#173: Stressed & Scrambling? How To Run a Smarter, Smoother Coaching Business

Hello there health coaches! Today, we are talking about the health coach scramble as I'm calling it. And I'm seeing a lot of it among health coaches right now. If you know what I'm talking about and you are here, live with me. Go ahead and tell me in the comments. I understand the scramble cause I know it's happening. It's that time of year, right? Like, it's almost the end of December. We're realizing, uh, oh, you know, maybe I didn't work with as many clients this year, as I wanted to, maybe I didn't earn as much as I wanted to in 2021. And it gets to be like, ahhhh, I gotta make up for it right way. And there's all these last minute scrambles to get clients now or make up for what we didn't do earlier or we just panic mode. So if you're there, and Diana's saying she understands that scramble, breathe. I'm here with you today to help make it all better.

Today, we're gonna make a, to help you stop scrambling. Michelle's saying I'm realizing I haven't planned for January and it's mid-December. Yeah. Michelle and I want you to actually do a lot more than just think about January. We're gonna get into that. Lisa saying yes, most def, she feels the scramble too. It's not fun, is it? It's really not. It feels bad. It feels like worse than being back in corporate. When like, you know, my boss was mad at me or there was some last minute pitch I had to work on. Right? Like it's kind of even worse cuz it's all on me. Right? So that kind of stressful scrambling places where we don't wanna be. And worse than that, it's ineffective because as soon as we're coming from a place of right, as soon as we're coming from that place of scarcity, that's when business is like pulling teeth, it's like we can't get anything to work.

Cause our energy is in the wrong place. Here's what works better. What works a whole heck of a lot better. You might not wanna hear this right now. Cause if you're in the scramble, you're like, but I just need, uh, right now have to do the thing. The second we have to give you some space to actually get ahead of yourself. That's the trick. Like you don't wanna be planning today and tell me if you do this, if you're here, live with me on Instagram, if you're on Facebook, tell me if you do this. You're planning today for something that you want to get done by like next week, two weeks from now, even next month, right? We're always thinking just like the next step, the next step, the next step. We're like, oh my God, I have to run a program and I'm gonna launch it 12 days from now.

Even though I haven't even created it yet. And I don't really even know what I'm gonna offer, but I'm gonna do it anyway. That's scrambling. That is a recipe for going nowhere fast and driving yourself crazy in the process. If you've ever experienced health coach burnout. And I got my hand raised up high for that one, this is how it happens.

Karina's saying yes here too. She has a plan in her, in her head. That's good. Shawn's raising her hand like me and it says I'm scared. I won't ever sign a paying client. I'm new - two and a half months. Okay. Again, let's pause everybody inhale.

Woo. And let that bad boy out here is the way to fix the problem. Right? We've only got a couple weeks left of 2021. So my suggestion to you all is this. If a client falls in your lap between now and the end of the year. Awesome. That's great. But otherwise, why don't you put your energy in what you can do next year? And I'm not just talking about January. That's for Michelle who told us that she hasn't even thought about January yet. I'm not even just talking about January. I'm talking about your entire first quarter of next year. Maybe even the first half of the year, getting those details ironed out and even get the a second half of 2022 loosely planned penciled in. How would it feel if you could look at a calendar for 2022 and see, this is what I'm doing, then here's what I'm doing that month.

Here's what I'm gonna do in March. Here's what I'm gonna do. Right? And it was kind of laid out for you. It's not set in stone. You can always change it, but you had a strategy. You had some thought put against it. What you're gonna offer when you're gonna do it. And then you could execute in a calm, relaxed manner. Would that feel good? Anyone just say that would feel good in the comments if you're here with me. Cause I know I breathe a deep sigh of relief when someone is telling me what to do, right? Like it's so helpful. And when you run your own business, no, one's gonna tell you what to do. You have to decide for yourself. So here's the secret. You gotta tell yourself what to do. So we're gonna put on our CEO hats today, figure out what needs to get done in 2022.

