Transcription

How would you like to be a leader in the health or fitness industry? Well, let’s have a look at how we can do that, right?

Welcome back to the show. Hope you’re doing great, and today we’ll be talking about that topic, how to be a leader in the health and fitness industry.

What matters first

Maybe you already are a leader and that’s awesome, keep up the great work. And if you’re somebody who’s not quite there in terms of where you want to be in terms of influence, impact, notoriety in the health space, first and foremost, let me say this, it doesn’t really matter because quite honestly all that matters is that you can help your clients achieve a specific result.

Who cares if you haven’t been on the top podcast, who cares if you haven’t been on TV? Who cares if you’re not speaking on the biggest stages?

A lot of this stuff is very ego driven and I’m guilty as much as anyone and I understand that there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be a leader, to being that prominent figure that everyone looks up to that’s like, “Oh my God, I want to be like that person.”

I understand that being more present, having more presence means that you can reach more people, you can impact more people’s lives, and that’s great.

So if that’s the end goal, if that’s the game you want to play, that’s totally fine because listen, I want to be a leader in this space. I think most of us could get into any space, why not plan to dominate? Why not play the game to win? And I think as a result of being in the game long enough and creating amazing results for your clients and being somebody who has massive value to the world, over time you become a leader.

 

Play the long game, lock down a process, and give away content

So I want to give you a couple tips, a couple ideas here to help you become a leader in the health industry. So first and foremost, it’s really important to play the long game because this is not going to happen overnight, and you have to be very realistic about that.

Now, the good news is that it doesn’t have to take you three to five years to see great results. Let me rephrase that. It depends on the business model you are following and that’s largely going to determine how fast you see the results you want to see. If you’re building your platform, playing on social media, reading tons of content and doing that slowly but surely, buckle down because it can be a very long ride. It took me close to 10 years to really build up a platform like that and yes, it’s nice to have, but you have to ask yourself, why am I doing this? What’s the ultimate goal?

And if we’re very honest with each other, the ultimate goal for anybody who runs their own business is to make money. Let’s just be honest, right?

So how do you make more money? Well, you help people, you transform their life. You don’t write blog posts. Because, “Why are you writing a blog post?” “Well, because then people get to know me and maybe it’ll help them a little bit and they’ll opt in for my free lead magnet and then eventually they might buy something from me or enroll as a client.” The likelihood of that happening is very, very low. Believe me, I’ve got a blog that reaches a million people per month. How many of those people turn into customers? You know, a certain percentage, but the average time on the site is one minute and 21 seconds. So how can you impact people in that amount of time? You can’t.

So if you’re following that type of process, that business model of playing the content marketing game, it’s going to take you a very long time. It’s very tough to crack that code. It’s going to take a lot of time and a lot of money. I would much rather do something that’s going to produce faster results, actually help people immediately and help me make a lot more money rather quickly. And that’s exactly what we help our clients do in our health business accelerator program and obviously in our luminaries masterminds.

So the number one thing is play the long game because no matter what business model you’re following, it’s not gonna happen overnight. It might take you six months, it might take you two years, it depends on your business, but you have to be longterm sighted.

Second is once you have some sales process in place, and this is important, like you have to have a process that can predictably attract and enroll new clients or customers, whether that’s Facebook ads to a webinar/call or whatever that might look like for your business. You have to have that before you do anything else.

But once you have that, you’re going to have a lot more freedom in your business because now you have a predictable way of making money, right? Once that is done, then you can start looking at creating some content. I really believe that you need to have the sales before you can waste your time with anything else.

The reason why I’ve got a podcast, the reason why I do YouTube videos is because, and only because I first spent a good amount of time building out our perfect client pipeline and really making sure that it was working properly.

I didn’t have a podcast from day one with Healthpreneur. I didn’t start doing YouTube videos with Healthpreneur from day one. I only started doing that when I had a lot more free time in my business. So, with that said, once you’re at that stage, I would strongly recommend picking  one content platform and consistently give away your best stuff for free.

A lot of the stuff you give away might be part of your program, but to be very honest, it’s not like people are going to accumulate all of your content all over the web that’s been provided for free and now piece together exactly what to do. They’re going to pay you for convenience, for access, for speed of results, for support, for accountability, so you can give away a lot of your best stuff for free and build that goodwill before you ask for anything in return. But remember, only do this once you have a predictable sales process in place because from that content you’re going to be driving people somewhere. Where are you driving them to? Hopefully it’s not a free lead magnet.  I really think that podcasting is the most powerful content platform. I really do believe that.

YouTube is nice, YouTube is great. My Healthpreneur channel has at the time of this recording maybe 30 subscribers, 30. Yeah, three zero. My health and fitness channel has 240,000 subscribers. Do I really care about the number of subscribers I have on YouTube for Healthpreneur? Not really, right? Because the vast majority of what we’re doing with Healthpreneur is actually YouTube ads and we’re sharing our content on YouTube to your existing audience anyway. So I’m not using it to necessarily attract new people, but I really do believe that a podcast is a great platform because it’s a very intimate experience and you’re listening to me for whatever, 10, 20, 30 minutes. You’re listening while you’re on a walk, while you’re in the car, there’s no distractions. I mean you might be doing this while you’re mowing the lawn or doing something else, but on YouTube, if you’re watching a YouTube video, there’s other videos that pop up, right? You might be distracted and jump off to something else. A podcast is a very, very powerful and high consumption type of platform.

So I think if you’re going to pick one platform and if you enjoy speaking, podcasting is great. And if you want to do a video podcast and then extract the audio, you can do that, all the power to you. But choose one. Start with one, okay?

 

Pick a niche and dominate it, network, and support others

Now, third thing to really be a leader in this space is to pick a small niche and dominate it. This is one of the big stumbling block. A lot of people have said, “Okay, if I go too narrow I’m going to alienate a lot of people. There’s not going to be enough pie left for me to have really.” And that’s a valid concern because you think, “Okay, well if I keep going narrow and narrow and narrow, there’s only going to be eventually a handful of people.” Just remember there are 7 billion people the planet. Let’s assume that 1 billion of those people, which is actually quite true, are on Facebook and let’s just say that you only need to speak with a very small percentage of those people, even if it was just 10,000 people out there to be your perfect clients.

Do you think you could get in front of 10,000 people if you were the person who specialized in like my friend, Izabella Wentz, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Like if that was your specialty, do you think you’d do okay? Well, she’s done pretty well, right? So don’t come into this space and be known as the health and fitness expert, because that’s what I did with my health and fitness business and it’s very, very tough to scale that mountain. You want to come in and you want to be like the brain health person or the gut health person or the knee joint pain person or whatever that is. Because you want to occupy a drawer in the mind of your prospects. When they’re thinking knee pain, they think of you. When they’re thinking brain health, they think of you. When they’re thinking of something specific you come to mind. And there will be plenty, plenty of fish in your seat. Better off being a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in an ocean.

Next, this is the one thing that changed everything for me, is you need to attend industry events and connect with other influencers. You have to. You cannot become a leader hiding behind your computer. So you have to get out to events like Healthpreneur Live, even attending our workshops, stuff like that. And you have to be surrounded. You have to get on people’s radar. You have to be known as someone who’s like, “Yeah, I get out to these events and I do stuff and I network with people and build these relationships.” Because if you don’t, no one’s going to know who you are. And this is the one thing that I did in 2010 that changed everything for me. After doing things on my own for three years, I started to go to events and I continue to.

And it’s the single most important thing you can do to really build your presence and become known to other people in this space. Next one is do more to support others than you ever asked for in return. And this goes back to giving your best stuff away for free, playing the long game, stuff like that, is just be a good person. Give more than you ask. Going back to the industry events and so forth, one of the biggest mistakes people make is, “Okay, I want to go to this event, what am I going to get out of this? What am I going to get out of this event?” That’s the wrong mentality to have. You have to go to the event thinking, “How can I contribute? How can I give while I’m there?”

Because when you do so number one, you become a more valuable asset to everyone there, and two, you just build reciprocity and goodwill. Well you’re not saying, “Hey, here’s my business card. Can you promote my stuff?” It’s not the right attitude to have. I actually had a consultation call with one of our Healthpreneur members who is part of our community. She actually came to Healthpreneur Live as well. And we had a quick call and she’s like, “How do I get more affiliates?” Sorry, “I’m going to events and how can I position this to get more people to promote it?” And we obviously brought down the numbers so I assured her that it would never make sense. But secondly is like, that’s the wrong attitude to have. Don’t go into stuff expecting like, “How can I get people to sell this?” It’s not going to work.

The easiest way to connect with people is like, “Hey, great to meet you. Let’s kind of find some common ground. By the way, you said you’re kind of stuck at this one point, well there’s this guy that I know or this resource that I have that I think would really be of value to you. Is it okay if I sent it to you or make that introduction?” Just be a value adder. And if you keep doing that, over time you will become a leader. Now remember, the foundation of all of this is that you can actually help your clients achieve results. So that should be like a foregone conclusion. So in addition to that ability to really make an impact for your clients, play the long game, pick one content platform after you built out your sales process. Get your niche, attend events, do more to support others than you ask for in return, and that over time is how you become a leader.

I know there’s no secret sauce, there is no magic pill. That’s the way it is. Okay? And you can look at other things like speaking on stages and so forth. That’s all fine and good, writing books and so forth, but at the end of the day it’s about creating results for your clients, staying in the game long enough so that others drop out while you’re still going, and over time longevity makes a big difference. You’d be surprised at how many people I reach out to that I don’t even know. And they’re like, “Oh my God, I’ve been following your stuff for years.” Or, “I’ve heard lots of great things about you.” These are things that you would never expect to hear, but if you’re around long enough people pay attention.

 

Yuri’s Wrap Up

So those are a couple ideas of how you can become an industry leader in our health and fitness industry and if you enjoy this type of stuff, well you’ve got lots more good stuff coming your way.

We’ve got a great episode coming up your way on Wednesday. We got a great interview coming up Friday. Lots of great stuff over the next couple of weeks. So be sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. It’s called The Healthpreneur Podcast, just in case you’re wondering.

And thanks again for joining me today. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you on our next episode.

Transcription

Healthpreneurs, what’s going on? Yuri here. Hope your day is going awesome. So welcome back to the show. We’ve got a really great episode for today, got a really cool guest on the show. Her name is Adrienne Nolan-Smith, and she is the founder of a really cool platform called getwellbe.com.

In this episode we’re going to talk a little bit about some personal tragedies that happened to Adrienne that led her into doing what she’s doing now, and I think it’s a really inspiring story to listen to, because I think a lot of us can resonate with it.

She’s gone through two major traumas that led her to what she’s doing now, but I’m sure in her story you’ll be able to see yourself in some way, shape, or form, because most of us in the health space get into this field because of some type of challenge, trauma, issue that dealt with when we were younger, and we simply want to solve this for ourselves or others.

This is going be a really, really cool inspiring episode.

Let me give you a little bit of background about who Adrienne is. Again, she’s a board-certified patient advocate, and we’ll talk about what that is in this episode as well. As I mentioned, she’s the founder of getwellbe.com, which is a media company aimed at bridging the gap between the wellness movement and the healthcare system. I’m not going to ruin her backstory because I think she’ll share that with us in this interview, but she went through some really big challenges when she was 12 and 13 years old, something even more devastating happened to her when she was 25, and as a result of that, she jumped into this field.

She spent several years working in healthcare technology with hospitals so that she could be on the frontline of seeing what was happening with the medical system. She holds a BA from Johns Hopkins, and got her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

So, with that said, let’s bring Adrienne onto the show and let’s jump into her story, and how she’s taken those challenges and turned them into a really great platform that is now helping a lot of people improve their health.

Adrienne, welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. How are you doing?

Adrienne:            I’m doing well Yuri, thank you for having me.

Yuri:                       You are very welcome, thanks for joining me. I’m excited to have you on the show, because you’ve been through some pretty cool things in your life, both good and bad, but I believe everything happens for us, not to us, so we can jump into some of that in a moment.

You run a great website, it’s called getwellbe.com, guys check it out, it’s really, really cool.

What inspired you? Why a website? Why not just a physical location to bring people in and help them with their health? Why a website, and what was the impetus for starting that up?

Her personal journey and how it impacted her choice to work in the wellness industry

Adrienne:            Yeah, as you mentioned there’s so many different ways, once you sort of have something that happen to you, or somebody that you love, or just when you realize there’s a different way to approach health, and that most people are doing it quite differently and struggling with a lot of things. Once you realize that, you really want to help people, as you do, and I’m sure all of your listeners, and that happened to me. I was thinking a lot of about the fact that there’s so many different ways to approach that. As you mentioned, you could have patients, or start a store or a restaurant and have clients that way, you can do consulting, corporate wellness. The wellness industry has so much going on, but I have to say, I didn’t ever feel like science and math were really my strong points. I didn’t want to have to back to school and deal with that. I’m decent at math, but science? Whoa, not really.

I thought wow, if I was going to see patients or have a physical location where I sold a product, I’d be able to touch people in that way, but I thought maybe if I could touch people with stories, and really show that there were experts who were not weird, or crazy, or hippy, or crunchy, or whatever all these stigmas are that people have of the integrative health world, and the wellness world and movement. That they could see themselves in that experience, and perhaps start to change and be a bit more open-minded as to the way that they live every day. Also, when they do have health issues, how they could approach those with the right care team so they could really get to the root cause of the problems, and maybe see different kinds of practitioners that helped me, like naturopaths, and herbalists, and acupuncturists and all that which, to a large part of the American population, seems sort of off-limits culturally, and it’s a bit stigmatized still. It’s certainly the insurance system that makes that the case.

For me I wanted to start with content, and I know that would mean I would be spending a bit more than I was making in the beginning, but I thought that would be the best way to approach getting to a larger audience, and then understanding what those people who are really attracted to the kinds of things that I was talking about, and the kinds of content, and stories that I was making, what they really needed on top of that for me.

So yeah, that was my thought process.

Her education and BCPA certification

Yuri:                       Awesome. Walk me through two things, number one, you did your MBA, you got all that great business background, which is something I think a lot of listeners don’t have them. There might be a few, but most people kind of jump into business. How does having that background, how has that helped you in what you’re doing right now? And second, you’re also a board-certified patient advocate. I’ve never heard that before. What exactly is that?

Adrienne:            Yes. So it’s a pretty new board certification. Well, let me talk about the MBA thing first. For the people listening who don’t know the background of my story and why I’m doing what I’m doing, it’s a long story, but the major catalyst was that I lost my mom to suicide in December, 2010, after about a five year battle being in and out of different mental hospitals, for extended in-patient stays. She’d had a couple of different manic episodes, and they had diagnosed her with schizophrenia disorder, and put her on lots of very, very heavy anti-psychotics and anti-depressants., which, as you know, kind of makes you into a bit of a zombie. When she took her life it was just a few days before Christmas, and it was also two weeks before my applications for business school was due.

Anybody who’s done this process knows that it’s almost a two-year process, because you have to study for the GMAT, which is pretty difficult to get into business school for, gosh, almost a year. Then get recommendations from your employer, and gather everything that you need from your undergrad experience. So I had worked really hard to try to get in, and the reason for going was that I didn’t know what I wanted to do, and I was working at IBM and didn’t think that was really my calling.

