Hello there, health coaches. You know what?
Today I am not live streaming into our Facebook group.
I normally do all of these episodes live,
but this week we have this big event happening in our Facebook group.
If you've listened to any of the previous episodes from last week or the week
before, you know all about it. So instead of live streaming into the group live,
I decided I'm going to record this episode sort of off to the side and release
it to all of you podcast subscribers because it's a time that
we confront the elephant in the health coach room. Yeah,
I mean, if you're here and you're listening,
I know that you already believe in the power of healthy living. Yeah.
I know that you want to make a positive impact on the world. I mean,
that's why we all got into health coaching,
myself included. I know you're probably interested in things like functional
medicine, intuitive eating.
You probably have three or four health coach certifications under your belt
already. So many coaches do,
but there is a difference between your passion and
your interests and where you want to spend your time and what you want to be
doing with your life and this lovely hobby of health and
wellness.
I know we all hate that word hobby when we're trying to start a business,
but that's what it is.
Unless you actually turn health coaching into a good career and you can
where you're actually supporting yourself.
But a lot of us get stuck on the hobby side, so I want to talk about it.
Is it possible to be profitable? That's really, I think what the question is.
New health coaches are wondering this coaches who've been in the business for a
while and they're like, I'm not seeing it. You might be thinking,
is this even for real? Listen,
I am right there with you. I'm not independently wealthy over here.
I do not have a trust fund. It's just me. I'm a single mom.
I'm taking care of my two boys and I'm the breadwinner of my household,
so I think about this stuff too, right? I own my home,
just replaced all the windows and the siding,
taking my boys to Italy for two weeks this summer,
and on the flip side, I probably could be better about saving for retirement,
but I get it when it comes to the money, fears,
and money issues, I get it.
I have the same thoughts as any of you and I always have.
Since I started health coaching back in 2009,
I've always been very clear that I need to make sure that my chosen career is
not only wildly fulfilling, which it is,
but also profitable health coaching certainly
can be. It doesn't happen overnight, that's for sure.
It's not like a get rich quick scheme, but it does happen when,
and this is so important when you're just as committed to marketing
and business as you are to health and wellness, be honest,
which side of the coin are you more likely to be spending your time on?
So consider this every day.
I make sure that I eat my vegetables, a wide variety of vegetables.
I'm sure you do something similar like that too.
You're purposeful with your diet. You go for a walk after dinner.
I like to get my steps in.
You do yoga or you go to your fitness class, you lift your weights,
you take your supplements. I got a whole pill box full of supplements every day.
I take my vitamin C and my iron and my fish oil and all the rest.
Just imagine if you were as committed
and consistent with all of your marketing efforts every day,
every day,
just like those supplements. This is what I've observed making all
the difference in our health coaches over the past. I mean over the past, gosh,
many, many years, 15 years,
but specifically over the past 12 weeks of our spring fast track program,
and I want to share with you how these coaches are actually doing the thing like
they're changing lives, they're making a difference and they're earning.
It's like the trifecta.
I know that I'm not the only health coach to find financial success
in this field. Before I started Healthy Profit University,
I ran my own successful health coaching practice for many, many years,
and please, I know so many successful health coaches, so if you don't,
it's a big industry.
Health coaching has grown and grown and grown and grown and grown.
So if you and the five health coaches that you talk to are all having the same
struggles,
just know those of us who've been doing it longer. We've been at it for a
while. There's lots of success stories in the health coaching world,
and I also know not everybody finds success.
That's the truth, right? I'm going to be honest with you. Is it possible? Yes.
Is there a limit to how much you can earn? No. Sky's the limit,
which is a pretty great feeling.
So I think this is a worthwhile discussion,
and if you're thinking to yourself, is health coaching a viable career?
Maybe you're thinking of getting into health coaching or you've already been in
the field for a little while and you're like,
I don't know how I'm ever going to make this happen. You're in the right place.
This episode is brought to you by Healthy Profit Universities Fast Track.
Fast Track is a very specific 12 week marketing plan for health coaches showing
you exactly what to do and what order to build your
audience, make offers and sign clients,
plus you get all the materials you need done for you.
They're completely customizable at a very affordable rate.
You can get yourself on the wait list for the next Fast Track opportunity,
which is coming this summer at healthcoachpower.com/waitlist.
So for the past 12 weeks, I've been working with our 2024 fast trackers,
and I've been doing this for years,
so that means I've had an up close and personal look at what's working for
health coaches time and time again. Now,
some of our fast trackers like Annie has signed a bunch of private clients.
I think she's signed six new private clients in the past 12 weeks,
and the secret there, it really just boils down. I mean,
there's a lot of small things,
but the biggest thing I can tell you is it boils down to offering your services.
Most health coaches are not signing clients and be honest with yourself,
is this you? Because they aren't making offers
in some ways.