And then you can relax into that because someone you has told you what the plan is. Taisha says it would feel amazing. Fox health coaching. I think that's Mary. She says I would love that. Everybody's saying yes, yes, yes. In the comments Susan saying, yes. I know. I know you guys. It's scary when you're just operating by yourself. Now I have some people that I work with in my business these days, right? I have of people on my team that help me out, but it never is going to be them who make the decisions. It's always still me. So we have to sit down and create a plan for next year, because then you will have the time to execute things properly. You will have breathing space, so you're not scrambling. And like, I, you can create a strategy around what you do and when you're doing it, rather than just like, ah, that sounds good.

Let me do that. Ugh. Maybe this other thing, shiny object syndrome. When you can slow down, step back, make a plan. All the pieces of your business can start working together. Instead of feeling like one off projects here, there, and everywhere. And you're just all over the place. Have you ever meal planned? I know you have, wouldn't you say the same thing to a client? That's like, oh, just go to the grocery store. I just grab whatever. And then like I bring it home and I don't have the right stuff to make dinner. You'd be like, whoa, slow your role. We actually have to make a plan first before we hit the grocery store. It's the same exact thing. So if the idea of planning up 2022 is like a little bit intimidating and I know that it can be, think of it like a plan.

We are making a meal plan for next year, except instead of it being like Monday meatloaf, Tuesday tacos, , it's gonna be stuff that helps you bring in the income that you wanna be earning. So if you're with me, what I'm gonna do today is address some questions that have come up inside of our health coach power community, Facebook group recently, and not just answer them, but answer them in a bigger way because I find that coaches are only asking questions sometimes, um, in a way that they're looking 12 inches ahead of themselves. And I'm gonna point out some ways to think longer term and more strategic. If you wanna learn to do this for yourself, anyone wanna learn to do this for themselves in their own business. I'm gonna be leading you through a workshop to do just that and help make 20, 22, your most profitable year, your calmest, most profitable year with this type of smart planning, now's the time to do it.

So I want you to sign up, to join us for that free workshop. It's at healthcoachpower.com/ 2022. Cause that's what we're planning for and think of it like this is my end of the year gift for all of you to thank you for being part of my community. We're gonna make a plan to make 2022 your best ever. Good. All right. I, I just dropped the link over here on Facebook. If maybe somebody on Instagram could help me out and type it in for me, healthcoachpower.com/2022. By the way, uh, I'm gonna respond to questions today. And if you have questions for me that are coming up, feel free to put them in the chat. Um, these are real health coaches that have asked all these questions inside of our community. And I'm not pointing for fingers by any means and saying like, oh, this is someone who's scrambling or this is someone who's stressing out.

I'm not saying that. I'm just approaching their very good questions. Um, not just with a quick answer, but with an eye towards future growth, because I think that's often missing. I had to learn that in my business. We're always just thinking what's next. And, and we, I learned to think long term, okay.

So, here is the first one this is from Nelcia, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name correctly and Nelcia said, hi everyone. I'm a health coach who serves teachers put a pin in that everyone. She works with teachers, I'm just starting my business. I'm hoping to formally launch in March of 2022. I want to start building an email list with a lead magnet. I wanna create a post in some of my teacher groups where I put a link and they can click on it and they would have to give me their email to be able to download it. The problem is, I don't know how. Do I need someone really techy? If not, how do I do it? I'm not sure where the emails go. Can anyone guide me?

So, Nelcia, what I wanna say about that is you're talking about setting up a lead magnet. This is something that you would do through your email service provider. This is something that is not particularly techy. You're gonna learn the, the steps once and then you'll be able to repeat it over and over and over again. It's one of those essential functions. If you're going to be marketing yourself online, now I teach these steps like literally step by step inside my course, Healthy Profit University. I'm not gonna be able to explain that to you right now, but it is like a common thing. You should be able to either find a tutorial, figure it out. Like it's, you're what I'm trying to say is like, this is within your grasp, right? Like for anybody, it's not like you're saying, how do I code a website from scratch? And then I would say, don't this is something you totally can do.

But what I want you to think about you, you, you already know what you can gotta do. You gotta put out a lead magnet in order to collect names for your mailing list. Now, if we think about 2022, when you said teachers, I was like, oh, that's fascinating because teachers operate on a very specific schedule. Have any of you guys ever worked with a teacher as a client? I have. And I know that they kind of wait until June to do anything for themselves because they're too busy. They're too stressed out during the school year. But once June hits, they're like, ah, like now I'm gonna do that thing.

