Scrivener is a software program that is used to create and managed written content. Scrivener is similar to Microsoft Word in the process of creating written content, however, it provides a more in-depth content management system for all of your writing.

To use Microsoft Word, you typically create one master document where the pages flow after each other. This means your content is created and written in a sequence that generally focuses on one primary topic. Each time you want to write about another topic or work on a new writing project, you have to create a separate Word document. As you create new documents for each project, you then have to manage multiple separate files on your computer and remember the content that you created in each file.

When you create writing content in Scrivener, all of your content and projects remain stored within one master file. Your Scrivener master file works similarly to a filing cabinet where you can create folders and subfolders which enables you to keep writing projects separate from each other, however, you can easily access each project because they are all contained within the one master file that you have open.

This means you only need to manage one file which makes it easier to back up or transfer your file between computers.

Below is a snapshot of a Scrivener project based on the Admin Package we have available in the store. On the left-hand side of the image, you can see the structure of the entire file. Each name on the left-hand side represents a separate writing file that you can click in to and access your content.

By having all your writing content in one file you can easily switch between tasks without having to regularly open individual documents. This means you can also easily search for previously written content without having to access separate documents.

Scrivener has a number of features that allows you to label your writing content so that you can easily identify content that is being researched, written, edited and completed.

Some of the projects that Scrivener has been used for include:

• Non-fiction book
• Fiction book
• Ebooks
• Screenplay
• Thesis
• Research project
• Course planning
• Blogging

Once your content is written, Scrivener provides the ability to publish your content into external files including ebooks, pdfs and html. This means you can easily share content with other users who do not use Scrivener.

If you want to learn more about Scrivener and it’s powerful features, you can take this FREE course on Udemy (no affiliation with this course): Get Started With Scrivener – Includes FREE 52 Page Ebook.

While you’re working through the free course, you can also download a trial version of Scrivener for 30 days. You can access the trial version download here.

There are a lot of free Scrivener templates available on the internet that you can download. Any template can easily be customised to suit your preferences.

The organizational abilities of Scrivener are one of it’s strongest features for creating blog content. Along with creating written content, Scrivener also enables you to import images and graphics so that you can outline your blog posts as they would appear on your website.

An important part of writing blog content is developing an editorial calendar to help you plan and manage your blog content. Scrivener provides you with the ability to create tables so that you can create calendars to plan your blog content.

You can create your table using a standard format of rows and columns and include additional formatting to stylize the look of your calendar. Below are a few screenshots of the calendars that are included in the Reiki Practice Admin Package for Scrivener that we have available in the store.

You can format your calendar using the colours and style of your preference and update it as each year progresses. Scrivener incorporates a useful label feature so you can visually categorize your blogging content.

Scrivener includes the primary editing features of spell check, thesaurus and word count so that you can professionally edit your written content as well as set writing goals to achieve.

You can create your blog content using a variety of organizational structures. For example, you can organise your content by calendar date with a folder and subfolders for each year and month. You could also choose to organize your blog content by theme and organise your folders and subfolders according to specific topics that relate to your Reiki practice.

Scrivener includes a status system that enables you to mark content as To Do, First Draft, Revised Draft, Final Draft, Done, In Progress and Outline so that you can keep track of the stage of your blog content. You can also incorporate your own status labels to make the system more meaningful to you.

Included at the end of this post is a FREE BLOGGING TEMPLATE as pictured below:

The template contains a list of blank notes and folders for you to use as your blog content structure for the year.

Scrivener is an excellent tool for creating content used for workshops and ecourses. The organizational strengths of Scrivener allow you to easily create and manage the multiple layers of content that you will use in your workshop or ecourse.

Scrivener enables you to develop a strong organizational foundation for your ecourse that provides you with the scope to brainstorm, create and organize your course content all in one Scrivener project file.

