Resources mentioned in this episode:

👉 Start The Profitable Practice Free Course Here

👉 Learn About The Profitable Nutritionist Program

Episode Summary:

This week we’re talking about the 3 big things I would do differently if I were starting my holistic nutrition business over from scratch today so you can avoid those mistakes for yourself.

A LOT has changed in the online business space since 2015 when I launched my nutrition business, and even more has changed in MY understanding of business profitability and strategic growth, which is what this episode is all about.

Let’s dive in so you can avoid these big mistakes for yourself and avoid the big time wasters and energy vortexes I found myself in for far too long.
 

Enjoy!

Transcript:

Note: The transcription below was provided for your convenience. Please excuse any typos or mistakes the automated service made in translation.

Andrea Nordling 0:00

Welcome to Episode 27. Already what I have just loving recording this podcast, my friend, Episode 27, holy cow feels like we are just getting in the groove over here. If you haven't already, please hit subscribe in your podcast player, so you don't miss any of the upcoming episodes, which drop every Tuesday. And if you're feeling really generous, please leave a review. It helps us beat the algorithms and more people find the show, which is much appreciated on my end. Alright, so last week, I shared my story as an entrepreneur from the very beginning when I was 22. And I was waiting to apply to the FBI Academy, all the way till now. And the present moment where I have been a full time entrepreneur, always working for myself commissioned only for almost 20 years in three different industries. It's kind of a long story. But I shared that all last week. So go check out that episode, if you haven't already. It gives the full chronological order of how everything kind of shake out. So I've learned a lot over the last many, many years, almost two decades, mostly in business, I have learned by doing things wrong and failing miserably, and then figuring out a better way, and eventually succeeding, it is a work in progress. I'm still learning so much. And I love being able to share with you what's working and what's not working. And some of my big failures along the way, which is kind of what this episode will be like today. Because it normalizes the failures, it normalizes the fall flat on your face, this did not work at all, like I thought it was going to flops that most of business is. And that's just, that's just the way it is. Good, you are running your own company, you are going to do most things. Not that well and wrong, at least in the beginning. It is okay, it's totally expected. Sometimes you hit it out of the park. And sometimes everything just seems to be working. And that's wonderful. But a lot of the time it feels kind of crappy. And it's not working all that well. But you're learning every step of the way. And it doesn't mean anything has gone wrong. So let's normalize the failures and the flops and the oh my gosh, I want to just just laugh or cry. I don't know which one because none of that worked the way I thought it was going to embarrassments. let's normalize those, they're totally normal, expect them and love everything that you learn from them. That's what I have learned to do along the journey that I've been on as an entrepreneur, I have learned to just laugh a lot and to expect imperfection every step of the way, because it's always going to be imperfect anyways, you may as well embrace that and expect it.

2:31
Oh, all that to say if you haven't already, go back and listen to last week's episode. And you will get the full start to finish chronological sequence of events of how my holistic nutrition business came about in 2015. And how it evolved over the years. So I'm not going to go back on all of that journey, you can listen to that episode, I went into quite a bit of detail. But what I am going to do today, and what I thought was kind of missing from that last episode, and I wanted to go a little deeper today was the three specific things that I would do differently. If I was starting my holistic nutrition business over again, right now, if today was the day and I was starting, there are three things I would do very differently. And then a few little bullet points in each of those categories we're going to talk about today, and I want to share them with you. So you can avoid these mistakes for yourself, or you can fix them. If some of these same follies are showing up in your business right now you can fix them, if you're just starting your business, then you're going to be off on the right foot because you're not going to make the same mistakes. That's why we're gonna talk about them. Now, last week, I went into quite a bit of detail about the evolution of my real estate business, to holistic nutrition practice and how that happened quite accidentally, I must say. And I really, as I've been thinking about that, and thinking about that journey, I started to put a name to some of the things that had worked and not worked in my real estate business. And that's not to say that most of the things worked, because most of the things didn't work, but I still made money and still had a very successful business. So that's gonna be the theme of this episode is all of the things that we do wrong, and we can still be successful despite those failures. But expecting them and learning from them and embracing them and tweaking things when we evaluate them so that we can do better next time is what being a business owner is all about. So we're gonna keep getting drawn back to that same, the we're gonna pull on that thread multiple times, I guess what I'm trying to say in this episode, but how we can just suck at things and still be successful somehow, despite ourselves, and how big of a blessing that really is.

4:26
You don't have to know everything to get started. That is the name of the game, Ron here, we just start where you're at, and you're gonna make it imperfectly perfect and learn along the way, which is exactly what I did as a newbie real estate agent, and a newbie, holistic nutritionist. And as a newbie business coach, I've had three different industries to experiment on some of these philosophies that I've now put a name to and really solidified my processes and my stance on a lot of things in the marketing and sales world. And you get to hear all of it on this show. So anyway,