We just quietly wait and we hope somebody asks us if we can be their health
coach. It's not going to happen. It might might every now and then,
but that is extremely,
extremely rare. What do I mean by making offers?
Some of the things my fast trackers do is talk about the kinds of clients that
they help and ask their audience and your audiences,
anyone that you have access to,
anyone that you can have a conversation with or send an email to, et cetera.
Ask their audience if they know anyone who would be interested.
That is a subtle thing right there. I want you to catch that.
They ask if they know anyone who would be interested,
which is way more effective than asking someone if they
themselves are interested in your health coaching services. Use that by the way.
Take that idea and run with it when you say, Hey,
do you know anyone who might be interested?
Do you know anyone that this could be helpful for?
People feel less put on the spot, and they're actually more likely to say,
actually, I could use that. Or to say, yeah, I do know someone, or Yeah,
I do want to introduce you to somebody. That's how connections gets made.
That's how momentum builds. It's like I said, make sure to use that.
Another thing that's working really well is an application process for these new
private clients.
So I'm sure some of you have not implemented an application system or if you
have one, the application could be working harder.
Let's say that someone's interested in hiring you as a health coach for private
health coaching services. We don't want them to go straight to a call.
We don't want them to go to your calendar.
We don't want them to be able to book a time as their first step. Instead,
what we want them to do is complete a very specific and intentional
application as that first step,
and it's designed like yes,
to collect important information like their name and their phone number and
whatever, but better than that,
it's designed to put that potential client into the mindset of
wanting to work with you of pre-deciding that this is
something that they're going to do.
So we're really strategic about the questions that we ask,
and that combined with the right structure for the sales call
or the consultation, which I also teach has helped Fast trackers.
Like any sign these higher end private clients,
we've also seen a lot of success.
Just shifting gears with a shorter low cost program in
addition to higher priced one-on-one coaching.
So this is something to consider the high end offer and the lower end offer and
the combination of the two offers means you can serve more people,
so that's very exciting.
It means you can give someone a low commitment entry point.
You can reengage with past clients and you can make it very,
very easy for somebody to invite friends.
I'm talking about a $99 five day program, easy peasy.
If you compare that to private coaching,
how often does a client tell their friend that they simply must hire you as a
health coach, and then that person goes, oh yeah, I think I will,
and they actually become a client. It happens, but again, it's kind of rare.
Private coaching is it's super personal and it's a big investment,
so has to really be the right person at the right time,
but if you offer a low cost five day mini program,
it is so super easy for your clients to turn to their friends and
say, Hey, do this with me. Let's do this together. Let's do this as a group,
and one client turns into five.
So we're seeing a lot of success with lower priced offerings
that engage a community,
and you would actually be really surprised at how well these programs work even
though they're short. I mean,
nobody's going to make a full recovery in their health in five days.
They're not going to heal from several diseases in five days,
but even in such a short timeframe,
people definitely see exciting results. Like Andrea,
who's one of our spring fast trackers,
she shared that just in this small five day program,
her client was glowing. She'd lost some weight, she felt less bloated,
she was more relaxed, she was energized. She loved the program,
and that's a big win for Andrea. She said,
this is the best sort of feedback to get, and I totally agree.
That's what I loved about these 12 weeks is like we really need
not just to implement a marketing strategy in a very serious way,
but we also need to feel that health coach high.
That's what I call it.
When you work with a client and they have a breakthrough of some kind,
they feel good, they're smiling. You're like, I helped someone.
This is so amazing. It's that rush we get when the clients are seeing results,
what's going to fuel us to keep going?
I find more than knowing that we have our
email marketing going and more than counting up how
many dollars we made today. I mean, that's good,
but without that health coach high,
we can just really burn out.
I don't want you to just have your nose deep into your Instagram reels all day
or developing programs and building your website. Oh my goodness.
We can get lost in that stuff. Some of it's necessary, of course, but again,
you are going to burn out without actually doing the work with clients and
feeling that rush of doing good work in the world.
It feeds our soul,
so I think that has to be part of how we build our business. It's not like,
let me do all the businessy stuff first and then eventually a year from now I'll
take my first client. That's very demoralizing in so many ways.
We don't like doing the business stuff. Let's just be honest.
So when we're thinking about can health coaching be a good career? Yes,
if you have a smart marketing plan, yes,
if you do the things to get clients and get that rush of
energy so that you want to keep at it, yes, yes, yes.
Many of our fast trackers I've seen go from zero to clients in just the short 12
week period,
and the key is to continue to make those offers,
continue to host events, continue to offer smaller programs,
continue to email your lists, and what am I saying? I'm saying do things.
I'm saying be active, not passive.
Remember, if you're waiting for clients to come to you,
you're going to be waiting a real long time. That's the truth.
There's another aspect to all of this. It's a little more nuanced.
I desperately need a sip of water. Hang on one second.