We’ve created a Course Planner Package using Scrivener that you can use to create your own workshop or ecourse. The package contains quick and practical advice on creating your ecourse, as well as useful worksheets and templates that can easily be implemented to help design and create your course content.

If you’ve considered creating a course before but it seemed too much work for an unexpected outcome, then this package will provide you with many templates and checklists that will help reduce the amount of time it takes to create your course.

This course planner package will provide you with a roadmap on how to complete your course from brainstorming your course topic, through to creating your course content and then launching your course online or in person.

After working through this package you will:

• Have a step by step project plan to create your next course
• Centralize all of your course assets to enable easy updating
• Select tech gear to create your course and 3rd party platforms to host your course
• Create an effective customer sales funnel to sell your course
• Construct your sales emails using the included email templates
• Decide on your course topic, course format and course delivery method
• Create your course using the modules template provided
• Create the marketing assets you will need to market your course
• Create a blogging strategy to market your course
• Use the 30 day planner to complete your course

The Course Planner Package is a Scrivener template that is imported into your Scrivener Project. All sections are arranged within the Scrivener structure of folders and text documents.

Scrivener was originally created for authors of books and contains a number of useful features that makes it easy to create an ebook.

You can start your ebook using one of the predefined templates provided in the software, or you can choose to create your own templates and use your template each time you create a new writing project.

The organizational features of Scrivener help guide you through the important steps of creating your ebook such as:

• Brainstorming
• Research
• Book outline
• Book content
• Appendix content

Scrivener has a Corkboard feature that helps you plan your ebook content. Within the corkboard section, you can drag and drop index cards within your ebook that you have used to create your book structure.

Scrivener has the ability to add document notes which enables you to make notes in areas that require further research.

Once your ebook is created in Scrivener, the editing process provides you with the ability to move content within your project and it’s individual sections so that you can finalize your ebook structure and content flow.

Once your ebook is completed, Scrivener has a compilation feature which will provide you with the ability to export your book based on standard ebook formats. You can also easily generate a table of contents with HTML links so your reader can easily navigate through your content.

Scrivener has all of the common editing features of spell check, thesaurus, headlines, bold, italics etc so that your ebook will be professionally created.

You can purchase Scrivener here.

Scrivener is available in Windows, Mac and iOs formats.

We have a number of products in the store that have been developed to use with Scrivener, including:

• Reiki Practice Admin Package
• Blogging Package
• Course Planner Package

Each product is created as a template that you import into your Scrivener program. All of the organizational structure is provided for you along with prewritten content and prompts.

You can view more details about the content included in each package by clicking the links above. Images are also included to show you the content provided in each package.

REIKI PRACTICE ADMIN PACKAGE

Reiki Practice Admin Package for Scrivener

BLOGGING PACKAGE

Blogging Package for Scrivener

COURSE PLANNER PACKAGE

Course Planner Package for Scrivener

As you build your Reiki practice, you may develop projects outside of your general client work to help general additional income. You may also undertake projects that help you run your Reiki practice efficiently. This might include your administrative tasks, as well as managing your online presence and marketing your Reiki practice.

You may also want to develop projects such as workshops, ecourses, and ebooks.

Many of these projects involve numerous steps to ensure you cover all the required tasks. To ensure you effectively undertake all of these tasks, it can be helpful to introduce some planning into your project.

There are a number of benefits that planning can bring to the successful completion of your project, including:

• Helps provide a structure to follow for the entire project
• Provides a detailed task list of the project
• Helps provide a path towards meeting deadlines
• Manages risks associated with potential problems
• Manages resources for effective coordination

The type of project that you are undertaking will affect the depth of planning that your project requires. For example, it is much simpler to plan for writing a blog post, then it is to plan for writing an ebook. Planning allows you the flexibility of making your project as simplified or as complex as you require.

As a Reiki practitioner running a small business, your projects should be simple enough to ensure that you keep moving forward, however, also allow you the space to be as detailed as possible about your tasks to ensure that you have covered all necessary parts of the project.

