The Passionate But Penniless Anti-Selling Wound™ archetype is when you feel an extreme sense of responsibility for the person you’re talking to. So much so that it pains you greatly for them to say “no thanks” and walk away, when you know how much you could help them. So instead you offer your services at a discount or even free.
This archetype is particularly common among healers – everyone from psychics to physical therapists and everything in between. Even professionals like attorneys and accounts who solve people’s problems, ie “heal” them, can find them suffering from this Wound archetype.
The reason is that as a healer, part of your mission in this lifetime is to help people. And so when you come across somebody that you know you can help, it feels unbearable for them to walk away without having received your help.
Marilynn, a student in one of my Heal Your Sales Wounds™ workshops, shared that she actually feels that to such an extreme, that when a client says they don’t want to pay for her services, she will often respond by offering a free trial, or give away her services for free – just so the person won’t walk away without receiving her help at all.
Update about Marilynn: She commented in the Facebook group that since getting this revelation from me about her over-developed sense of responsibility, she’s started to notice that the people she gives her services to for free actually don’t change that much. And it has caused her to have the HUGE revelation, “I can’t do it for them. They have to participate in their own healing, and that starts with paying me.” BRAVO Marilynn!”
A big part of Marilynn’s shift came during a coaching session I did with her, that she agreed to let me publicize on YouTube. You can watch it below.
Shortly after this session, she received a phone call booking her to do a Hand Analysis gig, to the tune of $500. I’d say that’s another Sales Wound™ healed!
You Can't Do Everything For Your Client
Relationships of all kind are best when they're 50/50, aren't they?
In the area of business, this means that when your customer has a problem, you the business owner owner should do half the work of solving it, but the customer has to do the other half.
Your half of the work involves being responsible for delivering your product and service; while your customer's half of the work - what they're responsible for - involves paying you.
The customer generally has to do a few other things as well to take responsibility for their own outcome - they have to provide you with data, show up for sessions, implement your suggestions, etc. But one the main things - and certainly the first thing - the customer must do is pay you.
And if the customer says, “meh, I don’t wanna do my part. I don’t want to do my work. I don’t want to take any responsibility for fixing what’s going on with me by even paying you,” some healers - and Marilynn is an example - will respond by saying “OK fine I’ll be responsible for your entire transformation. I’ll do 100% of the work. You don’t have to pay me, I’m still going to do my healing work on you anyway.”
And here’s the big problem with this.
When you allow the customer to do less than their half of the work, not only are you damaging your business - you’re devaluing yourself, you’re decreasing your income, you may even be jeapordizing the continued existence of your business - but you’re also robbing the customer of their own spiritual healing path.
We all came into this life with a set of stuff that we’re supposed to work on. And part of our life’s work is to work on it! And to do our share, and take responsibility for our stuff. And if somebody else comes along and erases our problem without requiring us to take any responsibility or to participate in any way, well that’s kind of robbing us of our karma.
Marilynn realized this in a very practical way when she noticed that the people she’d given her services to for free had actually improved less than those who had paid her.
Can you see how you're guilty of being Passionate but Penniless?
Or perhaps you resonate with some of this archetype, but not all of it. In that case you might be suffering from a different Anti-Selling Wound archetype, or even a different Sales Wound™ altogether.
There's also the Strategically Underpaid Anti-Selling Wound™ archetype. Much like Passionate But Penniless, the Strategically Underpaid person is also doing work that they haven't been paid for - but the reason is different. This archetype is very common among service providers, especially those who are part of a team the client has hired.
Another close cousin to the Passionate but Penniless Anti-Selling Wound™ archetype is not an Anti-Selling Wound™ at all, but rather the Prostitution Wound™.
This happens when you aren’t just passionate about how much your client needs your healing services, you actually feel a level of indignance that “society” isn’t doing more to help people like your client.
Jane is a speech therapist whose story is a great example of this Wound. You can read it here.