5:00
I guess what I'm trying to say is none of this is theory. This is all tested and retested based on things that didn't work. So hopefully it will shorten the learning curve for you a little bit. So, okay. 2015 is the year that is when my holistic nutrition practice was born. It's when I got certified as a nutritional therapy practitioner. And I really became excited about all things Holistic Health, totally an accident. I didn't intend for this to be a business. But once I learned the things that I could no longer unlearn, I felt like I had to teach others, those same things. I kind of talked a lot about that in the previous episode. But all that to say I didn't, I had the experience of someone who had been working with clients and marketing my business and my services as a real estate broker for many years. So I had that skill set that I had already learned quite a bit about. When I started my business, I knew I had a basis for what, what it took to get clients how to talk about things, how to how much effort is required to market a new business, I knew a lot about that. And I knew how to how do I say like I knew how to talk about my business without sounding like a total robot, okay, because I had already done that. So that was great. I was off to a good start, just for organically promoting what I was doing and practicing talking about holistic nutrition and what that meant and who I could help I, you know, I had a leg up on having those conversations. But what I had never done before, I had never marketed online, I had never had a website I had never marketed through copy, I had never sent emails to market anything. I had never written blog posts, I had never posted on social media. For my business, I had never done any of that, because my real estate business had grown totally organically through word of mouth, and happy customer referrals and good old fashioned talking to people. So I had never done this whole online business thing. Totally, totally different. Well, I don't know, actually, as I say that, I was gonna say it's a totally different animal. But is it? I don't think it now I'm gonna just take that back, there was a there was a lot to learn about the technology piece and what was possible when I was learning how to set up my nutrition business online. But the nuts and bolts of how to talk about things and how to talk about people's problems and the solution that I offered, and the results that they could expect or hope for. Those are all just the same, like the same as every business since forever, helping clients to get a result. So that part wasn't different. It was just like really the, the tech piece and the reaching people that I had never met before piece and writing copy that was all different. And I have learned a lot since those first few years when I was just trying to figure out this whole new language of online marketing has learned a lot. So a lot of what I'm going to share with you in this episode is based on things that I wasted my time learning and didn't really need to worry about. And then getting back to the basics and the simple stuff that works all the time. Okay, so where to start, I guess I should kind of want to start with this is letting you have a feel for the timeline here. So 2015 to 2016, I started my holistic nutrition business, I worked with nutrition clients, through online courses, and eventually a membership site, I had some one on ones I ran some live groups, I ran some groups online, I was trying a lot of different stuff. And having successes in in the mix there. I did some network marketing, for a few different companies, I was doing a lot of different

8:32
different avenues I was taking, like I was trying a lot of stuff, I always say I was throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall. Luckily, some of it was sticking. But I just kept throwing more spaghetti was just like constantly having all of the ideas and trying all of them out. No lack of action be taken, there was a lot of lack of strategy and a lot of lack of evaluating, that's for sure, but no lack of action. So that's what I did. For years ago, I was getting better at marketing online, I was getting better at talking to my potential clients. And then just when I would kind of get into the swing of things and something was working, I would think I needed to change it I was I needed to change from this course to a different course I needed to change from these courses, I was selling to now selling a membership offer, I needed to go from a group to one on ones I needed to go from one on ones to a group, I was always changing things. So this was a central theme in my business. And I love that from the perspective now that I get to tell the story and I get to tell you how huskily and hard and complicated and time consuming it was to do that. So that's a good thing. And I can tell you not to do that because I did it.

9:38
But I spent so much time being exhausted and like on this treadmill of just racing to learn more things and learn a new trick and learn a new tactic and learn a new thing to try and implementing. And I it was just like this never ending loop that I was on. I never slowed down enough to figure out how to make the things I was doing better.

10:00
instead of just kept trying new things, and introducing new ideas and new ideas and new ideas, and it feels even when I think about those first few years, my business, I would say, the first three years of my business, I felt like every idea was the winning the lottery idea, like, oh, my gosh, this is gonna be exactly perfect, I need to do it right now, I have an idea for a niche, I need to go balls to the wall and that and fully commit right now and like, create all sorts of assets and an online course. And I need to start doing this and this and this. And then I would do that. And then I would have another idea for another course. And I would race towards the finish line of that and create it as fast as possible, and sell it. And then I was off to another idea. And then I was, you know, creating this membership. And I was creating funnels, and there was just so many ideas, I never paused to wonder if I should be waiting for a while to execute on these ideas. I was just doing it, although the things anyone who wanted to come and work with me I was taking them, we could do one on one, I could sell you a course you could come in a membership. Did you want a group program to add to that? We could do that, too. What's so much happening?

11:02
Ah, so much happening. So in 2019, all that to say in 2019, when I had been approached from so many different colleagues for quite an extended period of time wondering how I was successful online. And I do make it sound like it was such a chihuahua energy. And it was in my recollection, my business was a very Chihuahua, like frantic energy. But I was making money. I was helping people I was having successes as well. So even though now I could I look through it with this lens of like total exhaustion, I need to also recognize the fact that I was doing well. And a lot of my colleagues wanted to know how to replicate that. They're like, how do you get clients online? How do you work with people you've never even met before? How are people opening your emails? How is this working? How are you selling your courses? How are people enrolling in this membership? How are you selling products? So I had entertained to the idea of teaching business for a while. But I was reluctant to? Well, I think my real reluctance was to do two things I didn't want to continue in my nutrition practice, and also be a business coach. I didn't want to do that for too long. So I just innately knew I needed to choose which was going to be and I did both for a little bit. But that felt confusing to me. And I knew it was going to be confusing to my potential clients. So I hooked myself up on this one, I didn't try to do both of those at the same time, because that would have been really unwise. So don't do that do not have two completely different niches and think that that's a good idea. That's not a good idea that is going to drain all of your bandwidth and confuse you and it's going to confuse your potential clients. So I'm glad I didn't do that for a little while I was doing both. And then I decided nope, if I'm going to do this, if I'm going to start teaching other practitioners, how to do what I've been doing online and how to work with clients that you've never met, that are strangers on the internet, get your business started, work with people you have met, leverage those relationships to build an in person practice, if that's what you want to do. There's lots of different avenues here. But I was pretty good at doing all of these things. So I said yes, I am going to teach what I know. And I'm going to stop working with nutrition clients. So in 2019, I shut down the nutrition part of my business, and I started the business coaching branch of my business. But that sounds weird branch of my business. I don't know, I fully embraced the fact that I was now going to be a business coach. And I was going to be working with holistic practitioners and helping them with their businesses. So why do I tell you this? Well, because I kind of was starting over at that point, right? Because I had done a lot of things for four years, I had been learning so many ins and outs of marketing funnels and the technology piece, like I said, and working with clients online, all of that. Now I was starting over and I had done intricate funnels I had done, like so many different things. We this is like an episode for another day where I could tell you all of the things that I loved the software's I had used. And all of the automations I had played with and all of the things

