#223: January Ideas For Your Health Coaching Business

Okay, hello there. Health coaches. This is the second time we were trying to do this, so I hope it works. As in, I already went live, I already hit record. I already went through the first part of today's episode and then Zoom just froze on us, so we're starting over again. Anyway, it's probably the first time that you're hearing this, even though I'm hearing myself for the second time.

So, hello and welcome. And today we're going to be talking about January ideas and inspiration for your health coaching business because this is a very important time of year. I don't need to tell you that this is the time of year that most people are thinking about their health finally for once. I mean, we wish they would think about it all year long, but alas, here we are will be January and we're going to get as much action as possible as we can in our business to take advantage.

Yes, does this sound good? And if you're here live with me, tell me in the comments if you already have anything planned for January and what that is. It could be something that you're offering for free. It could be something that you're offering as a paid service or a special event that you're doing. But throw your ideas in the comments that helps each other. See what all of you are up to. And I'm very curious as well. But if you don't have any ideas, don't worry. We're going to cover lots of different ideas today. And if you're interested in this idea of planning ahead, , planning for next year, I wanna invite you to our free workshop that's starting on December 26th. It's called, "Make 2023, your most profitable year yet." It is completely free. I think if you do one thing to push your business forward next year, make it this.

It's going to be easy, it's going to be fun, it's free. I mean, what's not to love? But this is the exercise. I'll be leading you through the exercise that I do every year in my own business to not just plan for January, but to plan for what the heck I'm going to be doing the whole year. Because otherwise you blink and it's gone. You blink and it's over. I'm like, oh my gosh, my kids are you in third grade already? When time just flies and you're like, what happened to this month? What happened to this year? And then with business, it's the biggest problem because you're just tripping over yourself trying to get anything done. Oh, I wanted to get that program done for January and here it is. It's already January 3rd and haven't done anything. That's what we wanna get ahead of, not just for January again, but for the whole year.
It's going to be incredibly helpful. So, if you haven't already signed up, go to healthcoachpower.com/2023. Okay, so I wanna start by just doing a little bit of a brain dump. So again, if you're here with me live and I see you, Cindy and Tamara and Jenny and Health Maven, whoever you are, and I see all your names popping up on my screen, what are people thinking about for the new year? Let's just call 'em out. I mean, obviously weight loss, that's right on the top. Everybody's already marketing to weight loss up, down and sideways. That's certainly one of the things. And I would say along with weight loss co comes other sort of related topics. We have people who are feeling bloated, certainly after all of the holiday food and holiday booze and not getting enough sleep. So we have the weight game, we have bloating.

We're going to see a lot of low energy in January because of all the aforementioned food and booze and not sleeping, but also just the hustle and bustle of the holidays. It's just, ugh, come January, everybody is exhausted after they've gone to their last party. Let's see. Cindy says immunity. Yes, oh my goodness. I had a child puking last night and lots of illness going around everywhere I turn. So, immunity is going to be a topic people are thinking about. Christine says, toning up. Yes, that's right. That's another I would say keyword. I don't know if that's the term I wanna use, keyword. That's going to be a main phrase you're going to hear people talking about for sure. Cindy says she's thinking of doing something for the 12 days of Christmas. That's more December, but why not? And you could even maybe flip it into the 12 days of the new year because right now we're almost on top of Christmas, so it's a little too late.

But you could do January 1st through the 12th. I have an idea for you in just a minute on how you can do that. Health Maven says energy. Yes, absolutely. What about mood stuff? What about seasonal depression? What about, I just saw my family kind of depression. What about just the low mood that comes with the holidays? That's very real for a lot of people. Chryler says, dry January. I didn't even think of that one. Dry January. That's a great idea. That's something that people have on their mind. I love that she says, I'm thinking of a resolution. Resolution thinking tiny to sustain change. So the idea of just resolutions in general. I mean, some people are super gung-ho about resolutions. Others are super cynical. So you could go either way with it. Yes, make resolutions. Let's do them together. No, don't make resolutions. They don't work.

Tiny changes are better. So lots of different themes that come up in January. And what I love about them is they all point directly to health coaching. Not to mention just the idea of a fresh start starting over. I mean, I kind of hate that phrase, new year new, but new year new you or a clean sweep. You don't even have to offer something around nutrition necessarily. It could be like the time when you're going to clean out your closet of all the clothes that don't fit anymore and all the socks that have holes, right? Just that idea of starting fresh.