There are 3 important concepts to keep in mind when planning your project:

1. What is my goal for this project?
2. What is the timeline of this project?
3. What resources do I need to complete this project?

Once you’ve defined these concepts, you can then move forward to the more in-depth process of detailing each step of your project.

Planning a project requires a level of visualization as you visualize the chapters in a book or the progression through an in-person workshop. The very initial stages of your planning process should involve visualising how you foresee your project to be carried out.

Use this visualization process to roughly sketch out a diagram or flow chart on a blank piece of paper. This sketch should be used as a very high level and generalized view of your project so that you have a way forward to explore the details of your project.

To show you how to plan a project, we’ve included an example below. You will be able to download the FREE planning template that is used in the planning example.

In the FREE template download, you will find all of the same sample information so that you can use it as a guide to developing your own project.

The FREE template is an Excel spreadsheet. A significant benefit of using excel is you can access a large database of free templates to download and use. You can view some of the FREE templates here: https://templates.office.com/en-us/Planners-and-Trackers

Some examples of the templates that are available include:

• Expense tracking
• Trip planner
• Idea planners
• Timesheets
• Calendars
• Lesson plans

You can download 2 FREE templates we’ve created that will assist in your planning. You can find the tools available in these blog posts below:

Productivity Tools: Stay Focusd vs Rescue Time



Create an Annual Social Media Plan in 1 Hour



For the purposes of this example, we’re using a project planner we’ve created in Excel.

The template includes:

• Instructions
• A blank planner template
• A planner template filled with sample data.

  

In this example, the project that is being completed is a blog post. If we use the 3 planning steps previously mentioned, our project would look like this:

• What is my goal for this project? – To write a blog post about the benefits of Reiki. Minimum 500 words.
• What is the timeline of this project? – 1 week
• What resources do I need to complete this project? – writing software, access to research, image creation software, social media

The example above is a detailed goal of one blog post. You could also scale the size of your goal to be: write 10 blog posts for my website and then use your planning template to plan out the entire 10 blog posts.

In the example using only one blog post, each column was completed as below:



If you’ve written blog posts before, you can enter your start and end dates based on your past experience. Writing blog posts requires some practice. Initially, you may find it difficult to get started with writing about your topic, however, over time you will begin to become more knowledgeable about creating effective titles, researching useful information, and writing in a way that feels natural and helpful for your readers.

Start out giving yourself plenty of time to write your first blog post. Write your blog post knowing that your first post won’t be written in the most efficient way, but you will learn from your attempt and improve your writing process over time. Once you’ve written a few blog posts you will begin to develop a pattern of time that it takes to complete your tasks which you can use as a guideline for setting deadlines in your future planning process.

The status column will help keep you on track. It provides a snapshot of the status of each task so that you know what has been completed and what tasks remain. Seeing tasks become completed can often be a motivating factor in maintaining momentum on your project.

Having all of your tasks allocated with a status will help you easily identify the progress of a project so that you can plan your week without wasting time on determining where you last left your project.

You can use this Excel planning spreadsheet to enter in your tasks and deadlines or you choose to print out a blank template and handwrite your tasks and deadlines instead.

Throughout this blog post, we’re going to detail the most important steps in starting your own Reiki practice. Some of the steps will be specific to your location and the local regulations and legal obligations in that region.

Many local and national governments provide online resources for small businesses to start a new business. Some of these resources are also specific to individual industries such as wellness businesses. Be sure to check out your local, state, and national government websites to determine if any of these resources are available to you as a new business owner.

One of the most important steps to creating your Reiki practice is to determine how ready you are to run a business. Running your own practice is a liberating process and can provide you with the independence to run your business the way you want to, however, it can also be overwhelming to find yourself having to make all of the decisions yourself. Self-doubt can creep in and potentially inhibit you from moving forward. It’s a good idea to explore your readiness to start a business and possibly work on developing some personal skills if you think it might be beneficial.