14:08
it's exhausting to even think about it. But by the time I was opening up, build a profitable practice it I was going to do it completely differently. And I'm so glad that I did so I kind of was starting over at that point. I said okay, it's gonna be a new website. It's going to be a new everything. I'm starting fresh. Ah, I simplified things so much. And I gave myself actually a couple months to do this transition I want I just totally started over and I burned it all down came from a different place. This was about the time where I was getting into personal development, and more so than I had been before I talked about this on last week's episode, the evolution of me getting certified as a life coach and learning a lot of mind management tools and figuring out my brain patterns so that I could kind of reverse engineer the results that I wanted in different areas of my life. This was about the time that I had been introduced to that so I was really getting excited about simple

15:00
fine and about leaning into my strengths and simplifying my processes so I could eliminate the things I wasn't so good at, and just making things easier. And that's what I did totally started over. Okay. What else did I want to say about that? I have to think here. I think I covered most of the details in less last week's episode. So I'm not going to bore you with those. But I do just want to say that this isn't completely hypothetical because I did kind of restart my business when I started business coaching. So that's why I can so confidently coach from on these strategies I'm going to talk about and on these mistakes from a place of I've done it both ways. And I know that what I'm because I've done it both ways myself, I know what I'm teaching my students now is the fast way. And the easier way for sure that you're going to enjoy so much more instead of the hustling, hot mess, totally disorganized trying everything. New Idea every week kind of business. So much simpler and so much more effective to do to not do that. And to do what I did when I opened Build a Profitable practice, which was a totally simplified, I think I've said this, because decided I'm going to keep things really simple. The tech piece in particular, I'm going to keep it so simple, I was gonna have less than five pages on my website. So that new website, I started less than five pages was it. I also committed to myself that I was going to have one offer, one, one offer one Oh, any one,

16:29
which was kind of killing me, because up until then I had had different price points, I had a lower end offer, I had a higher end offer, which still wasn't really a premium offer. But was the most expensive thing I had sold, there was a little something for everyone. We had groups, we had one on one we had digital we had,

16:48
who knows we had physical products I was selling, there was something for everyone. So when I started Build a Profitable practice, it was just going to be one thing. And I actually found myself deviating from this about a year into this side of my business in 2020. And I saw how confusing it was getting for me, which translated into confusion for my potential clients. So I scrapped everything, once again went back to just one offer. Shortly after going off script, even though I knew better this is why I bring this up is because it is so tempting to let our brains talk us into adding something else or deviating from the plan that we set for ourselves.

17:28
Our brains are really creative at telling us why that's a fantastic idea instead of moving forward with our plan and sticking to our decisions, right? You know what I'm talking about? So and I can say I know what I'm talking about. Because I did this too. I added another offer. And and then I said What am I doing no no one offer, there's one thing, and I scrapped that went back to one offer, I also committed to premium pricing. We'll talk a little bit more about that. But up until that point, like I said, I had had many different price points. And I the only way that I was ever going to make the kind of income that I needed and wanted to for the goals for our family was to have a massive audience based on the price that I was charging for my stuff. And I knew that I mean, I could do math, I could use a calculator. And I knew that and I still was resistant to charging more into increasing the value of my offers so that it was worth more and I could charge more. I'm not resistant to that anymore. And I teach my students not to be resistant to that I have an entire module in my program where I teach exactly how to get over that because it is a real mindset block that a lot of us have in our business just kind of pushing off the math, I guess is what I want to say like kind of just pushing that to the side like Yeah, yeah, no, today, the math isn't gonna work out on this. And there's no possible way I could get enough clients to make a living at this price. But someday that'll just change magically. And so I'm not going to worry about that for now. And at some level that can be helpful if depending on what your brain patterns are, if you are the kind of person that just needs to get in there and get started. And then you can incrementally raise your prices and get to the rate that you need to be at as your demand increases. And that's going to work for you, then it's going to be fine. And that's what I ended up doing. And it did work out fine. But I also see some of my students and some people that aren't my students but do the same thing. I think that this is pretty common to start at a low price point. And just to try to out, outgrow it with a with more people instead of doing the work the internal work on your mindset and on your beliefs about yourself in your offer and increasing the value of your offer. And iterating that so that it's higher value and you charge more just want to get more people into the cheap offer. And this is just a common trick that our brain throws our way so that we don't do the uncomfortable, tedious work of looking at our thoughts and of changing those patterns in our brain. Just gonna offer that it is a it's a real big thing.

