Are You Running Your Online Business Like a Hobby?
Welcome back to the Healthpreneur podcast! All right, Healthpreneurs, time to fess up. Are you running your online business like a hobby? If so, here’s a little gut-check for you: Online businesses take time and effort to run successfully – just like in-person businesses.
If your online business is your hobby or your “side hustle,” you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re a want-trapreneur (yes, I just made that up…like it?). If you aren’t going to show up, put in the effort and commit, don’t play the game. Don’t settle for mediocrity. Please.
At Healthpreneur, we only work with committed entrepreneurs. After all, why would we want to work with people who just want to dabble and always have one foot out the door? I challenge you to analyze the way you look at your online business and finally make the changes necessary to make it thrive.
In This Episode I discuss:
1:00 – 2:30 – The business-building opportunities online and the work it takes to build them
2:30 – 6:00 – Why you won’t succeed if you play it safe and don’t commit
6:00 – 7:30 – Our guarantee and when to see red flags
7:30 – 9:00 – Why most coaches suffer, especially the “hobby” ones
9:00 –13:30 – Investing in your business to make it grow
Transcription
Are you running your online business like a hobby? A lot of people now have the ability to start a business online, and within our space, they can setup a coaching business or sell products online. The barrier to entry in setting up an online business is lower than ever before, which is awesome, right? It gives so many people the opportunity to become entrepreneurs and run their own businesses, but the downside is that there’s never been an easier time to setup your own business and do everything I just mentioned.
The business-building opportunities online and the work it takes to build them
So it’s really a double-edged sword. The ease of entry is very, very low and that means that a lot of people are getting into business for themselves, which in some cases, maybe they shouldn’t even be doing so. Because what I want to challenge you here with is building a business is not easy. Whether it’s online or offline, it’s not easy. I’m all for setting intentions for reducing friction and setting a good intention and having the universe bring awesome stuff into your life. Hey, I do that all the time. But the reality is you can live in that space, but also understand that it’s going to take time, right? There’s things that you have to work through. There’s going to be challenges and obstacles, and problems never really go away. And if you don’t approach your business like a business, you’re just gonna fold up shop.
I see this so often, so often, with so many people in our space, so many coaches and entrepreneurs. I don’t even want to call them entrepreneurs because they’re not. They’re not entrepreneurs, they’re want-trepreneurs, they’re want-to-be’s. Because there’s a huge difference between building a hobby and building a business. People talk about, like you know, build your side hustle, screw that. There’s no such thing as a side hustle. All that is, is split energy and when you have split energy, you split results. The only way to get results in your business and in your life is through focused commitment.
Why you won’t succeed if you play it safe and don’t commit
And if you don’t take your business seriously, if you don’t fully commit and burn the bridges, you will never succeed. I’m telling you, man, I’m going to bring you the no BS reality today and hopefully this stimulates you in some way, shape or form to level up. Because you have a message, a lot of other health experts have a message, and they’re playing rinky, dinky, hobby business because they don’t want to take risk. They don’t want to put themselves out there. They don’t want to put in the work. They don’t want to commit just in case it fails. Listen, if you’re gonna fail, go all in and fail. Don’t just fail somewhat. Commit and then figure things out. And that’s that only way you’re gonna serve yourself, it’s the only way you’re gonna serve the people you want to serve, and it’s the only way people are gonna take you seriously.
We’ve talked about this. We’ve talked about how it is more competitive than ever. That’s not breaking news. You know this. And if you want to be considered by your perfect clients, you need to show up as the best possible option. It is not good enough, it is absolutely unacceptable to show up as average and mediocre. If that is the game you’re gonna play, do not even play the game. There’s way too much mediocrity out there. There are way too many businesses that are being run as hobbies and not serious endeavors. And I want to challenge you to really look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, “Is this a hobby? Is this a side hustle for me or is this everything?”