The health stuff for me, the integrative health and wellness stuff for my life, had always been just a hobby, or things that I was doing because of things that had happened to me. You know, I was that friend in my group of friends that everyone went to, and kind of made fun of for the way the ate, and the all the supplements that I took, and all the weird, quote unquote, “weird” practitioners I always went to. It wasn’t really until this experience that I thought, “Wow, this is a disaster with the healthcare system.” When I really gave my mom into, really trusted the conventional healthcare system with her care, and her life, was when it failed me the most. I only trusted it halfway, and took things into my own hands, is when I was able to have great success with my health, which was being cured of chronic Lyme disease as a middle schooler, and then later getting my period back, which is called amenorrhea, after two years of not having it all through natural processes, and avoiding the birth control pill and all that.

Other than small IBS issues and other things which aren’t that small in the long run, but compared to the other things that I’d gone through, they didn’t seem that big. So, at that exact moment, I told myself that I would dedicate the rest of my life to trying to transform the healthcare system to one that was really more root-cause driven, and that approach, the entire concept of chronic disease with wellness and integrative health in mind. And really only going, to what I call the nuclear weapons, of the healthcare system, which are drugs, surgeries, and radiation in emergency and acute situations. From a long-term perspective, both with mental illness and with chronic physical illness, it’s just not really a solution, right? It’s just band aiding system.

I got the MBA because I basically really prayed to her, and to anyone that was listening, to get me through to at least finishing one or two of these applications. I had set out to do four or five, and then use that as the opportunity to switch career paths, and work to fix the healthcare system. When I got into the Kellogg School at Northwestern in Chicago that March, it really felt predestined like, “Okay, she helped me in. I’m gonna have to go.” Even though it was moving away from family just six months after she died, to a place I didn’t know anybody, and really doing everything I could while I was there to learn what I needed to learn to make this happen.

It’s a long-winded way of saying the MBA did not really help me that much in what I’m doing right now, because it definitely helped me to get a job in healthcare technology, and work with hospitals for three years after I got out. But that was very much in the conventional healthcare system. I was able to see exactly what I thought was wrong, and proven to be as wrong as I thought. So that was good.

But, you know, traditional MBA programs, it’s changing a lot now, but I know this sounds ridiculous, but sort of before Instagram became what it is today, and digital marketing, it was really only about desktop digital marketing, and Google-driven digital marketing, right? So SCO, and SCM and having a product, and putting an ad on Google and hoping people see it and come to your website.

I learned as much as I could about that sort of thing, but I was also forced to spend a lot of my time learning about  traditional business. And maybe later in my life it will come back to be very helpful, sort of factory operations, and corporate financial accounting, and things that are pretty different from running a small business, and understanding email and social marketing, and things like that. I would say I had to do a lot of, I had to basically give myself an MBA in a very different time, in the last year, year and a half that I’ve been doing this full-time. But certainly I believe as you do, that everything happened for a reason, and I would never be where I am today had I not made that decision and gone when I did. Because I would have let the grief and the loss overtake me, and just stay at IBM for a long time and not follow any dreams. And maybe I would have felt stuck, like I was too far along to fully switch and all of that. So that’s the MBA piece.

Board certified patient advocate is a certification that was only given for the first time in early 2018, so I was part of the first crop that sat for the board exam. I did so because I had learned about it and sort of followed it for years that they were trying to establish this as a real role, and it’s slightly different from health coaching in the sense that patient advocates have to really understand how to interact with the healthcare system which, from having worked in it, and especially with hospitals, I was pretty familiar with. But really also understand what people, all the different treatment options that somebody could have, and sort of open their eyes and show them the different options so that they don’t feel like they went to one doctor, and the one doctor said this, and that’s what they have to do because it’s part of their insurance, or whatever it might be, and try to figure other ways that they could heal.

Certainly the people, if I’m ever using it in a professional capacity, in a coaching capacity, or being hired by private clients which, at the moment I’m a little too busy with WellBe to do, but I might. It would be people that really are interested in a natural first approach, or getting to the root cause of health, and therefore being more integrative in their approach, whether that’s with MDs, or other kinds of practitioners. And so I’d be able to navigate and speak on their behalf if they didn’t feel empowered to do so, about what they need, and what they’re …

You hear about the term “a birth plan” for women, and I think that everyone who’s going through a chronic health issue should have a care plan. It’s not something that a one doctor gives to patient, it’s what the patient really wants and can go and shop different doctors and see who agrees with that care plan, and who really will strive to find that root cause, and when needed, use those nuclear weapons, that is an important tool to have in the tool belt. But if somebody fundamentally disagrees with the way that you would like to approach your life, and your health and healing, that’s really not a doctor that I think you should have to deal with.

So finding the right people who are going to really respect your life and your care plan, and heal you, is really important. So I think that’s part of why the patient advocacy certification was put together, and why I ended up sitting for the board exam. I did it before too much of health tech, and conventional healthcare knowledge left me, which was great. A lot of the details that I had to learn about some of the more intricate parts of the Medicaid and Medicare system were still fresh, at the top of my mind.

Yuri:                       That’s awesome. It makes a lot of sense now that you explain it. It’s funny, we have a client who at one of our workshops a couple of months ago was talking about it. So she’s a naturopathic doctor, and what she was really passionate about was being that kind of middle person between the patient and the caregiver. And we were talking about yeah, kind of like a cancer advocate, and that’s the term we came up with in that session, and I didn’t even know about the fact that there was this type of certification, which is amazing.  I do think that a lot of patients are in a position where they’re not given all the facts, or maybe they’re not in a position of true power to make the best decisions for themselves. I think it’s amazing that having people like you now that are certified to be that kind of middle person, can be huge in helping them make the right decisions moving forward.

Adrienne:            Yeah, absolutely. I think cancer is where this is from. It’s the most extreme example of somebody who is at a place where they now have to very quickly enter the healthcare system and interact with a ton of different kinds of providers and treatments. There’s so many different approaches to cancer treatment, even based on the kind of the cancer, but also the stage, and what you’re interested in trying, and what you’re willing to do. Of course, everything also has downsides. If you’re in intensive chemo there’s a lot of problems with that, but that might be exactly what you want, or you really don’t want. Cancer is a really important example, and I think that probably pushed that along to become a proper board certification.

But, I think that that could be the case even in trying to figure out why you have a low thyroid, or why you have migraines, or why you have IBS, or any of these things where there’s a lot of different reasons it could be happening, and lot of different opinions based on the caregiver, or practitioner, or provider what it might be and what the best approach is for that.

You could get, if you’re not a nerd like me and really excited about research, and enjoy doing that, you could get really overwhelmed, and yet it’s almost like they can sniff it out if you don’t know how to understand and read research, and understand and advocate for all of the options and what you what. If there’s somebody who’s willing to do that for you, or doesn’t mind being firm with providers, they will maybe kind of do what’s easiest for them, or fastest for them, or what they know, right? It’s a lot of work when doctors have to see patients all day, in the fee for service system, to go and research something maybe a little bit more experimental, a little bit different.

A lot of times, what I’ve seen, is you have to bring things to them, and that’s really hard to do if you don’t know how to read research, if you don’t understand the difference between an observational study, or double blind clinical trial, and causal, or association, and all this kind of thing. You need somebody who’s going to be comfortable speaking that language, and I think that’s why the patient advocate, as a certification, was born, whether it’s for cancer or anything else.

Adrienne’s journey with Lyme disease and her mother

Yuri:                       Yeah. Well you had Lyme disease when you were very young. Had you had some type of patient advocate at the time, do you think that would have facilitated, maybe expedited the healing process? Amazingly, so you healed from Lyme disease when you were 13-years-old, but how long before that were you diagnosed with Lyme?

Adrienne:            I was diagnosed about two years, I would say, before my symptoms really started to dissipate, and it seemed like I was better. Now I’m sure … I don’t know how much you know about Lyme, but the testing is super-challenging, and inaccurate. My Lyme is inactive but there’s isn’t a  “you have it or you don’t test”. There’s bands, it says there’s an initial marker, it’s somewhere in you but then it says it’s inactive, I think similar to herpes, or Epstein-Barr. There’s an exposure to an actual active disease.

We never saw a bullseye, and my mom was really an incredible patient advocate, very fierce, and definitely the reason that I am better today, is because she was such a avid researcher, and really took every possible opinion on earth and kept going to different people, and never really gave up and said, “Okay, well let’s just do this,” or whatever. It was an endless fight.

Of course when you’re in middle school, that means you’re getting dragged around to a million doctors and practitioners, and you’re just exhausted by it, on top of having Lyme which makes you exhausted. But it was really the way to do it, because all of these different approaches, it’s very hard to say exactly what worked. But I did so many different things and something worked, and I got better after two years. But we don’t know if I had Lyme for about a year, or maybe two, or maybe three years before I was diagnosed. It was definitely more than six months because we did try the Doxycycline antibiotics protocol, which is what most people would say you can do to heal acute Lyme that way.

But, since that didn’t work, that showed them that it had been in me long enough so that now it could skirt around where the antibiotics would be able to find it.

Yuri:                       Yeah, that’s crazy. I mean, it’s such a debilitating disease. Unfortunately I know a lot of people who have it now, and one our team members, he’s been sidelined for almost three years now. The problem was that they didn’t know what it was for so long, and it’s almost turned into one of those diseases that’s like, “Well, we can’t figure out, it must be Lyme, or something of that nature.” It’s scary. Considering that there’s so much more diagnosis available now, that there’s just more, I guess, prevalence of it, compared to maybe 20 or 30 years ago.

But what did you learn about yourself in terms of your mentality? Going through Lyme is obviously challenging, you lost your mother when you were 25. How did you grow as a person during those different episodes?

Adrienne:            Yeah, well they were pretty different, I think, because I was being led, when I’m 11 to 13, going through that. She was really in charge and getting me to care, and really felt responsible and all of that. I was just kind of going around and doing the things I was told, and kind of pushing back a bit, because who wants to take Chinese herbal teas that smell terrible to school? You know people, “What on earth?” And eating all these weird things, and a million supplements and all this stuff. But, oh gosh, I even spent three weeks one summer when I was in the healing process, in a hyperbaric oxygen therapy center in Amish country Pennsylvania, you know, just staying in a motel with my mom, and my brother who was also very sick at the time. Long story, for another time. But that was brutal.

Same with trying a different treatment in Minnesota the previous summer for many weeks. So that was more like, “Oh man, this is a drag. But I’ll do it because I can’t remember anything and I’m so tired.” That was basically the two major things for me that showed me I was so sick. I had no energy, I couldn’t get up and do anything, I needed to sit down all the time and I slept a lot.

The experience of my mom having this manic episode when I was 20, and then being in this really intensive, horrible situation for the five years until she took her life, that was more me having to be a caretaker and understanding when I was needed and needed to be the adult. And that’s very different. There’s a lot more, you feel a lot more responsibility and guilt when things don’t work out, or that you don’t feel you’re there enough. And also more anger, because you realize, “Gosh, I’m calling these doctors, I’m asking for these things and they’re not really getting back to me, or they’re not taking it very seriously. Or they don’t consider this to be kind of an emergency until it’s over, and then they don’t take responsibility either.” Right? They’re not gonna, “Oh, we’re sorry that happened,” but a lot of the drugs that they put her on have suicidal ideations, and depression as a side effect. So shouldn’t that be something that they should take responsibility for? But no, that’s not really how it works.

I would say growing as a person, for me, was just realizing that things are gonna happen in your life, and that you need, no matter what role you played or whatever, you need to able to shed this sense of, “I should’ve, I could’ve,” and kind of rehashing, playing back things in your mind that you can’t change, because it’s really toxic and inflammatory. Yeah, there’s no good that comes of that, and you can’t progress in your life if you hang on things. So whether that’s with illness or with business, there’s going to be so many mistakes.

Oh my gosh, in just the last year that I’ve launched WellBe, or 13 months, so many things I would have done differently, or didn’t know at the time, or would have done from the beginning and wasted money on this or that. But there’s really just no good comes of thinking that way, and you should just really focus on, “Wow, I’m glad I figured that out, and I’m glad that I’m doing things that maybe are smarter now.” Or, “I’m glad I’m growing in this area that was stagnant for the first six months,” or, “I found this great person, and even though that I meant I had somebody on my team that wasn’t this person for a while. Oops. But doesn’t matter. You have to just kind of move on.” I think the way that you can do that is both, obviously working in your own head, but getting things out and talking to people so that they can show you that you’re not to blame, or guilt doesn’t do anything, or they would want you to be happy, or whatever it might be.

Two very different ways that I grew, but both really important and powerful.

What she has learned for business and life

Yuri:                       Yeah, that’s great. So speaking of some of these, knowing what you know now type of experiences, from the inception of the business what is, I guess, on really, glaring … I don’t want to call it a mistake, let’s call it a learning challenge, an obstacle that knowing what you know now, you would have approached things a bit differently with that type of hindsight?

Adrienne:            Yeah, oh man. Just one.

Yuri:                       Just one, I know. Every day there’s something, right?

Adrienne:            I know. It really is. Well, I would say that when you’re trying to build something from scratch, there’s really no way to do it without getting other people to help you, as I’m sure you know, and people who really know what they’re doing. But, at the same time, it’s really to fundamentally get what is happening, even if it’s development, and code, and stuff like that you don’t really understand. My site was built incorrectly the first time, and now I’ve had to go onto two or three other developers to try to get it fixed, and pay for that work, and it couldn’t have been slower because of the way they built it when it first launched. A launch is a really big opportunity and I still, again, don’t have any regrets because you just have to move along and you can fix things.

But outsourcing too much to people either on your team, or freelancers, or whatever it might be. If you don’t fundamentally understand it so that you can oversee it and catch things as they happen, things can get really far away from you. If you have, let’s say somebody on your team who’s been really responsible for one thing, but they’re not necessarily the best fit for you or the business … Excuse me.

Yuri:                       Bless you.

Adrienne:            Thank you. Then when you might need to make a switch, if they have been doing something that you know nothing about, and let’s say you had to do it yourself for a couple of weeks, or a couple of months until you found a better fit, you might not be able to, or you definitely can’t. So you feel a bit panicked, or a bit tied to them, and that could be a really toxic situation.

I think having, especially when you’re starting out in such a small business, everything that you’re doing, having an understanding of how to do it, even if somebody’s helping you with it, so that you don’t feel not in control of the things that are really crucial to your business.

Yuri:                       Yeah, I totally agree with that. It’s important, I think, to have that fundamental overview, a basic understanding of the different elements of your business. Because, as you said, if you delegate too much, and I’ve seen this so many times, especially in a health space, where you have this expert, naturopathic doctor, a chiro, or whoever they are, they’re like, “I just want to teach, I just want to share my content. I don’t want to worry about the marketing,” and they partner up with some marketing team, or a marketing person, and then that person leaves, or their business kind of goes haywire and they separate, and now they’ve lost arguably the most important part of their business, which is marketing. And whether it’s coding of the website, or basic understanding of customer service stuff, at the end of the day we are the CEO or the visionary, the owner of our business. We have to have a general understanding the different components because, as you mentioned, it’s not good if things go south.

And plus you might get taken for a ride. I mean, if you have a developer quoting you X number of dollars for a website, and you’re like, “Well, I know better than that, that’s insane,” you have a better of understanding of what to so.

No, that’s a great learning and great insight that I think our listeners will get some really good value from.

