#248: The Health and Well-Being Coaching Conference: Recap and Follow-up Thoughts From Michelle

Hello Health coaches. How's everybody doing today? Thank you so much for joining me. We're going to be talking today about the Health and Wellbeing Coaching conference that I just got back from, as in yesterday. Boy, are my arms tired? Or whatever the joke is, I'm exhausted from all the time zones back and forth. I'm not used to this kind of thing, but today we're going to do a recap and I'm just so pleased that you could join. When I was a student at I n so long ago, now, all the classes were still held in person and this was normal for me at that point. I would be taking a bus. I wasn't flying, but I would take a bus to New York City once a month and classes would run all day Saturday and Sunday. And I did that for a whole year. And it was really, really cool because I got to see a lot of speakers in person.

People I never would've had the opportunity to run into or to see even on a stage. Some of my favorites were Sally Fallon and Anne-Marie Colvin. Ah, loved her. Of course, Andrea Beman, who has since become a friend of mine. But man, back then I remember seeing Andrea on stage and well, neither of us had gray hair at the time, but the real magic of meeting up in person, meeting all my classmates and having meals together and it was sharing the hotel rooms and making lifelong friends. That was the great, the really, really good stuff. Now since then, cause it's been a minute, I attended a couple of i n conferences one time. We were in Miami, that was fun. One time we were back in New York City, all so good and then it has been a very, very long time since I have been in person with health coaches.

And right now we're online. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely adore the online space. It's allowed me to build this community. Right now we have like 13,000, 14,000 health coaches in our Facebook group. Amazing thousands and thousands of podcast listeners. It's allowed me to build a business while raising a family. So love the online space. Also really miss the faces and the hugs and the shared meals and making friends who understand my business and let's face it my healthy lifestyle too, because not everybody gets it, do they? So I was absolutely thrilled and I can't wait to share with you today about being at the Health and Wellbeing Coaching Conference. It was just this past weekend in San Diego. I met so many health coaches and it reminded me of exactly what it was like back in 2008 when I first started this journey. So I want to share what you may have missed if you weren't there or even if you were there because you couldn't possibly have caught everything plus my 2 cents on what we can do better as an industry.

So thank you so much for being here. And this episode is brought to you by Practice Better Try any practice better. Plan for free for 14 days at healthcoachpower.com/pb. And you can save 30% on your first three months with code H C P P 30 and until August 31st of this year, 2023. You will also get a free Kitchen Cleanout program built right into the Practice Better platform, which is so super cool. So you can start earning with it right away. Just make sure to use this link so that you'll get that gift. You got to go to health coach power.com/p b. All right, I see some of you are here with me live. That's amazing. Were you at the conference? Say, I was there in the comments, or if you weren't say, I wish I was there in the comments. What was this event all about anyway, if you're hearing about this for the first time.

Well, first of all, I was so super psyched to be part of this in full transparency. I am not at all involved financially or otherwise with organizing this event. That was all Dr. Jessica Matthews like big ups to her. We had her on the podcast a few months ago. So if you missed that, you can go back in the archives. Cause we were talking about the upcoming conference in San Diego. This woman, oh my God, she and her husband Jay, they took on the task of putting together what was the very first conference ever, ever for all health coaches as in not a conference that's run by and for a particular school, but for all of us. They self-funded the event and from what I could tell, they handled most if not all of the logistics along the way. So Liz is there and Katie was definitely there and Victoria was there.

Yes. Good. I'm so glad you guys are all here now because of course we have this ongoing continuing community, but I do hope we get back together in person sometime soon. But I was so impressed because I know what it takes to create large scale community. I know what it takes to do all the promotion and to be a one woman show, or in this case a one woman and one man show. So I just want to say big hats off to Jessica and Jay plus Jess is just so sweet. She's so warm and I love her energy. I was really happy too because when I looked around the room, this is totally unofficial. Those are just like my unofficial count. I would say about 10% of attendees were from my community. Not bad you guys, considering I only announced it to you a couple of months ago.

Are we hungry for the in-person interaction or what? Now? I was asked, speaking of in-person interaction, I was asked to lead a breakout room at the end of the conference. It was going to be a conversation or it was a conversation around business building of course. So I was really, really looking forward to that. But we kicked off the whole event with a happy hour that I hosted on Friday night. Were you there? I figure health coaches to have fun. Sometimes it feels, do you ever feel this way? I got to be little miss. Perfect. I got to eat my kale and drink my sparkling water. You know what? Let's just get down to it. We are normal people too. I eat the kale, I drink the water, but sometimes we just want to have a good time. So we did have a little open bar, we did have a little appetizers and it was a blast to just see everybody in a social setting.

