Practitioner Pulse July 2026: Plan A Successful Next Six Months: Ep 96

Halfway through the year can feel brutal if your clinic bookings aren’t matching the goals you set back in January. I’m recording this Practitioner Pulse ahead of time while I’m away celebrating my 50th, and I wanted to give you something practical and grounding: a mid-year reset that helps you finish the year strong, even if the first half has felt slow, messy, or unexpectedly quiet.

We talk about what I’m hearing across the market from practitioners, including a softer June and clients who are more deliberate right now. With Australian cost-of-living pressure, RBA rate rise uncertainty, and people watching budgets, decision-making can slow down. That isn’t a reflection of your value or your skills. The real risk is what happens next: comparisonitis, niche jumping, copying someone else’s offer, or disappearing because you feel wobbly. Six months is enough time to change the trajectory of your whole year, but only if you stop chasing shiny objects and get focused.

I break down the “visibility gap” and why consistency matters more than ever across email, Google, and social platforms. Social media is a billboard, not your entire business, so we focus on foundational content that builds trust and makes it easy for the right clients to choose you. In a world of AI answers and content overload, trust is your edge, and it grows when you stay in touch, show up on video if you can, and keep your message clear.

To wrap up, I guide you through building a simple plan from revenue backwards: what you want to earn, the consult numbers you need, and a marketing plan that prioritises email, SEO-friendly blogs, and smart repurposing into podcast and YouTube. Subscribe so you don’t miss the upcoming live Practitioner Pulse sessions, and if this helps, share it with a practitioner friend and leave a review.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:59

Hi real and welcome. I'm Cassandra Duffel. Thank you for joining me on The Abundant Practitioner. Now, this is our Practitioner Pulse episode for July 2026. I am recording this one in advance because right now, friends, as you're listening to this, I am in Japan celebrating my 50th birthday. So I did record this one in advance, and I hope you enjoy the episode. Practitioner Pulse is a new series that I started in June where we're going to come on every month and really touch on what's happening in the market, what's happening in our businesses, how we can take advantage of some of the things that are happening, what we might need to be mindful of. The other thing with Practitioner Pulse is I'm going to be starting later this year live practitioner pulse. So I'm going to be coming on to the YouTube channel and I'm going to be doing and syncing that through Zoom as well, doing a live with everyone on for the Practitioner Pulse, which is going to give you a chance to come on, ask questions, and we're going to have a really

Welcome And Practitioner Pulse Format

SPEAKER_00 1:58

lovely QA with those. So let's dive into this practitioner pulse. This is July 2026, and I'm calling this one the mid-year reset. Right now, we are smack bangos halfway through the year. SmackBang in the middle. And for many practitioners, this is the point where reality starts to collide with expectations. Did you start the year thinking I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, I'm going to launch my signature program, and I'm going to be generating five figure, six-figure months by the middle of the year, and I'm going to be doing all these fab things. Now, that's great. I love a goal. You know that. I love good goals and I love stretch goals. But maybe right now, where you're at, maybe you're ahead of where you hope to be. Maybe you're behind of where you hope to be. Maybe you're like me sitting here going, My gosh, wasn't it February last week? Where on earth is the year gone? It just feels like it's zoomed ahead. But whatever the situation that you're in right

The Mid-Year Reset Moment

SPEAKER_00 3:02

now, whether you feel ahead, behind, right on top, this is still the perfect time to pause and ask yourself what needs to happen in the next six months. Nothing happens in your business without a plan. And I find by and large, so many practitioners come into their businesses with just a hope and a prayer. I want to be successful. I don't know what that means. I don't know how many clients that is or what kind of revenue that is, but I want to be successful. And I'm just going to work in this business until I become successful, even though I don't know what success means to me yet. So we end up working, working, working and never really understanding what that means. It's the step we need to take from being an employee in our own business to being the CEO, business owner running the business, because that's the person with the plan, that's the person with the strategy, that's the person who knows where we're heading. So what's going to happen in the next six months? Right-o. Let's talk about it. Point number one, I wanted to talk about was a practice who might feel a little bit behind right now. And I know it's been a tough year for a lot of you. I absolutely get that. And you might be feeling that it's been slow, been slow to, you know, get moving, that there's been some quiet periods. A lot of practitioners are telling me that this June period has been more quiet than they normally experience, and they've been a bit worried about that too. So that sort of slower start, you know, the momentum's been harder to gain. Um, goals, unmet goals. And I know we can feel really deflated, can't we? If we've got these goals and we were going to be doing, you know, $20,000 by February, then it doesn't eventuate. So unmet goals can be a problem right now. We can feel a bit deflated, a bit behind. And when these things start to happen, we fall into a little bit of comparisonitis. Oh, that practitioner looks like they're doing really well. Oh, that person looks like they're doing great. That's

