How do you use clarity to provide therapeutic, coaching and counselling services in these times?

Unlike most answers on Clarity, where the experts share their grizzled, hard-earned experience, and seek to guide others to success... I'm not sure there are many of us with the experience to guide or advise you in such a personally challenging and difficult cultural environment. That said, we may not be able to guide, we can seek to inspire! The answer you seek is right there, in your own question, your own words. The opportunity to change the world that you're looking for is right in front of you. The words I mean are these... "My friends/acquaintances have been subject to similar experiences as well." It's clear to me that though you may feel down and defeated, you are already in a great place to effect change - With those friends and acquaintances you mentioned. You're already in communication with those people, you have a shared bond of common experience, and you want to make a difference. From such small seeds of determination, great change can be affected. There is a quote, which I am heavily paraphrasing and I cannot attribute properly, that I want to share... "Great leaders create a space for others to succeed" I want you to focus on one idea... "Creating a possibility space for others" What I mean by this is to imagine, discover and create ways for the people around you to feel better about life, to create spaces and opportunities for them to contribute to each other. This might mean organizing people so they can walk around together (assuming safety in numbers, and not an increased risk of harassment). Or a way for people to get together to share meals, or resources in some way. You might seek out experienced members of your community, who can help teach others to be safer, more secure and self-reliant. And you can help to teach others to do what you're doing and make the world a better place for each other. I don't know the individual challenges you and your community face, but I know who can fix them... You. And if you want to make a difference in the world as a whole, to inspire and illuminate others? Do everything I just suggested, and write about it. Anonymously if needs be. I for one would love to read a blog about how you're implementing change in such a challenging and hostile political climate. The world has enough productivity startups, mobile agencies and clever apps for first-world problems - We need something real, to remind us there is more to life than the latest Apple product, or viral video. You can do it. For yourself, for your community, and for the rest of us who might often take our lives for granted.

Best way? Figure out a process to get consistent referrals from other professionals. I made a video about this situation, in the video blog here: http://www.jasonkanigan.org/your-confusing-title/ Second-best way? Narrow your ideal customer definition, and go get them. Who values uncovering their unconscious behavior and changing them to conscious decisions? Who values that? Not many people, IMO. But I do know one niche that does: some high level executives. They know mindset is #1 in determining their results. The good news here? They know the value of doing so, and will pay for it. Unlike the regular public, who love 'free' and struggle to pay for anything because they don't have any money nor a belief that investing in themselves is important, your executives will 'get it'. In fact, I'd niche down even more, to executives in a certain industry who are making so much a year. Talk less about you and more about the situation your ideal customer is in. That's your marketing. Most sellers do it completely backwards.