Adrienne:            Yeah, and one more thing to add to that. Especially people that see patients, or teach, but want to have content because it’s important as an acquisition tool, or because they think what they’re talking about is important for people to know. If they’re outsourcing that too much or, for example, a lot of my business is now in Instagram, a lot of my audience, and so at first I’d had somebody on my team who was from the writing and editorial space and was therefore writing a lot of things for the site. We were sort of doing it together, but it was separate enough, or she had enough influence that my voice, and the kind of the things that I thought were really, really, really important for people to know, and there’s so many voices out there that if your voice is even a fraction off, or the voice you’re putting out there is even a fraction off from your voice, then people can sniff that out. That’s not really 100% you, or they’re just not clicking with it because there’s so many voices out there.

So then you might just become another Self magazine, or whatever Prevetion.com, it could be anything. And so when I started really taking control of what I was every piece of thing that I was putting out there, whether it was what we were writing for the site, or the captions for all of my social posts, it’s a combination of factors, but that was really the hockey stock for my growth. It just made me realize that you have to be so true to yourself, and good enough for a caption, is not good enough because it has to be something that you feel like, “This is great. This is exactly what would say, and this is exactly what I’m feeling today and that’s why I’m putting this out there.” And people really picked up on that, more than I realized that they would.

So a voice in branding and in marketing is so, so crucial to stand out in this space, because there’s just so much noise.

Marketing and the importance of preserving your authentic voice

Yuri:                       It’s huge. I talk about this with our audience, and marketing is sharing your beliefs. You know, if you’re not sharing your voice, if you’re sharing your perspective on what it is you’re bringing to the world, you’re not going to stand out, as you said, and I really believe that just as a message is important, the messenger is just as important. I think it’s important because a lot of people come onto this space and they feel like they’ve got a thousand pound gorilla on their back, which is too much competition, and I agree that there is too much competition if you do what everyone else does. But if, like you said, the hockey stick, that inflection point in your business was when you started sharing your voice. That’s when people connect with us. That’s when you will find your tribe of people, and it doesn’t matter who else is what they’re sharing, because the right people resonate with your message.

I’m happy you brought that up because I completely agree with you on that. That’s so important.

Adrienne:            Yeah, no it’s amazing, and I have been spending money on other marketing tools, and just stopped all that. I just really focused on making sure that every single post that went out felt really what I was feeling or thinking that day, and stuff that I thought was really important to share. Once I did that, it was wild. I made such a difference. Oh, and images that I thought were really beautiful images are such a piece of it. Just a generic image of anything, don’t use it. You have to feel like, “Oh, this is really my look and feel. This is super-beautiful to me. I would like this in an Instagram, or I would open this article because this just really resonates with me,” if it’s in my email, or whatever.

And then, it’s amazing, people can feel that third party. If you love it, somehow even if they’re not just like you, they’re gonna feel that and be like, “Oh, I like this branding.”

Yuri:                       Yup, no that’s great. I mean social media has changed the way the game is played guys. You have to be native to social. You can’t just be promoting nonsense and plugging stuff that is not congruent with you. And even if you’re advertising, we do a lot of Facebook advertising. We teach our clients how to deploy that stuff for themselves too, and a lot of what we do and teach is very different from the traditional type of advertising advise that’s been given over the years. Because, you know, stuff on Facebook or Instagram, where you’ve got your logo in the image, and an image of your products, people don’t care about that any more. We’ve seen so many ads, and we’ve so many offers that we become blind to thing, and you have to really fit in. Blend in to stand out is our philosophy.

And I agree. Using those type of images that are true to you, or that would be something that you would naturally post in your own profile. These are the types of things people are gonna resonate with, and if you’re listening to this, and you’re trying to do things that you’re trying to shortcut the system, it’s not gonna work. So, take this message to heart if you’re listening to this, ‘because it is important.

So Adrienne, this has been really, really insightful, really awesome. Thank you so much for sharing what you shared so far. Before we get into the rapid five, where can everyone follow you online?

Adrienne:            Thank you Yuri. I would say, first and foremost we’re most active on Instagram, so Instagram.com/getwellbe,it’s G-E-T-W-E-L-L-B-E, and then if you’re not on Instagram, we also are active on Facebook, but we would love to have you as part of community of newsletter subscribers. We send out a weekly newsletter with our newest original content, and any other announcements, like this podcast would in there, and other research and stuff that we dissect. That is just getwellbe.com, and then you can just easily subscribe to the newsletter from there.

So those are kind of the two best places, I think, to be part of our community is really Instagram and our newsletter.

Yuri:                       Awesome. It’s so cool that almost everyone uses Instagram as their main social platform. It’s sounds like Facebook is not even part of the discussion any more, it’s so interesting.

Adrienne:            I don’t know what it is, but that was a big part of why I ended up just jumping off the cliff, and leaving my job in health tech to do this, because I saw this amazing community evolving in the integrative and functional space on Instagram, where I could interact with people who felt like me, but also my doctors that I admired were on there actively, and we could message, and comment. Nowhere else have I seen that, and I just thought that was so neat. I knew that if I wanted to talk about this movement, and be in this space that it really had to be on Instagram.

Yuri:                       Yeah, and it helps if you get organic reach. I think Facebook, you post something, no one sees it, it’s not really enticing for many people to do anything on Facebook.

Adrienne:            Right? It’s wild how little people get to see the things that we see on Facebook versus Instagram. Yeah, it’s just wild. I don’t know why they’ve done that, but anyway …

Yuri:                       They want us to pay to play, that’s probably why.

Adrienne:            Right, and I’m very stubborn now because I’ve been seeing good growth without paying.

The Rapid Five

Yuri:                       I know, totally. Well anyways, let’s get to the rapid five. I want to dig into this. So rapid fire questions, whatever comes top of mind if probably the right answer. So, you ready?

Adrienne:            Yup.

Yuri:                       All right, here we go.

Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Adrienne:            Probably I get overwhelmed easily, and self-doubt.

Yuri:                       I don’t think anyone can relate to that, so you’re alone in that one.

Number two, what is your biggest strength?

Adrienne:            I would say connecting with people, and being really passionate about my mission, and that I think people feel that, and get on board in a way that I never really expected, and I’ve been really so touched and surprised by how many people have reached out to say that I’ve sort of touched something in them that they’ve never felt before.

Yuri:                       Awesome, good for you.

And number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to forward your business?

Adrienne:            Oh. Oh, gosh, one skill I’ve been dangerously good at.

Yuri:                       Right, and had to develop?

Adrienne:            I’ve had to develop. Well, I got to a ton of events. I’m in New York City, and I go a ton of conferences and panels, at least one a week I would say. Sometimes, on full weekend days, or two full days, or whatever it might be, and I just try to talk to everybody on earth who might there, and try to live blog a lot of really interesting information for our Instagram audience and our Instagram stories, and so many incredible relationships and opportunities have come out of doing that. But it’s really hustling. There are days I don’t feel at all like going to something from 6:30 to 8:00 that’s a conference, or a panel, or a workshop, or whatever, after work, and I’m just totally beat. But I sort of force myself, and that’s been really rewarding. So I think it’s a skill that I’ve become pretty good at, is just talking to anybody, not feeling awkward about it, going up to people, just saying, “Hi, what are you doing here? Who are you?”

I think it’s been great. I’ve gotten … It’s just so much easier to connect with another brand, or somebody can help you, or influence, or whatever it might be, if they can meet you in person and see that you’re not a weirdo and you’re just trying to help people and grow, yeah. That’s been great.

Yuri:                       Yup, I totally agree with you. That was the biggest catalyst to my business, for sure.

Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Adrienne:            So, I don’t want to say that this is a seven day a week thing, because I think that when I hear about people’s morning routines, there’s just no way that a lot of them are realistic.

Yuri:                       I’ve got a 20 part morning routine.

Adrienne:            … thing in the morning. Yeah, no. There’s no way that’s true.

Yuri:                       Yeah, exactly.

Adrienne:            Most mornings, these days in the last, I’d say, six months or so, I’ve been trying to get up and get out the door. Well, I drink water with some lemon juice and take a probiotic, that’s the first thing I do. And then I try to get up and get out the door to the Hudson River, which is pretty close to my apartment, and just get that sunshine, and do a five to ten minute yoga and stretching routine on the grass and then, if I can fit it in, also do a five to ten minute, I strive for ten, meditation routine as well out there, sort of looking at the water.

And the reason for that being, like there’s so many different things that we know about being outside and on grass, and in nature, and especially sunshine early in the morning that just is so therapeutic as a human, on a basic level, where you know, just a mammal. That even I think a lot of people don’t quite understand it is, and just to walk with my body. So it’s at least a 20 minute kind of walk, round trip, and I think that just sets me off on such a better path for the day. You know, if I don’t sleep well, or if I have to rush and do something, I don’t get to do that whole 45 minute thing. But that’s what I’ve been doing lately, and I think it’s just making a huge difference. I would advocate for first thing in the morning, moving, getting some sunlight, and doing stretching, and you’ll feel so much better doing everything else.

Yuri:                       That’s great, awesome advice.

And finally, complete this sentence: I know I’m being successful when .

Adrienne:            I know I’m being successful when I hear from people about some of the nuances that I wasn’t sure other people could really see or get about what I’m trying to do. And when they really nail it, and then they feel compelled to write into the website, or on Instagram, or come up to me at one of our events or panels, I think, “Wow. Okay, this was something that I thought was a bit subconscious, and they are really, really getting it, and that means that I’m at least doing something right.”

And then the other piece is, when I don’t feel so stressed and overwhelmed that I don’t know the path. I know I’m doing something right when all the goals are clearly laid out in front me, and I can feel a sense of calm about them, because I know they’re the right ones in my gut, versus, just like doing a million different tasks a day and thinking, “Is this really progressing me to something?” And that, I think, has made a huge difference for me, really feeling that gut confidence that I have a handle on what I’m trying to do, and do the things are really only related to those goals.

Yuri:                       That’s great. There we go guys, Adrienne, thank you so much for taking the time, for joining us today, for opening up, for sharing your journey, and I know there’s obviously so much more that we haven’t uncovered, but guys, make sure you follow her on Instagram, getwellbe, and obviously sign up for the newsletter over at getwellbe.com, and we will link up to that in the show notes for you guys as well.

Adrienne, once again, thank you so much for being with us.

Adrienne:            Thank you so much for having me Yuri.

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Yuri’s Take

So I hope you found this interview inspiring, and the message that I want to leave you with today is that your story matters. The journey that you’ve been on, or are currently going through, really does matter. And if you can use that, and leverage it in a positive way, to be able to create solutions for other people, that’s awesome, and that’s really why we’re all here. That’s why I don’t believe there’s any competition, because you have a unique message, you as a messenger are unique, and the goal is to be you, do you, because everyone else is taken, right?

As soon as we try to copy other people and emulate what they’re doing, now we lose our authenticity. And yes, there is a balance between modeling what’s working and being yourself, but it’s really important to share your voice, share your beliefs, and really don’t hold back. Really share some of those more vulnerable moments from your life, the things that have allowed you to get where you are now, both good and bad. Because those are the things that are gonna help people really bond to you and, as Adrienne talked about in this episode, when she started doing more of that, sharing her voice on Instagram, her Instagram following really took off. And so I think that’s a really cool microcosm of what happens at a bigger level with a business or a brand, where you simply just share who you are, and more of the authentic voice of that brand.

My take home message is that there really is no competition if you’re being you, and you’re really highlighting the uniqueness of your business. At the end of the day remember, we’re all in business to create outcomes, results for the people we serve. It’s not about giving them a thousand videos and doing a bunch of different stuff, it’s about helping them achieve an outcome.

When you compare that, when you pair that, getting the outcome for your client with your ability to share your unique voice, that’s a really great recipe for success.

So hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. Remember to subscribe to the podcast at Healthpreneur podcast on iTunes, I just about forgot what I was called, and if you’d like more support in really helping take your health business to the next level, I’d recommend you watch our 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint, it’s a free online webinar training, it’ll take you about 70 minutes to get through, and I promise you it will be 70 of the best minutes you’ve spent on your business, really giving you some big insights about what you should avoid, what you should be doing more of, and really the new way of building a successful business online, in 2018 and beyond, without having to become, quote unquote, “Internet marketer” in the process.

The websites to check that out at is healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

That’s all for today my friends, hope you have a great one, and I’ll see you in the next one.

 

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Follow Adrienne Nolan-Smith At:

https://getwellbe.com/

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Transcription

When I started Healthpreneur, it was me and myself pretty much. Then we brought on one person to help out with some project management stuff.

Initially what was happening is I was doing a lot of phone calls myself. I was doing enrollment calls. Four to six a day. That can take its toll. You’re kind of limited to what you can do energetically, but also in terms of freedom, in terms of travel and stuff such as that, I’m like, “Man, I don’t know if I can sustain this.”

 

When you can step back, curate your time, and refine your lifestyle

I ended up hiring some other people who I trusted, who were excited to work with us, and brought them on as enrollment coaches and now they’re results coaches for our clients as well, and they do all of the inbound phone calls.

I don’t do any phone calls anymore. We have a great team in place who are probably even better than I am on the phone.

I’ll be very honest with you. They’re amazing. Super helpful for our clients.

What’s that given me is that’s given me a lot more freedom back in my life. Because we have brought them on as coaches, yes, I’m spending more money on payroll, but it’s given me a lot more freedom back in my life.

This is what I’m talking about by doing less, I’m getting more done. I want to give you a couple little things to think about with that context. Okay?

 

Determining your “YOUnique Genius,” delegating, scheduling

The first thing you need to identify is what are your what I call “younique” genius activities.

I spell younique as Y-O-U, “younique” genius activities. For most people, there’s probably only one to three of them. For most business leaders, I believe one of our “younique” geniuses is creating content and sharing the message.

A podcast such as this is one of my “younique” genius activities. It’s my way of sharing my Kool-Aid, sharing a message. If you’re doing video, right? That’s your thing. These are things that you can’t really delegate that maybe somebody else could do, but maybe not as effectively as you. These are the things that you love doing, the things that energize you, the things that you can do forever.

That’s why for me talking into a microphone is very easy. It’s energizing. I can crank out a lot of this. I enjoy doing it, and I can bring my perspective to the market and serve our listeners in a very, very simple way.

This is an example of a “younique” genius activity. You have to identify what those things are for you. Speaking from stage is another one of my things. I love doing it, but as we grow that platform, I’m also thinking about how do I clone myself, how do I bring on other speakers to now share our company message, not just me who can travel around the world, right?

That’s the first thing is identifying those activities. Second is once you’ve identified that stuff, you have to delegate everything else eventually. Initially you’re going to wear all the hats. You’re going to learn how to do customer service and this and this and this and this, payments, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You kind of have to do that until you bring people on. When you do have a list of things that you don’t enjoy doing, the editing, the number tracking, whatever it is, that becomes a job description for maybe initially a VA to handle some low level stuff.

Then over time some more of the important tasks, whether it’s getting people to run your enrollment calls, right, having coaches working with you under your system to support your clients, these are things you can eventually delegate if you don’t want to do them yourself.

 

Get Your Most Important Work Done First Thing In The Morning

Third thing, just going back to a bit more personal productivity here, is block the first hour of your day to work on your most important project. I’ve got three kids and my magic time is between 6:00 and 8:00 in the morning when they’re really not up yet. I get up early. I get my most important work done.

The one or two things that are most important to move my business forward. It’s not reactive stuff. I’m not answering emails. It’s what is the project I’m working on, how can I move this forward? Even if the rest of the day was a complete shit show, at least those first two hours, it’s all good. I got the most important stuff done. Okay? The first hour or two in your day has to be devoted to the most important stuff.

