It’s super useful to offer a bite-sized program in your health coaching practice – whether you’re a brand new coach or have years of client experience. In this episode, Michelle shares how to gain momentum and earn income with one simple, fun program. Best of all? You can experience it for yourself with this November’s FREE 5-Day Jumpstart for Health Coaches: HealthCoachPower.com/jumpstart.
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How to Run a 5-Day Jumpstart
In the world of health coaching, big coaching programs are common, but there’s also significant value in offering something…bite-sized.. Today, I’ll guide you through the process of running a successful 5-Day Jumpstart.
The Power of a Jumpstart
Think of this 5 day program as a quick and accessible way to “jumpstart” a client’s journey towards their ultimate health goals. It can be tailored to any target market or coaching speciality and is a fantastic way to build momentum in your practice.
Whether you’re a new or experienced coach, creating and selling a $79 or $99 program is more straightforward than a larger, complex, and expensive offering. Make it easy for clients to say “yes.”
Developing a Strategy
The first step in creating your 5-Day Jumpstart is to decide who your program is for and what result they can expect. It’s best to have a clear target market in mind and gather a group of similar people together for this event.
(However, newbies can also run a Jumpstart for a more general audience if your strategy is simply to gain experience.)
Crafting Your Protocol
Your 5-Day Jumpstart program needs a simple but powerful protocol. This protocol suggests specific actions that participants can try for the 5-day duration. It may involve adding positive habits like meditation or removing negative ones like processed sugar.
Consider the habits that help the most people most often. For example, for clients looking to increase energy you might suggest eliminating sugar and alcohol, adding more protein and fat, and going to bed earlier.
Choosing Dates
Select five consecutive days to run your program. A suggested timeline is Sunday to Thursday to avoid weekend temptations. Allow at least three weeks to promote your program effectively. Use this time to spread the word and encourage signups.
Hot tip: Plan your program dates with consideration for holidays, special events, and your target audience’s lifestyle.
Selling Your Program and Gathering Feedback
Determine your pricing and ensure you have a minimum number of participants to make it a viable group. Collect payments through Paypal or whatever is easiest. Keep it simple!
During the program, collect feedback and testimonials. These testimonials will be essential for future marketing efforts.
Experience it for yourself first
Incorporating a 5-Day Jumpstart program into your health coaching practice can be a game-changer. It provides quick wins for your clients, builds your expertise, and can become a secondary income stream.
But it sure helps for YOU to experience this type of program first! That’s why I’d love for you to join me this November for my free 5-Day Jumpstart designed specifically for health coaches at: HealthCoachPower.com/jumpstart.
Full transcript:
Alright, hello there, health coaches,. I hear so many of you saying that you're working on a program. Anybody out there working on a program or I hear health coaches saying that they want to create a program. They're not quite working on it yet, but they are going to create a program one of these days. Usually, from what I understand, y'all are referring to something fairly large scale, right? Like a private coaching program, a big online course, and that's cool. That is great. I'm not going to say anything bad about that. However, there is also enormous value in having a sweet little bite-sized program offering in your health coaching practice. And that is what we are going to talk about today. So if you're here with me live, please go ahead, say hello in the comments and let me know if you've ever offered a real short and sweet program like that before.
This episode is brought to you by Practice Better, a complete practice management software that many, many coaches in our community swear by. With practice better, you'll automate administrative tasks so you can focus on doing what you love. Receive 30% off for your first three months on any paid plan at healthcoachpower.com/pb. That stands for Practice Better. Plus, I've got a done for you 5 Day Kitchen Cleanout to use with your clients right away, built into the practice. Better platform. See show notes for details. So again, there is enormous value in having a bite-sized program offering in your health coaching practice. It was definitely something that helped me gain momentum in my early years of business because I mean, let's face it, it is much, much easier to create and to sell a little $99 program, $79 program versus something bigger, more complicated and more expensive. On a scale of one to 10, how comfortable are you asking for money?
Let's just start right there. Is it easier to ask for $79 or $99 or like $2,000? So this is a really nice place for you, whether you're brand new to coaching or even if you have years of experience. I want you to think about a five day "jumpstart" and I use Jumpstart in quotes. I like that term because a jumpstart can be anything for any audience, for however you work with your clients. It is a quickie, five day experience that is super duper accessible. It is so much fun and it's a great way to gain visibility. So I'm going to share an overview today for how to run something like this.