Behind On Goals Without Panic

SPEAKER_00 5:01

also the time where I see a lot of practitioners jump niches. When you're struggling in yours and you see someone online who seems to be getting all of this traction for, say, adrenal health and adrenal fatigue, and you think, ooh, that looks good. That looks lucrative. I'm gonna go and do adrenal health. It's got nothing to do with the niche. It's got everything to do with you and how passionate you are about it and how much you love what you're doing. So don't go niche jumping, don't go copying niches, don't go copying messages, don't go copy just because someone's got a successful signature program, doesn't mean you need one. It's time to reset right now and come back to center because six months you've got left of the year. Six months. Six months is more than enough change or time, sorry, to change the trajectory of your whole year. So where you're sitting right now, if you're ahead of where you wanted to be or behind, doesn't matter. You still have six months to get exactly where you wanted to be. So if you're ahead of where you are, it's time to relook at your stretch goals and change them, up them, expand them. Okay, you've got to keep growing, grow to your next level. If you're behind, that's fine too. It's time to look at what happens in the next six months so you can still be hitting those goals that you wanted to hit. Now, the other thing that we need to be aware of when we're planning the next six months is clients are more deliberate. Okay, they're more deliberate. What I mean by that is they're delaying decisions, they're thinking about things more, they've got more budget awareness, they're being more selective with their spending. And I say that and giggle to myself in my own mind because how much are people spending on the end of your sales? And when you've got clients bundling in like I had the other day, saying, Oh, I've got to be careful with my budget today, but she's barely able to hold all the brand label bags she had from the shopping center across the road, you know, and we're talking there was a Louis Vuitton there, and then at the end of the session she put it on afterpay. Everyone has their own decisions to make around money, but I find people's selective spending can be really funny. Now, if clients are being more selective and maybe you're not seeing the bookings that you hope to have or the revenue that you hope to have, I just want

Why Clients Are Hesitating To Book

SPEAKER_00 7:13

to say to you, this isn't a reflection on you. This isn't a rejection of you. You are a brilliant practitioner, you are great at what you do, and it's just that we're in a season of caution, okay? So it's a season of caution, and we have been all year. It's going to continue a little bit more, but there's another RBA rate rise announcement to come. A lot of people, economists, have been suggesting that if they put rates up again, that it's going to send Australia into a recession. And I know a lot of people are just holding on to their dollars, going, oh my gosh, what's happening? Um, we've had some other changes. You know, there's been a lot of tax changes that you've heard about this week. So there's a lot of changes coming that are making people think, oh, what do I do? Where do I put my money? So that might change things. If we don't get a rate rise, in about six weeks post that, you'll see people ease up on the purse strings a little bit because what they are waiting for is the change. So if you get a rate rise, it comes on straight away. Immediately, you know, your mortgage goes up, the cost of everything goes up. If you get a rate reduction, they take about six weeks to hand that over. So, you know, we we've just got to sit and wait and see what happens there. But remember, there's clients who need help in every market, and it doesn't mean you have to be the cheapest. On the last episode, I talked about one of my return clients who, even though I offered her a return to care promotional offer of $195, that's what's there on the website. She chose the $400 consult because that suited her better. There's plenty of people out there. We've just got to make sure that we're being very upfront about what it is, what we're offering, what they're going to get out of it. And if things are slow right now, it's not a reflection of you, your abilities. I don't want you to take any of that on. I want to talk about the third thing that I'm seeing that's really coming to the forefront in this stage of the year, this mid-year. And I'm calling it the visibility gap. Now, I do not believe you can grow a thriving practice just by being visible on social media. So don't take that the wrong way. But what I mean is the visibility gap when I'm referring to it is you guys disappearing. Disappearing when it gets quiet. When things get quiet, you start to question yourself, you might have some mindset wobbles. And instead of ramping up marketing when things get quiet, they hide. You know, they go under the emotional do nut and they hide. They stop sending emails to the lease because oh, I haven't got many clients, no one likes me, no one wants to book. Not the case at all. But they stop sending emails, they stop writing blogs, they kind of hibernate a wee bit and go, ooh, I gotta hide. Now, it's not the time to be stopping your content, and I'm not