Before making the decision to start your own Reiki practice, ask yourself the following questions and reflect on your reaction to each question:

• Do I hold the correct qualifications for the services I am offering?
• Do I have the skills to manage multiple clients in one day?
• Do I understand the legal obligations I have with working with my clients?
• Do I have knowledge of the potential ethical issues that may arise with my clients?
• Do I have the resources to establish helpful administrative systems within my practice?
• Do I have a plan in place if I am unable to provide services to my client over a short or long term period?
• Do I like working in a team or alone?
• What is my motivation for starting my own Reiki practice?
• Have I budgeted how I can live without an income for 1, 3 or 6 months?
• Do I have a vision of how my practice will be run?
• Do I need to hire staff to cover client, administrative, or marketing work?
• Do I understand my taxation and business legal obligations?
• What income do I need to earn for a living wage? Am I able to fulfil the hours to earn that wage?
• Have I explored the expenses involved in operating a Reiki practice?
• Do I have additional income earning avenues while I build my Reiki practice?
• Am I able to establish a referral network for finding new clients?
• How much money and time do I need to invest to start my Reiki practice?
• Am I able to manage my time and energy?

The above is not an exhaustive list of items to consider when establishing your Reiki practice, however, the questions will help you begin the process of exploring potential risks and benefits of starting your own Reiki practice.

To run an effective business, you should establish a business model that determines how you will earn your income and find your clients. Essentially your business model is how you plan to operate your Reiki practice to make money.

Creating your business model can involve deciding on some important parts of your business such as:

• Will you provide individual Reiki sessions, online sessions or workshops and group sessions?
• What are the demographics (age, sex, location etc) of the client that you would like to work with?
• Do you have a speciality of dealing with a specific problem that your potential clients may be seeking help for?
• Will you be offering your Reiki services or physical products or digital products for sale as well?

How you create your business model will define the way in which you develop your Reiki practice planning. Your business model will determine the resources that you need to offer Reiki services and the administrative and marketing strategies to manage and gain new clients.

Setting up your Reiki practice can present with the most difficult challenges to starting your Reiki practice. There are many practical and legal considerations to put in place. If you can spend time putting these measures at the start, this means you can spend more time on client work in the future. Setting up your practice can be as simple as having a client intake form in place or developing a set of email responses so that you are not wasting your time on repetitive administrative tasks.

Setting up your practice typically covers the following areas:

• Office contact – phone, answering machine, email
• Office hours
• Office location
• Reiki treatment supplies
• Website
• Client administration – booking clients and accepting payment etc
• Business registration and legal requirements
• Office furniture and technology requirements
• Policies for fees, cancellation, refunds
• Client management
• Financial budgets and obligations (taxes)

This is not an exhaustive list of things to establish when starting your Reiki practice, however, it the list will provide a broad start to the most important parts you need to consider.

When starting your Reiki practice, you should implement the correct client management procedures to help you manage information about your clients, including:

• Client intake
• Client Consent
• Client privacy
• Authorization to release information
• Social media policy

Establishing these practices in advance will help ensure you meet your legal and ethical obligations with regard to client treatment and management. It will also help establish professional boundaries with your client.

Setting up your businesses financial systems involves the ability to record information and ensure that it provides you with an overview of your tax obligations.

It’s important to establish a robust system from the start so that you reduce or eliminate recording errors around your financial information. Recording incorrect information can have a significant financial impact so it’s important to get your system in place from the start.

Ideally, your financial system will provide useful reporting and also integrate with external sources including your accountant, bank and government for taxation purposes.

By automating your financial system as much as possible, you can then spend less time on admin and more time doing Reiki work with you clients.