I also want to invite you to experience a five day jumpstart for yourself because that is the best way to learn. Now when you do something like this in your own health coaching practice, I want you to charge for it. Like I said, even if it's $49, you're going to charge for something like this. But I'm going to show you the ropes for free. Join my upcoming five day jumpstart for health coaches this november at healthcoachpower.com/jumpstart. I'm going to drop that link right over here in the comments on Facebook. It's going to be good for your own and it's going to be good for your business growth. So again, that is health coach power.com/jumpstart. Alright, so how do we do it? What is the secret to running something like this? I know it can sound or can feel complicated, so I'm trying to break it down today into something that you can wrap your head around because anything you haven't done before, you never rode a bike before.
The first time you ride a bike, you're like, what do I do? What do my arms do? What do my legs do? So we're going to make it something that I think everybody can wrap their heads around today, and it starts with a strategy and that means deciding who your jumpstart is for and what result they want. So it could be my jumpstart helps corporate women have more energy. They want that my jumpstart helps dads in their forties lose their bellies. They want that. My jumpstart helps women in menopause reduce hot flashes. They want that, right? So anything that you can, and this is important, anything that you can begin to make progress towards in five days can work for a jumpstart. Anything you can start to see even the smallest amount of progress towards in five days, you can run as a jumpstart. Now, can you solve all autoimmune issues in five days for a woman who suffers with eight different autoimmune diseases?
No, of course not. Nobody can lose 50 pounds in five days. Of course not. Maybe those dads, they're not going to lose their entire bellies in a five day jumpstart. But can we just begin the process? Can we give them a jumpstart? Yes, yes, of course we can. Someone, like I said, even if they feel 1% better in five days, if they stop eating so much sugar and they, I don't know, eat a vegetable and go for a walk like anybody is going to feel better, that just goes without saying. That is the power of a jumpstart. So people start to see results however small, and it makes them motivated to continue. And I'll tell you in a little while about some success stories that I've seen in my own health coaching practice, seen it time and time again. So just remember, we cannot, we will not solve 100% anybody's health issue in five days.
That would be ridiculous, but we can give them a jumpstart in the right direction. So why don't we do that and well tell me in the chat, if you're here live, I would love to know who would your jumpstart be for? I'm not going to hold you to this, and if you're listening at home later via podcast, shout it out loud. Who might you run a jumpstart for? What is that result that they want to see? That's called your target market. And even if you haven't chosen a target market for your entire health coaching practice, at least for this program, you can have a target. If you're one of the coaches though, who's like Michelle, I have no idea who my target market should be. I literally cannot think of anybody. This is about the only time you're going to hear me say this on the podcast.
So hear me now, it's okay to go broad with a five day jumpstart. Oh my God, I just heard a collective sigh of relief because for years and years and years I've been coming on the show talking about how choosing a specific group of people to serve is so, so very important. But listen, I have seen enough health coaches offer a more general five day program to help people in general have more energy jumpstart weight loss. It still works. So if you want to do it that way, you can, especially if you're new in your business, it can help to just offer something. Just do anything, even if it's not super targeted and get experience working with a varied group, fine. But if you do already know your target market or if you want to dip your toe into testing a target market, this is a great way to do that and this is a great way to establish your expertise in a particular area.
So that's number one. What's the strategy going to be next? You're going to need to create a simple protocol for your five days. Now I know the word protocol is a little bit scary, so let's not go dive and down the hole of oh my God, we're not allowed to prescribe and diagnose. We're not. All it means is that you are going to suggest yes, suggest never prescribe that your jumpstart participants try certain things for a five day period. So this could include things that they're going to try adding in five minutes of meditation or a glass of lemon water first thing in the morning, right? Think about adding in. It can also include things that they're taking out like processed sugar. You can suggest, Hey, for five days, let's try not to eat processed sugar. Let's see how we feel if we take out processed sugar. Or maybe they're going to take out domething like sitting at their desk all day without a break, removing those unhealthy habits from their lives. So you were going to want to decide on a simple but powerful protocol. Ellen says that she wants a jumpstart, jumpstart a resilience program. I think that's really interesting. Ellen, who would it be for? Who needs resilience? No two people are the same, of course. So whoever your JumpStart's going to be for, there's no one protocol that's going to work for everybody. So think about it like this, what steps tend to help the most people the most often? And that's how I would even tell my clients about it. I'd be like, Hey, if we were doing a private coaching session right now, it'd be different because this is a group I've put together. What I have seen tends to help the most people most often. If I were going to try to help corporate women have more energy, well actually if you're here live, tell me, if you were going to try to help corporate women have more energy, what would you put in the protocol?