We didn't even know how many of y'all were going to come. Some people RSVP'd, thank you. But it was a surprise. We had 30 coaches show up that night. So it was a party. And I want to give a shout out to three of our Healthy Profit University members who met me there, Paige, Michael, and Simone. What's up? Thank you so much. I love being able to give you a hug and be there with you and see you in a real place at a real time. What a concept. And then so many more from our larger community. One in particular. I have to say hi again to Lisa's story. She's a health coach. I mentored so many years ago, maybe over a decade ago, and we never ever have met in person. She lives in California. I'm an east coast girl. Well, Lisa came and it was such an enormous full circle moment.

I hope you get to have this experience in your career to meet someone that you have known forever. You've watched each other's kids grow up on Facebook and then here they are in person. It was a real honor. Now, one thing that we did Friday night was we gave away some cute little notebooks that I had printed up with an inspirational quote on the cover and a free gift on the back. And I have some extras that I came home with. So I want to give them away to you, my podcast listeners, if you're listening to this show and you find it useful week after week, please leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. I want you to take a screen grab before you hit submit, and then email that screen grab to us at Support Health Coach Power and I will send you one of these notebooks and maybe even pretend I'm a rockstar and autograph it for you.

Is that silly? If you want, I'll autograph it for you. This is for us residents only because goodness, the shipping reasons. So if you're in the US, please write a review and let us know about it and I'll get that little gift off to you. Now, the other thing we did Friday night was I posed a question to each of our attendees and it said, "If you could ask Michelle any question in the world, what would it be?" Now of course, you can always ask me questions inside the Facebook group and I answer them a lot right here on the show. But I want to answer some of the questions that came in Friday night and that'll tell you about the conference itself, which started on Saturday. So Victor asked, what is the best platform to build clientele? And I want to say to Victor, and I'm going to make sure Victor gets to this episode, the best platform is the one that you love using.

If you love to research and write, by all means, start a blog. Attract organic search traffic that way. Learn how to convert them into clients. That could work really well for you. But if you hate writing but you love public speaking, maybe you're going to hold workshops everywhere you can. You're going to meet people face-to-face who need help with a health issue, and these are going to become your clients and that's going to work much better for you if that's your personality. Or you can use social media or podcasting or you can create referral partners or a combination of any of these things because listen carefully, there is no one right way to build clientele. There is only the path that feels good and exciting for you. And then learning how to, of course, optimize your marketing in that direction. Now, Sydney asked, I love this question, how does it feel to be in a career that changes the quality of people's lives?

Let me toss that out to all of you that are here with me live. How does it feel? Tell me in the comments, even in just one word, how does it feel to be in a career that changes the quality of people's lives? I think about this feeling all the time. You got to have a reason to get up in the morning. You got to have that thing goes, yes, it's Monday. Let me get back to it. So I'm always thinking about this in the 14 years that I've been in the industry, I've worked with a lot of clients. I've seen big changes happen in their lives. I would say my one word, if I were in the chat right now, I'd be saying satisfying, right? Just true satisfaction in life. I also meet people just maybe online or sometimes I run into them in person who will tell me that my content, my programs, my inspiration, whatever has changed their lives.
And I didn't even know. Cause maybe they weren't even a client. And I think if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, whatever, tragic, it would be tragic for my family. But I would leave this world going, all right, I did good. I made it a better place. I'd feel very at peace with that. Again, satisfaction just knowing I've accomplished something good in the world and you will too sydnee. And I'm saying that because Sydnee is a brand new coach. She's working with her first client. This is what I learned this weekend. So let's all send Sydnee some good juju over the internet or the energy waves of the universe. I think that would be preferable. Okay, Simone asked where I got my dress, you guys, I was wearing this long flowy yellow dress on Friday night, Simone. It came from Lulu's Online. You can go get yourself one probably fit you better because you're tall. I have 12 inches hemmed off the bottom of mine. And Diane asked about the best ways to create content. That's a big question. I'm going to answer it like this.

The best way to create content, not just for Diane, but for everybody, is consistently, yeah, it's a long game. There's going to be no one blog post or no one social media post or podcast episode that's going to build your client base. But if you do it regularly and you do it well over a period of time, months, years, and if you just keep going, you're going to effectively put yourself in the position of expert. People are going to start to regard you as an expert, even if you have no letters after your name at all. That's just what happens when you're creating content on the regular and they are going to come find you instead of you having to go find them. So find a platform, same advice, find something that works really well for you and start in a way that you can continue. What I mean by that is don't make it so complicated and don't be a perfectionist to the point that you never produce anything.