It's a little more nuanced,
but I also want to mention today when we're talking about is this going to work,
is this going to work as a career now for any business that you are starting,
of course the marketing aspect is important,
but specifically as a health coach,
you really need to exude an energy that people want to be
around. I don't know how else to put this.
It doesn't matter if you're at your ideal weight.
You don't have to be in perfect health. I promise you.
None of us are iner health, whatever that means,
but you do have to have a certain magnetism,
and that's what I've seen grow and flourish among our fast
trackers the most.
It's actually shocked me how much that's happened in the last 12 weeks because
when we're on our own, and I don't know if you've experienced this,
but I'm guessing that you have,
it's incredibly easy to get discouraged. We can feel like a
failure and we want to hide.
I remember getting so down on myself as a brand new health coach when only two
people signed up for my event or when someone decided against
my private health coaching program, I'd be like, oh,
but that's when we're alone together.
It's so much more of a high vibe situation. We can cheer each other on.
We can find the silver lining and we can keep on keeping on with that
encouragement. A couple of our fast track, this is true story,
found themselves in a situation where they didn't have anybody joining their
five day program. I mean, it happens. It happens to the best of us,
and some of our coaches, on the other hand, had 10 people, 20 people signed up,
but it depends where you're starting out. Okay,
so you didn't have any signups. That is when it is so
easy to just fall into a pit of despair like
you energy sinks so low. Again,
I know from personal experience, but that's not what happened in this group.
Everyone rushed in to support each other,
to join each other's group so that every single coach could at
least get the experience of running their program day one,
day two, day three, day four, day five,
and gaining the confidence that comes with that, and it's like, boom.
You can feel that energetic shift to a higher vibration.
That's the only way I know how to put it, a higher vibration.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is you can do all the
things to promote your business, but without a smart marketing strategy,
it tends to fall flat. You are like, let me try this, so that didn't work,
or Let me try this other random thing. Oh, that didn't kind of work.
How about this other thing, right? We're just kind of scattered.
Nothing quite takes fire or lights a fire or makes it really happen for your
business, and without the right support system,
your energy falls flat too. Meanwhile,
it's like this terrible downward spiral because clients are looking
to you to help bring their energy up.
They want to soak in your good vibes.
That is 90% of why someone's going to hire you as a health coach.
They want that positive, helpful,
life affirming force in a health coach because they're probably not getting
that anywhere else in their life unfortunately. Know this,
you are doing such important work in the world and you need to be
doing more of it. I honestly believe that when I look around in the world,
I'm like, everybody needs a health coach.
Some people need two or three health coaches,
so don't let yourself get sucked into the negativity. We all have that
inside of us sometimes,
but what I've seen when our health coaches get together,
when our community gets together, right,
we're powerful and the positive energy is contagious,
and we want to catch it. We want to catch that positive vibe.
We want to pass it on to our clients. That is first and foremost,
even when it comes to those little things,
and this stuff is going to happen in your business,
whether you want it to or not,
you're going to hold a webinar and you're going to forget to hit the record
button. Been there, it's okay, it happens.
Just know that dumb stuff like that's going to happen. There's no judgment.
It doesn't mean anything about you. Or you're going to send out an email.
Have you done this?
You're going to send out an email with a link to whatever something you're
selling or to your blog post or whatever,
and the link doesn't work. Yeah, guess what? It's okay.
A second email that says, oops, here's the right link.
Very likely those types of emails are very likely to get opens and people click
on them, and everyone really loves knowing that you're human,
so it's kind of a win. When I first started out,
if I made a mistake like that, I would cringe.
I would die a thousand deaths and I'd want to stay in bed for like a week.
My energy would just go south so quickly these days.
If I make a mistake, I just go, I bet most people won't even notice.
I'll just fix it best I can and carry on.
That's resilience. That's the energy of success.
That's what's going to allow you to not only become a health coach,
but turn it into a good career and earn a living doing the work that
you love. Sean is one of our fast trackers this spring,
and she said that watching the whole 12 week marketing plan come together was
amazing because it's all planned out,
and she loved how thorough the program is because we've thought of everything.
She's like, Michelle, you've thought of everything I have. That's true.
I've thought of everything, not because I just sat down and thought of it,
but because I've done this work for a very,
very long time and I know exactly what you need to turn health
coaching into a good career,
and I realized I could have spent this whole episode talking about other stuff.
I could have been telling you that you need a target market and a mailing list
and all those things to be successful. That's not untrue.
But what I've really seen in this field is that the coaches who
succeed, they have this glowing,
vibrant force field around them, attracting attention,
attracting clients, and attracting profit,
and if you want to develop all of that,
the wait list for FastTrack is available now at
healthcoachpower.com/waitlist.
We do have a summer opportunity coming up, so if you're at all interested,
put your name on the list. There's no obligation, and I'll see you next week.