What would top your list for what these women would need to try or need to do for a couple days in order to feel more energized to lose some of that brain fog? For sure, I'd be talking to them about eliminating sugar and I'm also thinking the alcohol for five days. Can she not do the wine at night because that is tanking her energy levels. I probably also talked to her, I say probably, but I have totally worked with women like this in my own health coaching practice. So I definitely have talked to women like this about adding in more protein and more fat into their diet to keep their blood sugar steady. That's going to help with their energy levels. What do we say here, Leanne is over in our Facebook group suggesting sleep. No doubt, and I am going to tell you, it is really hard to tell someone go to sleep an hour earlier.
So if you're going to suggest something like that, maybe it's 30 minutes earlier, make it doable for them. Ellen says five days commit to a sleep ritual, right? Exactly. Or maybe we give them something to do. Take all the light out of your bedroom or turn off your phone, put it in airplane mode and leave it in the kitchen 30 minutes before you go to bed or whatever feels doable for the people who are going to be participating, if she does any of that, any of those things that we just said, if she does that for five days, is she going to feel different? She's going to feel different. So what's your protocol going to be? That's the step that you have to take next. Then we're going to pick dates. You're going to run this for five consecutive days. Any five consecutive days can work, but I really like Sunday to Thursday. I find that for anyone who works full time, at least on Sunday, they can get going, give it their all, even if it's going to be a little bit tricky during the work week, so I can really set them up for success also, then you're ending on a Thursday, which means you're not ending on Friday when people might want to go out for happy hour. So it just helps everyone avoid those trigger days of Friday and Saturday and then they feel like they won, they made it. They did it. We would never want someone to go, oh, I screwed it up on the last day. So I really like Sunday through Thursday. I've also seen these work very well Monday through Friday. If you want to avoid the weekends, let's say you're working with a lot of moms and all weekend they are running their kids around to soccer practice, maybe Monday through Friday is better for them.
So pick your days and then plan ahead. You're going to want to give yourself at least three weeks to tell people about your jumpstart and get them signed up. Hear me on that. You can't decide today that you are going to run your jumpstart three weeks from now because you haven't planned anything. You don't have that protocol yet. You just started thinking about it five minutes ago. You're going to need some more time. And then once you know what you're doing, what you're offering at least three weeks to tell people about it, if you back yourself up into a corner and you only promote it for a week, that's not enough time. You're going to need to tell people and you're going to need to remind them. So right now, at the beginning of November, and we're heading into the holidays, so if you think about three weeks from now, it's going to be Thanksgiving anyway, and then shortly after that, the Christmas rush is upon us.
So I'd probably be thinking about the new year as the best time to run something like this, but if you're listening to this episode at a different time of the year, just consider are there any major holidays? What's going on in the world? What's going on in these people's lives? For example, if you're working with teachers, you might do better to run something like this at the very start of their summer vacation. So busy at the end of the school year. You might plan it for a time that really works for them. Make sense? So after you pick your dates, it's time to sell spots. And like I said, you could charge $49, you could charge $79, you could charge $99. Yes, I have charged a bit more than that at times, but there's something so nice about a two digit number. Just feels small, very doable. Like I said, bite-sized. So choose your price, offer the program, decide how many people you need to make this happen because if you only have one person sign up, well, that's not a group. If you only have two people sign up, it's not really a group either. So maybe you need a minimum of three. Maybe you want a minimum of five to make it worth your while. Even monetarily is it going to be worth your while? So decide on that and when you're collecting money, just do It in whatever the easiest way is. So however you normally collect money from your private clients, do that. Or if you don't have any private clients, just accept Venmo. Accept Zelle. Just make it easy. You don't have to set up a fancy sales page or have a checkout with a cart online and all those things. Just take cash, cash check. Just do it the old fashioned way. You can always get fancy later. And when you're talking about your upcoming jumpstart, I want you to remember this. This is so important. Nobody wants a five day jumpstart per se. They don't want a five day program. They don't want to. However else you would phrase it, that's not the draw. The draw are the results. So that's what they want. Tell everyone, first of all, tell everyone that's your job here. You're going to tell everyone you know what you have going on and tell them the results that they can expect.