20:00
shortcut to just get yourself to the point where you're sold on your premium pricing and you sell other people on it. Instead of trying to overcompensate by getting more people into a cheaper offer, that the thought behind that does never going to grow your business the way that you think, well, we delude ourselves, but it doesn't. Okay. So also I committed to that was kind of a tangent. Also, when I started the business coaching side of my business, I committed to email marketing as my only means of promoting my business. And I still had social media, platforms and accounts, but I had never been consistent about posting on them. That was never my jam. So I wasn't, I guess what I'm trying to say is, it wasn't a big change. For me to not be posting on social media, I kind of wasn't doing it anyway. But I felt guilty about it. Previously, I had felt like I should be posting should be doing that people that are really serious about their business, they post consistently. And they do this. And they do that. And they have Facebook groups. And I had all sorts of these ideas in my mind about the rules for what successful business owners did on social media. And I never did those things, because I didn't like them. But then I would hold myself hostage about it and feel guilty about it. So I decided, when I started Build a Profitable practice, I decided I was just going to get really good at email marketing, and not worry about anything else. So if I did decide to post on social media, or if I did have a good hair day and decide to jump on Instagram stories, that was a bonus, but I was never going to feel guilty if I didn't do it. That felt much better for me. And now of course I teach this I teach people how to organically market and to just talk to people wherever they like to be. Some of us that is just via email, some of us is in person, some of us it's on our website, or it's even social media, I have plenty of students who still are active on social media, but they're building alternative means of communicating with their people for when that's not available anymore. And we've talked plenty about that. But we know there's definitely a trend with the topics that we talk about in holistic health, that many a big tech company would like to silence and hasn't done a really good job of doing that so far. So this is a real thing that we need to be thinking about. Just having those alternative means, again, another tangent for another day. But I was already leaning into the fact that I just really wanted to get good at email, I love to email I thought my dream business is if I just communicated with my people via email, but that's my dream business. And who says I can't do that, I think I could do that. Or I want to do that. So I'm going to go for it. That's what I wanted to do. And I'm really glad that I did. So if I was starting my holistic nutrition business right now, I would do that same thing. I get really good at selling via email, and anything else would be a bonus. In fact, this podcast, and I talked about this in last week's episode. This is actually my second podcast because at the beginning of my nutrition business, I had a podcast as well that I was not a strategic about. So it didn't last long. The lifespan was very short of podcasts. But for this one, I knew that I I knew I wanted to have the podcast, I actually planned for about a year and a half to launch this podcast. But I did not do it until my business was at financially at the point where I wanted it to be I had set a metric I said when we were consistently making X amount, then we are going to introduce the podcast. But I I really had this pretty solid benchmark for myself that I wanted to be converting my audience into paying clients at x rate via email get really good at selling via email, before I introduced another marketing engine, which is the podcast and I love the podcast. And I for so long was really kind of battling that decision a little bit. And I wanted to fast track it. But I kept reminding myself No, we are going to constrain our focus, to email getting better at copy getting better at emails and growing that email list without introducing the podcast. But I always knew this was coming. And the reason that I think I was able to constrain my focus is because I have a really solid three to five year plan for my business. And this is something that's also very different than in the early days of my nutrition practice. When I did not have a plan. I did not have a business plan. I didn't have a plan. I just wanted clients I wanted like this month. I remember thinking if I just make $3,000 a month, I'm pretty sure like I'm good to go.

24:27
And then as soon as I was doing that was like no, it has to be 10,000 a month, I have to be making 10,000 a month, and then I would make 10,000 a month and then my brain would immediately say, well, that's not repeatable, that's not sustainable. We can't do that again. And then it would go it would slump back and then I would hit it again and it would slump back. And the reason I say that, I guess a few different reasons but one of them is because had I had a plan, a long term plan three to five years and knowing exactly like where my business was going and what my goals were it I would have had so much more certainty

25:00
thinking power is like staying power with my decisions. Because I would have known why I made them I would have had, I would be remembering where I was headed, and why those were a good idea. But since I didn't have this big picture strategy and a longer term vision of where my company was going, and what I was creating, it was, it was so loosey goosey with the things I was doing. I was just living like one month at a time, like this month, I'm doing this and hopefully I make some money. Next month, I'll try this, hopefully I make some money. And it just seemed like a bunch of months that really weren't strong together, they were just isolated months instead of a year or a two year plan. So if I was starting my nutrition business, again, I would have a solid formula for how to create a three year plan. This is another thing that I teach my students is creating a longer term strategy with your offers and your price points and have a direction that you're going with your business so that you know what to do right now and that you're working in that direction. I didn't have that. So that was another thing that I did differently. When I started my build a profitable practice like of my business and start a business coaching is actually how to plan. And so it was much easier for me to delay the creation of the podcast, even though I had a bunch of episodes outlined, I knew exactly what it was going to be called. I had I had it all planned out. And it would have been, it was tempting to just start it and to go, it would have been easy for me to talk myself into why that made sense. But I didn't and I'm so glad I didn't. Because it was like a carrot that I was dangling for myself to do to execute on what the primary goal was my primary focus, which was emails. Alright, so I've belabor that point. But having a long term plan and knowing where you're going, it makes it so much easier to make decisions and stick to them. So that's another thing I would do differently. I also would have one funnel. And if the word funnel makes you cringe or you don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about a funnel, let me give a quick overview in this world of online marketing, that these things called funnels, there are various types of funnels, but basically they take a stranger from the internet that doesn't know you, and it systematically introduces them to you and what you offer, builds know like and trust factor so that eventually they will hire you or purchase something from you. This is a funnel like picture, a funnel, and at the top there are a lot of people and they trickle down into clients at the bottom. I had experimented with a lot of different types of funnels. Like I said, put the fun in funnels.

27:40
Were the first few years of my business, I was the queen of funnels. I thought it was so fun. And I still think it's so fun. I geek out about different business tactics and strategies and, and funnels to be honest, like I love it. I think that it's so cool. I love the psychology behind it. I love to find out why people predictably do the behaviors that they do. I like to find out how people that have no experience in business can be really successful in business. Like I just geek out about business. I love it. So when I discovered this world of funnels, I went all in and I learned all sorts of funnels, I had webinar funnels, I had email funnels, I had video sales letter funnels, I had intricate funnels of all sorts, I had ads funnels, I had all sorts of funnels. And what that created was a lot of moving parts and automations that I could not keep track of. So eventually, it got to a point where I thought about maybe hiring someone to help me part time like a virtual assistant that could help with some of the some of the clerical menial type repeating tasks that I had going on, and the thought of trying to untangle the spiderweb of different workarounds, and tags and segments and automations. If you don't know what any of those mean, just know that they are very robust features,

29:04
email service providers, and as that you can get lost in a little bit. And if you don't know what that means that God bless you, you don't need to yet I'm sure. And those will be waiting for you someday when you're ready. But in the beginning, when I really should have been focusing on getting really clear about the problems of my people, and getting really clear about the solution that I was offering them and obsessing about getting them better and better results. So the things I should have been worried about over delivering to the clients that I had and making my products even better increasing the value increasing the price getting better in my selling. Those are the things I should have been worried on about. Those are the things I should have been worried about, not about tags and automations and online funnels. I just was a little premature in my excitement about that. And so I ended up with a lot of like, for example, someone would come to my website and be interested in what they found their blog