The Visibility Gap When It’s Quiet

SPEAKER_00 9:55

saying stop social media altogether in this market. Look at it as a billboard. So let's say you bought a billboard, paid to rent a billboard on a main highway in the area that you live for your clinic. Now, that's about branding. You're not going to go changing that every week and putting up all these different messages. It's a branding exercise. I look at social media right now the same way. I don't think we need to be posting every day, multiple times per day, because it doesn't give us anything. There's no benefit in doing that. Posting a few times a week, a few times a month, whatever suits you, with content that is really grounded and foundational. What I mean by that is you wouldn't go posting, here's the five tips to detox this spring, because every man and their dog's posting that anyway. You would post why my clients with chronic fatigue get success with me when they're failed with other practitioners. Why I believe that the answer to whatever this problem is is natural medicine. You need foundational stuff that shows who you are, what you do, what people are going to get out of it. So when they do come and look at you, they can see in a nutshell who you are. So that's really important. Now the interesting thing to remember here is this this visibility situation, it's a really hard one because doesn't it take time to build? Takes time to get traction and get things moving, okay? But once you get that traction happening, it flows, doesn't it? It flows. The minute you stop, you're back down the bottom of the bucket. So if you don't send an email for a week, your sender rating reduces and you won't show up as readily in people's inboxes. If you are posting every day on Facebook and then you stop, you're not going to be seen. The algorithm's going to punish you for it and you won't be shown. If you are sharing on Google My Business, great platform right now to be using, lots of traction there, very, very positive. But if you are posting there once every week and then you stop, it's a so it's a search engine. It's Google. They're going to penalize you for it. You're not going to be shown as much. So whatever you're doing, keep your regularity and you can increase it, absolutely, but don't go back beyond where you already are, if that makes sense, because it erodes very, very fast, the traction that you had. Now, if you listen to the previous episode, I want to pull a piece of that out because part of the July practitioner pulse, I think we need to talk about trust. And I know I banged on about this in the last episode, but trust. Trust is more valuable than ever before. We've always said that trust is important, but it's always been a bit of a flippant throwaway statement for a lot of people. And I remember learning in college and they talked about how important it is to build trust when we're doing that communication subjects and things. But now, in the last two years, it actually means something in a way it's never meant it before. And it means something because of things like AI. When we can get information that may or may not be right at the blink of a hat, type bullets there. Having someone we can come and ask, like a practitioner who specializes in something, who we trust, is much more meaningful. Trust is also becoming more valuable because we are content overloaded. And one person saying this and one person saying that, and this person's saying

Trust Matters More In The AI Era

SPEAKER_00 13:16

something different, when you've got all these conflicting opinions, how do you make sense of that? You go to the person you trust and you say, What do you think? What do you think? That's why content overload is eroding trust even more. So you've got this content overload, you've got all of this noise. It's really hard for people to focus on anything. They might be thinking, oh, this looks like the way forward. Then they're seeing all this other content about something else, and they're thinking, oh, is that the right thing? Maybe I'm wrong. So being able to trust you is more important and more valuable than ever before. I think it's an important thing to note that information is becoming easier and cheaper than it's ever been before. You can find anything you want online. AI can give you something in milliseconds, be it right or wrong. Okay. I know a lot of people who've ended up with crash websites recently because they followed what the AI told them to do. And then when they went back to the AI and said, that didn't work and my website crashed, the AI literally said, Oh, my bad. Yeah, that's right. If you had done that, that would have crashed your website. So, you know, we've got to be careful. That's certainly not somewhere you want to be getting your health information, is it? So trust is much, much more valuable. Now you can utilize that. Utilize that to your benefit. That means keeping in touch with people, making sure you're emailing your list. It's a great time, if you don't have one, to start a YouTube channel. And I'm not saying to post one thing every week. I'm saying it's a great thing to have there because if I see you on video, I'm building more trust and more credibility than if I'm reading something you've written. If you had a YouTube channel that you only put something up on once a month, so be it. That's fine. What if you had six short videos on there talking about you, your practice, the people you love to help, the results that you get? So I can come as a potential client and watch all of that. By the time I've watched you in six little 10-minute videos, I feel like I know you. I could probably walk past you in the supermarket and recognize you after that. That's what's really important. Now, with the back end of the year, this next six months, I want to say these words to you. Focus will win. Focus will win. Those of you that are scattergun, going, I'm gonna do this, now I'm doing that, and now I'm bouncing over here, and someone else told me to do that, and you're boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you are going to find yourself at the end of the year in the same position you're in now. That's just the way of it. But if you can get focused, set a plan, make a process and follow it, that's where the results will come. A lot of my practitioner clients right now, so you know that yes, I'm a naturopath and I've got my clients in there, but I've also got practitioner clients that I mentor. Now, by and large, they're all saying to me at the moment that their client numbers are increasing. They're seeing momentum, they're seeing more people come in. And it's because they are being consistent. We've been working for months on getting their content moving, getting regular with their email marketing, putting up the blogs, getting the right words on their websites, and it's working. And you know what? They were focused on that. Instead of stressing about, oh, I haven't got enough

