Transcription

Hey, Yuri here, welcome back to the show, hope you’re doing great. Today I’ve got another treat for you.  We’ve got a great guest on today’s show, her name is Emily Lark and she is the creator and owner of Back To Life, the complete healthy back system, which is an amazing information product which we’re going to talk about in just a second.

She’s also the owner of a yoga studio and we’re going to be talking about how she had the courage, really to venture into starting her own business a number of years ago, in spite of all the fear that she was facing and feeling in her gut. You know that feeling of, “Oh my God, can I do this?” We’re going to talk about that and how she went through that. We’re also going to talk about how she sold over 120,000 copies of her Back To Life system, which is an online program that she has absolutely just crushed over the past year and a half.

It’s an inspiring story, Emily is an awesome person, I think you’ll really, really enjoy this one. So without any further ado, let’s welcome Emily Lark on to the show. Emily, what is up? Welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast.

Emily Lark:                          Yuri, thank you so much for having me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yes, you are welcome and again, just really stoked to have you on the show because we connected a little while ago and I’ve heard some really great things about what you’re up to, I guess specifically online because that’s kind of the space we’re in, but you also have a physical private studio.

 

Emily’s journey from brick and mortar to online and her program

Before we jump into the direction we want to take this conversation, which I think a lot of our listeners can relate to, which is walking through fear, self-doubt, all that kind of stuff, talk to us about what it’s been like, or that journey of brick and mortar to online. First of all, why? Then more like how did you start? How did you make that first step into coming online?

Emily Lark:                          Oh thanks, yeah that has been a huge transition for me. I opened my yoga studio about four and a half years ago and really spent every day there working with clients one on one, teaching classes. I didn’t have any experience in marketing, or certainly no experience in online marketing, I’d never built a website before, or written sales copy.

So the studio was just a very organic process, it grew through word of mouth so I was able to be pretty lazy with my marketing actually. Then I branched into the online world for two reasons. The first is I knew I had a program.  My program is called Back To Life and it helps people with back pain.  It’s exercises for back pain and for a lot of years, my in-person clients had been asking me to make videos for them, or for them to share with their families so that was always something in the back of my mind.

Then a couple of years ago, I found myself going through a divorce.  I have two small boys, and my studio while it does well, it was kind of a part time thing. I was very much a stay at home mom with my kids. So I needed something more in order to be able to support them as a single mom. So that was kind of the push I needed.

I had been wanting to do this for a while but sometimes you don’t do it until you really have to. So that’s what caused me to launch into the online space and really everything has shifted since then. Now I put almost all of my focus on marketing.  I spend all day sitting in front of a computer rather than up and out with other human beings, so it’s been a big shift in my daily life and also in my professional focus, for sure.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So when you were venturing online, what did that look like? Were you in front of your computer and you’re typing in, “How to start an online business?” What was that initial search? What did the thinking look like for you?

Emily Lark:                          Yeah that’s a really good question. At first I was looking at sites.  I initially wanted to have a yoga membership site where people could pay monthly and take yoga classes, but then I started studying marketing and listening to marketing podcasts and reading about online marketing and I realized that for someone like me, who didn’t really have a brand or a following, that would be pretty tricky to get people to sign up for a membership when they don’t even know who I am and had never bought from me. So that’s when I was introduced to ClickBank, who is my merchant service. When I went on ClickBank and started looking at a lot of the products on ClickBank and studying those products, that was really what guided and shaped how I developed my first product.

 

Learning how to write copy and market

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. So you’ve sold 120,000 copies? Or you’ve impacted 120,000 customers in pretty much your first year, which is amazing.

Emily Lark:                          Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         How did you do that?

Emily Lark:                          A lot of luck. No, I think I was very fortunate. I spent a lot of time working a lot of hours including a lot of nights and weekends.

I made the transition from focusing on my practice and my program and I transitioned into focusing really heavily on marketing. That is what made the difference for my program because I launched it and obviously as you know with affiliates, or with media buyers, it has to hit certain numbers in order for it to go out and to have the opportunity to spread. The key to the success of the program working, was the heavy attention to marketing I had been doing.

Once it did start working, I came into this industry and I didn’t know anybody, so I started flying out to events like Affiliate Summit West, and the Traffic and Conversion Summit, and just started networking as much as I could and met a couple of people at those events who really felt sorry for me and could see how hard it was being that new girl in the room who has no data behind them and no experience and no connections and a couple of people said, “I remember what it was like to be in your shoes so I’ll help you test, I’ll email your product out to my list.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         Don’t you just love the health space? There’s so many good guys and girls in this space, be it on the affiliate marketing side or whatever other side, it’s just such a great collaborative space, it really, really is.

Emily Lark:                          You’re so right and that is what has been the most surprising to me about this. I thought especially in online health and wellness that I’d be very disconnected, but I have met the most generous, heartfelt people and really some of the best friends that I’ve ever had now have come from this space.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. So for everyone listening, here’s a message again about getting off your butt, getting to live events, just like actually hanging out with other humans and it’s the same message I keep saying, if you want to grow your online business, spend more time offline. That’s a huge revelation that I had in 2010, because I spent the first few years struggling my butt off, trying to figure this thing out on my own.

In 2010, I did exactly what you did, I started going out to events, met who I needed to meet and everything started from there. Yeah, so many people have said that. Two things, I wish I hired a coach sooner and get to live events.

Emily Lark:                          Yes it’s so true.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah and then obviously you mentioned really studying and improving the mastery of marketing. Just so everyone knows, we’re talking about an information product with an upsell flow, so I’m assuming for you a lot of it was developing the skills of copywriting and that kind of stuff?

Emily Lark:                          Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         What did that look for you in terms of what were the things you were doing on a daily basis to really own your craft?

Emily Lark:                          I spent a lot of time reading other sales copy and I even would watch VSLs, long Video Sales Letters, I would watch them and I would type them out and after watching them so many times and typing them out, I realized that so many of them followed what I thought of in my mind as an equation and a pattern. So I actually have an old picture where I typed out three or four VSLs and I laid them all across my living room floor page by page next to each other and I went through and I highlighted them, looking for every time they said something positive, every time they threw out a hook, looking for when they first mentioned the product and I found a real pattern there.

Then from there, I started crafting my own sales copy and bringing my own story into it while trying to hit those same markers of the timing and the expression of it, so that was the biggest thing that I did. It took months, it took hours a day for months to figure that out.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s so funny because … a lot of the clients that we help are more on the coaching side than the info side although we do have a lot of info clients as well, but it’s amazing that whether you’re coaching clients one on one or in a group setting and copy’s not as heavy as if you’re selling a product, copy is still really, really important because it’s really about just connecting a message in the right way with the right audience.

When I look at the people that I know in our space who’ve struggled for years, I’m thinking guys you probably know like Bruce or Andrew, these are guys that just did exactly what you did. They studied the heck out of what was working, they figured out the recipe and they just tested a bunch of stuff and it’s amazing what can happen when you crack that code because it doesn’t matter what space you go into or what happens in your life, this is a skillset that is going to really feed you in more ways than one forever. It’s so valuable to be able to put words on paper on a screen, or on video, and be able to influence people in a positive manner.

Emily Lark:                          You’re absolutely right. I think for me anyway, it didn’t feel intuitive at first. I first wrote a VSL and wrote a sales page that just was the way I thought it should be written and then I realized very quickly it was not going to get me anywhere, and if I wanted to do this right, I had to study what was working. Now, I’m about a year and a half in and I’m just now starting to branch out a little bit away from that, but of course I’ve got that foundation that I always work from, so it’s an interesting process.

 

How fear can be leveraged into a good thing that drives progress

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. Let’s shift gears a little bit because a lot of people that get into business for themselves or transition from offline to online or whatever the transition might be, come up against fear. I think it’s the same for the clients that we serve. If you’re helping somebody lose weight or get into better shape, there’s some type of fear of the unknown, “I’ve never done this before, am I going to be sore? Is this going to work out?” What was your experience? What were some of the blocks that you had internally as you were making this new path for yourself?