You want to make it good enough, hit publish and then do it again and again, because content creation really, it has to have that consistency to it. And I know because it's been the cornerstone of my entire health coaching business from day one with my very first health coaching clients. They were actually blog readers and then they asked me to coach them. So it's very powerful. So thanks for those and for all of the amazing questions that I received, I will certainly be staying in touch with everyone that I met over the weekend. Anyway, the conference. Let's talk about the conference. It officially began on Saturday. Michelle Seeger spoke about, and she gave away her book called The Joy Choice. There were sessions on group coaching and motivational interviewing and trauma-informed coaching and a whole lot more. It was pretty academic, most speak, most of the speakers were researchers and from academia.

That's what I noticed, which makes sense given Dr. Jessica's background. And get this, a healthy lunch was even provided each day. That's very different for a conference to actually provide meals. That was crazy. So that was very cool. Now, one moment that I want to share with you from Saturday. This is something that really stuck out for me. It was during a panel discussion and it was all the NBHWC board members up on the stage and a member of the audience raised her hand and she asked if there had been any studies about the challenges of accessing health coaching. Now, I'm paraphrasing here, but my interpretation of the question was what about all the people that can't afford health coaching and how do we make it easier? How do we get health coaching into the hands of more people? And this member of the audience cited her own experience of trying to hire a health coach years ago, and the coach's program was $4,000. Now that was too expensive for her and the coach who remained unnamed, I have no idea who it was, suggested that this woman skip her next car payment in order to put a deposit down on the coaching program, skip a car payment. What do we think about that? Would you use this as a selling technique in your business?

I just felt like so many things that I was feeling and wanted to say in response to this I ask this was question was not pointed at me at all. I was just sitting in the audience, but I'm going to say it here. First of all, there is nothing wrong with charging premium prices. And rest assured, there are lots and lots of people who can and will happily afford it. Yes, however, I believe it. I mean, my heart just went, ugh. It's, it's unethical. I believe it is entirely unethical to ask someone to do something like skip a car payment or put themselves in any sort of real financial risk in order to invest in your program.
Just had to say that we can show you better ways to get people to say yes, if it's the right choice for them, we can show you a better way. I'm going to talk more about this in a little bit. This really influenced me to make some changes into what I was planning to share in my own breakout room session on Sunday, and I'm going to share it with you guys too later in the episode, Tom saying a couple people over here in the chatter saying No. That's how we felt too at my table. We were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's not how we want to do it. We always want to keep ethics top of mind. So anyway, that happened. The sessions continued on Sunday. I really like Anthony Maciello's presentation on what it's like to start a business as an entrepreneur. And he talked about the reality that working for your self can start to cut into your own self-care.

Has anyone ever experienced that? I'm raising my hand. You can raise your hand in the chat if you've ever noticed that. Sometimes you work harder for yourself and longer for yourself than you ever did for any job when you're working for someone else. And of course we know as health coaches that we got to curb that. We got to make sure we're taking care of ourselves and we're sleeping and we're resting and we're eating well, but it can be difficult. So he spoke to that, which I really appreciated. And he talked about get this. He talked about paying attention to your finances. Anthony's not like a finance guy, but I was like, that could have been a whole separate session because that's how important it is. So I really appreciated him for that. There was a session on lifestyle medicine. There was a session on evidence-based coaching.

There was a panel with a few successful health and wellness entrepreneurs and academics, including Sharie Crow, who has also been on this podcast. And then finally it was time for the breakout rooms. And I was so pleased, happily, very happily surprised to see the vast majority of the audience, I would say of all the breakout rooms, half of the whole audience came to hours to talk about business building because of course we can talk about coaching theory all day long. We can learn, we can hear about research, we can understand the importance of coaching and all the topics. They're all good. They're all solid. But unless we are able to find and work with clients, does it even matter? We're not going to make a difference in the world just by talking about coaching. And the best way to coach. You all know I'm really practical like that.

I would rather if everybody who listens to this episode, and I know it's going to be hundreds and hundreds of people because it is every week, I would rather that you do B minus work as a coach and you affect 100 lives, 1000 lives even a little bit than be perfect and certified and have 14 different acronyms after your name and never actually work with clients or affect anybody's life for the better. I really prefer the former. And I know I was a B minus coach for the first few years of my business as I was learning and still did good work and still was able to build my business. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to do, I hear from coaches all the time. I heard from some after the conference who were saying, I'm just so afraid to get started because I have to do this and this and this and this red tape and this paperwork, and I can't do this.