30:00
Post are like, and they would opt in to a freebie at the end of the blog post. So I have, like, for example, I had one blog post that I had just a lot of traffic from that was about how birth control causes adrenal fatigue. I don't know if I said causes or what I said, anyway, it was like the causation of adrenal fatigue from people that have been on birth control. And at the end of that, I had a PDF that they could download that I think had some supplement recommendations, or some or it had something to do with that something very specific to this topic. So they would read that blog post, they were intrigued, they would download this PDF, I think we all know how that works. And then they will be on my email list, well, then that would trigger an email sequence of five to 10 emails that would, you know, build credibility and ultimately sell them on an online course I had about adrenal fatigue. But if that same person, like think about this, that same person loved that, and then they kept clicking around on my website and got to a different blog post, and then they downloaded a different freebie that was then triggered a new email sequence with different emails, five to 10 emails that was going to sell them on a different online. Now this person is getting two or three emails from me a day selling them two different things. And they're just getting hammered. I mean, this is, I guess what I'm trying to say that you can be kind of making a lot of mistakes and still be successful, because I did sell these courses through these email funnels that did work. But in retrospect, I think about the poor people that were probably just getting slammed with conflicting messages about what to buy, and what was the next step, and I had no idea what was going on. It's, luckily, I don't do that anymore. All that to say I committed to one funnel, you know this, you go to the free course, if you haven't already, here's a plug for the free course, if you want to learn more about what I do, go to build a profitable practice.com and start the free course, that was something that I committed to when I started, this new leg of my business was I was just gonna have one thing, we're gonna go to the free course, we're gonna make the free course fantastic. And keep improving the free course it keeps getting edited, it keeps getting added to it keeps getting tweaked, and better and better. But this one, like all roads lead to want to lead to Rome to this one, free course. And that is so much simpler to me, it's so much simpler to talk about. So of course, it's so much simpler for you to know that there's just one thing you need to do, instead of go here, go here, go here, and then ending up with a bajillion emails, all selling different things. And then I had to try to figure out when I was sending a promotional email to only send it to the people that had this tag, or were in this segment of it, if that's great to you, God bless you, because it really was much too advanced for where I was in my business. And I do see that a lot trying to have people trying to like I did get ahead of themselves with the technology piece and to automate things before it's ready to be automated. Keep things super simple, keep it very manual, and very easy in the beginning. And then by the time you get to the automations, you'll know exactly what you're doing. And it's not going to be it's not going to be such a mess. Because you'll know what your processes are. And you'll know what the heck you're automating instead of just automating for the sake of automating. Alright, I also tech wise, decided to have one software platform I love and use Kajabi. So much, I cannot even tell you how much I love Kajabi because before I was using a different platform for my courses, a different platform for my membership, I had a separate website, I had a separate email service provider, I had a separate webinar platform, everything was different. And I was trying to get them all to talk to each other. And this is another way where I got lost in having to do a lot of maintenance for these automations to make sure that all these different tech platforms were talking to each other. And again, it's just it was way too complicated. For the stage of business I was at I was trying to have a business that was like a million dollar business that needed all these customizations and all sorts of intricate automations. But it didn't, I didn't have a million dollar business. And I was not at the stage to even be spending any time worrying about that. Which I knew. By the time I got to 2019 when I was opening Build a Profitable practice and I was starting business coaching, I knew that I didn't need all of those bells and whistles anymore, and I was just gonna have everything on one software platform. So I started on Kajabi and since then I have recommended it so much and I talk about it so much that I actually am a Kajabi partner and I do some extra Kajabi bonus material and some strategy around how to use Kajabi for my people that sign up through my link so if you are interested in Kajabi Guess I'll just give the plug here you can go to build a profitable practice.com forward slash Kajabi and learn all about those courses and extra office hours and extra things that I offer to my people around Kajabi because I love it. It's simplified my business so much to have my emails, my website my course

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Is my clients, my payment portals, hosting events, having people sign up for events, all of those landing pages and everything in one software platform where everything just talked to each other and worked. And I didn't need to have things breaking all the time was a really big deal too. So I will say that if I was starting my nutrition business again, right now, I would not have everything so cobbled together and spread out, I would make it easier on myself, whether it that's with Kajabi, or a different platform, I just would keep everything as integrated as possible, and keep everything simple and talking to each other. But just the amount of time that I wasted on tech, like learning tech stuff, it felt very productive at the time, it felt like I was so professional, and I was learning all of this stuff for my business. And I was figuring it out. And really, it was a tremendous waste of time, because most of that I didn't need to be doing and I could have used that time, much better. I think, learning how to sell better learning how to be a better coach, learning how to create processes for my clients, that we're gonna help them get better results, and stuff like that. So clearly, I have strong feelings about wasting time on text. Don't do that. Don't do it. If you find yourself loving that part of your business, it's probably because you like the feeling of being distracted from the things that you're not as good at. And you probably need to lean into the resistance about those things that you aren't that good at.