Now. I'm gonna like whatever they've been wanting to do. So when you're planning for next year, I want you to think about whatever large scale promotion you're going to be doing. Think about doing it for the summer, or maybe think about, um, doing something else at the very end of the summer. That's like preparing them to go back to school. It's the exact opposite of almost everybody else. That's listening to this podcast right now because the rest of us, most people like all of my clients who worked in corporate, they work, um, and then they have vacation in the summer and they don't wanna think about their health. They don't wanna do anything except go on vacation and you know, barbecues and do nothing. So, typically summer is a slow time for health coaches. But now for you, it's gonna be the opposite. And, and then same thing with something like Christmas break, a lot of people piece out over Christmas break or they go skiing or they go visit their family or whatever.

Um, but again, for teachers it's like, you know, they can take a breath that may be your best time to work with them or to reach them. So what I want you to do is think about these lead magnets and any other list, building endeavors that you're going to be putting forth in 2022 and start to think about what would be the best times of year for teachers. And what did they need when like, is there a certain time of year, maybe it's that back to school, time of year, that you could create something that's gonna help them with packing their breakfast and lunch every day. Cause I know a lot of teachers, they gotta get to school early, right? And then they, they bring breakfast with them. So if it's not gonna be a muffin, what's it gonna be? Right. Maybe that's something that's going to happen for you, like right at the beginning of the school year and just think through like teacher's life and what she needs or he needs when, and that's gonna help you figure out which lead magnets to create and which time of year to promote them.

And it's gonna serve you so well. Okay. High fives. Give me a hands up in the comments. If that made sense, we wanna think about our target market. We wanna think about their lives and then plot against that when we're our, year. So good. And Nelcia, again, I guarantee you're gonna be able to figure out that opt-in page situation. If not, I do teach that inside healthy profit university.

Okay. Here's the question from Amanda. I love this one. Like is this hit home for me? Cause I have been there. Amanda said, I'm curious how other health coaches have navigated maternity leave. I recently graduated. IIN and I'm fired up and ready to get my coaching business going. I have two clients and a couple events coming up in the near future. So I'm confident I'll get a couple more private clients, but as I get closer to my due date in March, I can no longer offer my six month program. And soon I can't offer my three month program either.

I don't wanna lose this beautiful momentum I'm creating, but I also know I won't be able to be fully present for clients around the time the baby is born. She says, I have a toddler too. Any ideas on how to stay involved and still be there for prospective clients without saying, I can see you in three months.

Thank you for this wonderful example, Amanda, because for all of us, a really important thing to do when you're looking forward, looking ahead in your business is taking into consideration what the heck's going on in your own life, right? Yes. We wanna think about our target market and their lives. We also wanna think about our own lives and what's happening. So Amanda's having a baby, maybe somebody watching, you're listening today, you're getting married next year. Maybe you are going on a big vacation, like whatever it is you wanna think about, what's coming up for you next year and work around that.

Super important. Very easy to forget. I know I was just plotting my own calendar for the, um, beginning of next year. And I'm like, oops, my kids have mid-winter break that week. So I'm not gonna be running that promotion because I'm planning to take them away somewhere. So this is super important. Um, now of course I told Amanda, that's something that she could do while she's on maternity leave. And this would apply to any of you who know that you're really not gonna be able to take on clients for a portion of the year. That's fine. However, you would wanna think about ways to stay engaged. And when I went on maternity leave with my second son in particular, I chose that that year. I wasn't gonna worry about clients cuz also, I mean, come on, you have a baby. It might be three months when you come back to work, it might not having two kids is kind of a game changer, right?

It might be like six months. You wanna give yourself lots of breathing room and grace to take care of yourself and your baby and your family first. And yes, because we're health coaches. But um, so give yourself a lot of breathing room there. And I, I did that for myself and I said, maybe I won't take on any new clients this year after the baby's born. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna double my mailing list and keep in touch with them. I'm gonna nurture the heck out of an audience. So I built, I did, I doubled my list that year because just like we were talking about with, I decided I was gonna create a lead magnet. I figured out a calendar for how to do that. I put out a lot of interesting content and these were things that I, it wasn't in real time, I didn't have to get on the phone with a client.