So, that's another important theme for this time of year. So you can run with any of those themes or anything else that comes to mind and turn it into an offer that makes sense for you and where you're at in your business right now. And for those in your audience, and you might just be starting out, maybe your audience is your sister, your circle of friends, your aunts and uncles, that might be your audience right now. That's cool. We all start there. If you've been practicing for a while, maybe you have an audience that includes an entire email list with a couple hundred people or who knows, maybe a couple thousand people. And then you can do all of these ideas as well, perhaps at a light slightly larger scale. So let's start with something that I am positive everyone can do. I mean, you can literally do this even if you didn't have an email list set up yet.

Even if you didn't have an email service, it was just you and your Gmail inbox and all you had was three friends that wanted to participate with you. I'm talking to all you health coaches that are still in school thinking, I don't have to start marketing myself. I highly encourage you to start marketing yourself, even if it is just with your three best friends or a couple people that, or your family members or whatever. Start practicing doing the work. Start doing things that then they can talk about to other people. It works on so many levels. Anyway, an easy thing that everybody can do is sending a simple email series. And you could also think of it as an email course, like a mini course. Just when you're thinking about what would I put in these emails? I love this idea because it doesn't require any fancy technology at all.

It doesn't require graphics, it doesn't require anything. What could you send to your audience over a period of days? It could be three days, it could be five days, it could be 12 days. If we were going to do that 12 days of new year thing, I had an idea when I was considering this early. You could send a recipe every day. Who's going to be mad about that? Especially if it was a great recipe that you love and you've made a million times and you can say for sure this recipe works. And you can tell them why it's a great recipe and what makes it healthy for them. Boom. By the end of the 12 days, they've got 12 new recipes and they feel like they got great value from you. Easy, easy, not rocket science. What else? Maybe over the period of three days you're going to send out a cleansing ritual for each day. That whole idea of a fresh start or a cleanse in the new year. Maybe you want everybody to throw out the clutter on their desk. That's going to be one of them.

There's going to be something else that they're going to do to clear out their inbox. Whatever is important to you. Again, they don't have to be nutrition related. Health coaching can span the gamut from food and exercise to all those primary food topics, relationships, and spirituality. So think broad in the beginning. What does my audience want? Not what I want not to, what I want to tell people about, but what does my audience want this time of year? What can I give them? What can I help them with that they already won? Cuz this is stuff they'll be really excited to get from you. What if it was a daily peak into, oh, this might be fun if it was the 12 days of New Year's if it was a daily peak into a health trend to avoid this year and let them know why you think they should avoid this health trend. I think the natural next thought would be, and instead hire health coach instead actually address the root cause of your issues. Instead actually work with someone. Don't just hop on the next shake or powder or whatever that comes along.

That could be an interesting thing. So how many of you think it would be easy enough to send out a series of emails? Just say me in the chat if you think that's something you could pull off. I mean, heck, if you started today, you could definitely have your first email go out on January 1st if you wanted to sync it up that way. And if that was too soon, you could run up the second or third week of January. I think that would be totally fine. And you don't even have to get people to opt into it. If they're on your email list, you're just choosing to email your list three days in a row or five days in a row. That's all. As long as you're sending them value. They won't mind if you email them every day of the year, they may start to mind .

But for just a specific period of time for a special series, it works beautifully to make them think, wow, I'm so glad I'm on this email list. Look at this great value that I'm getting from being on this list. Okay, Shay says she could totally do that. Christine says she could do that too. Tamara says Doable. Good. So just writing some emails. I know you know how to do that and we can continue to brainstorm some ideas in the chat if you are already percolating up here. Cause that's what starts to happen, right? Okay, so let's move one little notch up from sending a series of emails. This next notch up would start to build your mailing list. So this would assume that you already have a mailing list set up or that you could set or not very quickly cuz it really is not that hard to do.

And then you could run a short challenge, a free challenge. So more of an event that people would opt in for, give you an email address and then in exchange be enrolled in this event. At that point. I gotta tell you, it's not that different from the email series. It's really not. It's so funny. It's just in the way that you talk about it. So now you're running a five day challenge instead of it being a five day email course or a five day email series, but it's the same thing every day for those five days or if it's a three day challenge or a seven day challenge. I don't like letting them go too long. I max that around seven days because people start to lose interest. So let's say that you're going to run a challenge. Becca, who is in our health coach power community Facebook group was writing about wanting to do a challenge.