Fourth is have kids. Well, if you’ve got kids, you know what I mean, but I’m not promoting any non-birth control type of activities here, but obviously having kids is very good from a productivity standpoint because what they do is they force you to create a hard stop.

If you don’t have kids, create a hard stop for yourself no matter what. For instance for me, I’m done working at 3 o’clock everyday because that’s when I pick up my kids from school. Then that’s it. If I have to finish up one or two little things at night, I’ll just hop on my computer for 30 minutes and finish things up. To the best of your ability, stick to that. This is the nice thing about having an office, which I don’t have. I mean I work from home, but if you have a physical office you go to, leave your stuff there. Don’t bring anything home, so when you’re done, you’re done.

Having that discipline is extremely helpful because again, what it does is it time compresses your day. It’s like you’re going on vacation. You have to get everything done before that time. Okay?

 

Scheduling Time Off

Number five is a little bit counterintuitive, but it’s something I really recommend is schedule time off in your calendar before anything else. When you’re planning out the next quarter or the year, block off when you’re taking a weekend off. Block off when you’re traveling. This is something that I do on an ongoing basis.

First and foremost, I know when I’m doing my workshops, when I’ve got my masterminds and I build my travel with that in mind first and foremost. We usually take a family trip in February. We do one in late November-December to get away from the cold. We’re typically traveling as a company anywhere from two to four times a year for a total of eight to 10 weeks. Then there’s obviously little trips that I’m taking for speaking or for other things like that. You want to block all that off in your calendar because number one, it’s exciting.

Number two, it gives you a really good sense of where things are happening and then you’ve got specific deadlines because you’re taking off for instance. It’s a really effective way to manage your calendar.

 

The importance of systems, processes, and teams

Finally, is putting systems in place that work on your behalf when you’re not working. Systems can be technology or people or both. If you’re not going to be here, what is the process? What’s something that you’re doing on a daily basis.  How do you handle this specific issue that comes up? If a field payment comes through, how do you deal with that? Document that process.

Now you have somebody else that you can give that to who can deal with that issue step-by-step as you’ve laid it out when you’re not there. No matter where you are in your business, I think one of the most important activities, which is not a lot of fun to do to be very honest, is to document everything you do.

How do you upload a video to YouTube? How do you create a post for Instagram, or how do you deal with this specific customer service thing, or what is the onboarding sequence look like for new clients? Document all of that. Create a playbook for your business.

Because the more you do that, you’ll very quickly realize that you’ve now “McDonaldized” your business. You now have an operations manual for the way your business works. When people come in to work with you, you’re like, “Okay. Cool. Here you go. You run chapter one. You run this and then here are the things for you to work on. Here’s the step-by-step.”

I’m telling you this will give you more freedom than you can ever think possible. I would honestly spend maybe one hour a week just documenting your processes and just block it off in your calendar. Friday morning 11 o’clock process documentation.

Look at one or two things you’re doing and document the whole thing. Here’s the first thing I do then this, then this, then this. In the long-term, a year from now to five years from now, having that done will give you immense freedom because either you can turn to that very easily for a quick reference or more importantly, somebody else can run that for you.

How our training helps set you up for success and freedom

That is how you do less and get a lot more done. That is how you build a business that gets back to fulfillments and profit and impact instead of working yourself into the ground and burning out. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one.

If you want more support and the exact strategy that we use to help our clients really build very profitable businesses with honestly less than a dozen hours of work per week once they have built out their initial pipeline, right, there’s obviously as I mentioned a little bit of time to build things out, but once that’s done, how can you build a high six-figure business with I’d say about 10 hours a week.

If you want to do that, then we can show you exactly how to do that inside of our 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint training.

It’s over at HealthpreneurGroup.com/training. It’s a free webinar.

Go through it and you’ll see exactly what we do in our business and exactly how we help our clients get those types of results without grinding themselves into a pulp.

If that’s of interest to you and you enjoyed what we’re talking about here, such as doing less and getting more done and serving your clients at a higher level and making more money, having more freedom, then this is for you.

Check it out today. Thank you so much for joining me. Hope you have an amazing one and continue to go out there. Be great. Do great. I’ll see you next time.

Transcription

Hey guys, how’s it going? Welcome back to the show, Yuri here with you, and today I have got one heck of a treat for you. I don’t know why it’s taken 161 episodes to do one of our first client spotlights. I don’t know why it’s just occurred to me, “Hey, maybe you should get some of your clients on the show and talk about their journey,” because we’ve got some amazing clients who’ve done some tremendous stuff in this space, and one of them is Amanda Tress.

Amanda Tress is the founder of a great program called the FASTer Way to Fat Loss which spread like wildfire across the internet, especially over the past three years, most notably over the past 18 months, and it’s just incredible to see what she’s been able to do.

When we started working together, she was one of my first mastermind clients. She reached out to me two years ago looking for some help because she was working 30 hours a day, and was really burned out.

She’s the mother of three young kiddos, she’s married, and at the time she had two businesses and she just needed a bit more structure to move things forward with what she was doing , and was really happy to work with her for the following 12 months and help her get clarity and moving in the right direction.

It’s been amazing to see what she’s been able to do with the FASTer Way to Fat Loss. They’re doing more than a million dollars per month and growing, with their fitness/nutrition based program to helping women lose fat in a science-based effective manner.

What I love about Amanda as you’ll see, is that she’s very driven.  That’s one of the first things I noticed in her and that she’s very committed to doing what it is she wants to do and that’s a big part of why she’s had the success the she’s enjoyed.

She also believes in herself and what she’s doing and the mission that she’s on, which is to help empower women because she understands that women are more likely to give back to their family, church and community, and that’s  her driving mission with what she is doing.

So I’m excited to dig deep with you into Amanda’s journey, taking her way back to the beginning and showing you how even though they’re enrolling thousands of clients a month, it didn’t start out that way and some of the trials and tribulations that she’s learned along the way.

So without any further ado let’s jump in and let’s bring Amanda onto the show.

Amanda, what is up? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

Amanda Tress:                  Thank you, I am thrilled to be here.

Yuri Elkaim:                         This has been way long overdue. This is episode 161 and I’m like how have I not brought one of my first mastermind clients on the show, it’s crazy.

But I’m super excited to have you on the show because you’ve done some amazing things since I’ve known you. Since we stopped working together to see your continued growth and progress is incredible and I’m just super proud to have had a hand in a piece of that, but also to help highlight your journey and give our listeners some good perspectives because as we talked about before we started recording, a lot of people especially on social, they see the after, right? They see the shiny objects, right? The fancy cars, the jets, the success, but my goal is really to highlight a lot of the journey because most people don’t recognize that.

Let’s start by sharing what the first iteration of Amanda Tress online looked like, when did that start? And how did that all come about?

 

How Amanda juggled personal training, blogging, and a digital marketing job

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, that’s a great question. So the very first Amanda Tress initiative started several years ago. It was when I was pregnant with my first who is now seven. I started a blog and had been working with clients as a personal trainer in the gym. Prior to starting a blog I had, as many of us did, traded dollars for hours, grinded for hours and hours per day in addition to working my full time digital marketing job.

I started this blog when I was pregnant with Emma just simply to get some valuable content online regarding a fit pregnancy. I had googled quite a few things during my own pregnancy and found a lot of misinformation, a lot of outdated information regarding what women could and should do. I started this blog that then turned into some pretty cool campaign partnerships with fitness brands.

I then decided while I was pregnant with her that I should try a concept of online training. The reason I wanted to do this is because I had a lot of former clients, previous clients who I had worked with in the gym who had since moved away and I said, “You know what? Why can’t I just simply leverage online tools like for example Skype and train clients online.” So I started training clients online one-on-one, and again, this is seven years ago, and at the time I was also leading in-person boot camps, and it occurred to me that if I wanted to scale or if I wanted to have the opportunity to impact more than one person at a time online, I could do a virtual boot camp concept. So I was the very first trainer in my area to launch this concept.  I called it my virtual Body After Baby Boot Camps.

This was shortly after delivering Emma.  I started small Yuri. I started with four clients, five clients, six clients, and then 11 clients for these little virtual boot camps, had a lot of fun getting to know people over Skype and in different capacities online, Facebook, and so forth, and over time iterated.

It’s been a seven-year process to perfect what is now my virtual boot camp that has scaled pretty significantly and we bring on now over 2,000 clients a month. Those are new clients and we serve over 5,000 clients total per month. So it’s very humble beginnings and got a lot of pushback, a lot of criticism online from people like, “Who are you to think you could train someone online? The only path would be to trade dollars for hours in the gym. You can’t possibly get that same impact with someone online?” So anyway, yeah, it’s been quite the journey but that is how it started.

 

Amanda’s entrepreneurial journey and evolution

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome, and how did you get those initial clients when you first started? Were there existing clients that you brought online or how did you go about getting those?

Amanda Tress:                  That’s a really good question, and I always joke the fitness industry found me, I didn’t choose the fitness industry. The reason I say that is because I am financially motivated but I did not see the potential to be very successful financially in the fitness industry. When I initially started training clients in the gym I was charging $8 a session, then $10 a session, then $15 a session, I felt terrible. With my initial virtual boot-campers I think I was charging, literally Yuri and this is embarrassing, like $25 for a virtual boot camp. They were former in-person clients or family members. I started to get very small, very humble, and it was just simply because I had a passion to transform lives. It wasn’t about the money.

And then when I continued to iterate and to morph the virtual boot camps, I would literally go belly to belly, meet with people who I had previously worked with in the gym and say, “Listen, I have this new virtual boot camp concept I think it’s a perfect fit for you because you don’t have time to meet me in the gym anymore, I want you in. It’s $60, write me a check, I’ll be by your office in 10 minutes to pick it up.”

I was strong-arming people into my initial beta groups because I wanted success stories, I wanted the opportunity to test things, and so that was how I got started. It wasn’t anything fancy, no 17 step ClickFunnels. It was literally belly-to-belly or texting people and saying like, “Hey, you got to join this because I really want you in and if you’re my friend you got to be in it,” so yeah, that’s how I got started.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well that’s one of the things I love about you, and I think for people who may or may not know you, I mean you’re very good at “selling” and not in the typical closer douchey type of way, you’re just very passionate about what you do.

Amanda Tress:                  Yes.

 

The benefits of her program and why she believes in it

Yuri Elkaim:                         This is an area that a lot of people struggle with, right? They have lack of self-belief or self-doubt or whatever it is. What was it in you or your program or what you were doing that gave you that belief to be like, “I don’t care, I’m going to drop by your house and get this money because you need to do this thing.” Where does that come from?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, that’s such a good question and I’ve asked myself that question multiple times, and frankly it all comes back to the why, the passion and again, fitness found me, I didn’t choose the fitness industry. It’s just the fact that I am genuinely passionate about transforming lives. I’m in the business of helping people get well, prevent disease and fulfill their purpose with the energy I know they should have, and so for me it’s like if I have the cure to cancer I’m going to shout it from the rooftops.  If I have the way to prevent illness, if I have the way to help someone feel more confident, if I have the ability to equip and empower women to be the catalyst for their family and their community then I’m going to do it and I’m going to talk about it.

I work very hard to develop good programming, but at the end of the day it’s like I just know that if someone truly wants to see a significant body composition change or an increase in energy or wants to prevent disease, they have to go through my program.

There are so many big companies out there who don’t have other people’s best interests at mind and I know I do and I have those core values of generosity, excellence, bold action and integrity, and so I want to again, get people on my side and through my program so that they can once and for all see that big change, but yeah, it just comes down to that purpose and the why. I don’t even really consider what I do selling, I just consider it sharing and teaching and transforming lives.

Yuri Elkaim:                         For sure, it’s serving, because I mean if people do not enroll in your program they’re not being served and I think you’re such a great example of this is like you really understand that and you kind of go above and beyond to make that a reality for you and the people you serve. Probably I think and honestly every time we hung out, whether it was one of our masterminds or anything else, I remember several times it would come up in conversation where you would say, and I don’t even know how it would come up but you would say, “I believe I’m the best trainer in the world,” something along those lines. Several times I remember you saying that, and guys I want you to listen to this because this is important because there’s no shortage of trainers, there’s no shortage of health and fitness experts, but you believe that you are the best.

Now objectively, whether or not that’s true it doesn’t matter, right? But you believe you’re the best and I think that’s part and parcel of why you have this massive drive to really get the message out and help a lot of people, I think that’s great.

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, thank you. I believe that what is happening with the FASTer Way to Fat Loss specifically is the most important thing happening in the marketplace for women and for fitness professionals who want to earn significant income, and I don’t necessarily believe that I’m the best trainer but I am absolutely able to surround myself with the smartest trainers and the most talented individuals who can help me elevate the business and the brand better than anyone else. So yeah, I appreciate you remembering that and mentioning that.

 

The lesson Amanda learned through having a baby

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well so when we first started working together, one of the things that you were saying was you were working like 30 hours a day pretty much.

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, totally.

Yuri Elkaim:                         You were super busy, doing a lot of things. You had two businesses, you had the agency side which is more kind of done for you, marketing different businesses, then you had the FASTer Way to Fat Loss, talk to us about the journey and the recent epiphany/decision you’ve made to really zone in and focus on what really matters in your business.

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, absolutely. So a little bit of background for everyone listening. I started my fitness business as kind of a side hustle 15 years ago, then seven years ago started the online virtual boot camps, but I’ve always had a career background in digital marketing, that is kind of my 9:00 to 5:00 job background,.

When I was on the labor and delivery bed with my five-year-old I decided to start a marketing agency for wellness professionals. I landed my very first client when I was in labor, had just stepped down from my full-time job to be home with my baby, and I was able to scale the agency pretty quickly, but you probably heard me say and I’ve said for years, “I have 99 problems and they’re all agency side.”

I tried really hard to ramp up in agency, and again that’s my career background so I felt like that my real job was the agency work and marketing, funnels, sales pages and then kind of my hobby was the fitness side.

Well something happened after I had my third baby who was a bit of a bonus baby, a big surprise. When I had her in January I was extremely exhausted, I was getting very little sleep. She was my worst sleeper that first month, and I said to my team, “Listen, I cannot physically take on any agency consult or clients right now, let’s not take on any.” I said I just want to focus on surviving with the FASTer Way, keeping my head above water, so I focused only on my virtual boot camps and we started having these massive record months.

And it was like this weird concept where I wasn’t taking on any agency clients, I wasn’t doing a single consult, I wasn’t helping anyone with their own digital marketing, I was just saying, “Listen, kind of out of fairness for my baby who I need to spend as much time with as possible and for my clients, I’m only going to focus on the virtual boot camps.” Well again, record month after record month and I finally looked at my team and I said, “We just have to stop accepting clients for the agency side.” I said, “We’re going to go hard, we’re going to listen to the marketplace.” Because the success of any business is really based on timing in the marketplace and the market readiness is evident for my virtual boot camp specifically, so I did quite a big move and stopped accepting clients for my agency, best decision I’ve ever made in my career.

At the time I felt like a massive failure because here I had spent years and years and years ramping up an agency and then kind of in a day decided to shut it down, but we are now earning over seven figures per month with just simply fitness, with just simply one vertical, so that for me is proof that we made the right decision and we’ve been able to do a lot of other things to support the fitness side. So again, really, really difficult decision. I think you probably told me like two or three years ago to only focus on one thing and I didn’t listen at the time and now finally did and it paid off but yeah, it’s quite the development recently.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So the lesson or the moral of the story is you don’t need a coach you just have to have a baby.