Focus Wins With A Simple Plan

SPEAKER_00 16:17

clients, they focused on the marketing plan that we set, and now it's coming to fruition. Things are building. Building is momentum, isn't it? And that's what we want. So I want you for this back half of the year right now to make a plan. What does it look like? I want you to plan first revenue. What do you need to earn? What do you want to earn for the rest of the year? And break that down into the months that you've got left. Break it down into the months, and then what does that look like in terms of client numbers? How many initial consults do you need and how many follow-up consults do you need to hit that number? If you sell products and you're selling herbs or supplements, what sort of numbers do you need to do there? So all the different revenue streams you have available, work that into your plan so you have an idea. It's just great to have that goal of right, I know I need 10 initial consults and 20 follow-ups this month to hit that mark because then you can track it. And how good does it feel when you go, wow, you know, it's week two and I've already done two-thirds of those consults. Like that's an amazing feeling. So map out your sales and revenue first. Then I want you to make a marketing plan. I want you to make a marketing plan for the next six months. Marketing plan that focuses on content over social media. Content over social media. We want to do the the things that work. I'm not saying dump social media. You can have it in your plan, but give it the priority it deserves. I want you to focus on email marketing first. I want you to build a list. If you don't have one, start one. If you've never created one and you've got to practice, get all those client emails and make yourself a list. I want you to start writing content. Blogs, articles, or just condition content on your website about the kind of people that you help. I want you to put those up. Google is looking for you to update your website once a week. If you do not update your website once a week, you will lose ranking. So a blog is a great way to tick that box because you're putting new content on there, content that's highly searchable by your ideal client and you're keeping Google happy. So that's great. Then that content that you've written becomes everything else you need it to be. If you have a podcast and you want to do a podcast episode, whatever you wrote on the blog, that becomes your podcast episode. If you want to do something for YouTube, sit there, speak it. That becomes your YouTube content. The blog becomes all of your social media posts. I used to physically print my blog and highlight the words and the phrases that I would put on my social media that covered off that week's worth of social media done. You send one email, you write one blog, and then that blog becomes everything else that you need. Your daily Facebook posts or your three times a week Instagram posts. Set a consistency for your marketing that you can achieve. There's no such thing as best consistency or frequency in this market. It doesn't exist. It's about what you can achieve and grow from there. So get regular with what you're doing and stick at it for 12 weeks. You know it takes 12 weeks to see any success, and then adjust. So if you've done your plan for that 12 weeks and you've seen nothing, I would suggest that perhaps your frequency is not high enough. The frequency I can suggest is weekly, but I know that's a lot for many of you. So a weekly blog, a weekly email is too much for a lot of you. If that's the case, fortnightly. And if you can't do that, do monthly. But I would never ever do anything less than monthly. And if you're only doing it monthly, you are going to take longer to see results. So if it's going to take us 12 weeks doing it weekly, you're probably going to be looking at six months to a year before you see any traction just doing monthly. In all honesty, though, it won't take you that long. It won't take you that long to knock that up. One email, one blog. It shouldn't be taking you a full day to write a blog or an email. It should take you an hour, if not less, to do that. Okay, so main thing here is you need a plan and you need a plan for your sales and a plan for your marketing for the rest of this year. It's not about having another platform. It's not about doing another course. It's not about introducing a new offer. It's not about another shiny object and chasing something else. It's about activating what you've got in front of you in the best way that you can. All right. So as we're closing up this episode of the Practitioner Pulse, I want to just remind you that later this year we're going to start bringing these conversations into quarterly live practitioner pulse sessions. So keep an eye out for that. That will be live streaming on the YouTube channel, and I'm going to run it through Zoom as well. So if you are a practitioner who wants to finish the year really strong, you may not be the one who had the best start. Okay, there's six months of the race left. So even if you're a bit flat right now and things haven't worked the way you wanted, you've got six months to turn that around. So be the one who stays focused, be the one who makes a plan, be the one who sees it through. Okay, stay connected, stay activated, and get the things done. Those are the people that come December are going to be saying, Cass, I had a great six months. All right, friends. So go take some action and I will see you in December with much better results. All right, friends, thanks for being here, and I will see you in next week's episode. Have a great week.