And I said, oh my gosh. Just find yourself a client. Just start. Just start. You'll get there. You'll get all the paperwork and you'll take care of all the nuts and bolts as it becomes important over time. So anyway, by the time I got to our breakout session on business building, I looked what I had planned. I had a whole outline plan for what I wanted to talk about and have discussion around in the breakout room, and I just kind of crumpled it in a ball and tossed it over my shoulder and I was like, let's let, we're going to do this very free forum. I tossed the plan out the window because I wanted to serve the group better and really take their most pressing questions coming out of everything that they just heard and learned at the conference. And it was so much fun to do it that way.

So of course, we always want to have a plan going into things, but I'm going to encourage you that if you ever feel that urge, maybe you have a workshop, a speaking event, whatever. Even if you're just writing a blog post, sometimes scrap the outline and just go from your heart, go let the energy flow through you, which is also a very beautiful way to coach being a conduit from the energy that wants to move in the universe. That sounded really woowoo, but sometimes it is just like that. So we had so much fun. I think it was a big energy boost because it was a long weekend and by the end, everybody was kind of wilting flowers and needed to hear their voice and needed to have that energy boost. So it was great. We ended up covering most of what I had planned to talk about anyway, so I thought, why don't I share it with you here as well.

I'm going to do that right now. So this way, even if you didn't get a chance to join us in San Diego, you can walk away with some of the same insights, at least from this business session. And if you're listening right now and you know could use help with your marketing, please DM me on Instagram. Or you can post in our Facebook group, just type the words rising tide and you'll see why in a moment that's rising tide and my team will get in touch to help. So here's what I had planned for Sunday afternoon's breakout session. You ready? Pretend like we're all in the room together. I wanted to talk about how we had driven past the harbor in San Diego and we were oohing and eyeing over all the yachts, right? Ooh, who owns that one? I do this all the time.

I live in New York, I live right along the Hudson River, and every summer I'm like, I got to make friends with somebody who has a boat. But let's just think about the people who own those boats and the yachts, just like the rest of the population, it's very likely that they have health issues. Yes, it's very likely that they are exhausted and stressed and by the time they're 50, they're probably on several prescription medications. So here's my question. The why doesn't every boat owner in the Hudson River and everyone with a yacht in the harbor in San Diego have a health coach?

We think a lot about people who cannot afford health coaching, and we're going to get to that in a bit. But how about those who can absolutely afford a health coach? Now, if you're here with me live as I'm recording, tell me in the comments, why do you think, don't you think that every boat owner or everyone with the financial means and the health needs, why don't they have a health coach? What's getting in the way? I would love to see your answers to that. I am posing this question after 14 years in the industry, I've helped clients on six continents. I have charged anywhere from 50 to $500 an hour for private health coaching. Here's what I've seen. The need is there. People need health coaching and many people can afford health coaching, right? At $50 an hour. At a hundred dollars an hour, even at $500 an hour, Liz says, most likely have a personal trainer or some other person. That's true, they might. And yet still probably suffering, still probably not reaching their goals or at least in a sustainable way. Same reason that people might have a personal trainer and a health coach who don't own a boat.

So what I have noticed is that even though the need is there, most people have never even heard of us Health coach. What's that? Whereas most people have heard of a personal trainer or a massage therapist or maybe that I bet everyone's at this point has even heard of acupuncture, at least heard of it if not tried it. But a health coach, any guesses? And I don't know the answer to percentage wise, what percent of the population has ever even heard of a health coach? That would be a really interesting statistic. I used to work in big advertising. I dunno if you know this. Volkswagen was a client. Everybody knows Volkswagen Carnival Cruises was a client, McDonald's was also a client. But anyway, let's just say if McDonald's had a new breakfast sandwich, we made sure everyone knew about it. So the way that I see it when I'm looking at the industry is this, health coaching has a fundamental marketing problem.

We have an industry-wide marketing problem because no one knows who we are. How are we going to fix this? I mean, I know everyone's starting to work on it. We're trying to get more involved with doctors and functional medicine practices and board certification and yada yada, but it's hard to make change at a systemic level. Have you noticed it is hard to get the visibility of a McGriddle? And I'm going to ask, I think I need to ask. Let's all ask the national board if they have a 300, 400 million advertising budget, because that way we could hire the ad agency that we need and then everyone would've heard of us for sure. I don't know if we're there yet. I don't know if that's in the budget. We're going to have to check with the board. So I think we're going to have to do something else.