I didn't have to meet anybody in real time. I worked on these things when I could even like, you know, if it was the middle of the night and I was awake, whatever, uh, you know, your life gets very strange with the baby, but I was able to put together lead magnets and freebies throughout the year, throughout the year doubled my mailing list. And my only, only task I gave myself was to consistently email my mailing list. I didn't make off offers. I didn't take on clients. I didn't stress about any of that, but I nurtured the relationship and Amanda, I would suggest that you do the same. That would set you up for so much success when you come back from maternity leave. Like whenever that is. Okay. Sadika says it makes so much sense. It does. It makes so much sense. And guys, this is how businesses operate. Any business.

I don't know where you've worked before. I used to work in ad agencies and we didn't just fly into the new year going, huh? I wonder what we're gonna do in 2022, you know, each year upper management was putting together a plan similar to this. We have to do it for ourselves else. Okay. And of you guys have a question or something that's on your mind by the way, go ahead and throw it in the chat. And I will try to get to you. Um, I just have some here that I pulled out of our Facebook group because they made for such good talking points. Okay. This one comes from Beverly and Beverly said I've compiled a list of several provider across different industries to reach out to as referral partners. What if people found works best email call, social media, reach out, walk in.

I have some warm contacts I'm likely going to email or call because they know me, but I'm not sure what's best for cold contacts. People are so busy, but really that's a great question. So first let me answer it in the short term, like a small answer, and then I'll like blow it out into like what it could mean for your next year. So when we're talking about cold contacts, I say, don't bother. I don't want anybody. At least in my business. I don't, I can get cold pitches and you know what I do delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, cuz you're right. You're absolutely right. People are so busy these days. I am so busy, so delete, but what gets my attention is when someone's actually trying to be helpful, useful, friendly, not pitching themselves. So in essence, what you wanna do is take your cold cut contacts and turn them into warm contacts before you try, try to do anything else.

So, an easy way of saying this is make friends, make friends, like it's just that simple people like to do business with people that they like. So I would focus on that in terms of all of your cold contacts, definitely don't wort waste your time doing like, uh, you know, emailing a, a distribution list. We're walking into these places. You're gonna do much better if you can warm them up. Um, but now if we think about Beverly's 20, 22, what does this mean? Well, for example, um, if I wanted to, and I've done this in the past, I've, I've moved to a new town and I'm like, I wanna do workshops at that yoga studio. I can just walk in there and be like, Hey, can I do a workshop here? Cause they're gonna go. Who the heck are you? No, I went to the yoga studio.

I paid good money. I took class. I took class with the owner. I took class with the owner, maybe couple weeks in a row after class, maybe I stopped and said, Hey, great class. And she said, Hey, are you new? Yes. I just moved to town. Now we're having a conversation. This is how you start to warm up your cold contacts. So, Beverly, what I would do is if you have a list of some really excellent, um, possibilities for referral partners, I would map that into your calendar for next year. Cause it does take some time and especially how many yoga classes can you go to in a week, right? If you're trying to warm up like yoga studio owners, for example, but I would map it out and put it into your calendar often when we're thinking, oh, I gotta find referral partners. We just say, oh, I gotta do that sometime.

And I'm gonna challenge you to actually make it a task and give it a date of like what you're gonna do. And when in order to warm up each of your contacts and that's gonna make it much more actionable for you. By the end of the year, you will have more friends , you will have more of these warm contacts that are gonna help you in your business. Okay. So that's another way to think about 20, 22, what activities am I going to be to support these income goals that I have or other goals that I have. Okay. Diana says, do you use practice better for all your forms for your clients plus everything they need for their sessions? Yeah, I think I do. I really have switched everything over to practice better by now. Um, and what I, in terms of thinking about 2022, I know a lot of you start out with practice better on the free plan and that's totally cool then you're like, when am I gonna, you know, when do I need to upgrade to the paid plan?

I would, this is gonna be part of your planning for next year. You wanna think about how many clients do you want to sign? And then how are you going to get them, right? What kind of promotional activities are you going to be doing? And then you'll be able to see on your calendar, okay, by this date, I'm probably gonna need the paid plan. And then you can, uh, plan for that expense as well. Right? It's a it's well, well worth it to use practice better if you're using them, if you're signing up, be sure to use our discount code, by the way, it's healthcoachpower.com/practice. And you wanna use code hcpower30. I'll put that in the comments afterwards. Um, if you do decide to upgrade to that plan.