Emily Lark:                          This is honestly my favorite thing to talk about because I feel like fear has been the number one reason why I’ve been successful. Not so much the fear itself, but the way I shifted how I react to fear because for many years. I think I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit and I would have ideas of things I wanted to do and I’d get about half way into it and then all of a sudden the fear would come in a tidal wave and I would listen to it, I would feel the fear and the self-doubt and to me at the time, it felt like that was my gut trying to tell me I was making a mistake.

So I would rationalize that and say, “Oh yes, this is not the right choice for x, y or z reasons and so I’m not going to do this anymore.” So it was really about four years ago when I opened my yoga studio, in my heart it just felt like the right thing to do. I knew I wanted to do it but I also knew that that fear was probably going to come and take me down about half way through the process. So I made a promise to myself that no matter what, I was going to give myself just one year and I was going to do this full-force, as hard as I could for one year, no matter how scared I got and if at the end of that one year it wasn’t working, then I could give myself that out but I wasn’t going to do it until I’d gone through it for year.

So sure enough, as I started to open the studio, it took several months just laying the groundwork and getting it ready to open and I have never been more scared in my life. My body felt like it was being electrocuted every second of every day and fear can be sneaky too, because sometimes it feels scary, sometimes it can feel like boredom, you know? It can come in the form of disinterest-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Emily Lark:                           I think it can disguise itself in many ways. So I went through that process and I’d made myself that promise that I was going to go through it and as soon as I actually got to the grand opening of the studio, that week was like the clouds parted, the fear was gone and I realized that it had all been worth it and that was a huge transformational experience for me because I had never really walked through the fear in such an intense way and come out the other end.

Once I had gone through that experience, I realized that my fear was not telling me I shouldn’t do something, it was telling me I should and that I was doing something bigger than what I would normally do and I was doing something that was pushing me to grow and so that’s why it was scary. So I really fell in love with the emotion of fear and so when it came to starting my online business, I knew I was going to go through that same process again and I did and I think it was even 10 time worse because this business was even harder to launch into, but every time I started feeling that fear I would tell myself, “Don’t back away, run towards it.” It’s not a pleasant feeling at all, I’m not meaning to make it sound like it’s an enjoyable experience, it’s absolutely brutal but changing my mindset to move toward the fear has changed my life, it has changed everything in my life.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s amazing. What specifically were you fearful about when you were opening the yoga studio and was that the same fear when you were starting your online business?

Emily Lark:                          I think so. I think it is multi-layered. The first fear was financial, it takes a lot of financial investment to start a business and you don’t know if you’re going to get a return on that investment so there’s a lot of fear and even guilt involved on spending the money on something that I didn’t know if it was going to work. There was a lot of fear … I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and other people’s opinions of me matter probably more than they should, so there’s this huge fear of putting yourself out there very publicly and then not having it work.

Although one thing I tend to do with that, when I’m planning something big, or starting a business, or starting a new project, I tend to keep it to myself until I’m ready to launch it because that fear of other people’s reactions, or of looking like a failure in front of other people, can be pretty crippling. So I tend to keep those things more private but there’s so many new things that you have to encounter when you’re starting a new business too, so many new systems you have to learn, things you need to get familiar with and just every single time when something new would hit, “Oh, how am I going to hire a video production crew to come film my team?” Or, “Oh, what kind of IT guy do I need to use to build my site?” All of those things made me feel like a big idiot in the beginning because I didn’t know what I was doing, so there was the fear of that, just the fear of feeling stupid.

Yuri Elkaim:                         True.

Emily Lark:                          Not knowing what I was doing.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I can definitely relate to that. I think the strongest fear that I’ve felt with respect to looking like an idiot in front of other people was our first big event and I was like, “What if nobody shows up?”

Emily Lark:                          Oh my gosh, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That is a crippling fear and it is the worst feeling because as you said what other people think of us, unfortunately we hold in such high esteem, maybe now more than ever because of social media and stuff, but I think to be able to push through that and for anyone listening, it could be whatever it is for them, whether it’s enrolling clients or selling a product, or their own physical studio, because you have two choices I guess. You have the choice of staying where you are and not doing anything, or you have the choice of moving through that fear and just having faith that things are going to work out. What was it like for you? So as you’re feeling that feeling, what is the mental dialogue, maybe on the negative side, but what are some of the limiting discussions happening from that little guy in your head and how did you, or how do you, combat that with more positive internal dialogue, to keep you moving forward?

 

Combating the doubtful voice in the mind

Emily Lark:                          I think I had a lot of thoughts of … For me, I always felt like owning a business was something that other people could do and not me. So I would have a lot of thought of, “You’re a fraud.” Or, “You’re a wannabe.” Or, “This is not something that you’re equipped to do.” As far as combating those thoughts, honestly, I think I’m still figuring out how to do that, to tell you the truth. I haven’t figured out how to make those thoughts go away, I’ve just figured out how to let them be there and keep moving forward anyway, but they’re still there, even with the success that I’ve had in the last year, I constantly feel like I’m not good enough, I constantly feel like the next thing I do is going to be a huge failure and I would love to figure out how to make those thoughts go away. I haven’t figured that out yet, I just try to let them be there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I don’t know if they ever do go away because I think one of the things that’s worked for me is I’ve just really developed this unwavering belief that everything is happening for me and with that belief, and it’s such a strong belief that no matter how bad or good things get, everything is happening for me. Whether it’s not hitting a specific goal or things not working out, it’s like, “Okay, cool, that was meant to be for whatever reason, let’s keep moving forward.” I think for me personally, it’s just having that belief, or that faith I guess, in a higher power or the universe, however you want to think of it, or yourself, to be like, “Yeah, this is working, this failure or this not so good thing is moving me one step closer to the ultimate thing.” So that’s worked for me.

Emily Lark:                          I couldn’t agree with you more and that is actually one of my mantras that I try to say to myself over and over again, especially when things are going bad. I say to myself, “This is a gift, this is a gift.” And then I say, “Thank you,” in my head. Looking back of course, we can see that all of those failures, everything that didn’t work out has led, at least for me, and it sounds like for you, to something so much greater and so much better. So I try to remind myself of that when I’m in it, rather than just looking back in hindsight.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, and I think it’s probably even more paralyzing for perfectionists and we see this a lot of times, we see this so often, it’s like, “Okay, why don’t you have this thing deployed yet?” Well, it’s not perfect yet, or … it ultimately comes down to the feeling of them not being good enough because I think perfectionism’s like, “If it’s not perfect it’s because I don’t think people are going to think it’s good enough,” which is really a reflection of the fact that I don’t think I’m good enough. What was it for you that … even with the product? Because a product is never perfect, it can always be a little better, like with any product out there, for you, what was the point where you said, “This is good enough, it’s fine, it’s going to support people.” What did that dialogue look like for you?

Emily Lark:                          I think for me, really I had to have deadlines that I set for myself. It has always helped me to … like for with the studio, I interviewed with a bunch of newspapers, had a bunch of articles come out with the grand opening date so I knew it was going to open on that date whether it was ready or not. Or for the product, I had deadlines with my videographer. I had rented the space, I had booked the film crew, so I knew ready or not, I was going to be there filming that day. That is one thing that helps me a lot is having those deadlines. When I don’t have a way to set firm deadlines that involve other people and being accountable to other people, that’s when I still do really struggle with going back and forth about things and taking longer than I should to launch something.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s important. Just talking about accountability, what are your thoughts on having a coach, or having a mentor, or having that type of professional accountability?