That's the draw. You're not selling a five day jumpstart. You're selling more energy. You're not selling a five day jumpstart, you're selling weight loss. You're selling the result that he or she wants at the end of five days. The jumpstart of what? And you're going to tell everyone that they have to sign up by a certain day, okay? Because you want to know that you've got that minimum number met people sign up, encourage them to invite their friends. People love to do this kind of thing together. I would have women join my programs like this and they would have a group of three or four of their friends that would do it together every time. And I got to know them and I got to see them interact with each other and it was just lovely and found out that they didn't even live in the same country. They were friends from college who now somebody lived in Switzerland and somebody lived in California, whatever. This was a way of them doing something together and having an experience together. So really a beautiful thing, even aside from the health benefits. So once you've sold your spots and the dates have arrived, it's time to run your program. That sounds very scary, but actually I think this is the most fun and easiest part. It can be as simple as sending an email every day for five days. You can do that, right? That's like at the base. That's all it has to be. Now, could you include a live call or two? Yes, you can do Zooms. You can even have in-person meetings. I don't know anyone who has done that recently, but when I started my health coaching business, I held in-person meetings for my group. I was running them locally.
I would also recommend that you have some type of online forum, like a Facebook group or if you have practiced better, there's a built-in forum there. That's a place for your group members to ask you questions, meet each other, get support, share ideas, et cetera. So that's a really beautiful part of this whole experience is the group interaction. So highly recommend something like that. There's one more step after running your program, but just a reminder, if you want to see a five day jumpstart in action, join me this November because I've put together something pretty awesome specifically for health coaches, and this way you can just see exactly how it works and you can sign up for free for that again at healthcoachpower.com/jumpstart. Then you'll be like, oh yeah, I see how this goes. You're going to have a really good idea how to run your own after going through it together.
All right, and what is that last thing? Don't forget this part. You got to collect feedback along the way because you're going to want testimonials for next time. And remember that sometimes it's like the little things, it's little to you or to me, but it can create this big aha moment for our clients. So even though you're like, what can anybody achieve in just five days? Let me tell you one time I had a client, her name is Amy, and she went through a program like this with me and she kept it up for another few weeks. A lot of people will do that. They're like, I feel so good, and this was so easy, I'm going to keep doing it. They will. It won't last forever. It's very good to circle back because people will need ongoing accountability and maybe become private health coaching clients in the future.
But Amy, like so many, kept it up for another few weeks on her own. She went and had her blood work done. She had cut her high cholesterol numbers in half. She was blown away. She was a physician's assistant, by the way, so she thought she knew a lot about this stuff. In fact, she said she was so surprised because on the program she was eating more fat than she usually did. She was eating more eggs, she was eating more red meat. But of course we know because she cut out the sugar and the processed food boom, her cholesterol numbers dropped because the inflammation in her body dropped. It was so simple, but it was life-changing for her because she thought for sure she was just doomed to have high cholesterol forever. I've had lots of clients lose three pounds, four pounds, five pounds in a week, and no, it's not permanent weight, fat loss, not permanent weight loss, but it's movement on the scale when maybe this woman hasn't seen any in a while, maybe the scale's just been creeping up, up, up, and she's very unhappy about it.
She sees it start to go down. She feels great. It creates this momentum for them to continue. It gives her a win, and that's what we want people to feel in five days. They can get a win. They can stick to anything for five days and feel better. That's a really good place. They're going to tell everyone about you. And I had another client one time, he got off his acid reflux medication, which he'd been on for years. He just didn't need it anymore. It was a total surprise. It was a surprise to him. It was a surprise to me. It's not something we were trying to do. It was not like the get off acid reflux jumpstart. You would never do that anyway, but he just was like, I don't need this. And he took the protocol, he followed it. He kept at it for another couple of weeks and boom, really big exciting results from just a little tiny five day program. So your last step is to collect those spontaneous testimonials, which will come up in your Facebook group or your online forum, which will come up when people email you and they're thanking you. And what you want to do is ask for permission to use those in your future marketing materials because next time you're going to run it again, it's going to be bigger, it's going to be better. Maybe you're going to charge a little bit more and you could do these a couple times a year and turn it into a true secondary income stream for yourself. So that's the overview. Your five day jumpstart can have you earning in no time as long as you decide who it's for.
Create a simple protocol and pick dates. Tell everybody and tell them again, and remind them again to sell your spots. And don't forget to collect testimonials at the end. This episode has been brought to you by that clean life, which can be an awesome resource, by the way, to create recipe books or sample meal plans for your jumpstart. It's an amazing service. I've used them many times and highly recommend it for a limited time. I have a discount to share with you. Get 20% off four months when you join that clean life at healthcoachpower.com/tcl. That stands for that clean life. That's all for today everybody. Thank you so much for being here, and I'll see you next week. Take care.
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