I originally answered this question in Quora. Here's my interpretation: Very tough to sleep most nights of the week. Weekends don't mean anything to you anymore. Closing a round of financing is not a relief. It means more people are depending on you to turn their investment into 20 times what they gave you. It's very difficult to "turn it off". But at the same time, television, movies and vacations become so boring to you when your company's future might be sitting in your inbox or in the results of a new A/B test you decide to run. You feel guilty when you're doing something you like doing outside of the company. Only through years of wrestling with this internal fight do you recognize how the word "balance" is an art that is just as important as any other skill set you could ever hope to have. You begin to see how valuable creativity is and that you must think differently not only to win, but to see the biggest opportunity. You recognize you get your best ideas when you're not staring at a screen. You see immediate returns on healthy distractions. You start to respect the Duck. Paddle like hell under the water and be smooth and calm on top where everyone can see you. You learn the hard way that if you lose your cool you lose. You always ask yourself if I am changing the World in a good way? Are people's lives better for having known me? You are creative and when you have an idea it has no filter before it becomes a reality. This feeling is why you can't do anything else. You start to see that the word "entrepreneur" is a personality. It's difficult to talk to your friends that are not risking the same things you are because they are content with not pushing themselves or putting it all out there in the public with the likelihood of failure staring at you everyday. You start to turn a lot of your conversations with relatives into how they might exploit opportunities for profit. Those close to you will view your focus as something completely different because they don't understand. You don't blame them. They can't understand if they haven't done it themselves. It's why you will gravitate towards other entrepreneurs. You will find reward in helping other entrepreneurs. This is my email: paul@ecquire.com. Let me know if I can help you with anything. Your job is to create a vision, a culture, to get the right people on the bus and to inspire. When you look around at a team that believes in the vision as much as you do and trusts you will do the right thing all the time, it's a feeling that can't be explained. The exponential productivity from great people will always amaze you. It's why finding the right team is the most difficult thing you will do but the most important. This learning will affect your life significantly. You will not settle for things anymore because you will see what is possible when you hold out for the best and push to find people that are the best. You don't have a problem anymore being honest with people about not cutting it. You start to see that you're a leader and you have to lead or you can't be involved with it at all. You turn down acquisition offers because you need to run the show and you feel like your team is the best in the World and you can do anything with hard work. Quitting is not an option. You have to be willing to sleep in your car and laugh about it. You have to be able to laugh at many things because when you think of the worse things in the World that could happen to your company, they will happen. Imagine working for something for two years and then have to throw it out completely because you see in one day that it's wrong. You realize that if your team is having fun and can always laugh that you won't die, and in fact, the opposite will happen: you will learn to love the journey and look forward to what you do everyday even at the lowest times. You'll hear not to get too low when things are bad and not to get too high when things are good and you'll even give that advice. But you'll never take it because being in the middle all the time isn't exciting and an even keel is never worth missing out on something worth celebrating. You'll become addicted to finding the hardest challenges because there's a direct relationship between how difficult something is and the euphoria of a feeling when you do the impossible. You realize that it's much more fun when you didn't have money and that money might be the worse thing you could have as a personal goal. If you're lucky enough to genuinely feel this way, it is a surreal feeling that is the closest thing to peace because you realize it's the challenges and the work that you love. Your currencies are freedom, autonomy, responsibility and recognition. Those happen to be the same currencies of the people you want around you. You feel like a parent to your customers in that they will never realize how much you love them and it is they who validate you are not crazy. You want to hug every one of them. They mean the World to you. You learn the most about yourself more than any other vocation as an entrepreneur. You learn what you do when you get punched in the face many many times. You learn what you do when no one is looking and when no one would find out. You learn that you are bad at many things, lucky if you're good at a handful of things and the only thing you can ever be great at is being yourself which is why you can never compromise it. You learn how power and recognition can be addicting and see how it could corrupt so many. You become incredibly grateful for the times that things were going as bad as they possibly could. Most people won't get to see this in any other calling. When things are really bad, there are people that come running to help and don't think twice about it. Tal Raviv, Gary Smith, Joe Reyes, Toan Dang, Vincent Cheung, Eric Elinow, Abe Marciano are some of them. I will forever be in their debt and I could never repay them nor would they want or expect to be repaid. You begin to realize that in life, the luckiest people in the World only get one shot at being a part of something great. Knowing this helps you make sense of your commitment. Of all the things said though, it's exciting. Every day is different and so exciting. Even when it's bad it's exciting. Knowing that your decisions will not only affect you but many others is a weight that I would rather have any day than the weight of not controlling my future. That's why I could not do anything else.

If I understand your current question correctly you're asking about desire towards vs impact of financial reward related to work. If you look at Herzberg's 2 factor theory you could conclude that financial gain is a work hygiene issue. Pay is not a strong motivating factor until it does not reach market or personally assessed value. On the other hand, promotion provides an intrensic variable of success that motivates individuals. Also, if you look at Maslow' s Hierarchy the money based issues are on the base while self-actualization and social status are much higher on the pyramid. Keeping this in mind most will find a higher degree of self-effacacy in a higher position vs a pay raise.

The best way is to lean how to ask great questions and to physically spend time with your users watching them work. I don't have all the killer questions, but my favourite to help understand product roadmap opportunities is "What do you do 3 minutes before, and after you use our product?". That helps me understand where the opportunity lies to build a solid solution end-to-end. Also, finding a set of users that feel comfortable having you hangout and work with them, taking notes and asking questions is invaluable. Just to understand their environment, the way they organize their work, and how they might communicate around the problems your solution is/could help with is incredible. Every time I'm at an event and someone ask me what I do, I always ask them if I can "show them" and if they say yes, I have them find / download / signup and explore our app. Then I ask them questions about how they might see someone using it, who they think might be the best customer, etc. It's not about not knowing, it's about continuously learning and testing different perspectives. As for tools I use: www.usertesting.com / especially new mobile tests!