Emily Lark:                          I love it. In the beginning when I was first getting started, I didn’t have that and those were the hardest days for me, was just sitting by myself and not having anybody that I could talk to or get feedback from and that was brutal. Now I feel like I have so many mentors in this space because I’m working with a lot of people now and I’m friends with a lot of people who’ve been doing this a lot longer than I have and that has taken this process from feeling really lonely and scary and hard to just feeling more supported. I definitely, I get so much more done, I’m more inspired, it’s less grueling, it makes a huge difference.

 

Belief-shattering moments and persistence

Yuri Elkaim:                         I want to talk about belief for a second. Was there a point where you believed that “Can this really work?” Was there a point for you where you had your belief system shattered? Let me give that a context. Two mutual friends of ours, I’m not going to mention their names to keep them anonymous, we’re at a Mastermind, one of the guys leaned back in his chair, saw the other guys computer and saw his ClickBank stats and that blew his mind. He was like, “This is actually possible?” That changed everything in the way he went about his business and his belief system. Was there a moment for you where you said, “Okay, wow, what I thought was possible is a fraction of what really is possible, let’s keep doing this and let’s just keep going harder?”

Emily Lark:                          Yes. Really I feel like the past year I have been flooded by moments like that. It has been like an avalanche of belief shattering moments for me. The first one happened when one of the very first people who were testing my offer, they had mailed that day and of course I was terrified, I thought it was going to bomb, and I was out at Costco that morning with my son, my three year old was in the shopping cart, and all of a sudden on my phone, ClickBank send email notifications every time a sale comes through and so I start getting all of these notifications of sales coming through on my phone and then all of a sudden I get a Skype message on my phone from a man who was in the UK actually, who had mailed for me. He starts saying, “This product is doing better than a lot of the big dog offers that I mail for, congratulations.” And it just knocked my socks off because I thought I was still in the testing phases, I didn’t think I had a success in me yet, I thought I was just testing things.

So that was a crazy moment, to be there in my Costco world with my kid and then all of a sudden realizing that a door had just opened up that I never thought would open ever but let alone that fast. Following that has just been … I think for me, the sales obviously were a big exciting thing, to see what numbers I was hitting but the most exciting thing for me has really been the connections I’ve been making with people, especially people in this industry that I had really idolized. So those have been a lot of big belief shattering moments too, where there would be somebody that seemed so untouchable and then all of a sudden I would find myself vacationing with them, or going to visit them or having dinner with them. Those have been big moments for me as well.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. I think those moments keep happening over and over again. Even at this point in my journey in our health and fitness business, we’ve been testing, I don’t know half a dozen offers, with cold traffic and it was like, “All right, this one’s going to be the best one yet, it’s going to be killer.” And it’s like, nothing, “Shit, holy cow.” And then we’re like, “All right, hey how about this one that we’ve had going somewhere else for a while? Let’s test this.” And all of a sudden, it’s like, “Holy cow, let’s scale this as fast as possible while the getting is good because this is unbelievable.” I think the message for you guys listening is you just have to keep going and there’s going to be moments that unfold over the journey that, even when you don’t think things are going to work out, you know what? You never know, just keep going, keep testing different things and I think the only time we fail is when we give up.

I think that’s the big difference between those like yourself who get the success, whatever success means to us, is that you just keep going, you keep moving through that fear, you keep seeing the journey unfold which is something you can’t enjoy if you stop. Persistence I think is, it sounds cliche and it’s over-used in entrepreneurial circles but it’s so important because if you just stop, you wouldn’t enjoy any of the stuff you’ve enjoyed.

Emily Lark:                          So true and I think too, getting used to realizing that maybe even the majority of the time you’re going to have failures and most of my time has been spent working on failures and then reworking them until they work. I feel like there’s almost a pattern where I’ll go through anywhere from three to six months of grinding at something that’s getting nowhere and then all of a sudden it hits and it works. Then you’re happy for like a day and then you’re back in the grind again.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. I think we have this mental disease as entrepreneurs where we have … I don’t know if it’s masochism or sadism, I always get those confused and being like you have to be realistic of the fact that the more you fail, the more you grow and the faster you can move forward and if you’re not okay with failure because you’re a perfectionist or whatever, you just have to listen like, the only reason I’m where I’m at, the only reason a lot of successful people are where they’re at is because they’ve just gotten okay with taking action and failing a lot and having those handful of successes along the way.

Emily Lark:                          Yeah, I think you’re right.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, because you just need one home run, you just need one home run and that’s it but you have to hit a lot of singles and you have to strike out a lot to get there.

Emily Lark:                          It’s so true and even with things like, we talk about things like social media, things like Facebook Lives or posts that people do, or even ads that we put out, so many of them don’t work and then you hit one that does and then it carries you, but you have to go through all of those trials and all of the ones that don’t work.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, absolutely, that’s great advice.   Emily, this has been really inspiring. Are you ready for the rapid five?

Emily Lark:                          Oh gosh.

Yuri Elkaim:                         If you think your journey in business has been fearful, just wait. No, it’s all good, it’s nothing to worry about. So five rapid fire questions, whatever comes top of mind is probably the right answer. So first one, what is your biggest weakness?

Emily Lark:                          Over thinking things.

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

Emily Lark:                          Persistence.

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

Emily Lark:                          Copywriting.

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

Emily Lark:                          The thing you’re not supposed to, I check my phone.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Do you sleep with your phone beside your bed?

Emily Lark:                          Yes I do.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I tell my wife, I’m like, “Why do you do this?” But to each their own, it’s all good. Five, complete the sentence, I know I’m being successful when …

Emily Lark:                          When I’m really scared.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool, that’s one we haven’t heard yet, that’s pretty cool, awesome. There we have it guys, Emily Lark, that was … thank you so much for joining us Emily. What is the best place for people to stalk you online and check out more about what you’re up to?

Emily Lark:                          Well they can always look for my Facebook page, I think it’s facebook/EmilyLarkOfficial or just under the name Emily Lark Healing In Motion. Or emilylark.com as well.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool, awesome, we’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. Emily, once again, thank you so much for joining us, it’s been an awesome conversation, feels like we’ve covered so much in 30 minutes, and guys, hopefully you’ve gotten a lot out of this episode, a lot out of this conversation and just the constant reminder that the journey is not easy but it’s totally worth it. So Emily, thank you so much for inspiring us and sharing your journey with us today.

Emily Lark:                          Yuri, it’s such an honor, thank you.

 

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Yuri’s Take

Wasn’t it awesome? Isn’t is amazing to see how regular people, like you and I, like Emily, can walk through fear. It’s like walking on fire, we all face it and just absolutely create some amazing things and amazing amounts of courage to walk through that fear and just make stuff happen because … Guys, I want you to really understand this. The people who succeed in selling 120,000 copies of your program and making tons of money, impacting a lot of people, these are not super heroes, these are not avengers like The Incredible Hulk. These are regular, everyday people, believe me I know a lot of them, a lot of them have obviously been on this show and I can tell you, time and time again, there is nothing that separates them from you or anybody else except for what’s happening between their ears.

This has been such an important realization for me that I’m building out a whole new platform that we’re going to be getting on to do a TED Talk with and a lot of other big things and it all has to do with courage because I really believe that persistence is important and getting mentorship and coaching is important, all that good stuff, but at the end of the day, you have to have courage and courage is being able to feel the fear and do it anyways. It’s being able to understand that making a commitment is one thing and crossing the bridge to the result that you want is required to get where you want to get to, but that bridge is called courage.

Too few people, whether it’s in business or in life as they want to get their health under control, are not willing to go through their fear and cross that bridge, because of uncertainty, because they’re fearful of whatever it might be, of failure, of success, of what people might think. I’m telling you, it’s the most important thing that you have to be able to muster and the good thing is courage is like a muscle, the more you use it, the stronger it gets. So start off by making little courageous decisions and make a lot of them because it’s like flexing a muscle. So when you feel the fear, move through that, move into that, move into the unknown. Make decisions without needing 100% certainty that things are going to work out. The more you do that, the more courage you’re going to build as a muscle and the more confidence you’re going to build as a result of being more courageous. That my friend, is how you become unstoppable in your life.