Amanda Tress:                  Absolutely, that is the lesson, everyone should have a baby.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, but I think it’s as true as well, like everyone kind of discovers the answer for them at different times, right? So I think it’s great that you can say that, because I mean the power of what you’re doing when it’s focused is compounded exponentially, and there’s just so much energy. Even if you’re not physically putting a lot of effort into another thing, it’s just even energetically, it’s there. It’s almost like it’s just kind of weighing you down like an anvil in some way.

Amanda Tress:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative) absolutely, totally agree.

 

Social media marketing, conversions, frequency, and her certification program

Yuri Elkaim:                         So let’s talk about how you’ve been able to fill your programs with thousands of women a month. You’re a social media machine, I think it’s incredible what you’ve done with Instagram and Facebook Live, so how early did you start using Instagram? And how often do you post to social?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, really good question. I settled on Instagram pretty early. It was, gosh, six years ago that I initially started on Instagram. I have leveraged different platforms at different times and again for me, the success of my business has been based on timing the marketplace, really listening to the marketplace and meeting my ideal clients where they’re at. I was active on Snapchat when Snapchat was very popular-

Yuri Elkaim:                         What’s that?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, exactly. I was very active on Periscope which is one of the main ways I was able to scale my business and it provided quite a few tipping points for my business along the way. Periscope which was then acquired by Twitter was a great practice for Facebook Live. So I was able to show up every single day for my own TV show 3:00 PM Eastern and people, my users got used to hearing from me every day. I’d have people find me organically on the Periscope Map and within 24 hours convert into my program.  You couldn’t do that with any other platform at the time and now you can’t do it. I actually am really sad about Periscope, that their user base was so compromised because that was my favorite platform by far. I wish I could still be leveraging periscope like I had for an entire year.

I do use Facebook Live. Facebook Live is okay. The very first Facebook Live I ever did my mom hopped on and she immediately commented, “Amanda, why didn’t you say hi to me?” Like in the middle of my Facebook Live, and that’s kind of like set the tone for my Facebook Lives from then I do it like, “I know my mom’s watching, my dad’s watching, my mother-in-law’s watching.” I’m not able to be as authentic as I was on Periscope.

Instagram has been really powerful recently with Swipe Up To Shop, that’s how I personally get most of my conversions. And in regard to frequency, I tend to post at least once a day on Instagram and primarily Social Proof, and I think you are even the one who said, “Amanda, all you really need in today’s marketplace is social proof and a Buy Now button. You need a testimonial and a Buy Now button.”

And so right now I just do a lot of testimonials and I share success stories of my clients. I do a day-in-the-life on Insta Stories similar to what I used to do on Snapchat. But yeah, I mean I don’t like to spend time on social media, I rarely spend any time on Facebook unless I’m posting or checking in with clients. I don’t scroll through Instagram, I just don’t have time. I just cannot even be bothered with looking to see what everyone else is up to from a competitor standpoint. I just kind of put my head down, do what I can do, share things when I’m inspired and call it a day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome, and do you plan out your social calendar or is it pretty much impromptu when you’re inspired, what you’re feeling like sharing on the day?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, it’s all impromptu and that’s because I have horrendous rebel tendencies, so if I even try to tell myself to come up with a content calendar, I’m just not going to do it. I’d rather stick my head in a toilet than try to come up with a broadcast calendar, and even like this morning I broadcasted a video but I tried to force it. I had planned it a few days ago and then I broadcasted it today and it just didn’t come off right so I deleted it. I have to be in the moment passionate about something for it to really be effective.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. It’s a good lesson because it’s important, if you guys were listening to this, to understand that not one strategy is right for everyone. So some people need that structured calendar and they’re very systemized and structured and they can do the same thing at the same time every single day with a plan, and then there’s people like you. I’m pretty much like that as well where I’m like, “All right, I know what I’m going to talk about today, let’s go for it.” So you just have to really honor who you are, and I think that’s really important. And I think a lot of people and maybe you see this with some of the coaches you work with is I think a lot of people struggle with that. They try to be like someone else and in the process they lose themselves and then they’re like, “I don’t even feel like myself. I don’t feel authentic.” Is that something you see with the people that you bring on as coaches or other people in your space?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, absolutely, I see it with other people in my space constantly. It’s that concept of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy and it’s like no one is going to be successful if they’re just simply trying to emulate someone else, and so when we bring on a certified coach through our program we try to remind them consistently like, “Listen, you do you. This is about you. It’s about you staying on the platforms that you enjoy.” If you hate Instagram don’t try to be on Instagram posting every day, that’s just not going to be the best use of your time. If you love Facebook do Facebook. If you would rather be belly-to-belly with people. If you want to go to the bingo night and get to know people there and bring them on as your clients that’s fine too.”

And the thing is like there is no cookie cutter approach for how our coaches are successful, and people who we notice just copying what we’re doing, they do fizzle, they’re not successful long-term and it’s kind of easy to see through that too if there’s an end user kind of looking from the outside at what’s going on, so yeah, totally agree with you.

 

Growing and hiring; the importance of giving roles and delegating

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s talk about the delivery of your program a little bit. So you can only work with so many clients, I mean I think you were reviewing macros and so forth back in the day and what was the moment where you said, “Okay, I need to start thinking about maybe bringing on other coaches to support this,” how did that all start for you?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, really good question. So I have been bringing on staff team members to help with my groups for a couple years, but when I got pregnant is actually the time that I’m like, “You know what? I’m so exhausted and sick right now that I need people to help me in a big way if we’re truly going to expand this movement.” And so I launched a coach certification shortly after finding out I was pregnant with my third, and literally I was so sick through the first trimester that I couldn’t get into the groups and check on every single client’s macronutrient chart and look at every single question, and so I said, “Okay, I’m going to accelerate some people through the certification and then turn around and hire them to help co-lead my clients through the program.” And so again, it’s kind of like yeah, everyone should just have a baby to see what their real priorities are.

That’s the true story, that’s what happened.  I literally needed to go to bed at like 8:00 PM and I’m puking all night and all morning so I’m not going to be on besides like two hours a day so what can I do to continue generating revenue? So out of necessity I created this certification program to be sure that people understood the science behind the strategies, and then I empowered those women to help with my groups and now we’ve really helped take the certification community to the next level and said, “Okay, we’re going to help you grow your own business with your own clients, and we’re going to gift you with a very significant commission for every client that comes through the program.” Yeah, that’s how it started and kind of the rest is history now.

I like to say you can either have control or you can have growth but you cannot have both.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s good.

Amanda Tress:                  And I’ve become very good at delegating because of the reasons that I mentioned, really more out of necessity but that’s what’s helped us scale in huge ways.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. That’s very true, it’s control or growth. I agree with you on that because so often we’re like, “Oh it’s got to be done exactly my way and I don’t know if I can relinquish the reins here because if we lose control God forbid …” But that is where all growth happens. I think even personally when we kind of allow ourselves to not be in control of everything that’s when we get uncomfortable, that’s when we grow, that’s a really good insight. Speaking of growth, what were some of the growing pains you had to go through as you started certifying these coaches and bringing them on? What were some of the trials and tribulations and how did you deal with that?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, really good question. I’ve learned many important lessons over the past 18 months after bringing on coaches. I have a very high standard. We run our business with excellence, integrity, generosity and bold action, and at certain times through the past year I’ve noticed that different certified coaches within the community were switching up programming or they weren’t abiding by our code of ethics and unfortunately I had to make some really difficult decisions regarding canceling a handful of contracts and even for people who had scaled their FASTer Way businesses pretty successfully and some of the hardest decisions I’ve made and it’s because it’s people decisions, it’s going to impact relationships. Of course, we try to have multiple conversations like, “Hey, this needs to change. This needs to change. We need to kind of get some quality control going here.”

I’ve learned the importance of better contracts. We continue to improve our contracts. I’ve learned the importance of also having the right team in place to really kind of help me develop a strategy, a thoughtful strategy with some of these legal decisions or harder decisions, and then also having a team in place who can help minimize my exposure to some of the issues, like for example we’ve had a couple, a few former coaches literally copy/paste the program, meaning Command-C, Command-A and rename the program slightly and continue to grow in scale, and it’s like we’ve sent multiple cease and desist out which is also difficult. And at first I was very weighed down with all of this, it’s like, “I learned in second grade that you shouldn’t copy someone’s content and literally paste it and use it for your own.”

I remember Jordan Stuckey got in big trouble because he copied the encyclopedia, and it’s like other people in my industry haven’t learned this concept so it was very difficult, but even this past week I realized how fortunate I am to have the very best team surrounding me, whether it’s attorneys or people who help with the trademarks and the copyrights and a COO and a director of technology who scaled her own $25 million brand and then sold and had similar issues. It’s been a very, very difficult year with some of these issues that weigh me down and I can even feel the stress and anxiety as I’m talking about it, but I have the right team in place that has helped really address these issues so that moving forward we know how to address them, we have a system and we can scale big and we can make a massive positive impact in the marketplace.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s amazing. I want to come back to talking about the hires and kind of the mindset around that in a second, but first, a lot of … not a lot, but I mean there are obviously coaches out there who have their own methodology that they want to certify other coaches in and I think one of the concerns that we’ve seen is, “Well how do I …” Again, using the word control, “How do I control the message. How do I make sure that they’re not bastardizing this methodology, and they’re staying within the confines of this protocol?” How do you guys keep track of that?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, well now we have much better systems, we have one portal, one website that everyone goes through, whether it’s my client or the client of coach, we have key staffers in place for quality control. We actually have requirements for our coaches, for example they have to send us training videos that they film for their clients and we review those. We have different checklists of different items that they have to go through as well and at the end of the day, again in the contract we reserve the right to cancel a contract for any reason at any time with seven day notice and it’s after seeing that maybe someone is deciding that instead of doing the 16/8 protocol they’re going to do a 27 day fast with their clients, like you can’t do a 27 day fast with your clients through the FASTer Way to Fat Loss, that’s not what this program is about.

So just making those tough decisions, but it’s a very number of people who do try to compromise the programming, and so thankfully it’s been small scale but yeah, I think for us is just code of ethics, really fantastic contracts and then also that business in a box and one website, one portal that everyone goes through, so every client is having the same experience.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s great, that’s awesome. So let’s talk about team building for a second. I mean could you foresee, three years ago for instance, were you able to foresee where this could go? Did you have any doubts of you as a leader being able to lead this? What did that look like from a vision perspective for you?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, that’s a great question. I have always known that I would lead a movement or a substantial company, I would manage significant wealth, even when Brandon and I were in our teens we were listening to different financial cassette tapes because we were like, “We are going to be multimillionaires someday,” and we were so young, and I remember our parents just laughing and I had a financial planner when I was like 19 and I named my retirement account, retire by 34, multi-millionaire blah blah blah and he’s like laughing. It’s like we knew it, we just didn’t know how. And one of the very first people who was a boss or a leader to me who kind of saw my potential, I was like 21 or 22 and I was like, “I’m going to be a multimillionaire by 30,” and he was like, “Okay, how?” And I was like, “Oh huh, good question. Let’s talk about it.”

And he was one of the first bosses that was like, “I see something in you, let’s not have you doing stupid projects at work, let me try to kind of help empower you to go above and beyond,” and I actually looked back around and hired this person to work with my team this past year and it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done for the company. It’s like someone who saw my potential a decade ago, now I have the opportunity to employ, and so the two of us have been quite the partnership moving the business forward. And there’s been several other really key hires that we could get into if you’d like to that I’ve made just to help elevate and take things to the next level.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I mean so how big is your team and who are those key moving pieces for you guys?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, really good question. So we have several directors on the team now. I recently onboarded a wonderful director of technology who’s also providing some leadership for the six week virtual FASTer Way to Fat Loss Program that I have. She has scaled a business from an idea on a napkin to 25 million in the process of selling, just very sharp individual and has decided that she doesn’t want to be a CEO anymore, she wants to be number two. And with this person in particular, I got to know her because she initially was a graduate of my alma mater and then a client of my program, but immediately I was like, “I need to keep this person close, because I don’t know how or when I’m going to work with her but I know that I will at some point work with this person.”

And I just also hired a web marketing specialist and technology specialist, same thing, I’ve known her for four or five years and I’ve even met with her over the past couple a few years and said, “Listen, I want to hire you at some point. I want you on my dream team. I don’t know how, when, where but it’s going to happen and so when the timing is right and I have a position opening are you interested?” And those are the types of conversations I’ve had over the past several years, and just now I have these three or four new hires within the past six months who are just key hires helping us elevate the company, and so I feel like this quarter I have the dream team and I’m on the verge of being able to fire at all cylinders.

And the thing is in the past I’ve said, “Let me hire someone who’s affordable and who has a little bit of time to help,” and I’ve hired people who are cheap and unfortunately when you hire someone who’s like cheap labor you get-

Yuri Elkaim:                         You get what you paid for.

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, you get what you paid. So now it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to pay a little bit more. I’m going to target the dream team. I’m going to just …” Like literally this one person that I hired, I mean like a year ago if you would’ve asked me I would’ve said there’s no way he will work with us. There is no way he would step down from where he is right now and work with my team, no way, and it’s just a matter of writing it down, casting that vision, being really specific and just throwing it out there into the universe and saying, “This is who I want on my dream team,” and then pitching it. It never hurts to ask, and it’s amazing what people will respond with. So yeah, it’s been just awesome to make some big asks and move forward with some pretty strategic hires and then also move some people into other roles within the team that are better suited for them.

One of the guys that I hired, he helped me within a month transform my org chart and really empower people in the right way and get them in their zone of genius and that has paid off in incredible ways. Like just giving the right person the right leadership role or the right responsibilities has been amazing, and so that for us we’ve done 10X just by shifting people around and moving their roles and giving them raises and showing them that they’re valued, and so it’s been really exciting.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Well I mean you can’t have a guitar player playing the drums.

Amanda Tress:                  Right, exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It doesn’t make a lot of sense. One of the things I think is a really important lesson for our listeners here is that you have these relationships brewing on the back burner.

Amanda Tress:                  Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And you weren’t looking last second to hire someone. You knew you saw potential for future collaboration in some capacity and that’s really, really important. I mean guys if you’re looking to hire, hiring is an ongoing process. It’s a process of continually building relationships, of continually thinking ahead, “All right, in a year from now I’m probably going to have an opening for this type of position, this person can be a good fit,” and I think it’s really important, it’s a great example of what you’ve done with that, so key lesson for you guys there. Amanda, this has been awesome.

 

The Rapid Five

One of the things I forgot to tell you about is we have five rapid fire questions called the rapid five, are you ready for this?

Amanda Tress:                  Oh, love it, can’t wait.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, but before we get to those, where can people learn more about you, follow the work, join the FASTer Way to Loss Program if they wanted to?

Amanda Tress:                  Yeah, thank you for asking. So the best place to connect with me is on Instagram @amandatress. Again, I post a day-in-the-life, you’ll see my baby Lily, you’ll see all of the new decorations that I’ve bought for my house but then you’ll also learn about the FASTer Way to Fat Loss there and I’d love to connect.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome, all right guys we’ll link up to that in the show notes as well. So are you ready for the rapid five?