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Alright, um, what else? Well, let's just see, I started investing in my brain, and not in shortcuts or workarounds at this point, which I kind of talked about a little bit, I was getting much more curious about why I had the results that I had, and what my default thought patterns were about my business and about my clients and about what was possible for me. And I started to question if those things were true, if I wanted to keep thinking man, or if maybe there were some new beliefs that I could entertain, and some new thoughts to think and some new neural pathways to create in my brain that we're going to get me new results. Can you guess that? Yes, there were. And there have been, and I got pretty excited about that. So I started investing in that I started investing in me, instead of investing in new software's, I started investing in me getting better at what I was doing and learning about myself, like learning about my brain, so I could help my clients with their brains. And that was a fantastic use of funds. But that was very different. Like I said, up until this point, I had been really laser focused on learning other people's strategies and other like what had worked for them and how were how were they making funnels? And how was this webinar, converting those types of things were what I thought I was going to need to be learning. And it turns out, I already had all those answers, I just needed to get better at talking to people about their problems, telling them, I could help them, and then blowing their minds by helping them, like really helping them get better and better and better results. And that was going to be the best use of my time that was gonna pay dividends back in my business, not a new webinar funnel. Okay, so I know I'm kind of going all over the map here. But I just feel like this is an episode of tangents. So

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going, what I wanted to keep it simple. And if I was starting over again, that's what I would do. I would start now, and then iterate as I grew. And that's what I would highly suggest that you're doing that you should do as well or start doing. If you're in the midst of your business right now. And you can feel like you're a little bit disorganized in some of these areas. Just start now start simplifying, and iterate as you go. You don't need to stop everything, you don't need to burn it all down. You don't need to spend a bunch of time setting up new systems, just start simplifying and allow like trust yourself to tweak as you go. And to know when it's time to grow to the next level, but not overcomplicate things in the meantime. And then also, something else I wrote down here that I wanted to touch on was to change your to do list into a to think list that I keep talking about investing in my brain and changing my thoughts. And I would if I were starting all over again, I would make those investments in myself and not in other people's shortcuts or workarounds. But what I mean and like I think a good way to think about that is changing the to do list into a to think list. What What would I need to be thinking for this to be possible? What would I need to be thinking for this to be simpler? What would I need to be thinking for these results to be inevitable? What would I need to be thinking for my clients to come running to me already ready to start? What would I need to be thinking to know that I can help these clients get results 100% of the time, what would I need to be thinking so that To Do List of webinar funnels and websites and the right copy and consistent

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it posts and

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I work, what else is there creating a new free training and an email funnel all of those to do lists change to a to think list, which is going to make the to do list so much easier. It's going to make the to do list like the simplest thing that you've ever done when you change your thoughts about it. So I wish I had known that. I wish someone had told me hey, let's take a minute pause on creating a new course even though I know that you think self in 2017, that you need to just create a few more courses. But stop with that. And let's look at what you need to be thinking and not what you need to be doing. Okay, so in 2019, I was on to myself about this. And that was a lot different. Because just imagine it was just two and a half years ago that I had an email list of 00 I had an email list full of nutrition clients, people that were interested in learning about adrenal fatigue, and digestion. But I had no email list of people that wanted to learn about how to build their business. I had had people in my life, you know, people that I knew personally, who had asked me for help about this. So I had a start, I definitely had a start. But there was zero people on that to do list. When I started my Kajabi website two and a half years ago from scratch. Remember, I had first the other leg of my business, I had all of the different platforms linked together with, you know, Garmin duct tape. But what I started my Kajabi site with everything it was just like yours might be if you're starting from scratch right now, or just like yours was when you started from scratch, I had no nobody, no contacts in there, I had nothing created at all. And I made the first $40,000 in my business with less than 200 people on that email list. In the first few months, I made about 40,000 actually way less than 2200 people on that list. I think I had less than 100 for a long time. Anyway, it grew, it grew because I got scrappy, and didn't wait around. I was not trying to how do I want to say this? When I started my nutrition practice, I did spend a lot of time trying to set up the backend tech stuff, and to automate things because I thought that that's what a professional business did in this day and age. And what I learned long the years is that it's just much simpler to grow as your business grows. And so in the beginning when I started, and this should be a probably a whole podcast episode itself is how I started Build a Profitable practice. But I threw out a survey to some people that I knew. And I said, if you could get help with any part of your business, what would it be? And I just had people like answer a few basic questions. I've really paraphrasing here, but answer a few questions on a survey about what they needed help with in their business. And that opened up a conversation, I ended up making an offer to some select people that had answered this survey. And there were like less than 30 people that had answered the survey. By the way, this wasn't a huge audience. And I made them an offer. I said, Okay, I'm thinking about starting a group where I'm going to teach everything that I have learned about growing my business, if you want to join, here's what we're doing. Here's one we're starting, and 10 people did. And that was the start of what is now the profitable, nutritious program that has grown since then. But at the very beginning, it was super scrappy, there was no sales page, there was no, I don't remember there being anything other than a personal invitation in me just getting really scrappy. So I guess the reason I say this is if you are starting your business right now from scratch, or if it's still small, you don't have a huge list or you don't have any email list. And that seems daunting. Just know that that's just a thought. And it's equally possible that you are just a few conversations away from having clients and from people hiring you right now. And getting started and then that email list is going to grow. As you get better at talking to those clients and talking to potential clients, and working with those clients and getting them great results. Everything is just going to organically grow from there. And that will make your emails better. Make people share your emails that will make that email list grow. It will make you confidently pursue avenues for marketing your business and growing your influence in ways that right now don't even seem possible. But they will if you just get started and iterate as you go. Okay, so I know I've gotten circles around these different things, but one, two, and three, keep it simple. Start now and iterate as you go. And number three, change your to do list into a to think list. Just want to remind you these are the three big things that I would change. Mine is all of the little things like one offer not so many funnels, email marketing, premium pricing, not having a complicated website. Oh my gosh, I can't even tell you how complicated my nutrition website was. It there was there was so much happening there. If you had landed on that site. You would have had three hours of fun ahead of you clicking on all of the buttons