So if you enjoy that, just let that simmer in and let that seed plant itself in your mind. I’ve got a lot more to share on this topic over the coming years, it’s going to be a huge part of my platform and I’ll keep you posted as we build this out. In the meantime, hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show, if you have, be sure to subscribe to the Healthpreneur podcast on iTunes. While you’re there if you’ve enjoyed this, leave a rating and review and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode. In the meantime, continue to get out there, be great, do great and I’ll see you soon.

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Transcription

Healthpreneurs, what’s up? Yuri Elkaim here and I am joined today by my awesome results coaches.

Our New Weekly Series

We’ve got Jackie, Amy, and Stephanie. This is the first of a weekly series that we are starting. We don’t actually know what we’re going to call this, but the whole idea here is that we want to get together and talk about what’s going on mentally and emotionally.

We want to talk about what’s going on between the good old ears because we know a lot of our clients are dealing with different issues. As you will see through one of our clients, or doing anything in life, it’s never about tactics, it’s never about the strategy. It’s always about what’s going on between our ears, so our mindset.

What we want to do every week is bring up a new challenge that we continue to see in the coaching calls that we run with our clients.

Amy, Stephanie, and Jackie all do one-on-one coaching calls with all of our clients on usually a weekly basis. They’re in the trenches with them. They figuring out what is going on and where they’re stuck. As a company, our sole focus is on helping our clients get results as fast as possible. By getting results, we mean attracting the perfect clients, enrolling those client’s, then obviously, helping them at a very high level to achieve a great transformation in their health and life.

Our goal is to help on the business side so they can do marketing with a lot more ease, but again, a lot of people we will serve are not marketers, right? There not copywriters. They’re not well versed, necessarily, with years of experience in business development and marketing. So when you take on anything new, there always going to be those challenges.

 

This Week’s Topic: Overwhelm

What we going to talk about today, guys, is how to overcome overwhelm because this is probably the most, I guess the most pertinent thing that we continue to see. Today were going to address that and were going to talk about some of the ways to deal with it, how to overcome it, and how to move forward with confidence. I’m super excited to have you guys, Amy, Jackie, and Stephanie. Welcome.

Amy:                     Thanks. Yuri.

Jackie:                   Hi there.

Stephanie:          I’m so excited to be here.

Yuri:                       Yeah, so hopefully, the tech holds out. I think we are good. It took us a couple of minutes to figure this out, but I think in the future, it will be a lot more streamlined. I want to start off by starting the conversation with the idea that when anybody, any of us, when anybody who we are working with, or any human being embarks upon something new there is always going to be a learning curve, right? There’s always going to be this change in our world, in the client’s world, and because we’re learning new stuff, because we’re being exposed to new things, it’s not familiar to us, right? So there is going to be a process of learning new things, of getting stuck, of having to open new doors, and that’s when overwhelm starts to creep in.

I want to talk about this and we’ll go for about 25 minutes. I just want to open up this conversation and get your perspectives on some of the things that you’re seeing with our clients, and we’ll start with that as it pertains to where their challenges are, as it pertains to getting things going in this whole overwhelm idea.

Stephanie, do you want to kick it off?

Stephanie:          Yes, I’d love to.  I’m so excited to be here with you guys, excited for this new segment that we’re doing once a week for our clients. Basically, I think when it comes to overwhelm, what we’ve been seeing a lot and what I see in my own personal clients too in my coaching business, is we look at the whole elephant. You know there’s a saying, it’s like how do you eat an elephant, one bite as a time. I think sometimes people are getting really overwhelmed by looking at all of the stuff they have yet to complete, or all the stuff that they need to complete.

Then, just like you said, there’s a learning curve. I think sometimes people get overwhelmed when all of these things are new to them, so not just one thing, but many things. Instead of just taking it piece by piece and understanding… Here’s the other thing too, .. I said this on a Facebook live yesterday, is that I’ve worked with Yuri for many years. One thing I know about you is you’re a master at creating systems.

Yuri:                       Thank you.

Stephanie:          You’re welcome. I worked with many people in this industry and you’re really good at that. I think if people could just understand that if they just follow the systems and strategies that you’ve set for them, they will be okay, but they get lost in their mind. The other thing about it is that I think we also have really smart people, a really smart clientele that are very, very clever. As my boyfriend, Andy, would say, they’re clever people. I think the smarter you are, the more you can get lost in the Weeds because you think about, what about A, what about B, what about C, what about D, and what about this, blah blah blah?

I think that’s the other thing too, that it can be detrimental if you’re too smart because you can think of too many outcomes, if that makes sense.

Yuri:                       I actually think it is in some ways, a handicap to be too smart.  This is what I fell into when I started my business in 2006.  I thought I was too smart and could figure this out on my own. I didn’t get the proper coaching and guidance that I needed. Obviously, our clients are smarter than I was because they have our guidance and coaching, but it is very true. It’s almost better to be completely naive sometimes and just be like, okay, I’ll just do this and I’ll just do that, and you don’t second-guess anything, including yourself. I completely agree with you on that one.

 

Taking the leap, pulling the parachute, and staying committed

Amy, what about you when it comes to overwhelm? What are you seeing as something that’s coming up?

Amy:                     This is something that comes up week after week after week. There’s a couple of things that I see. First of all, people are jumping in because they’re committed. They truly want to help people so they come onboard and they are super stoked. You talked about Stephanie; those emotions don’t last forever, right? So we’re high on this emotion. We’re like, “Yes, we’re doing this, and we’re taking that jump off the cliff, but we don’t know what the parachute looks like. So we start to worry and wonder, and the parachute I’m referring to is the perfect client pipeline, right?

We understand the concepts. We understand the constructs, and if I really knew a lot about parachutes, I’d be able to tell you more, right? We know that there are strings. We know there’s this big thing that opens up, and we know it’s suppose to help us from just crashing to the ground, but we don’t really know what that looks like. So what I am seeing with a lot of our clients is they’re worrying and wondering about the future, instead of going to the system that’s known, because it’s still an unknown to them. It’s still that parachute.

When we can bring them back and say, “Stop worrying and wondering …” Ask yourself, is that true? Is that even something you need to think about, because no, it’s usually not, you don’t. Get back on the path and follow the system, because you’re committed. You want to help people, and that is the clear path, even though you don’t know, right? It’s foggy in the woods and you’re like, “Am I going to make it?”

So that’s really one of the big things, is that we make things up because, like you said yesterday Stephanie, even though worry and stress is inherently uncomfortable, it’s familiar. So we want to stay safe in a familiar place, even though stress and worry really sucks, but we know it. So instead of taking that jump into, can I really dig down into my perfect client, can I really do this webinar? That’s what I see. We’ve got to bring these people back, reassure them that, yes, you’re on the right path. Just follow the path and don’t worry about the future. So, that’s one of the big things that I see. There’s another one too, just people needing permission to go their own pace.

Yuri:                       And because of that, we changed the deliverability of the program.

Amy:                     I love it. Yes.

Yuri:                       Look guys, if you’re watching this, or listening, because we are going to be turning this audio into part of our podcast as well, this the beautiful thing about a coaching program, or I think any product that is somewhat malleable, is that we are constantly getting feedback from our clients.

We’re looking at how we  can better serve them. How do we make this better for them? How do we make this easier for them to deploy? We’ve only made this better over time. One of the things we recently did was we realized that overwhelm was something that was kicking in. We said, okay, why don’t we change the way this program is being delivered, instead of releasing new modules every week, the next training is only available when you finish the first one.

So we made that simple shift and just to what you said Amy, our intention is to give people permission to work at their own pace. With that said, that can’t be a cop out to take forever and not to get stuff done. We’ll save that for another episode, but that’s a great point.