Amanda Tress:                  I am.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, here we go. So number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Amanda Tress:                  Oh that is a great question. I am absolutely horrendous with details. I don’t respond to people on texts well because I forget. I could not manage a spreadsheet to save my life, thankfully I found the right team members to help with the details behind the scenes but even my friends know, like my best friends don’t even text me anymore about weekend plans, they text Brandon, they’re like, “Hey, we want Amanda to meet us for such-and-such on Saturday at 5:00, can you tell her to do that? Can you put it on her calendar?” That’s how bad it is.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I can definitely relate. I think a lot of people in this kind of visionary role can relate to that, because I had to do, for my account, they send me a bunch of transactions over the past year that I had to identify and I was like, “What the …” Like I got to go back through my bank statements and try to figure out what this $4,300 transaction was for-

Amanda Tress:                  Oh, wouldn’t want to stick my head in a toilet.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally, I mean those are the things that I procrastinated on massively because were the same in that, details, forget about it. All right, so number two, what is your biggest strength?

Amanda Tress:                  My biggest strength is casting a vision but then also believing that it’s possible. I want to be a 100 million dollar company and it’s going to happen here in the next few years and just have that confidence. I like to say I’m a perfect package, I’m confidence and competence wrapped up in humility but anyone who knows me knows that’s not really true, it’s just that knowledge, it’s that belief that we can crush any goal.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. I have no doubt you’ll get there for sure.

Amanda Tress:                  Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Amanda Tress:                  Hiring, yeah hiring for sure, and a year ago I would not have said that but like you said, just kind of being in a constant state of hiring, even yesterday I wrote someone else down on my dream team list and I’m going to develop a relationship and hope to hire that person within the year. She has no idea, and if I asked her today she would say, “Absolutely not, I’m really happy with my current business and where things are going,” but by next year at this time I believe I can get her on my staff.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Amanda Tress:                  Oh, that’s a good question. I do have a morning routine, the very first thing I do in the morning is I hop in the shower. I need to be clean to be productive. I don’t know how people do it with the dry shampoo, I take like three showers a day and I like to be clean and that’s what I value and then-

Yuri Elkaim:                         You take three showers a day?

Amanda Tress:                  Oh yeah, I do. I just love being clean. I take a shower in the morning. I take a shower in the afternoon right after my workout and then I take a shower at night before I go to bed.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And you live in humid Florida so that can kind of-

Amanda Tress:                  I do, yes. But yeah, I take a shower and then I do my daughter’s hair.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice, awesome. And finally complete this sentence, I know I’m being successful when.

Amanda Tress:                  Oh, I know I’m being successful when I am fulfilled with my impact in the marketplace without feeling so burned out that I can’t serve my family well at the end of the day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome, I love it, and just so you guys know, Amanda is a badass competitive mini-golf player as well, that was a pretty epic game, that was a lot of fun.

Amanda Tress:                  It totally was. We need to do that again.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally, I will bring some donuts as well so there you go.

Amanda Tress:                  Oh, perfect.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Amanda, thank you so much for joining us, this has been a lot of fun and-

Amanda Tress:                  Thank you, I really enjoyed it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, and again, thank you for everything you’re doing, for serving your community, for expanding the FASTer Way to Fat Loss message, for really empowering more women with their personal transformations, but also helping them with their financial aspirations as well which I think is awesome. And again, it’s been an honor to work with you as one of our clients and to see your continued growth and I’m really excited to see what the future holds for you guys.

Amanda Tress:                  Thank you, my pleasure.

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Yuri’s Take

So I don’t know about you but I’ve got chills down my spine after that interview. There’s a couple of things I want to really highlight from this conversation. Number one is that belief in yourself is massively important to success in life, and it’s the belief that what you’re doing is making a difference, it’s the belief that you’re here for a reason, you’ve got a purpose to serve others. And when you’re driven by that, little things like what are people going to think of me, go by the wayside, because when you put yourself out there in the degree that Amanda has done there are going to be haters, there are going to be people who say you can’t do certain things, there are going to be things you do that gets you way out of your comfort zone, and at the end of the day what’s going to move you through that is having belief which is going to fuel that courage muscle to keep moving forward, and I think it’s really important to remember that.

And if you’re somebody right now who doesn’t quite have the belief, who doesn’t quite have the self-confidence to knock on doors, make those phone calls, do whatever it takes, then I really want to challenge you to dig deep and figure out what is it going to take for you to get that level of belief because I believe in you. I believe you have a message, something really important that can transform many people’s lives, and the way I see that is if we’re playing small, if we’re not doing whatever we can to get that word out there to help those people, we are being selfish. We have to get out of our own way. We have to get out of our own head, and we have to think about the bigger why, the bigger reason that we are doing what we do.

In my Courage Code talk I talk about six ways to build courage because courage really is the bridge to help you go from where you are to where you want to be, and … excuse me. One of the steps to building more courage is having that belief. Now one of the other steps … excuse me once again. One of the other steps to building courage is to surround yourself with other courageous people, and this is why I continue to say and you continue to hear that the most successful people that we’ve had on the show get themselves around other successful people, it’s the very reason why I have a mastermind. It’s the very reason why we have a group coaching program which is our health business accelerator, because we know that one-on-one coaching is fine, but there is so much more synergy and power when you’re in a group setting.

When you can sit beside someone who is 10 times further ahead of you in business or you can teach somebody something or get something from them in terms of their journey, this is how we grow, this is how we borrow other people’s beliefs. We borrow their courage to help us move forward, because just like living a long life is impossible in isolation, so too is growing a successful business. You cannot grow a successful business in isolation. There are simply too many obstacles and challenges in the way for you to figure out and overcome all by yourself.

So here’s what I’d like to propose to you is if you are ready to step up and really make your dream a lot bigger than your fear then I want to invite you to take the next step with us, and it starts by watching our 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint Training, and start there.

If what you’re watching resonates with you, and you’re thinking to yourself, “Yeah, this is exactly what I need. This is a process, a strategy that I can deploy in my business, I deserve this.” If that’s what you feel after going through that then book a call with our team and you’ll be given the link at the end of the training and then let’s get on the phone.

Let’s have a chat about where you are, where you want to be, what’s holding you back and let’s put a plan together to move you forward, because I’m going to tell you this, you will not achieve the results you want to achieve by yourself. And I’m not saying that I am the solution or Healthpreneur is the solution for everyone obviously because that’s not true, but you cannot be delusional in thinking that, “Oh, I don’t have the money yet. I’m going to save a little bit of money first and then I’ll do all that stuff.” No, it doesn’t work like that. It doesn’t work like that.

You have to put yourself out there when you don’t have the means to doing so a lot of times. Every single time that I’ve invested in a coach, a mastermind, a group, some type of experience, it’s always very often, if not always been above my pay grade. It’s always put me out of my comfort zone because that’s how we grow, and we see it so often that … I mean we have a lot of calls every single week with amazing health coaches and trainers and experts who can transform the world, and what it comes down to is that they let their fear overshadow their dream. They let their fear of, “Oh, I don’t know if I can pay for this,” overshadow the possibility of what they can do with the right support and the right strategy.

And I want to challenge you, I really do want to challenge you and then really ask yourself and look in the mirror, “Am I happy where I’m at,” and if you are, tremendous, keep doing that, but if you are a high performer, if you’re a growth-oriented individual who wants more, who wants to contribute more and who wants to become more, then it’s time to step up.

I invite you to go through our training, book a call with us and then let’s see if we’re a good fit.

Start the journey, go to healthpreneurgroup.com/training, watch the training today and let’s get that started.

Thank you so much for joining me for this podcast today, this interview, hope you’ve enjoyed it. Hopefully it’s inspired you to see what is possible from humble beginnings with the right strategy, the right focus, the right support, the right team around you. And remember, I’m no different than you, Amanda’s no superhero, right? These are ordinary people.

We are ordinary people just doing some pretty cool things because we believe, we’re focused, we get the right support and we keep moving forward and we’d love to serve you as well. So thank you so much for joining me once again, continue to get out there, be great, do great and I’ll see you in our next episode.

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Transcription

Today I’m going to be sharing seven lessons from my The 7-Figure Health Business with you.

If you want to grow your business or if you already have a successful business or if you’re just getting started, these are some lessons I’ve learned over the past 13 years with my business online, that I think will really give you some great insight and clarity about what you want to avoid and maybe what you want to do a little bit more of.

Without any further ado, shall we just jump right in? Is that okay with you?

 

Clarify your vision and engage and interact with clients

1. Clarity of Vision

All right. Here we go. The first lesson is you have to clarify what you want to achieve. That’s the starting point for everything, right?

Having that clear vision is the guiding light. It’s the North Star for everything you do. We talked about how even though your strategy can change, what you want to achieve should be set in stone. Now again that can change over time as well. Like you achieve something and then you want to achieve something else or maybe there’s a bit of an offshoot, but you want to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve whether that’s from a big perspective or even what you want to achieve on a daily basis. Okay? Clarity is massively important.

Just like pilots do not leave the terminal without a flight plan, without knowing where they’re going, you should not be doing anything in your business without knowing exactly where you’re going. That’s the first thing.

2. Engage With Your Customers

Second lesson is you want to engage with your customers or your clients as often as possible. This is where a lot of let’s call them Fortune 500 company CEOs drop the ball big time because they get to a point where they’re so removed from their customers, so removed from the marketplace, that they’re so disconnected from it. They’re sitting in their ivory tower looking at spreadsheets and numbers and they kind of forget that they’re dealing with people.

I think the benefit of having a coaching-based business is you’re forced to engage with your clients all the time, which is amazing. If you’re somebody who is a bit of a recluse and you don’t enjoy interacting with people, that’s totally fine.

You’ve got more of a product-based business and that’s the way you want to run things, totally cool as well, but there will come a point where either you’re not going to feel as fulfilled as you want or your customers don’t feel appreciated because you never interact with them.

Interact with them doesn’t mean send them promotional emails several days a week. It doesn’t mean the typical communication that we send out out via the internet, right?

It’s things like sending people a personal thank you video or sending them a message on Facebook to let them know that you appreciate their business. Little things like that can make a big difference. Even at the minimum, if you’ve got a Facebook group, get in the group and engage with them. This is something that I’m guilty of.

We have our Healthpreneur Facebook group. We’ve got several thousand people on that, and I’m not as active in there as maybe I could be, but again I’m more active on Instagram to be honest with you. If you want to hang out and interact with me, follow me on Instagram. I’m at @healthpreneur1. That’s probably where we’ll have the most conversation.

Whatever your platform is, just choose that platform to engage with your customers or clients.

 

Sell what people want, give them what they need, and know your numbers

3. Sell People What They Want

Third lesson, sell people what they want instead of what they need. Most people need support, mindset and all that kind of stuff, right? Everything between the ears, limiting beliefs, all that stuff that holds people back. That’s what they need to succeed. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling. Everybody needs that.

That’s the biggest difference between those people that do succeed and those people that don’t is what’s happening between the ears. That’s what people need the most help with. Do they want to buy that? No, because they’ve heard it a thousand times.

It’s not sexy. It’s not novel. What they want are the tactics, the strategies, the swipe files, the done for you, whatever. These are the things where we want to meet people where they’re at. Sell them the thing they want. Sell them the weight loss system, but support the hell out of them on the backend with the stuff they need to actually deploy what it is they bought. That’s a big thing.

I’ve spent a long time struggling with this because I think a lot of us health experts come from a place where we’re kind of eternal optimists. We’re like, “Oh, this is the way it should be. This is what people should want to buy,” but we’re going to shit all over ourselves as Tony Robbins says, right?

We have to give people what they want, not what we think they want. You really have to be tuned into the marketplace. Yeah, and start there. Sell them what they want. Give them want they need.

4. Know Your Numbers

Fourth lesson is know your numbers. Listen, I’m not a numbers guy. I procrastinate even to this day big time with my accountants. I hate looking through spreadsheets and tracking down specific transactions. That stuff drives me crazy, but it has to get done. Now that’s an extreme example, but even if we just back it up a little bit to knowing your numbers, we talked about this on a previous episode, is you have to measure the most important metrics in your business.

I know exactly the most important numbers in our business and I track them at minimum every week. I do a whole reporting. We have a scorecard that I update and look at every single Monday, and then we’ve got a couple different things that are filled in from our team members. At the very minimum, I have a financial check in every Friday where I look at my personal bank stuff, my business stuff. Then Mondays I review our scorecard from the previous week. You have to understand your numbers. First of all, you have to identify what those critical numbers are and there should not be a thousand of them. There might be a handful.

You have to make sure that they’re meaningful to moving your business forward, and then look at those because those the going to be the indicators of how well your business is doing. It’s really important.

 

Know your business model and predictable sales process

5. Know Your Business Model

Number five is identifying and perfectly one main process that attracts and converts new business. This is your business model. This is when people say how do you attract new clients, if you don’t have a solid answer to that and by solid answer I mean “well, we have this automated system that I don’t really do much with and it attracts clients,” that’s kind of the ideal answer.

Most health experts that we talk with, their answer is, “I don’t really have one or some clients refer me some new business,” but it’s not predictable. Okay? That’s the biggest problem we continue to see in all of the businesses that we help is there’s no clearly defined business model where you have a defined input and then there’s a predictable output. By that I mean what we help our clients deploy as I’ve mentioned probably a thousand times now is the perfect client pipeline.

It’s a four step process that walks you through exactly how to automate most of your marketing so that even when you’re sleeping, you can have clients enrolling or busy applying to speak with you and then you can enroll them a lot more easily and predictably. Every single month you can have tens of clients or even more working with you at a very high level and paying you premium price to do that. That’s a much more attractive position to be in than posting on social media haphazardly. Maybe someone will take your baits, all that kind of stuff. When I mean predictable, here’s the thing. Our whole perfect client pipeline is built on the premise that we have to go out and pay to acquire clients.

What that means is you have to be … Two things. You have to have a process n place and second, you have to have the courage to be able to say, “Okay. Listen, I’m going to take a risk.” That’s essentially what this is. “I’m going to invest $500 into Facebook ads and we’re going to see what happens.” With our guidance, I mean it’s amazing what can happen. We actually just had one of our clients Dan post yesterday morning about … He just kind of did a little recap of the last couple months just so everyone else in the group, in our Health Business Accelerator group, have some context.

He’s like, “Hey, guys. Just want to give you some ideas here about what’s been happening in the last couple weeks.” He said that he had spent … I think he had an initial test of $500. He had no result. Like no profit from that, right? That can happen sometimes. Then he said the next round he spent $500. He made $1,500 profit. Then he had a next round of testing. Spent $500 again. He had another $1,500 in profit plus a number of new calls coming in that week. The profit potential there, the ROI, was four or five to one. The whole idea here is that he was saying, he’s like, “Guys, just follow the process, know your numbers, and keep practicing, right? Just keep at it.”

He was getting calls booked for $33 a call, which is phenomenal considering that people are jumping through a number of hoops before they can even book a call with him. $33 per call to jump into a program that is priced … I think it’s priced at about $1,997, $2,000 or so. When you have that type of process built out, it’s amazing what can happen. I tell our clients all the time like I will not even work with people in our Luminaries Mastermind, which is our mastermind where we help people go from six to seven figures, if they don’t have a predictable process in our business for attracting clients or customers.

Because if you don’t, here’s what the alternative is is you run a promotion machine, is every single day you’re running promotions. “Hey, buy this. Buy this. Buy this other person’s stuff. Buy this stuff.” It’s exhausting. It kills your list. It kills the goodwill you have with your audience, and it’s not a predictable model. It’s hope and pray. It’s shoot and spray. All these different terms you can use.