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and following all the rabbit holes, which I'm sure many people did, and then they were so exhausted at the end of that journey that they had to take a nap, and never hired me. So don't do that keep it much simpler for yourself and for your clients. By having just a few pages and one call to action, one funnel, one thing for them to do, oh, my gosh, so much simpler. What this really boils down to, and as I'm saying this to you, it's like, I keep going back to it. And I haven't said it in this episode. So I'll just remind you, the process is really simple for growing your business, any stage of your business. Now, there are different nuances depending upon if you are just getting your first clients or if you're at the stage where you are automating your processes, and you're growing to being fully booked or filling up groups. Or if you're at the stage where you are going to be scaling your business, because you have that demand built up already. And you're thinking about a course or membership site or, or program like the one that I have, where you're going to be teaching too many people at once. There's different stages here. But the process is the same in each stage, it's a very simple three step process, you decide, you take imperfect action, and then you evaluate, the way that you do this is going to be maybe a little bit different, different action steps on each stage. But it's always the same, you make the decision. You take imperfect action, you don't revisit the decision, you take the imperfect action, knowing it's going to be imperfect, knowing that you're going to have failures, knowing that it's not going to go right the first time or the second time or maybe even the 10th time, but you're gonna figure it out. And the way you figure it out is by evaluating every step of the way, what went well, what didn't go, Well, what am I going to do differently or think differently next time. It's so simple, just these three steps over and over and over again, I didn't know these three steps in the beginning, I had not finalized my philosophies and processes. And this also comes from teaching it to students, right, because you get the best way to learn something, as they say is to teach it, you get so clear on your own philosophies and your own unique approach to things by teaching it to others. So I've have had the benefit of thinking about this in a lot of flack from a lot of different angles, I guess, as I've been teaching it for three years now. And this is what I've come to it's just it's always going to be decide, take imperfect action and evaluate. Always, it's it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that. And when you learn that process, and you just decide to become the kind of person that's resourceful, and that doesn't quit, then you don't quit. You just keep going through the process, you decide you take imperfect action, you evaluate, you take more imperfect action, you evaluate, and you don't quit. And really, I think the mental drama in our business comes up when quitting is still an option, we still have that in the back of our head that it will help if this doesn't work, I can quit, or I'm going to quit or have a plan B,

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then you probably will. Because business is hard. It's gonna press your buttons. It's basically like I think it's like looking in a mirror. And just getting all of your insecurities are staring back at you, the minute that you decide to start your business. And you can just put the mirror down and quit. Or you can keep looking at it and Mike trying to trying to change the lighting a little bit.

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Maybe you needed a little darker, a little brighter so that you could see things differently. And it does it changes. But you don't quit, you don't put the mirror down. Terrible analogy. But you see where I'm going with that if you are resourceful and you figure things out, instead of spinning in confusion, and wasting time and trying to do all the things and wasting your energy like I did for many years and was still successful in spite of it. But if you do that, that's in service to your clients as well, because it's exactly what they need to do to. I don't even know what it is that you teach people or how you help them. But I know that if they're a human with a human brain, they need help with this too. They need less confusion and more simplicity, they need more support. And they need to stop wasting their time trying all of the things they need to constrain their focus, we all do. Everybody, they need a simple process to keep them on track. And they need a guide, which is you to support them along the way. This is what we all need. We need a simple process that's going to get us where we're going. And we need a guide to help us not quit on ourselves along the way. Your clients don't need to be wowed by your expertise, or your knowledge or the latest studies or more information. They don't need that they need to be wowed by your understanding of their problem. And your offer to give them the solution so that they can get the results that they're desperate for. That's what they want. That's what you want. That's what your clients want. That's what we all want. And if I was starting my holistic nutrition business again, right now, I would keep that in mind, which would allow me to keep things much simpler. I would be much more focused on my clients, my future clients, the kind of clients I wanted to work with the results they were going to get getting better as a practitioner and as a coach and understanding how to

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support them,

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creating better processes around them. I would like think about them so deeply. And about what's keeping them up at night right now, and about how I can simplify that for them and help them get the results through my solution, which is my paid offer my one paid offer.

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That's what I would do, I would spend my time on that, instead of looking for shortcuts like funnels, and a new font on my website, as if that's what clients really want is a better looking font. No, of course not. But I thought this for a long time. And I spent a lot of time in the early days of my nutrition business. Like I've said many times now, I spent a lot of time really learning about all of these automations and bells and whistles and technology and shortcuts and workarounds. And I my time would have been better served is what I'm trying to say thinking about my brain, they get about their brain and getting to work on getting the better results. Change that to do list into it to think list. Feels weird to say that, I hope that that lands for you. To me, it makes perfect sense, I hope it does for you. Because truly, like I said, when you change that about yourself, the thoughts that you're thinking you change you reprogram, like we truly through the work that you do it just listening to this podcast, the seeds are being planted subconsciously, you are starting to have awareness and think new thoughts just from listening to a podcast like this that introduces the idea that maybe some of the deep seated beliefs that you have about yourself, and about your business, and about your clients, or your future clients or your lack of clients. Think about your offer, those beliefs might just be optional thoughts as possible, they're just optional. And you could choose to think something else, if it would better serve you just that knowledge is going to know that seeds planted that's going to grow. And that's going to probably shape your business for years to come as now you're more aware of these default thought patterns that you have. And the option to change them should you still want to. And if you should still want to, you will find that the to do list for your business is almost effortless at that point. It just, you just don't even have to think about it. You innately simplify the stuff that doesn't even matter. That's just noise. And you get to work on the stuff that does matter, which makes you money, it gets people results, and it makes you money and it gets people results. And it makes you money and it goes better and easier and faster. And you have more fun. And you laugh at the failures along the way each step because it is working. Even if it isn't perfect, it's working and you're getting better. And you can see that progress, which is the most fun way to run a business. And that is what I want for you. So if you are in the market for a little more than that, it just have to say this is what we do in my program. So if you're ready to simplify your approach to your practice, you have to join us the next Enrollment Dates are may 19, to the 25th. And as always, all the details can be found on Build a Profitable practice.com forward slash join. That's where you can always find about the program, all the details, everything that's included, and which is a lot. It's a very robust program.