 

Doing things to eliminate overwhelm

Jackie, I want to talk about what people can do if they’re feeling overwhelmed.  One of the things we talk a lot about is mastery versus dabbling. Do you want to talk about that, or anything else that comes to your mind as it pertains to helping people overcome overwhelm?

Jackie:                   Absolutely, and hello. It’s so great to be here. Yuri, I’m so glad we’re doing this because it’s just all about that accountability, and those little pieces of strategy that can help people just push forward and know they have the support. That’s why we’re here, right? So piggybacking Stephanie, what she said about one bite at a time, and having that parachute, having the tools, having a proven strategy that we know works, and just taking those little steps every day consistently will get you there.

So when I am working with our clients, and overwhelm will pop up on call one, it might even pop up on call four, and really, it’s just a feeling, right? It is just a feeling that is allowing us to assess our situation. Why am I feeling overwhelmed? What’s triggering it? Is it the workshop? Is it what is involved in the workshop? It may be family. It may be other demands on your life and our capacity is just not there to meet all those demands, right? That’s really all stress is, but if we can assess that and appreciate the feeling, and then say, okay, what steps can I take? Do I need to delegate this? Do I need to hire someone to clean my house? Do I need to delegate something off my plate so that I can really take on what I really want and make my priorities the priority, right?

So we can get caught up in the nuances. We get caught up in the excuses. I always tell people you’re going to find an excuse or you’re going A to point B to point C, if you just follow the system from the perfect client pipeline to the dream come true system, to play your ad, the webinar. Everything is there bit by bit.

I’m going to, again, second what Stephanie said. Yuri is a master blaster when it comes to processing. He does not ever leave any stone unturned. Our workbook I think is 160 a pages long and it’s growing as we continue to evolve the program. All I can continue to tell my people is when you feel overwhelmed just stop, pause, assess the situation. What’s triggering it? It’s just a feeling. We have the choice to allow it to stay around or to totally say, “Oh, this is unacceptable. If I’m going to be productive today I need to reassess.” Appreciate that I’m having the feeling, because we never get anything positive out of a negative … Overwhelm is a negative feeling … and switch it, right? What actions can I take? What things can I move off my plate? What things do I need to add to really feel like I’m being productive today? It’s just the little things. It doesn’t have to be huge, right? Yeah, that’s really what we dig into, and sometimes I have to remind people time after time, but it’s okay because it will eventually become a habit, right?

Yuri:                       Sure. I think it’s important too if you’re watching this, if you’re one of our clients, or you’re part of our Healthpreneur community and not one of our clients, you’re in the business of helping people improve their health and fitness. Maybe you’re a trainer and you’re helping people build muscle, lose fat. Let’s use that as an example. When you give somebody a 12-week plan, so let’s say lose 20 pounds, the plan works, right? We know the plan will work, and it doesn’t matter if the nuances of your schedule. If people just moved their body and lift weights properly they’ll get results, but why don’t people get results? Because, as you said Jackie, there’s excuses, right? I’m too tired today. My body is sore. They also get to a point where that thermostat of pain, that threshold, it starts to become uncomfortable.

They get some degree of results and that they feel comfortable because they’re making some progress, but they lose that desire to keep moving forward. A lot of time, they just get stuck in complacency. I think that’s why I’m so comfortable at coaching because when you give somebody something to do on their own, you’re assuming that person is a superhero and they’ve got a bulletproof mindset to take on anything. That’s just not the human experience for most of us. So having you guys, and allowing our coaching client’s to have the access to you guys…

If you’re a client watching this please understand how valuable these ladies are. They’re incredible. I’ve known them for years and they are awesome at what they do. What you guys have access to, please tap into this, and let it fuel you to move forward. Because the other thing with overwhelm, and I’m just piggybacking on what you said Jackie too, and Stephanie, is I think a lot of times we feel overwhelmed or paralyzed because we don’t know what the next actionable step to take is.

One of the activities that I do is every single week I take out a sugar paper and I do a brain dump. I write down everything that’s on my mind, personally, professionally, whatever. I write down everything. Okay, now I have everything out of my mind. Now I’m looking at, okay, well, if I’m going to tackle this first thing … Let’s just say I’m going to work on my webinar. What the hell does that mean, right? What does work on my webinar mean? That’s like I’m going to get my website up.

You might as well just say I’m going to run for president, right? There’s so many moving pieces in that process. Work on my webinar. What specifically, what’s the first actionable thing that you’re going to do to move that process forward? Maybe it is I’m going to brainstorm the title of my webinar, or I’m going to clarify the contents, or I’m going to identify the three pieces of content I’m going to share on the webinar. What happens is now your brain knows exactly what it’s going to do. It’s like laser focus missile, and now you get the momentum going.

Then the next thing is like, okay, now you have the momentum. It’s easier to move from that to the next thing and to the next thing. Guys, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, a lot of times it’s just you’ve got too much stuff going on in your head, and you just have to clarify it, break it down, and know exactly what to do next, and make it tangible and manageable. That’s my secret sauce.

Amy:                     Yuri, those are awesome tips. If you don’t mind, one thing that I say,  and I feel like I say it every Tuesday on the implementation call and with all of the one-on-ones … The other thing that I think that we leave out because were so driven and we so want to help people, that we fall into the same direct category as our clients, right? We put ourselves last.

So when you’re feeling overwhelmed get up, go outside. Do some jumping jacks. Do a bunch of push-ups. Run around your house. I happened to live in the woods so I love all the trees. I can just go foresting. I’m very lucky, but even if you live in an urban area, step outside. Get some fresh air. Put on some music. Dance around your house. Whatever your thing is, get your body moving. It will change your state of mind.

All you chiropractors out there, my chiropractor told me this morning that in the 30 minutes after an adjustment is the best time to learn something new. So if you get an adjustment get to work 30 minutes after, but change your state because, as driven people, we sit here in front of our computers all day long because we feel like we have to help people. We have to get this done. We’re not making the progress we want.

You’re making progress as long as you’re taking the steps every day. Get yourself up. Get moving. Change your state and sit right down with the clarify that Yuri just talked about, and then you’re going to rock and roll. I use something called the Focus App. It forces me to take breaks. I know that sounds funny but I need to be forced to take breaks. That just a piece I feel like we leave out. Anyway, I just wanted to piggyback on that for you.

Stephanie:          Hey Amy, just to piggyback off that, that’s great because it is state change, but it’s also going back to all this is a choice, right? If you choose to continue to do what you’re doing and get what you’re getting, then how is that serving you and your client’s, right, or the clients that are looking for you that don’t know you exist yet? Or, you can make a change and start doing what you need to do. It’s going to be a little uncomfortable and different but that’s called growth. That stress, if it’s managed right… You’re always going to have stress. You can’t avoid it. Stress is critical for growth. It has to happen.

Yuri:                       That’s good.

Stephanie:          It is good if you know how to manage it, right, and it’s all choice. That’s why we here to help you be that voice that you’re not standing up for yourself half the time. Half the time, you’re beating yourself up and getting stuck in this mess of overwhelm and stress and worry, when we can help you stand up for yourself. You will eventually start to do that for yourself because it becomes this habit. It gets wired in the brain. We can’t blame you for where you’ve been wiring and everything’s been circuiting together for the last 30, 40, 50 years, but we can help change it, right, and shift it, and that’s where the work happens.

Yuri:                       Stephanie, are you there, because I lost you on the screen here?

Stephanie:          Yes, I am still here. I’m actually learning a lot with you.

Yuri:                       Yeah, just so you guys know, technology wise, we are using E-cam live with Skype, and we’ll see. Maybe we’ll switch to Zoom in the future if this is a little bit funky. We lost Stephanie for a few minutes there but she’s there, so she’s with us.

Stephanie:          Still here.