The biggest thing I want to leave you with with respect to this one lesson is if you don’t have a predictable, automated, when I say automated, I’d say the vast majority of that process is automated, so 90% of it is automated, so you have for instance Facebook ads or YouTube ads putting your message out in front of your ideal audience, and as a result, attracting them into the next step, which in our case is a webinar. Then from there, getting people to fill out an application and then jump on the phone with you. If you don’t have that built out, like you’re toast. I’m telling you. You’re struggling.

I tell people, “Listen, don’t even go in and don’t even waste time on social media. Don’t be on Instagram. Don’t do anything else until you have this built out.” Then people ask me, “Okay, Yuri. Well, I see you on Instagram. I see you’ve got a podcast. I see you’re doing stuff on YouTube. What’s going on? You’re not congruent with your message.” I have to remind them. I’m like, “Hey, guys. You have to have the sales process built out before anything else. I’ve built out the process two years ago. Okay?” Now I’ve got some more time to start spending on other things, right? I can spend more time on Instagram and do other things like that.

But if you don’t have a predictable sales process in your business, nothing else you are doing is worth your time. Nothing. I’m dead serious about this. Do not write another article. Don’t write another email. Do not get another phone call. Don’t do another interview. Don’t post another thing on social media until you have your perfect client pipeline built out. I’m dead serious about this. I’m very passionate about this because I’m sick and tired of seeing well-intentioned, amazingly passionate health experts, health and fitness experts, struggle because they don’t have this predictability in their business. It will cripple you.

Okay? Now if you want help with this specifically, this is our bread and butter. This is what we do every single day. This is how we’ve built our business, Healthpreneur, to more than seven figures in just over a year. This is exactly how we help our clients go from zero to hero or scaling what they already have. The beautiful thing about this is that it levels the playing field. You don’t have to have a following online. You don’t have to have all these accreditations. You just have to be able to produce a result for someone. If you want help with this, go through our training, healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

If it resonates with you, then book a call to speak with us. We’ll get you on the right path to move your business forward. If you want our help, we can talk about that as well. Okay? That’s a long-winded answer. It’s a long-winded points for number five.

 

Always add value, know it’ll be a challenge, and enjoy the ride

6. Always Add Value

The sixth lesson from my seven figure businesses is always be adding value. Always be adding value. This podcast is an example of adding value. Your Facebook ads should be valuable in and of themselves. If someone doesn’t click on the link in your ad, they should still be like, “That was a useful 30 seconds of my time.” Every touch point you have with an audience should be valuable.

The webinar people attend, the phone call they get on with you, everything should be about adding value before asking for anything in return. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling or what your model is. That is a commandment. That’s a big one.

7. Buckle Up And Enjoy The Ride

Number seven, the seventh lesson is buckle up, enjoy the ride, and never give up. I say buckle up because if you’ve ever been on a roller coaster, that’s essentially what business is like. If you’ve been in business for anymore anytime, you know what I mean. You’ve probably heard some great interviews on this podcast from people who’ve been around for a while. Other people that are a little bit more novice in their business.

I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt there’s not a single person I’ve ever met who had it easy, smooth sailing all the way through. That does not exist. The dilemma, the challenge in 2018 is that social media highlights the destination. It doesn’t highlight the journey. You have to be aware of that. When people are showing you the shiny cars and the private jets and how many clients they’ve enrolled or wherever they’re traveling, all this kind of stuff, they’re not showing you what went in to get that. I want to make a much more conscious effort, at least with respect to what I’m sharing on social, about what is involved in the process.

The hardships, the lessons learned, because it’s not always easy. There are times where you’re not going to sleep well. There are times where you’re going to require massive amounts of courage to continue moving forward. There are times where you’re going to have to say how much money am I willing to lose to make this work. If you’re not cut out for that, if you can’t stomach that, you probably should get a job working for somebody else. Because I will tell you, there is nothing more rewarding than building your own legacy, building your own empire, but that does not happen on the back of easy streets. It happens sadly through struggle.

I don’t want to make it sound like everything has to be hard and challenging and there’s suffering involved and everything because there doesn’t have to be. But I think if you’re not realistic about the fact that there are going to be times that are really going to challenge you, just like when you workout, you can give up or you can do a couple more reps. It’s the same thing in business. How you do anything is how you do everything. If you give up when the going gets tough, if you are not able to push through those limiting beliefs, if you don’t feel that you’re worth what it is you’re selling or what it is you’re charging, all these things are going to hold you back.

 

How being an entrepreneur changes you: Growth, contribution, freedom

I can tell you that the number one traits of successful entrepreneurs is courage. That’s really what it boils down to. What is courage? Courage is the ability to move through fear. That’s all it is. Fear never goes away. Life doesn’t get easier. Business doesn’t necessarily get easier. I mean relatively maybe it does. You just get better. As a result of getting better and being able to handle more and bigger things, subjectively things do get a bit easier. You can take on bigger problems, bigger challenges, and solve those for yourself, for your clients, for your business. That’s what this journey’s all about.

We kind of start on the kiddie roller coaster, right? The one that doesn’t require like heavy duty seat belts. Then as we get a little bit more seasoned, we’re like, “Okay. I can handle the bigger ones, right? I can handle the one with the loops, the one with the crazy drops,” and that’s pretty much how life is and that’s how business is. I can tell you firsthand from experience that it’s the most rewarding ride to be on other than being parents. Having your own business and pushing through the challenges. I’m going to add one more caveat.

Other than being parents, other than pursuing professional athletics because that in and of itself is incredible, building your own business and really transforming people’s lives, building a team in the process, is you will learn so much about yourself. You will grow so much in the process that you’ll connect with people 10 years down the road who are working in nine to five jobs, who you knew from high school or college, they will be the same people. They will look at you and be like, “You’re not the same person.” That’s a very good compliment because it’s all about growth. Entrepreneurs I believe really value growth, contribution, and freedom.

That’s what we’re all here to do. Those are the seven lessons from my 13 plus years building a few seven figure businesses in the health and fitness space. I hope you found them helpful.

Once again, listen, my goal is to help you not have to suffer. My goal is to help you move from suffering to success, from mediocre results to amazing results. Remember, when I say that, I’m not saying it’s not going to be easy, right? We’re still going to get on the roller coaster, but the difference is that we’re going to go on the roller coaster together. I’m going to walk you through that. I’m going to run you through that.

We’re going to go through the ups and downs together. Having that really makes a big difference. I’ve had numerous coaches and supports over my life. It’s probably the only reason that I’m here even sharing this with you. If you think you can do it on your own, it’s not going to happen because I did that and it didn’t happen. I know a lot of people who didn’t really do it on their own. There’s very few people. If you’ve listened to any of the interviews in this podcast, a lot of them have said, “I wish I had found a mentor or a coach and I wish I had found them sooner.” Bar none. Like every single person that I know who’s successful will say the same thing.

That’s why I invest continually every single year anywhere between $50 to $150,000 in my own growth and development, coaching programs, masterminds, all sorts of stuff. I really, really encourage you to do the same because this is your business, right? This is your life. This is your legacy. It’s not a hobby. If it’s a hobby, why even bother, right? Why even go through this if it’s a hobby? Go in. Jump in the pool or don’t go to the pool at all, right? Don’t stand on the first step. Dive in. Don’t even play. That’s the way it is. It’s black or it’s white. There’s no room in this world, there’s no room in this competitive marketplace for dabblers.

You have to commit to mastering. You have to commit to mastering what you do, how you help your clients, your ability to influence people, your ability to sell, to market, all that good stuff, right? You have to be able to put in the time and effort to make that a reality.

I could talk about this forever obviously, but I will leave it at that.

Again if you want our help in helping you move your business forward, then start off by going through our free training over at healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

In the meantime, thank you so much for joining me. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our next episode.

Transcription

We’re talking with Lance Roll today, who is maybe arguably the godfather of bone broth. Bone Broth is all over the place nowadays. You see them in powders and you can buy them from supplement store. But where did it all start? Well, this gentleman, this chef, Lance Roll, is going to walk us through how he really started this whole movement, more or less in the bone broth space.

What’s nice is that he hasn’t deviated from his initial plan. His core values are staying true to his roots of producing an amazing high quality product without compromise anywhere. Is still true to this day as it was when he started more than a decade ago.

I’m excited to have him on the show because he’s doing some amazing things. If you have a following and you’re always looking for something cool to the let your list know about, something you’re not going to do yourself, you can let your people know what Lance is up to.  It’s pretty awesome stuff. He’ll tell us a little bit about that in this interview.

I’m not going to do a huge spill about Lance. He’s a pretty amazing person, as you’ll discover in this episode.

Without any further ado, he’ll actually give us a good rundown of his bio. So I’ll just kind of bring him right into the show if that’s okay with you. But again, if you want any of the links that we talk about or any of the references, head on over to the blog healthpreneurgroup.com/blog for the show notes and any of those links. Without any further ado, let’s welcome Chef Lance Roll onto the show.

 

Introducing Chef Lance, bone broth, and the seasonal aspect of his business

Lance, how are you my friend? Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

Lance Roll:                           It’s good to be here Yuri. I’m doing pretty well down here in Vista, California and things are going well. The summer is almost over. So that’s been a nice summer.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well does the end of summer mean in California? I mean, isn’t it summertime all year round for you guys?

Lance Roll:                           Sort of, yeah. I mean, the fall definitely, the temperatures here in Southern California, we get our hot spell. So end of summer means it will cool down and pretty close to the coast here, we get pretty moderate temperatures so it’s not really that bad but we complain anyway.

For me and my company, the Bone Broth company it means fall is coming. And it means that bone broth season is coming back in. So it’s a little bit seasonal work we’re going through and so that’s kind of the exciting part for me. And school returns so you get kind of a little back to normalcy in terms of having your son in school or whatnot. So the kids are at school and you get a little more time and you’re just always at home trying to figure out what to do, especially when you’re entrepreneur.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, you brought up initially a point of bone broth being seasonal. I think I can relate. I mean, most people drink warm soup when it’s colder outside, right?

Lance Roll:                           Sure.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So that would make sense that more people buy in the fall. What did you see historically in your business with the sales from season to season with bone broth?

Lance Roll:                           Yeah, for sure. The season’s definitely bring on sales because mostly … Our business is both online at BoneBroth.com and it’s in retailers here in Southern California for the most part and a few outside of Southern California.  We do see the summer season, I kind of like to say like this, “They probably sell more ice cream in the winter than we sell bone broth in the summer.”  Ice cream is just a thing that people eat all year round no matter what the season. People don’t want to drink warm bone broth so people can have bone broth smoothies. And we definitely see the trend over three years of keeping an eye on it, that the sales drop in the summer for sure.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I wonder if for a green juice companies, it’s probably the same thing in the winter. I would assume that their sales of fresh pressed green juice go down in the wintertime, at least up here in Toronto, where it’s like frigidly cold.

Lance Roll:                           Right. Of course, people just associate things with what’s going on in their bodies and what’s going on outside. So yeah, in Toronto we’d probably have a good bone broth company for … We had a buy the cup program up there somewhere. I’m sure they do really well. When it’s cold because people want to have that warm up feeling and they don’t necessarily want to have when it’s warm.

But one of the things with healthpreneurs and with us, we are trying to focus more on the people that need bone broth no matter what time of year it is. People need green drinks. I mean, you know for sure, the green drink advocate, that the green drinks are good every part of the year. I mean, your body doesn’t ever stop being your body so you need to take care of it either way.

 

What sets The Brothery apart

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. So let’s talk about bone broth as a business because a lot of people are not running bone broth type of businesses. And you guys are doing an exceptional job and you’ve done so for so long, about ensuring quality, is at a premium. You’re not cutting corners. It’s not like you’re weight labeling a capsule and sending it in a bottle to people. This is like an actual food. What do people have to know about what goes into running this type of business?

Lance Roll:                           Well, yeah. This has like definitely been a labor of love, as we like to say, because the commodity market itself is a very low margin. So in terms of selling food in the stores and online, there are some challenges shipping frozen bone broth around the country, which we’ve been doing since 2013. So we’ve had to face some of those, but the business itself. Yeah, it’s a labor of love. It’s more of, we’re crafting our mission to help heal the planet one GI tract at a time. We’re associating with a lot of doctors and trying to reach people that need our product at this point.

After three years in the business, we’ve seen some things come and go. We do have, like you said that capsule, white label capsule pill is now out there with the different products. So the whole industry, in terms of the liquid bone broth, liquid gold as Dr. Kellyann likes to call it, is challenging right now because people are confused. We have a whole group of Healthpreneurs out there that are selling food as medicine and most of them are selling nothing … They’re not selling any food. They’re telling you to eat food, but they’re telling you, “Hey, don’t eat food, but drink my … Take my vitamin.”

And of course, nothing against supplements. Supplement industry is a multi billion dollar industry and people are doing really well with quality supplements. And of course, our bodies, at this point in time, need quality supplements. But we do claim food as medicine. So that’s our trick to the whole thing. That’s the way we roll over here. Again, we think about the beginning of the trend in 2013. Bone broth has been around for centuries and we have a lot of information on the internet. Now if you type in bone broth you’ll find tons of information about the benefits and the historical uses and all these different things.

And before that, there were no bone broths on the market in a sense. There were none commercially available. You couldn’t go to the store and buy bone broth unless you were in San Diego, where I was selling bone broth. And you couldn’t really even get an online up until then. And then between then and now, so quickly you’ve gotten pretty much a whole powder market out there. And interestingly enough, again, the powder people are very tricky. They’re just trying to sell their product. But they made the big jump from … You mentioned fresh pressed green juices versus a really well made, quality, dehydrated green juice, but I’m not sure that you would make the claim that they are the same thing, that they’re exactly the same.

In bone broth it’s the same thing. The bone broth powders are made in a certain way, high heat, high pressure. They’re heated to extremely high temperature to dry them. Imagine taking a gallon of green juice … And somebody told me recently that it’s about 10 gallons of liquid to make a one … Just big a powder reconstitutes to a gallon of the product. So it’s kind of interesting. But I mean, I don’t know much about the green juice industry. I feel like because they do a low temperature dehydration and they capsule the nutrients, it’s different than bone broth. Where the bone broth people are …

And the thing is, it’s interesting because if you ever tasted one you’d be like, “There’s no way it’s the same thing”. And there’s no way you could take the product I make, this traditional 24-hour simmer on the beef, 18-hour simmer on the chicken with vegetables and all kinds of beautiful traditional bone broth. Imagine this pot of soup on your grandmother’s stove and then translate that to the brothery.  I produce about 20, 24 gallons at a time. So I would be able to produce two gallons of powder out of that and it would take me weeks and weeks and weeks just to make enough to put it in a box to sell.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. How was-

Lance Roll:                           So …

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sorry.

Lance Roll:                           I just was going to say, I think all of the liquid bone broth companies are challenged right now. Because the assumption is made, “Hey, you can mix powder with water and have bone broth.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure.

Lance Roll:                           You might have some of the similar qualities, but it’s not bone broth.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s why we have you here. It’s to bring us the real deal.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah, the real deal is that-

 

Recommendations and the benefits of bone broth

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. How much bone broth does somebody needed to experience healing in the GI tract?

Lance Roll:                           This is definitely bio individual theory. I mean, you know everyone is created differently. So if someone comes to a doctor and they’re experiencing tremendous symptoms that indicate gastrointestinal problems, GI tract problems, the doctor, if they’re familiar with bone broth and using traditional healing methods may put them on a two or three day bone broth cleanse where they’re drinking nothing but bone broth for two or three days. And they’ve seen a lot of really tremendous results quickly.

