OMG! I did it! I completed my certification…I have my health coaching certification…I’m holding my certification… WOW!!!!
Oh, shit! Now What!? What does it even mean? Can I really build a practice that becomes a viable business? How do I make money with this?
We’ve all been there, right? We are SO excited to learn about the thing we are SO passionate about. We really want to change the world with this education that we’re getting. As we’re going through our training, we don’t really think about how this education is going to magically become a business that supports us…we just think it will happen… magically.
Many of us continue on with the jobs we had before we started our health coaching education. Some of us take part time jobs, even restaurant or retail work, in the attempt to stay flexible to accommodate the flood of clients that we are SURE will come. And yes, we got SOME business education from our training courses, but chances are, you were left with the same feeling we were: “How Do I make my passion work as a business?”
Let’s take a deep dive into this today.
I did some research on this topic and actually found a wide array of responses…mostly checklists. It was so interesting. Some of the checklists were focused on the practical:
- Create a business plan
- Scope out financing
- Hire a lawyer
- Trademark your logo
Pretty much traditional business tips for ANY start-up.
Others were a little “airy-fairy”:
- Act confident
- Be passionate
- Never stop learning
- Be flexible
- Develop or adopt a program
- Find a mentor
- Diversify your income stream
- Identify your ideal client
- Identify your brand
- Be consistent
Sound like yearbook entries? To be fair, there were, in my opinion, some solid recommendations that would seriously help someone starting out in health coaching,
or any business endeavor, frankly:
These are all really good suggestions and are the backbone of why Jake & I can help health coaches (like us) be successful.
Let’s break it down:
- Develop or adopt a program. When I decided to go out on my own, after closing my health club, I considered promoting a program that I had personally created or adopting one that someone else had already created, complete with marketing tools. I chose to go with a program that someone else had created because it allowed me to focus my energy on other things. Of course, the program was completely in alignment with my beliefs and education, but I could rely on professionals who were more credentialed than I to pump out valuable content…huge time saver and credibility builder.
- By following step 1, I automatically got mentorship AND a plan for introducing their program to my potential clients and even got help introducing the program to these prospective clients.
- Once again, by following step 1, I created an additional stream of income that also supported the work that I was doing with my clients. Not only do my clients see faster results and are able to stick with my suggested guidelines better, I earn residual income by helping them incorporate plant powders and vertical, aeroponic gardening systems that support them in following their program.
- While it’s easy to say that our ideal client is “anyone who wants to improve their life by improving their relationship with food”, it’s super important to get a really clear picture of who we really, really, really want to work with. Are they a man or woman? What’s their name? How old are they, exactly? Are they married or single? Kids? Working? Full-time or part-time? Do they work out? What social media platforms do they use? Etc., etc. Do you get the picture? You want to get so into who they are that you have an actual relationship with your avatar. Remember the movie? It’s just like that.
- Your brand is different than your program and different than your avatar. It’s who you are, uniquely. What’s your special sauce? What sets you apart from everyone else out there in the health coaching world? People will work with you because they resonate with who you are. That means that not everyone will want to work with you…just the people who are a fit with you and your brand. What tone do you want to have in your communications on social media, your website and all channels?
- Consistency really is key everywhere in life, right? Whether it is building your health coaching practice or following a health protocol or learning anything new, consistency of effort is always the number 1 thing that successful people share as their top tip to achieving the same success they have had. It’s way better to spend 30-90 minutes/day working on your health coaching business 4-6 days/week rather than thinking you’re just going to grind it out on the weekend.
Give these tips a spin. We’d love to know your results and if you want to talk about it a bit, drop us a line and we’ll send you a special link to our calendar so we can set up a 15-minute video chat.