I think she was talking about should there be some type of group like community component? And I say yes, yes, yes. A Facebook group can work really nicely for that. You can use a WhatsApp group. Actually I've never used WhatsApp, but I hear a lot of our international health coaches talking about that. So I know it's an option to use WhatsApp. You can use Practice Better, has sort of a community messaging board that looks a lot like a Facebook group. So whatever you have, people love that ability to connect with each other and feel like they're not the only ones going through this process. Now let's talk about what the process would be. If you let a challenge in January, what would the topic be? Here's something that I bet everybody could use the sugar cravings challenge. Let's not eat sugar for five days. Let's crush the sugar cravings that came out of candy cane season.

That's going to work regardless of your target market. Basically every human being on Earth can use that. Or you could go the opposite way Instead of saying what you're not going to eat during the challenge, maybe it's what you are going to eat. Maybe it's eat your greens challenge and every day of the challenge, everyone's going to make sure they get one serving of dark leafy greens. And of course you're going to provide examples and recipes and actually educate them along the way around what the heck a dark leafy green is and why they're important. Just an idea. Now you also can run challenges that don't have to do with what somebody does or doesn't eat. You can run a challenge meal planning challenge, and over the course of several days you teach how to meal plan one step at a time. Step one, what do you have in the pantry?

Step two, what are some go-to meals? Step three, whatever the process would be that you put together by the end of five days, they've put together a meal plan for the following week and they know how to do it so then they can do it again and again and again. You could have a meal planning challenge. You could have a challenge based on a symptom that they are experiencing. The increase your energy five day challenge, Chris are saying power to protein challenge. I love that. How about getting some protein in at every meal? That certainly is a challenge for a lot of people. So this is a great time of year to put together something that's doesn't take too much thought or effort because people are really drained after the holidays. But put together something that's easy for them to join, easy for them to participate in. You don't wanna make it too complicated. Some we're going to detox from every food on the planet and we're going to do Ayurveda, that thing where you swallow the cloth and pull it back out your throat. Do you know that cleansing technique? You guys look it up.

That's one of 'em. Okay, so on. What I'm saying is don't do that. Don't make it too complicated or weird. Make it something that's accessible to folks. Come January 1st, Crisler says that's a good one. Busy moms need that kind of practical help. The meal planning, right? Yes, teach. You can teach something over the course of five days. I mean, heck, it's not probably the time of year to teach how to make sourdough bread, but if that's something that you love to do and people are interested, you can teach how to make sourdough bread over five days or how to make fill in the blank. You can teach anything in these challenges as well. So it doesn't have to be a challenge to deny yourself a certain food. You know what I mean? I'm just trying to stretch everybody's thinking here. All right. So that would be a great way to build a mailing list.

And for that you need to start real soon today picking a topic because it's going to take you a little bit of time to set up an opt-in page, just the process that somebody's going to go through in order to sign up for the event. I do teach all of that in depth inside Healthy Profit University's core curriculum. It's not that hard, it's just a few steps that you have to go through. Anyway, I would start now. I would plan to run a challenge no earlier than the middle to the end of January because you're going to need to set things up and then you're going to need to promote this event for a good two, three weeks in order to make it worth your time to have time for people to sign up and have a group to run it with. So good to always be thinking about timelines and how this is all going to work together.

So if you have a little bit of a larger audience, if you have been coaching for a little longer and you have an established presence with your people, January can also be a great time to run a paid short group program. And what pops to mind immediately for me are all the coaches I know running detoxes this January. Anybody here, I think Julie said earlier, something about a detox. And Helen says, love these ideas. I'm full of 'em. Helen, 13 years of doing this, I got 'em all right here for you. So I'm going to talk about the idea of a detox, but keep in mind that a detox does not have to mean, again, we're not going to eat anything except green juice or we're going to be super duper extreme. It can be more gentle than that. And a detox can also mean a digital detox.