You guys ever hear of the ripple effect? I know you have ever heard of incremental change. Here's where I think we are. The more people that hear about health coaching, the more people that give it a try, the more people that tell their friends, right? In this way, every time one health coach has a small win, we all benefit, right? A rising tide lifts all boats. Yeah, that's where the rising tide thing comes in. So here's what I need. I need all of you to become more effective marketers, even just 1% better incremental change. Because collectively, that's how we're going to let everyone know what health coaching is all about. How do we become more effective at marketing? How do we find clients? Number one question, Michelle, how do I find more clients? I'm like, that's a big question my friend. Go listen to the 200-something podcast episodes we have.

It's basically all about how to find clients. But here are some ideas, right? Referral partners, social media, your website, speaking engagements, podcasting as mentioned earlier, there is no one right way to build your health coaching business. So you got to think, what are your skills? What are your unique strengths? What are your weaker areas? Like maybe you come from healthcare and you have a lot of connections, that's great. That's a strength work. Your referral network. And if you enjoy public speaking, do that. If you're introverted, you can create an online course. You can create online content, right? There's no one way. There's only the path that feels good to you. Of course, PS stretch yourself a little from time to time. You might think that you're not good at something, but give it a try because you might surprise yourself. Now, again, if you're watching this on Instagram or if you're over here on Facebook, or even if you're on YouTube later, answer this question in the comments.

And if you're listening via podcast, you can just answer in your head. And we love you too. What would it mean for you in your business to have consistent, predictable, substantial income from your health coaching business? How would it change your life? I mentioned earlier that I've charged from $50 an hour to $500 an hour. Does that seem like something that you could do too? By the way, we're never charging hourly. It's always packages. Always packages my friends. Earning enough allowed me. It's going to be different for all of you. It allowed me the freedom to leave an abusive marriage. Again, it's going to be a different answer for everyone, but I hear people say, I was able to buy the house that my family needed. I was able to finally take a vacation. I was able to remodel the kitchen or whatever it is that you need to do in your life, and you need the freedom to be able to make that move.

But does that mean that we have to tell people to skip their car payments? Like this is where everybody goes, ick. I don't want anything to do with marketing. Michelle, get me out of here. No, no, no, no, no. Good ethical sales and marketing is simply about helping someone make a decision that is right for them. And you can do this because you're a coach. You can coach someone to do the thing that they want and need to do, which coaching someone to a yes or a no. If this program is right for them right now, or is it not? And that's okay too. And when people say no, and I can't afford it, or Oh, I got to ask my husband or whatever, no, we're not going to be able to, or this is just completely out of my league. Does that mean you're charging too much?

No, that might be true for this person and maybe you need to target a group of people that has more disposable income, right? That's something that we can talk about. But if the answer is no due to financial reasons, please keep in mind that when you are earning substantially, you are in a position to help other people. If you're earning nothing, you can't, like you can't give from an empty cup. Obviously in my business, I have been able to give away over $50,000 in scholarships to the BiPOC community in the past three years. I am very proud of that. I could never have done that. If I had been charging $10 an hour for the past 14 years, I'd be broke. The other thing that you can do when you're earning, well, you can offer a sliding scale. You can afford to do that. You can offer low cost group programs.

You can offer low-cost online courses. You can offer free resources, your blog, your podcast, your downloads. So again, if you see this as an area of opportunity for you and also for the industry, right? Because we all have to get 1% better, you can start moving the needle in your business simply by typing the words. Again in Instagram, send me a dm, throw it in our Facebook group. Just type rising tide. Y'all know how to reach me. However you need to reach me, rising tide, and we'll get back to you to see how we can help. So what I loved about the conference was a collection of all sorts of health coaches and industry leaders and the chance to feel each other's energy. Like I met Victoria, Victoria's been here today, right? I, I'm like, I love this woman's energy. I could feel it from 15 feet back.

It is good stuff. When we get together, we can vibe with each other. And all the dedication and support from Dr. Jessica and putting this conference together, amazing. It was the first inaugural, it was the inaugural Health and Wellbeing conference, but it surely won't be the last. And here's what I think we can do better. It's that part about putting theory and learning, because we all love to learn. We got to put it into practice, like the certifications, they're nice, whatever theory is good, but go do the work. And a big, big part of that is knowing how to market yourself. Like almost 100% of the hands went up in the conference hall when Dr. Jessica asked how many coaches want to start their own business or already are working for themselves. Almost every hand went up. So we need to do better at marketing, even just 1% better because a rising tide lifts all boats. That's it for today, everyone. I'm going to take a break because the jet lag is getting to me, but I will see you next time right here on the show, and next year, hopefully at the next conference. Take care.