Financial considerations you will need to explore include:

• Insurances
• Software for recording income and expenses
• Paying yourself
• Any payroll tax obligations
• Retirement savings
• Methods of payment for clients (cash, credit card etc)
• Business registration and any subsequent tax collection from providing services
• Producing invoices/receipts for clients
• Establishing and maintaining a bank account
• Receiving payments from external parties eg insurance, contractors etc

Therapeutic services such as Reiki need to consider ethical guidelines with regard to marketing Reiki services and products. The marketing must factor in your potential client’s vulnerability around physical and mental health issues.

If you belong to a professional organization, you can check that your marketing strategy follows any guidelines they may provide. You should also check if you are regulated by government guidelines on how you can market your Reiki services.

Your country, state, or local area may have its own regulatory body that will help provide you with a framework to follow on providing wellness services to the general public including clients of all ages.

• Most organizations suggest the below basic guidelines:
• Refrain from false, misleading or deceptive advertising
• Clearly state the terms of your Reiki service
• Be mindful of using testimonials and revealing client details that are covered by privacy obligations
• Do not create an unreasonable expectation of a “cure” or benefits of treatment
• Do not oversell your professional skills

All businesses function within a network of colleagues, peers, other businesses and government organizations. Many of these networks can be beneficial to supporting your Reiki practice and the ability to function as a business as well as develop a client base.

A professional network relates specifically to your Reiki skills and how you interact within your industry. Establishing a professional network provides a number of important benefits, including:

• Professional development and advice
• General education
• Addressing ethical issues
• Client management
• Collaboration on projects
• Mentorship/Mentee
• Community service

Some types of professional networks you may want to connect with include:

• Doctors
• Dentists
• Dieticians
• Physiotherapist
• Doula’s
• Occupational Therapist
• Social Workers
• Speech pathologists
• Pharmacists
• Diabetes Educator
• Optometrist
• Acupuncture
• Naturopathy
• Reiki
• Yoga
• Massage
• Kinesiology

To extend your network even further you could also make contact with other services including:

• Child care
• Hairdressers
• Beauty salon
• Weight loss centre

Connecting with these businesses can expose your business to clients who may be experiencing issues that you can help with. Look for organizations who work with your ideal client but don’t have a full range of services on offer. Smaller businesses and organizations have limited budgets and are eager to find additional resources to help their clients.

Establishing a professional network requires persistence in connecting your business to other services. Initially, you could create a list of at least 10 referral sources. Over time this list could expand to up to 50 contacts. When you create your network list, take note of contact details and social media networks.

The networking process can appear ineffective in the initial stages where you may not receive any response from professionals in your network. Remember that persistence and consistency is the most important aspect of marketing your business. This also has to be balanced with being respectful of the other person or business.

If you struggle to develop a list of networking contacts, try to build the task into a part of your business administrative tasks. Set yourself a goal of contacting a specific number of potential network contacts each month.

There are many Reiki based associations and organizations that provide benefits to its members through networking, education, training, public advocacy and general professional development.

If you’re not sure why joining a professional association can benefit you, you can read more on our blog post: 10 Reiki Associations and Organizations

In the above blog post, we detail a number of benefits for joining an association including:

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

• Guidance on establishing a career path.
• Educational requirements to become a Reiki practitioner.
• Guidance on the profession’s standards of practice.
• Updates on development in the profession and changes in practice
• Continuing education in person or online.
• Provides an avenue to be involved in the direction of your profession.
• May provide teaching or presentation opportunities
• Ethical advice

NETWORKING

• Build relationships with other Reiki practitioners.
• Develop mentor and mentee relationships.
• Establish working relationships for collaboration on projects.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Free resources to establish your Reiki practice policies.
• Free directory listing to advertise your Reiki practice to potential clients.
• Liability insurance at a discounted rate.

PROFESSIONAL ADVOCACY

• Promote and advocate Reiki practitioners working in allied health.
• Awareness of Reiki and the services it offers in the community.
• Volunteering opportunities for community service

In addition to connecting with professional organizations, you should also remain informed on developments within the Reiki field and any complementary therapies that work well with Reiki.