Our guarantee and when to see red flags
We had a client recently who enrolled with us earlier this year, probably seven months ago as of this recording, and as you know, we spend a lot of time with our clients. It’s not like a product you do on your own. We’re in the trenches with you. She wanted to leave the program and get a refund, and we told here, first and foremost … Well, let me give you some back story. She had said to us in her message that she had a change of heart, that she thought she was getting into this because it was gonna be like a nice hobby to kind of build on the side. I’m like, nowhere in the history of our marketing have we ever said that. But anyways, she was just a dabbler. She was a dabbler. She wanted to build a hobby. You cannot build a hobby with this level of involvement. You can’t just dabble at this and figure this stuff out and have “passive” income coming in.
And so, anyways, it was a just good reminder to talk about with our team because we have two guarantees with our company. The first guarantee, ’cause we have a lot of people ask us, “Hey, Yuri, does your health business accelerator program have a guarantee? We want to make sure it works.” Yeah, the guarantee is that it’s a 100% guaranteed to work, if you do the work. Because you will have a winning strategy, you will have more coaching and support than you can ask for, and if it doesn’t work, that’s your fault. And we tell people that, straight up.
The second guarantee is that we have a zero money-back guarantee. Which means, if you work with us and you don’t get the results, that’s your fault. It’s not our fault because we know it works. It’s like a marriage, you have to meet us halfway, do the work and show up. If you’ve a change of heart in the journey, if you want to start selling hotdogs in the side of the street or do whatever else you want to do, that has nothing to do with us. That is 100% on you and if you don’t take responsibility for that, too bad for you. So, those are our two guarantees. A 100% results guaranteed if you do the work, 0% money-back guarantee.
Okay, I’m just gonna be very honest with you and if you don’t like that, too bad. But here’s what I would say is when you’re working with your clients, you should have a similar guarantee. I understand if you’re selling a book or a course or someone is gonna do it on their own, if they don’t like it, whatever. They can get a refund. There’s no investment of your time really, but if you are in the trenches, if you’re walking through the Valley of Death with your clients, it is unacceptable for someone to ask for a refund. If that person even brings it up in a phone conversation before they enroll with you, that’s a big red flag because what’s that showing you is they’re already considering the exit. They’re already looking for the exit. They’re on the plane, they’re expecting the plane to go down, and they are looking for where is the nearest exit.
And if that’s coming up in your conversations, that’s a big warning flag. That has probably someone who’s not fully committed to the outcome they say they want. So in our case, we only want to work with people who are building a business, not a hobby or a side hustle. And in your case, why would you work with people who are looking to dabble? Only work with people, and I think you know this, you only want to work with people who are motivated and committed, who want to do the work. And you need to be super clear in your messaging. You have to be super clear in the conversations you have with people to be … Listen, you can’t just enroll anybody because you want the money. If they breathe and fog up a mirror, you can’t just enroll them.
Why most coaches suffer, especially the “hobby” ones
You have to be able to turn people away confidently and the only way you can do that is if you have a predictable, incoming flow of clients and leads. And that’s why most health coaches suffer because they don’t, so they end up settling for anybody. And if you want to be a lot more discerning with the people you’re working with, number one, you gotta be very clear about who you want to serve and your messaging has to be spot on. But second is, you need a pipeline that, regardless of people who enroll, all right, whatever, next. So, it’s very, very different when you are hoping for, “Oh my god, is this like … When am I gonna get my next client. Hopefully a referral comes in.” That’s a very different ballgame and it’s a terrible place to be in your business, to be hoping for clients to come in.
That’s why the only thing we focus on with our clients is the perfect client pipeline until it’s built out and doing its thing, bringing in tens of thousands of dollars a month because nothing else in your business matters until that’s happening. Everything else is a massive waste of time, the websites, the funnels, whatever else you want to do on social. None of that stuff matters in any way, shape or form unless you have a predictable pipeline to bring new leads and clients into your business. And if you disagree with me, please let me know because I would love to know what the alternative is, okay?