 

Mastery vs. dabbling and how we hinder ourselves

Yuri:                       I want to segue into one thing I think is important, is you have to understand guys, you have to understand that if you’ve committed to a process, even if it’s not worth your fuss, if you’ve committed to working out or getting into shape, or whatever it is, you’ve two choices. You have the choice of mastering this thing you’re doing, or you have the choice to stay where you are. If you’re happy with where you’re at, and you just have to be honest about that. There’s nothing wrong with… Well actually, we can never be stagnant. We’re always growing in some way, shaped, or form, or progressing.

Nothing in nature stays as it is. I’m looking at my lawn. We mowed it a couple of days ago and then the grass is growing. You cannot not be moving forward but you have to commit to really mastering whatever it is you want to get better at. If you don’t then you’re simply not going to get forward. You’re going to stay stuck where you’re at. You’re going to be struggling in business. You’re going to struggle with your health, one other thing you’re moving forward with. You have to be okay with moving through that, and understand that it’s okay not to be a master of anything that you’ve just started to learn for the first time.

It’s like my oldest son Oscar, he’s very driven, very kinesthetic, but when he takes on something new and he fails he doesn’t want to do it anymore. I’m like, “Dude, what is the reality of you mastering reading before you’ve ever read a book, right?” Now he’s an amazing reader because I just kept encouraging him. I’m like, “Buddy, how do we get better at anything?” I have trained him. My four-step process is know exactly what you want, know how to do it properly, repeat it over and over again, and believe you can do it. I just beat that into his head… Well, not physically, but I just think emotionally and verbally, so that he lives that. Now he loves reading.

It’s the same for you guys. If you’re building a webinar and it’s not working the first time, right, if your writing your Facebook ads and you have this story you’re telling yourself, I’m not a copywriter. It’s not about that, right? It’s about mastering certain skills that are going to move to forward your business, because if you don’t master the stuff you’re not going to get where you want to get to, and you going to be where you are now, or where you were a couple of months ago, 10 years from now, and that sucks. So you have to associate some degree of pain with moving away from where you are at.

Stephanie, do you want to jump in with anything, in terms of moving forward with where we want to be versus staying stuck where were at?

Stephanie:          Yeah, so basically, it’s so interesting how the brain works because some of the times we want so badly to do a certain thing, yet we keep doing things that are going against what it is that we really want. A lot of that comes from the subconscious mind, which is basically this old archaic piece of the mind that comes from caveman brain that was taught to view everything from a negative perspective; like a lion, tiger, or bear might eat me. I might starve to death. I might have to do this, right? We end up creating situations in our mind that hold us back from greatness so much. Really, part of it’s the fight or flight response, right?

If you start to exit this cave … I call it a cave, that we’re stuck in this way of thinking, feeling, and acting that’s the old way. If you start to exit the cave, it will set off that amygdala, which is that fight or flight response. It causes stress, and it causes freak out and you want to go back in the cave and quit, right? It’s just like you use that copy writing example, which is a huge one for our clients, is that they find it difficult because it’s a skill they’ve never really done before. Then we have these amazing copywriting coaches that they probably learning all the stuff and they like, “Oh my gosh, how am I going to remember this all,” or whatever?

The thing is that if you keep allowing yourself to go back in the cave and say, “I’m not a copywriter, I can’t do this, I’m not doing this,” you will never be able to exit. Exiting the cave is where the magic happens. That’s where all your clients are. That’s where this amazing system that you’re building is going to be housed. That’s where you’re going to go and, just like Jackie said, nobody’s going to know you are there unless you go out and start to speak about it, and show your webinar, and actually record your webinar and all the stuff.

So you’ve got to go back to why you started, that’s the purpose, passion, and a lot of people say… This is something, I’m actually going to do a podcast about this soon, which is a lot of people say you feel the fear and do it anyway. Really, I believe that if you actually follow your passion, purpose, mission, drive, and why you start and use that to push you through the discomfort, you’ll get so much farther  than you will if you’re like, “I’m freaking out. I’m freaking out. I’m going to do the thing, but I’m freaking out.”

If you go back to why you started, that will help you with that overwhelm as well.

 

Tapping back into your desire and vision daily

Yuri:                       Yeah, if we were to boil everything down, like why is it that there are some people that are just so successful, I think it comes down to massive drive. What drives them I don’t know, but there’s some burning desire inside that them that never gets satiated. It’s not make more money, buy more stuff. Whatever their reason is … Anytime you guys feel like you’re in a funk you have to tap back into that desire. You’ve got to figure out what is… Just as you said Stephanie, connect to that vision.

These are things that you have to be doing everything single day. It’s not once a week, guys. This is a daily practice, just like flossing your teeth and brushing your teeth is. If you don’t tend to your mind, the garden your mind, the weeds are going to take over very quickly. Listen, unless you’re a two year old and you haven’t been conditioned for your whole life, we all have shit in our head, right? So we have to actively and consciously take control of that. Whether that’s writing down things you’re grateful for, or writing out your vision, or listening to inspiring interviews or podcasts or stuff like this you have to be doing these things.

You have to get to the point where the inputs coming into your head outweigh the other inputs that are not a part of you, whether that’s television, new, negative people. You have to flood your brain with the good stuff because that’s the only way, over time, that you’re going to change the way you think about life. Then you have to borrow other people’s beliefs. You have to get around people for where you want to be, and you just have to stay plugged in. It’s not easy guys. It’s not easy but it’s worth it. It’s worth it because the alternative sucks. The alternative is a life of mediocrity and not living the way you want to live. I think, no, this has been a great discussion guys. This has been awesome.

 

Watch our training to see our approach and have a call

So, for the sake of time, I must wrap up in a few moments, but here’s what I do want to say; if you’re watching this and you’re not currently one of our clients, and you want to be able to really get in front of your ideal prospects, get those people into your world to really sort them at a high level, here’s what I’d like you do, watch our training.

Just watch our training. It’s called the 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint. Go through it. You’ll get a better sense of our approach to helping you build a successful business online.

Click here to watch our training:  https://healthpreneurgroup.com/training

If what you see resonates with you, then book a call with us. You’ll be speaking to one of these lovely ladies, most likely, or Phyllis, or David, who is also on our team. That’s the first place to start because what were doing is very, very special. It’s very unique compared to what other options are out there.

I’m tired of seen people struggle with amazing wisdom and knowledge, put up free challenges and $10 eBooks, or worth publishing books that are simply moving off the shelves, because that’s a whole other ball game.

If you guys really want to create more impact, income, and feel it for yourselves, we’ve got something great that really can serve you. The place to check it out, healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

Watch it today. It’s totally free. If you want to chat with us afterwards, you can totally do that.

In one minute or less, any final words, Jackie, Amy? I’ll let Jackie go first.

Jackie:                   Utilize your coaches. That’s your only way you’re going to level up in life is your environment and your surrounding, and they’re available as part of our programs. Take advantage of. We’re not cheap so take advantage of it.

Yuri:                       Exactly. Amy, anything final from you?

Amy:                     I want to piggyback on what Jackie was saying. It’s up to you. It’s your choice. You can choose to frame it as fear or you can choose to frame that kind of heart fluttering and tingly feeling as excitement. So switch your habits, switch your mind. It’s totally up to you. You can do it.

Yuri:                       Awesome. Well, thank you Amy and Jackie, and Stephanie, who has come in and out of this video, but I don’t know why.

Stephanie:          I’m here.

Yure:                     You’re still there.

Jackie:                   You forget she’s here.

Stephanie:          I was here the whole time.

Yuri:                       Thank you for all guys watching, if you’re on the HBA group or one of luminary’s mastermind members, or if you’re just part of out healthpreneur tribe, thank you so much for taking the time. If you’re listening to this on the healthpreneur podcast then let us know what you think. Jump over to iTunes, subscribe to the show. We’ve got lots of great stuff coming your way. This is a new segment that were adding here to our solo rounds and awesome interviews. That’s over at healthpreneurs.com/podcast.