Updating your professional skills will ensure your clients are receiving the best care. It can also challenge you to increase your knowledge and understanding of Reiki and other relevant wellness therapies.

Wellness therapists are vulnerable to the same difficulties in life as everyone else. This can include problems with relationships or job difficulties, and illness. Practitioners can also experience mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and stress that may result in burnout.

Reiki practitioners are often privy to difficulties that their client may be experiencing and this can impact Reiki practitioners own wellbeing over time. Helping industries often report as experiencing a high rate of burnout from client work.

It is important to engage in self-care activities to help reduce stress and provide a nurturing restoration of wellness back to yourself as a Reiki practitioner. Doing this can benefit yourself as well as your clients as you maintain a healthy level of physical and mental health.

Self-care helps to create a framework in which Reiki practitioners can identify the impact of stress that needs addressing in both their personal and professional life. Self-care is most beneficial when it’s used during and after a stressful event. Self-care also acts as a preventative measure for handling future stresses.

Self-care can be beneficial to practitioners by:

• identifying physical issues and promoting future good health
• identifying psychological issues and implementing preventative care for future good mental health
• reducing stress and managing future stress through healthy coping mechanisms
• providing emotional support
• encouraging supportive relationships, both personally and professionally
• encouraging a balanced personal and work life

As well as a regular self-care plan, it’s essential that practitioners implement a plan in the event they are unable to therapy for their clients who may be in immediate need.

In the short term, you can simply reschedule your client, however, if you are absent from your Reiki practice for an extended period, you may need to refer your clients to another practitioner, or hire a contract practitioner to take care of your clients until you can return

If you have a plan in place for these potential situations, this can help minimize stress when you are experiencing the stress and feeling overwhelmed with the choices you have to make about your Reiki practice.

Once you’ve started your Reiki practice, it is helpful to implement a system of review to help you assess different parts of your Reiki business.

Below is a suggestion of items to include in your business review:

• what parts of the business are working successfully
• what parts of the business need to change
• where does most of the income from
• can any expenses be reduced or eliminated
• how can the business grow

If your financial recording systems are in place, you should be able to access your financial reports to help you analyze your income and expenses. Your goal should be to increase revenue or reduce expenses. Sometimes to increase revenue, you will need to increase expenses also such as advertising costs or a larger space if you require it for additional clients.

If you plan to maintain your income levels as before, you should then try and focus on reducing your expenses if possible. Expenses always have a way of creeping beyond their original budget.

If you have a website or social media, you should be able to access their specific analytics and reports to determine how your private practice is performing online with regard to website traffic, newsletter subscribers, and social media followers.

When you first analyze your data, it may seem like there is a large number of data to sift through. Over time, you will begin to determine the most important metrics for you to review each month. Initially, you should keep your list of metrics to review limited and then as you gain confidence in analyzing your business information, you can begin to add more metrics to your list.

Need help with setting up your Reiki Practice admin policies and procedures?

If you need help to set up your Reiki Therapy Practice business, we have an Admin Package in the store which contains a large collection of essential business documents.

The Admin Package is available in 3 formats, including:

• Evernote
• Scrivener
• Microsoft Word

 You can read more about the packages in our store HERE. 

BUSINESS ADMIN

• Business Details
• Accounts
• Contacts
• Financial Policies
• Fee Schedule
• Cancellation Policy
• Refund Policy
• Legal Policies
• Copyright
• Disclaimers
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Business Trackers
• Social Media Tips
• Business Admin Maintenance
• Calendars 

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

• Business Goals
• Project Template 

CLIENT ADMIN

• Client Intake Checklist
• Client Call Log
• Consent for Services
• Client Privacy Policy
• Social Media Policy

EMAIL & LETTER TEMPLATES

• Inquiry Reply
• Referral Request
• Reminder Late Payment