And then, from then it’s a doctor telling a doctor, naturopath, the clinician, nutrition expert, acupuncture, Chinese medicine specialist, who is then telling somebody, “Yeah, you need two cups a day to really make an impact or a pouch a day.” Which, for us, is three cups.  Right now for me, feeling pretty good so I’m doing about a cup a day. There’s a lot of great principles, the collagen and gelatin and a lot of the amino acids are helping you repair your system, help detoxify your system. So that’s the way the bone broth is working.

So for someone like yourself, who’s super healthy and your family and you’re always optimizing your health. I’d say having a pot of bone broth on the stove and drinking a cup or so a day for each member of your family would be a great regimen to just keep optimal health, immune boosting and all that stuff. So it really depends. Nutritious we’ve worked with and people I’ve talked to, it’s a couple of months. We had one person a while back tell us that they started drinking our bone broth for leaky gut and it took about six weeks before they saw some real significant improvements in their gut lining.

So we like to say that bone broth heals and seals. That’s the magic of it. So imagine this liquid gelatin just kind of flowing through your system from top to bottom and just sort of doing its thing in your system.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s like a liquid band-aid.

Lance Roll:                           A liquid band-aid. I’ve never heard that one before. So that’s a good one.

Yuri Elkaim:                         There you go. You can use that if you like.

Lance Roll:                           I use liquid band-aid. It sounds good. The liquid band-aid. I like that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, you definitely inspired me to get back on the bone broth. Again, summertime here has been so hot and the only thing we want to drink is like ice pretty much.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s a simple visual, what you just said is have a pot of bone broth on the stove. Just have it sitting there and then just take from it on a daily basis. It’s almost like going to the well to get your daily water.

Lance Roll:                           Sure. And with you guys at home, it could be something simmering on the stove or it could be a simple slow cooker.  I can’t ship to Canada unfortunately, however, there’s a bunch of Canadian companies that have started and there’s companies all over the world that have started bone broth companies. So we’ve seen that as well in terms of an entrepreneurial journey from 15 to 18, there’s just every corner or butcher shop, seems like, in America, is making their own bone broth now.

So people got hip to it, “Hey, we’ve got these extra bones, we’re throwing them away. Let’s throw them in a pot, bring them to a simmer, throw them in a glass jar or a pouch and put them on the shelf.” So that’s happening. But again, you really got to be careful with the quality. If you’re going to make your own bone broth and any Healthpreneurs out there that are making their own bone broth, just be sure you’re using great quality water, like we use the Palomar spring water. We’re using great quality bone, certified organic or higher, your local butcher, however the case may be. It’s certified organic vegetables.

I won’t give a recipe because there’s tons of them on the Internet, but basically carrots, celery, onions that go in there and some people say whatever you want in there. Louise Hay used to say, “Just take whatever veggies you have, put them in there with your bones and simmer for 18 to 24 hours.” On the timing-wise too, I figured the main thing is this little low simmer that we get, and which is simmering for a while. I think 18 to 24 hours is plenty.

 

Filling in skill-gaps, scaling, and getting distracted

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. That’s great. So Lance, let’s talk about your journey. What have you learned as an entrepreneur having this business? What are some lessons you can share with our listeners about your journey, about being an entrepreneur?

Lance Roll:                           I would say my biggest lesson right now has been determining in the beginning what your gifts are, what your talents are, where you want to focus and then being sure that you fill in around you the people that you need to help run your business, that fill in those skill gaps. So if I could do anything … Again, for me, I’ll be honest with everyone, I would not be the CEO. I like to be the chef. I like to talk on podcasts. I’m really good with people. I like to make recipes and cook.

So I’ve sort of been missing that lately. And a good CEO to sort take care of things. And the way you get organized in the beginning is really important, I would say the journey as well. If you’re going to be able to grow a business at a point that you could have investors, I would be sure that you vet everyone really carefully in the beginning. And I’ve heard this story over and over and over again. I just talked to someone about a couple restaurants they opened and this guy had, I won’t mention the name, but he had super powerful internet presence, super powerful presence in general, got a partner who claimed this, that and the other thing. They opened up two restaurants and I asked him, “Hey, how’s it going in the restaurants?”

And he said, “Hey, the restaurant is closed. We were losing X amount of money a month. We predicted to spend this much to open the restaurant, it costs double. And then we opened the second restaurant.” So again, he kind of … basically at the end of the conversation, he said, “Basically I picked the wrong partner” This is a super smart guy too who’s really vetted and everything. So I’d say, as entrepreneur, that would be a really key choice. Figure out exactly who you want to be and what you want to do.

And if you want to scale and grow and build scale and sell, then just make sure that’s your model and you stay true to that model. If you want to stay local and you can create a nice lifestyle and living for yourself and that’s what you like to do, then that’s a place you could go to as well.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I think that’s a really good advice because there’s nothing wrong with either one. There’s nothing wrong with being on paper a smaller company revenue-wise, but maybe you have a great connection with the local people around the area and you have a very fulfilling business and it’s giving you the cashflow that you need. Because I think a lot of times, especially in this day and age, where everyone sees the shiny objects, the fancy cars, the money. That’s what you think business is about. And I don’t think that’s right for everyone.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah, absolutely. And that’s, again, a place where I’m at right now. When you get to this level, you’ll get to a certain level where you really need to make that clear decision. And if you’re going to make a clear decision to build, to scale and to eventually kind of sell, there’s plenty of VC money out there. There’s food companies in my industry that will take you on. But real important to get super clear on that and determine exactly where you’re going to be down the road. So that’s a really clear distinction you need to make as an entrepreneur.

 

Navigating the retail and online markets and targeting the right clients

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. What’s been a lesson that you’ve had to learn the hard way?

Lance Roll:                           Well, I’ve mentioned a few of them already kind if. I definitely feel like I chose partners that, even to their own admittance, it wasn’t probably the best partnership for me. I sold my catering business a little prematurely. That’s what I really love to do. So I made that mistake in a sense of like I’m longing to go back and be a chef again. So that’s something we’re working on right now, to figure this out. But that would be a couple of key areas. I think it’s really important to … One key mistake we made, I was so wound up … And what happened in that, Yuri, was I was a little distracted between the two businesses, you know?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Lance Roll:                           And I did see the shiny object of the bone broth company and not having to work as hard and essentially being more of like what I’ve been doing the last couple of years, CEO and podcasting and try to create recipes and different things like that, versus being in the kitchen. Hindsight’s 20/20. So you just got to make sure that that’s your clear vision for you and your family.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, and that’s just very true. Because it’s tough …

Lance Roll:                           It’s tough to go back.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. If you’ve got attention … There’s a saying that goes, something along the lines of like where energy goes, attention flows. Or where attention goes, energy flows and results show. And I’ve noticed this too because we’ve got two companies. Now, when I stepped away from my first one for the most part, I started to see what was happening, even though nothing else was really changed. Other than energetically, my focus was not there anymore. So I can definitely relate to that, that it’s tough to juggle and just like the power of focus is so important.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah. And again, we made this decision in the beginning and we had to run the company for a while, while I was taking on the broth company, to bring it to a place where we could … Because, again, it was one of the things I developed over nine years. So I had a lot of my heart into it and the bone broth company was a newer company. So again, so we ended up moving that off and it’s still in existence. It’s doing great. So that’s good thing.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. So talk to us a little bit about the business model. How do you get the word about … BoneBroth.com, by the way, is like, what a URL. So how do you get people to buy your stuff?

Lance Roll:                           Again, right now we are … We have BoneBroth.com and we’re selling through that website. We did, again, with the partners we had chosen … So they were really focused on retail. And so the bone broth, right now I would say we’re doing emails to our list and we’re trying to reach doctors right now. Basically, like I said, we’re fighting the bone broth in the retail is really not working as good as we’d like because of the amount of competition. For instance one of the companies is bought by, one of the broth companies. One company created broth, added their other products and they’re owned by General Mills.

So it’s hard to compete with some of the companies. Most of the major retailers have come out with their own white label boxed bone broth and even the big producer of the boxes of bone broth, a company was bought by Campbell’s. So there’s such huge markets and the marketing behind their products is so huge that you can’t … People come in all the time, they’re like, “Oh I got my broth over at Sprouts. Which one did you get?” “Oh, I got the Sprouts brand for 2.99 a box.” Oh, that’s great. But you’re not drinking bone broth.

You’re drinking something that was made into a brick of paste. Picture a big giant black brick or brown brick of paste and then it’s reconstituted with water in a plant, brought to 275, 295 degrees to sterilize it and then it’s done inside the box itself, which is like with plastic, polyethylene and aluminum. And it’s shelf stable for two years.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sounds good.

Lance Roll:                           Here I make this fresh, beautiful bone broth and they’re standing at the store going, “This is the same thing.” That’s what the marketing’s doing. So it’s been a little bit of a rough ride at this point.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. That’s why it’s so good to have you on the podcast. In fact, you’re doing other podcasts as well because not everyone is going to know about the difference between bone broth. But I think the people who get it, get it and they will seek out the best option, which yours would definitely be one of them.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah, for sure.

Yuri Elkaim:                         We’re definitely happy to have you on the show. If you’re listening to this, go to BoneBroth.com and order some. It’s friggin amazing as you can tell, it’s the real deal. There’s no cutting corners and that’s why it’s just so great to be able to showcase an artisanal business. This really is like the local French bakery with the freshly made bread type of … But that’s kind of what this is and I think it’s great to be able to support that.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah. But wonder bread’s made of the same ingredients, Yuri.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I know.

Lance Roll:                           I was going to sequel on that note to just to kind of finish up a little bit. Oh I’m sorry, I-

Yuri Elkaim:                         The brick?

Lance Roll:                           The brick, yeah. The brick, the broth. That’s why, again, we’re targeting. So our strategy is moving to targeting, really laser targeting on the doctors. Because we have 30 plus testimonies on our page. Most of them are from doctors, some huge doctors. Dr. Tom O’Bryan is one of them. And we’ve got a bunch of other doctors online right now to start coming online. We’ve had our broth tested for other things and we’re finding that we’re very clean because of our Palomar water.

So our focus right now, for the rest of this year is to get our product in front of the people that really need our product and will know the difference. So we don’t have to sell millions of units of bone broth. We only have to sell a couple thousand units of bone broth and to reach those people should be easy enough. So that’s our target. That’s our entrepreneurial tip, like really just trying to laser focus who is our audience. Defining who those are then figuring out ways to get to those people, because then we’re not in the competition. We’re not in the mileage of a giant stadium of people that are just broadbrushing the whole thing.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri Elkaim:                         I totally get that. Awesome, Lance. This has been awesomely insightful. Are you ready for the rapid five? The five rapid questions?

Lance Roll:                           Sure.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, my friend. So whatever comes your first answer is probably right answer. So number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Lance Roll:                           Organization.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Number two, what is your biggest strength?

Lance Roll:                           Doing live podcasts.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Lance Roll:                           Dangerously good at. Demos and making really good bone broth.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Very cool. Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Lance Roll:                           I drink 32 ounces of beautiful warm lemon water with a little salt in it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. That’s a very common answer we’ve had on the show. It’s good.

Lance Roll:                           Yeah. I do kundalini right after that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Oh sweet. There you go. And finally, complete this sentence. I know I’m being successful when …

Lance Roll:                           When people come up to me and say, “Your broth has helped my grandmother heal from this.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. That’s great. Lance-

Lance Roll:                           Or helped me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. That’s tremendous.  Such a simple solution that you guys are making more accessible in a great clean, high quality way. Lance, thank you so much for joining us on the show and sharing your wisdom, your journey, telling us more about the benefits of bone broth, what to look for and what to look for. And guys, if you’re interested, not even if you’re interested. I’m going to make a very strong suggestion, is go to BoneBroth.com and friggin order some. Aside from that Lance, is there anywhere else that people can follow you online?

Lance Roll:                           Oh, yeah. We’re @TheFlavorChef on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. So @TheFlavorChef. And that’s where they can follow us and that’s where we’re at.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Beautiful. Awesome. Lance, once again, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Hope you guys have enjoyed this one.

Lance Roll:                           Take care.

 

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Yuri’s Take

So one of the things I admire about Lance was his honesty. He was very candid about some of the stuff he’s gone through and that’s the whole point of this podcast, guys. It’s not about showing all the glitz and glam. There are times where shit hits the fan and things don’t go as you want them to. I’m really grateful that we have guests like Lance, who were willing to open up and share that, listen, it’s not all that great all the time. There are times where things are tough and I thought they’re going to work out better and they didn’t. But you know what? You just keep moving forward.

So I want to really acknowledge Lance for being able to share that and I hope he gave you a sense of realism of what goes into building a successful business online. And what is success? It doesn’t have to be a hundred million dollar company. For Lance, he’s extremely happy creating amazing, high quality product that that doesn’t compromise on what they’re set out to do. For him, and obviously there’s probably a couple nuances within the business that he would like to see a little bit more built out, but it just reminds us that success is different for everyone.

And I think success and fulfillments, they’re not necessarily the same. I mean, you can have success without being fulfilled, but I really do think that it’s a nice blend when you can have that sense of fulfillments. And I think when you feel fulfilled, success is kind of a byproduct of that. And I think that’s kind of what I got, or hopefully you got from this interview with Lance as well. Again, if you’d like to learn more about what he’s up to, you can check out his website. It’s really, really great stuff. And one of the final parting messages I want to leave with you is whatever it is you’re setting out to do, whether it’s coaching clients, creating a product, is have very strong values.

Really kind of put that foot in the sand and say, “This is what I stand for. This is what I stand against.” And share that, be vocal about that because that’s a hundred and attract and polarize people. You’re going to repel the wrong people from you and you’re going to attract the right people to you simply because you’re sharing your Kool-Aid. You want people to drink the Kool-Aid because you want people on the boat, who’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid or getting behind you and that’s how you build the tribe of ravenous followers and loving clients and that’s what it’s all about.

If you continue to put out the me-too stuff that everyone else is doing, how to lose 20 pounds in 30 days, top 10 ways to use coconut oil. Who cares? Nobody cares about that stuff. There are millions of pages of content already around that. Be different. Be you. Take a stance. Share your points of view. Talk about what you believe more than what you know. I guarantee that will make a big difference in how people respond to you.

So that’s my lesson for you today. Again, if you’re serious about taking your business to beyond six figures, we’re talking about coaching clients, not in a one-on-one scenario, but really coaching clients that are deep level.

If you’re a health expert, coach, practitioner and you want to take your business, whether it’s starting or scaling into the next level, you got to check out the training. Seven Figure Health Business Blueprint.

Head on over to healthpreneurgroup.com/training. 75 minutes and that will open your eyes, that will expand your horizons and show you what is possible a lot more quickly than a lot of other business models out there.

And if you truly want to build a life built around your passion and truly serve people at deep level, I’ve not seen a better way to do so then what assures you in this free online training. So check it out today. It is awesome.

Once again, I want to thank you for joining me. If you’re new to the podcast, remember to subscribe if you haven’t already. We have tons of amazing episodes and great interviews coming your way, so you don’t want to miss anything. So that’s all for me today. Thank you so much for taking the time for joining me. I’m Yuri Elkaim, signing off.

Continue to be great and do great and I’ll see you at our solo rounds on Monday.

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