It can nothing to do with food at all. It could be like, hi, for this week we're going to put our phones down at 5:00 PM and not look at them again. Oh my God. Can you imagine? Right? Or this would also go back to the idea of a dry January. So, running a paid short group program that's focused all around having a dry January these are all excellent ideas for January. I know that Leanne and Eva inside of our Healthy Profit University group are both planning detoxes that they created themselves. And again, if you're going to do a short group program like this and people are going to be paying you for it, I would run the timeline very similar to a challenge. Meaning you'd wanna start now figuring out what it's going to be cuz you're going to wanna start selling it at the beginning of January.

You could even if you got your act together very, very quickly and you didn't have too many holiday plans, you could even start selling it in the week between Christmas and new. So here's a hint. When you're trying to sell something during any time of the year, but particularly a busy time of year, you wanna offer it first to your whole list or your social following, whoever you have in your audience. And you wanna offer it at an early bird price because that gets people to move and sign up. You don't wanna wait until the day before your program is supposed to start and nobody has paid you anything. Most people will wait for the very last minute just because that's human nature. So hit get it out there as soon as you can offer an early bird rate. Maybe the early bird could be they have to sign up by December 31st.

I mean, you'd really have to move quickly to make that happen. But even if it was like they have to sign up by January 10th for the early bird price, otherwise they could sign up for another week and then your program runs toward the end of January. That's how I would work it for sure, because we're working with a very tight timeline. If you wanna run a January program, and I'm speaking to you today on December 20th, so you wanna definitely incentivize people to sign up, take action, do the thing now and not wait. So have any of you ever used an early bird strategy before? It sounds kind of cheesy, right? It sounds like the meal that you get at the diner at 4:00 PM for the early bird special, but it's very similar to that. It's a reduced rate if you do it early. So if you're going to have a program that's like $99, the early bird could be $79.

If you're going to have a program that's like $199, maybe early bird is $129 something that feels substantial enough that people are like, oh, let me do that now. That's worth my time to stop what I'm doing and make sure I sign up now to get that price. Chase says how much you usually charge for something like this. So I just threw out some numbers. And those numbers. I mean, it depends what you're running. If it's a five day thing, $99 bucks is very standard for something like that. You could, of course, Cindy told us earlier, she's running a 12 week program that starts in January. That is a different beast entirely. But I would think about a very accessible price point for something like this that's coming up quick. You're going to be marketing it, but you're not going to be marketing it as fully as you may have if you planned it three months ago.

So, I think the goal should just be like, let's just get people in. And you don't want price to be the objection when it's a short program like this. Okay, so let's move right along unless we have other questions. I'm just peeking at my screens here. Which of these sound like something that you could pull off? Is a detox something that you think you could make happen? Remember, it could be as simple as we're not going to eat sugar or gluten or dairy. That's it. Three things. Most simple thing ever to communicate. And you're going to lead people through that process if you're like, I could never do that. Yes you can. Yes you can. And the first time you stumble a little bit and then you get a little bit better at it. Maybe you could do it again in the spring and you could do it again in the fall.

And it all starts to come together after you work with real people and go through the process. Cause then you're like, oh, I remember last time what was confusing for them? I'm going to explain that anyway. I just wanna let you guys know that even if you are still in school, even if you just graduated as a health coach yesterday, all of the things we've talked about so far are available to you. You don't have to be a certified health coach to run a detox. 1000% do not have to. My mom could pull together a couple of her friends and say, Hey, for a week, let's try not to eat sugar, gluten or dairy or for a week, let's just eat plant based. And they could all go, okay. And then they could talk about it for a week and that would be it, right? You can do it too.

So, don't hide behind the I need more trainings. I need my certification. I need to be board certified. You don't actually , which is kind of the awesome thing about this field is we do have a lot of flexibility. So just like Crystal's saying right here, yes, just do it. Just do the thing and take advantage of that January energy, cuz other people wanna do the thing too. Come January, okay, so now I had wanna talk about if you are certified, you are taking private clients or maybe not yet, but you're ready to start taking private clients. Finally, again, just do it. You're going to learn how to do these things by actually doing them. How about in January, you have a special bonus that you're offering with your one-on-one coaching packages. Please do not discount yourself. You are not Walmart Health Coaching is not a discount service.