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Definitely the most comprehensive in the industry, and a huge overdeliver you will find because we coach every single week, you have lifetime access to everything that's included. So you can go as quickly or as slowly as you want through the materials. And if your brain is a little stubborn on rewiring some of these thought patterns of yours, that's a beautiful thing you have all the time in the world, you have a on day one, you start with a beautiful printed workbook, or digital if you prefer to film digital, that walks you through each stage of the process. Every single video lesson that you watch inside the process I teach has a workbook page that goes with it, you are going to make those key decisions that you need to make for your business. And you're going to have it all written out in one place where you can have all of your ideas and your thoughts all on paper. I'm a paper and pencil girl. So I like to have a hard copy. But like I said, if you're digital, you have that as well. And you're going to learn how to get to work to better organically market and sell to your best clients on repeat all the time, you're gonna get so much better at it just by the simple process that you learn in the program and having the support of other people with you. If you feel like you don't know what to say in your marketing or your sales conversations right now to draw those best clients in, then you need to join the program. Just hands down, you need to join the program, you're going to learn all of it. You're also going to learn how to reprogram your brain to approach your business and to approach your clients I might add from a place of this calm confidence that makes you even more money generates even more referrals because who doesn't want to hire the calm, confident practitioner? No one course no one doesn't want that. Speaking in double negatives here. All right, again. Just want to reiterate if you are at the very beginning of

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Starting your practice, then you need to heed my advice, don't overcomplicate things and just keep it simple. Start right now. And iterate as you go. Don't feel like you need to have everything figured out for your business three years from now, right now, you're never going to you're just going to end up redoing things. This is another mistake that I made is I thought that I was going to just create these assets in my business like courses and funnels and website pages, like I would just create them one time they would be done, I would never change them. And they would just work. And guess what they're never done. Because you keep growing, your understanding of your clients keeps growing, the way that you get them results changes and gets better over time and your capacity to help people changes the whole, like, your process will change. So there is no one and done. And that's why it's just impossible to start in the very beginning. And to try to make a scalable business and assets to scale your business later, because you have no idea what that's even going to look like. And I really wish someone had told me that at the beginning of my business, because I spent so much bandwidth, trying to anticipate what I needed to set up at that point that was going to work years in advance. And all of it just got recreated or, or eliminated and deleted altogether was such a waste of time. So just start now, iterate as you go, I would happily welcome you into my program where you're going to learn a process for exactly what you need to do at each stage of your business so that you don't waste your time on those things for the future, until you have the demand and the process ready to go. And then it's time to start creating automations. And to scale with digital assets, which is so much more fun, because then you'll already know exactly what that needs to look like. It'll probably be half created by the time you start creating it. But that's the process I teach. Third thing is to change your to do list into a to think list. Please, please please, if you're listening this podcast you already know, it's just it's all about what you think it really is. It's all about these default thoughts and questioning them and asking what do I want to think instead and understanding that nothing has gone wrong. If you by default, think really crappy thoughts about your clients and your business and yourself. And what's possible, your offer all of that if you have really crappy thoughts about that most of the time, nothing has gone wrong. That just means you're human, the human brain. And when you can understand that, that is not an indication that you should quit, then you won't quit. And then you'll realize, oh, this is totally normal. And this is how my clients feel to

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when they're working on a big goal or a big change. This is also how they feel. And when I get to the level of understanding that I overcome this in my business, and I can I have awareness of this pattern. And I can address it and have the tools to address it, I can help them to have the awareness of that pattern in their health journey. And I can help them overcome it and address it. And that is a beautiful thing. So if you're just in the beginning of your business, take all of my advice, please. And keep things simple. And just start making money now and helping people and iterate as you go. And think about your brain much more than your to do list. That's what I wish for you. If you already have an established practice, and you're working with clients, and you're making money, but you feel like it could be a lot more streamlined and simplified. And organized. Then same rules apply. start simplifying, Where can this be simpler for you? And for them? Where can it be simpler? What are you doing now? Just because it's the way you've always done it. But it's not working anymore? Keep it simple. Maybe you're like me, you have all the automations? Well, maybe you're like the previous me. The nutrition business me with all the automations all of the funnels way too many offers way too many website pages, way too many things to manage too much tech trying to talk to each other. How can you simplify it, do yourself a favor and simplify. Truly this the best thing you can do one, offer a few pages on your website, and then just get really good at selling that offer and at explaining to people that you understand their problem, you have the solution and you're going to help them get results and then get them the results like obsess about how to get them better results. That is going to be where your business just really takes off. Because people can't help but talk about that. When your clients are getting the results that they came for. And they're blowing their own mind. They cannot help but tell everybody about who they're working with and the results that they're getting. So I promise you that's the best use of your time.

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Yeah, that's what I have for you today. Learn from my mistakes keep it simple. Start now and just iterate as you go. Allow it to be imperfect and change over as as the time goes by and as you get better and better. And then change your to do list into to think list. I think that that's those are like the three biggest things I would do differently with many bullet points underneath them.

1:00:00
If I was starting my business over right now, and I'm happy to say that I have kind of had that opportunity to start my business over, and it has been so much more enjoyable, I've made so much more money, it with less stress on myself and less pressure. And my clients are getting way better results because instead of like I've said in so many different ways, I'll say it one more time, instead of wasting my time and energy and bandwidth on trying to do way too many things. I just really constraining my focus to helping my clients get better results and to teaching you about all of these things that I am much more solid on because that's where my focus is. So instead of, you know worrying about all the funnels, I'm just thinking about my clients, when I go coach my clients every day in the program, like what do they need today? How can I help them? How can I explain this differently? What process can I teach them? You know, what have like what assets This is the was the birthplace of the workbook I told you about? What can I help them with, it's gonna help them get results better and faster. And that always comes back to pay a spec dividends in our business. So I offer the same to you and would welcome you into joining us in the program. If you want to surround yourself with a successful bunch of peers that can help you to join us in May again, the doors opened back up on May 19. And will be open until the 25th. We would love to have you Alright, have a wonderful wonderful week my friend and I will be back in your podcast feed next Tuesday.