Investing in your business to make it grow
So if that’s the most important thing you need to focus on and if you’re committed to building a business, you have to focus and commit to doing this. It’s not like I’m gonna do a little bit of this, and if it doesn’t work out initially, I’m gonna go back to what? What else are you going to do? You gonna do some blogging? All right, good. We’ll talk to you in five years. What are you gonna do? You gonna post on Instagram and social media and post some pictures of whatever? Great, awesome. Let us know how that works when your cellphone ends up in the toilet or when you don’t feel like posting on Friday ’cause you’re not feeling too good.
You see, if your business is dependent upon you efforting everything, you don’t have a business, you have a job. You have a job. And that’s what I’m saying here, is that you need to treat your business like a business. A business is a system … Really an ecosystem, a system that works independently of you to produce results for your clients. And that means, it gets leads, it gets clients, it get results for those clients largely independent of you. Now in the coaching business, obviously there’s gonna be your coaching involved, but as you scale and grow, you need to start thinking about how do I start to systemize this so I’m not the only cog on the wheel here.
Anyways, I hope that make sense. Where am I going with this? Yeah, hobby versus business. So if you are treating your business online like a hobby, it’s not gonna grow. Another way to think about this is, if you setup a retail store or a clinic, would there not be some costs involved? This drives me crazy. People are like, “I’m looking for the cheapest solutions to do whatever. I don’t want to spend $100 a month on this or this thing.” I’m like, “Seriously?” I understand not everyone is in a financial position to make those types of decisions, but again, what would happen if you setup shop? If you were setting up a clinic, you probably go to the bank, you get a loan or a line of credit, right? $30,000, $40,000, boom, you setup shop.
But online, we’re like, “I’m just gonna do everything for cheap. I’m gonna do everything for free and then I’m gonna figure this out somehow to generate revenue. Now if you take that approach with your business, whether it’s online or offline, you’re not gonna grow your business. The only way to grow your business is to grow your revenue. If you have a money problem, you have an income problem. And if you have an income problem, as I’ve said, you have an in-coming problem, not enough leads and clients coming in. And you have to take your business seriously because if you only look at it as a hobby, it’s not going to fly.
So that’s my two cents. I’ve love to hear from you. Join me on Instagram at healthpreneur1. Let me know what you think about this. At the end of the day, we’re helping health and fitness experts build businesses, build great brands, not side hustles. So, I just want to be very clear about that, okay? And I would recommend you do the same for your clients. Do not work with people who are dabblers, work with people who are committed to mastery, right? To really figure out their health, master it, to get the outcome that they want ’cause that is where the true fulfillment comes from. They get great results, you love working with them, it’s all good and it starts with you. You have to set the standard. You have to set the bar for what is to be expected, of what is to be done when you guys work together. Okay?
So again, if you want our support in this and if you want a more predictable pipeline built out in your business, then we’d love to support you if you are a good fit. If you’re looking to build a hobby or a side hustle, don’t even talk with us. But if you are committed to building a great business, hey, let’s have a discussion. But again, it all starts off with attending our free training, The Seven Figure Health Business Blueprint. If you like what you see, then and only then, can you book a call with us. So again, it’s over at healthpreneurgroup.com/training and for now, I’m signing off. I hope you have an amazing day. And remember continue to be great, do great, and I’ll see you on Wednesday.
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What You Missed
On the last episode we were chatting with Phil Caravaggio, the co-founder of Precision Nutrition, about what he did to make the Precision Nutrition brand successful for over 20 years now.
Phil is the man behind the madness. His systems and processes are the unsung heroes of the company’s success, and he’s going to reveal exactly what secret sauce he used to help the company flourish from the inside out.
Tune in to hear Phil dive into their business model and reveal how they market deep commitment so they attract deeply committed clients right off the bat. If you want to get – and keep – quality clients, you must offer a great product and experience.
In this episode, Phil breaks down how to do just that.
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