It is a premium service. So don't discount like the whole industry by being like, oh, in January it's going to be half off coaching. No, but you could offer your coaching package with a bonus. Somebody signs up with you, they pay to get started in January, even if their first session doesn't happen until February, who cares? And they get a bonus set of personal training sessions with you. Maybe if you are also a personal trainer, yoga sessions, if you are also a yoga teacher, I know many health coaches have other specialty areas, maybe you're a Reiki practitioner, you know, can bring in your other skill sets and package it up as a bonus available for January only. You could do family cooking classes. If you're working with moms, you could do a bonus pantry cleanout for your clients. Think about something that you don't normally offer.

Maybe you offer as a separate paid service and bundle it up for January. Run yourself a promotion in the new year and let everybody know that now is the best time to sign up as a private client, not only because it's January, but because they're going to get this extra special bonus with you. And that can go a long way, again, towards making people take action now as opposed to what people do, which is, oh, I'll do that later. Oh, that sounds good. Maybe next month, maybe next year. , right? That's just how people operate. Good people do this all the time. I know I do it too. So to help them overcome that, we need to incentivize them. Okay, and I had one more a bo okay, bonus for you that I almost forgot. This one is for the introverts out there. Anyone introverted, don't wanna make offers, don't wanna ask people to sign up for anything.

Don't wanna run a Facebook group or do any sort of Facebook Live. Dear God, no. Right? If you're an introvert, you're going to love this one in January. Think about putting yourself out there in the form of something that people can download. Helen says, me, introverts, I feel you. I was the most introverted person you ever met 20 years ago. And in running my business, I've definitely come out of my shell. But I gotta tell you, even after this, right? When I'm live and I got a headset on and I got lights and I got people, I'm going to need a minute still introvert at heart. So I feel you. So think about offering a new downloadable, either free like a lead magnet or could be something that's paid, but it can be something that folks are going to sign up for or potentially pay a small amount for and download.

If you can create that in the comfort of your own office or at your own desk between now and the middle of January, you can start offering it then and still have a way of putting yourself out there without video, without having to show up live for people. My only hesitation here is that some of you will think you're going to write an e-book and then sell the e-book for $39. You are not, people don't buy eBooks like that. Mm-hmm. People might download an ebook for free. Better if you could make it shorter and faster because who wants to read an ebook? Oh my goodness, that seems like very year 2000 to me.

So, Put together something short and free and valuable. Any of the ideas we've talked about today, pantry, cleanouts, fresh, dark, have more energy, lose the bloat, lose weight in January, detox from your holiday indulgences. Create a new freebie download that makes sense for this time of year. You could use it again next year too, which is pretty awesome. It could be a recipe book, something about sugar cravings. Or you could put together something that's more comprehensive so it's not just a couple page P D F, but maybe there are some additional resources. There could be a guide and a recipe book and sample meal plans. You could put together a whole beat sugar cravings in January kit and sell it for $29. Something like that might work for you. So that one is tucked in there for everybody who pees their pants just a little bit at the thought of having to sell themselves or put them out in public.

Yes, Crisler says, I'm an extrovert, but I still have a hard time asking. I know. It just takes practice. It really does. And that's why I love running the free events like a five day challenge or doing an email series or doing things where you're not asking for very much in return or even offering something that's like $99 because that's how you get your feet wet. You're like, oh, people bought something for me that was $99 and suddenly you're totally fine with asking for $199, and then next time you'll be able to ask for a thousand and so on and so forth. My final tip for you guys today as we head into January, the idea that I wanna plant in your mind is that you do need to plan ahead in your business more so than your weekly meal plan when you hit the grocery store.

More so than planning what you're going to wear for the day. It takes time to put stuff together, to organize it, to make materials, and most of all, to promote it properly. having a plan for not just January, but the whole year is going to help you so very much to stay on top of things. So inside my upcoming free workshop, make 2023 your most profitable year. Yet I'm going to show you how to move the needle on four aspects of your business that make all the difference in the income that you earn. And you're going to have it mapped out ahead of time, which means then you can organize your life around it and get ahead of things before they smack you in the face. So I hope to see you there. You can sign up again for free at healthcoachpower.com/2023.

And I'll tell you one thing that I know for sure is that I will be seeing you here, not just next week. Yes, I'll be back next week with another episode, but I'll be seeing you here in 2023 too. Thanks for hanging out with me today and for brainstorming some ideas. If you're watching the replay later, or if you're listening via podcast, hop into the Facebook group and continue adding to this thread because when one of you has a great idea, somebody else goes, Ooh, I could do that too. And that is the power of community. Take care everybody. I'll see you soon.