That’s all for today. Hope you guys have an awesome one, when we do this every Wednesday morning. Stay tuned and stay plugged in, and keep you the great work guys. Talk to you soon.

Amy:                     Awesome. Thank you

Jackie:                   ‘Bye guys.

Stephanie:          ‘Bye.

Transcription

Hey, hey, hey. What’s up? Hope you’re having a great day. Today’s episode is all about the initial enrollment call, strategy call, consultative call, whatever you wanna call it. I want to give you one way to make your trail call, if you wanna think of it that way, where you’re speaking to a prospective client.

 

Why to serve – not sell – your clients

I want to give you one really cool way of approaching these calls so you get better results not only for yourself, in terms of higher enrollments, but also for the prospective client.  I really believe that everything we do should be about adding value before we ask for anything in return.

That’s why our approach to all of our calls is service, not selling. What happens is, when you show someone you can actually help them, by helping them, for instance on the call, it builds further trust in you that you are likely the best provider or the best match for that particular client. I want to give you a really simple way of thinking about this, okay?

The thing is, a lot of people eventually, or initially, have this resistance to feeling like a salesperson on the call. They say, “I don’t wanna feel salesy. It’s like a sales call.”

 

Making it a coaching call to get to the truth

Here’s the distinction I want to make for you. It’s not a sales call, it’s the first coaching call. If you’re working with clients in a coaching capacity, think of this call as the first coaching call in your relationship together. It’s not a sales call. Just that little tweak can change the way you approach this. Let me tell you why this is the truth, okay? The truth of the matter is that when you get on the phone with someone, you are trying to figure out if they are a good fit for you to work with them.

If you get to the point where they recognize that they need your help, you recognize that they’re someone you would enjoy working with and you can obviously help. Then all that matters is getting to the truth of the situation. Sometimes that person’s truth is, “I know I need your help but I’m scared. I maybe can’t afford it or I don’t know if this is the right solution.” There are gonna be moments in some of these calls where you can skim the surface and just be like, “Cool, I’ll let you think about it. We can touch base at a later point.” In which case you never will, just based on experience.

 

How we teach our clients to do this

The second option is that you can challenge people right there on the phone and get to the truth of the matter. It’s not to call them out on their shit, but to really have an honest conversation.

“Let’s just talk about this for a second, because you just said you’ve been dealing with emotional eating problems for 10 years, and now you’ve told me that you see this as being a really good fit for you, but for some reason you want to think about this. Let’s talk about this.” This is where you come in as the coach, to have, quote unquote, the difficult conversation that’s going to make you maybe feel a little bit uneasy if you’re not used to this, or not used to this. But it’s a really good practice because as a coach your job is to have difficult conversations with your clients. I don’t think difficult in the sense of like, your clients are a pain in the butts to work with. I’m saying having conversations that matters, instead of being like, “Hey, how’s the weather today? Everything good? Cool. Awesome.” Just that surface level discussion. As a coach you need to hold people accountable. You have to call them out on their BS. You have to hold them to a higher standard. That starts on the first call.

If someone doesn’t like that, then they’re not a fit for you to work with them, I would strongly suggest. That’s how I would recommend approaching these initial calls. They’re not sales calls, they are coaching calls where you can go deep with people.

You can create a mini transformation right there on the phone and they should come to the realization that, “Holy cow, this is just a taste of what’s to come? This makes a lot of sense.” If you come from that place of service. If you come from that place of, “Let me show you how I can help you right here on this phone call, before you even give me any money.” That’s just a really good way of doing business.

 

Why it works for us and how you can learn to do the same

That’s the way we approach everything we’ve ever done, and that’s the way we teach our clients how to do the same for their businesses. Now, if you’d like an example of this, here’s what I want you to do.

First of all, go through our training. The seven figure health business blueprint. You can do so at: healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

Register, watch it today. There’s no charge, it’s free to attend.

If you like what you see on that training, then book a call with us. On that call you’ll get an exact example of what I’m talking about here. With that initial call, we call it a result accelerator call, is a coaching session, it’s not a sales pitch.

You’ll see how we approach these calls and how valuable they are. We’ve done so many of these call I can’t even think of the number now. The only time we’ve had somebody tell us that, “This is actually a waste of my time.” Was with one person we had as a coach doing some of these calls, probably nine months ago now.

We very quickly realized he was not a good fit for our company. Because I saw an email come through and this lady was very disappointed with her call. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back and I told this guy who was doing some coaching calls. I said, “You know what? This is not gonna work out. I don’t really think you get what we’re doing here.” That is the only negative feedback we’ve heard since then, or even before that.

That’s just because we approach everything with love, and from a place of service. I think it’s a really good approach to model for the way you run your calls as well.

So if you’re a coach, if you’re building out a coaching program where there’s one-on-one or group based, watch the training and just … Again, it’s free to attend. You don’t have to pay for anything to, quote unquote, hack the way we do things. Obviously there are a lot of nuances that you may not pick up on, which is totally fine. That’s probably how our clients deploy their businesses. But anyways, I’m gonna stop talking.

Attend the training. See for yourself, if you want to attract more clients, if you wanna convert and enroll them more effortlessly without feeling salesy, then this is the process we wanna go through.

So again, healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

I will see you there. In the meantime, thank you so much for joining me once again on show. Stay tuned for some amazing interviews we’ve got coming up this week. In the meantime, have an awesome day.

Transcription

What’s up, what’s up, what’s up. Welcome back to the Healthpreneur podcast. Yuri with you. I’ve got a treat for you today. I’m interviewing an amazing man. His name is Andy Hnilo. I’m not going to spoil the surprise, but he had a near death experience seven years ago that will shock you when he shares exactly what happened. But he was able to turn that experience into a super-successful skincare company.

Now, you might think, “Okay, what the heck? What’s the correlation?” Well, you got to listen to find out. It’s absolutely phenomenally inspiring, so I’ll give you a little bit of background and say who Andy is.

He is the CEO of Alitura Naturals, and they develop cutting edge natural skincare products. That is interesting because it’s one of the few male originated skincare lines that I’m aware of. Yeah, I’m not going to spoil the surprise for his life threatening accident, so I’ll let him share that with you in the episode.

As a result of that, they’ve created some really, really top notch natural skincare products that are truly filling a gap in the marketplace.

I think what you’ll get out of this episode is, number one, some really cool guerrilla marketing tactics that Andy was able to use to get this product off the ground more than seven years ago, some of the mistakes that he made that he would probably not want to repeat again, if he were to start from scratch, and some really important lessons about physical products.

So, if you’ve got a physical product based business, I think you’ll really enjoy this. Even if you don’t, I think there’s a really good number of lessons in this discussion. Without any further ado, let’s welcome Andy Hnilo to the show, and let’s get into it. Andy Hnilo, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How’s it going?

Andy Hnilo:                         Oh, it’s going great, Yuri. Thank you so much for having me on.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I’m excited to jump in. I know had a bit of an audio technical difficulty getting started, but we are connected. It’s all good. We’re going to bring the goods. I’m pumped to have you on the show because what I love about speaking with entrepreneurs in our space is that we’ve all had some type of journey, some type of crisis, health scare, discovery that led us to do what we’re doing now, and your story is frigging remarkable. I don’t want to spoil the surprise, so can you kind of give us the Cliff Notes or the version that you feel comfortable sharing with our audience and how it led you to doing what you’re doing now?

 

The experience that inspired his vision

Andy Hnilo:                         Sure, yeah. Let’s see March 20 of 2011, I was just crossing the street. I looked down to check my phone to see if my Lyft was arriving. I got hit by a westbound heading Land Rover that hit me into the eastbound lane, and I got run over by a Toyota Tundra. I completely lost consciousness. I was getting my clothes cut off me in the middle of Melrose, a very popular street out here in Los Angeles, California. I don’t remember any of that, but I definitely remember the feeling of waking up in that ICU bed with a couple of my friends around me and my jaw protruding through the bottom of my chin. I had a very bad compound fracture. I had seven broken ribs as well as and a collapsed lung. So I was really banged up.