Okay, Alice says, which one is the most important to get new clients, email, Instagram or Facebook. That is like one of those questions. That's like, that's not the question. Um, all of these avenues are important to get clients. It's how you use them and when you use them. So social media is sort of, um, towards the top of, of the funnel, so to speak. That's how you can come across more new people also by doing workshops also by being a guest on a podcast also by writing articles for different publications. But anyway, social media is one of many ways that you can get yourself in front of new eyeballs. And that's really cool. So there's then your job is to get those people onto your mailing list and from your mailing list is where you will typically sign most of your paying clients. But if you never get anyone onto your mailing list, well then your emails aren't gonna be very effective.

Are they? So I can't say your emails are the most important cause it depends. Who's on there. How they get there. Social media by itself is not the most important. And if you're not creating a relationship, moving them to your email list and following through with appropriate sales messaging. So it's like different pieces of the puzzle that all work together. That's what's most important for signing paying clients. So a, what I would do is I would look at your social media strategy and your email strategy. And by that, I mean, how often are you posting? What are you posting about? What's getting engagement, you know, make a plan for that as well as your emails. Are you emailing your list regularly and go into 2022 with a plan. So like right now maybe, maybe Alice doesn't have an Instagram account. So maybe in February, you're gonna dedicate February to learning, using, and setting up Instagram and getting that going for yourself.

You're not gonna worry about Facebook. You're not gonna worry about the TikTok or anything else. Like that's gonna be your Instagram month because you know, it's going to help funnel more people to your mailing list. You know, like that, that's just like an idea I had off the top of my head, but whatever you're sort of lacking in that puzzle idea, you could, you guys can dedicate a period of next year to strengthening that area for yourself. These are things that otherwise just get swept under the rug and it never has happens. So that would be my suggestion for you.

Okay. I'm gonna do one more question before we wrap this one is from Faria and she says, if a client wants four sessions, one-on-one meal planning, what are some tips you can give me as to what to cover? So Faria there's so many different ways that I wanna address your question, but what I'm the part that I wanna pull out for today is that, is this part, a client wants four one-on-one meal planning sessions.

Is that what you're offering? Or do they just say, Hey, can I hire you for like four sessions? Cause here's what we don't want. We don't want our clients dictating our packages. You will have people say, can I just hire you for a couple sessions? I get that all the time. No, no, you cannot. But you can purchase one of these packages that I offer because clients, of course, they're thinking of themselves. And that makes sense. You need to think about yourself. I'm not gonna do any kind of four session one-on-one meal planning with anybody that is not worth my time. It is worth my time to work with someone over a three month period, a six month period, some period of time where they can actually see results and work with them to overcome a problem, to solve a problem. That's what's very valuable one-on-one meal planning.

Not that valuable can't charge that much. So this is not a service personally that I would choose to offer. And it sounds to me, I'm just reading between the lines here that somebody told far that this is what they wanted to hire her for. And so she's being reactive, um, not in a bad way, but she's trying to figure out how to handle it. I want you to go into 20, 22 saying here's what I am offering. Here's when I am offering it, here are the types of people that I'm offering it to and being very clear about what you have to sell. I bet all of us have one income stream, which would be one-on-one coaching, right? So we have some sort of one-on-one coaching package. Maybe you have several, what other income streams do you have? Do you have an affiliate marketing in income stream or other passive income as an income stream? Are, are you doing meal planning sessions? Are, are you doing cooking classes? Like, you can't do everything. So decide what are my income streams going to be? And then how am I gonna promote them and sell them? And that goes in your calendar and I'm going to be talking and demonstrating how to do this so it all makes more sense during our free workshop at the end of the month. So if you haven't already scampered on over to your web browser, do that now.

And sign up to join us at healthcoachpower.com/2022. It is the planning and the strategy that is going to take you from scrambling and stressed, to running a smooth and successful health coaching business. Thank you all so very much for being here today. It is always a pleasure. I will see you soon. Take care, everybody.