I went home and I had a lot of perspective. I was excited, actually, that I survived the accident. It took about a day or two to kind of shake the sorrow away. Looking in the mirror after an accident like will stick with you for a little bit.

I  became extremely passionate about my recovery. I made it a very big goal of mine to get back better than I was before. I’ve been an athlete my whole life and I’ve had a lot things where I like taking care of myself and I was in the entertainment industry for a long time as well, so when you’re looking at an unrecognizable version of yourself in the mirror, it will definitely kickstart and inspire you to get back on your feet quick.

So I became really passionate about ingredients and long story short, seven years later, I have a skincare line with 20 products in 76 countries. It took a lot of time and a lot of attention to detail and I used myself as just my biggest science experiment. They say necessity is the mother of invention. I had no intention of starting a business. No intention to ever create a skincare line. I wanted to get back and accelerate the healing of my injuries, my scar and my abrasions so that’s how it all started.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s amazing. I mean it’s not amazing that it happened to you, but I’m a firm believer that everything happens for us, right? We do agree with that?

Andy Hnilo:                         Right. No, absolutely. Absolutely, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         At the time, it’s obviously very challenging to understand that, but I’m sure what you’ve created is a direct result of that and is obviously helping a lot of people because of that. You’ve got a video on your website. Guys, if you want to check this out, go to Andy’s site which is at alituranaturals.com.  There’s a video talking a little bit about his story and talked about how the plastic surgeon who came in to see you said to one of his colleagues, “I need some help with this one.”  It was that bad.

Andy Hnilo:                         Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         What is the thinking going from that experience to “I’m going to start a skincare line.” Because I think you mentioned that you wanted a better, more natural way of just cleaning up a lot of the scars and stuff. Was that the big impetus for starting everything?

 

Why he declined chemical-laden topicals and searched for something natural

Andy Hnilo:                         Yeah. One of my surgeons was recommending this cream that was loaded in corticosteroids, parabens, had some steroids in it, had fragrance, glycerine, alcohol, preservatives, nothing that served the skin. I knew that. I was into skincare, health and wellness and I knew my ingredients before the accident, but this obviously escalated that after the accident.

I became very interested in certain extracts, butters, essential oils, powders and clays.  I politely declined the creams and serums that was offered that I use to accelerate the healing in my scar and in the cuts I had all over my body.

Instead,  I became interested in seeking out and sourcing ingredients that would help me heal and ordered them.

My jaw was wired shut and my teeth were nubs so a lot of time I didn’t want to be outside, and social situations were difficult for me so I just began compounding and isolating certain ingredients and then blending them and then based on particle size, seeing how they work together, just hoping for some type of result.

Clays, cacao butter, beeswax, bee products in general are so healing and hydrating for the skin internally and externally.

So I just was experimenting with certain things like colostrum, deer placenta, egg yolks. I mean that was internally to get as much just nutrition in the system because my jaw was wired shut, I couldn’t chew obviously so I made this really nutrient dense smoothie, but on top of that, I’d make this mask with rich clays that are so high in mineral content and I would make just different pastes to follow up the clay mask that I would use to heal and hopefully find some type of just result from that in the reduction of swelling and just to accelerate a lot of blood flow to surface of the skin, pull out impurities.

I was going through x-rays every month to see how the bone is growing back and it was part of my routine. Every single day I was just doing that mask. Every hour of every day I had something to do. I just became obsessed with my recovery.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome.

Andy Hnilo:                         Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So you said deer colostrum. Did I hear that properly?

Andy Hnilo:                         Several different kinds of colostrum, actually, but no, deer placenta is the one that-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Oh, sorry.

 

His beta testing, recovery, and connection to Bulletproof

Andy Hnilo:                         … yeah, that kind that gets people off guard but it’s so rich in minerals and micronutrients.  Many animals eat their own placenta afterwards because it’s something that’s so nutrient dense. I would try anything, I would make these really rich smoothies to help nourish my system and heal myself from the inside out but as far as the skin products, that was just purely out of necessity and out of my research that I was doing all day long. Studying spa treatments, but also adding my own twist to it as well to kind of kick it up. Things like pearl powder and colostrum used topically, I’d never seen either of those used on the skin before. I know they were very beneficial internally but trying it out on my face and seeing the result I was getting was … I knew I had something but that took about a year, a year and a half, two years to finally go on board with it.

I was driving around town, there were people in the ICU, that saw me a couple of weeks later and were absolutely blown away with how I looked because the abrasions were gone, the cuts were completely gone, my skin looked great. There was a lot of swelling, obviously and the scarring is not going to go down in two weeks but it had been reduced a little bit, but the clarity in my skin was very apparent and so people asked what I was doing.

I was hesitant because, I don’t know, for whatever reason … you know, a guy with skincare, I was just kind of hesitant to admit that I became extremely obsessed with what I was putting on my skin. These creams and these masks and these little serums that I was creating out of the kitchen all day long as part of my recovery, going on walks, getting circulation going, getting my tonics going to reduce inflammation inside of my system. Every part of every day had a purpose but I began testing on those people that were questioning what I was doing … well, curious of what I was doing, and they fell in love with it too.

I was just driving around town with a backpack and a little bowl and some essential oils and a little thing that I’d mix it with, apple cider vinegar, and technically that was my beta testing, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Andy Hnilo:                         Everybody loved it, as far as the kelp powder, I was using a little too much kelp powder so I started reducing that a little bit because it was a little earthy and isolating and dialing down the vitamin C content, but I never charged anyone, never had any intention to start anything, didn’t have a website but that quickly ended when I  reached out to Dave Asprey from Bulletproof, if you’re familiar with Bulletproof?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, he’s a good buddy, yeah.

Andy Hnilo:                         Yeah, and a great guy and so I wanted to work with Bulletproof because I loved his attention to detail and to ingredients. I was a little down and out, things were going well but I wanted to find my purpose, I wanted a good job, I was very into health and wellness. I trouble-shooted his email address,  and obviously I knew his name, Dave Asprey and I found the contact form info at Bulletproof Exec  I can’t be that far off, so I went d.asprey, asprey.a, David, every different combination you could think of.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome.

Andy Hnilo:                         I copy and pasted the same email, sent a before picture of me in the ICU bed just really banged up, then an after picture of me doing a job, I think for Men’s Health magazine just going, “Hey man, thanks so much for you your products, I love them, they really kick started me on my road to my recovery.” One of them went through, he got back to me, we have a 45 minute conversation. I was up in Palo Alto, my mom was there, it was great. So they brought me onboard as an ambassador for Bulletproof and then months down the road, he had me on his top ranked Bulletproof Radio podcast. So yeah, I was on the podcast and we just were talking about my recovery and just want I went through,  resilience,  products and how I bounced back through a lot of Bullet Proof products.

Because this was not planned, weren’t even going to talk about skin care or anything like that and I was hesitant to admit to millions that I was doing this mask, but I’m so glad I did because he got a big response from it.

I told them that my website was under construction, it definitely wasn’t under construction. I called a high school buddy and we got a Shopify store set up a couple weeks after the podcast aired. I was having people PayPal me at $35, free shipping, it just sounded good. Coming up with a price without even knowing your raw … goods costs. Everything I learned on the run how to start a physical product, how to run a physical product business happened within weeks.

And then Dave flew down, we came to terms on an agreement. He took the Alitura Clay Mask on his Bullet Proof site as his first bullet proof approved skin care product. Getting that validation from him, but also his customers really trust what he does and he hadn’t done anything with skin care before,  that’s how we acquired a lot of our customers in our customer data base.

And so we’ve just been really staying consistent with that and introducing new products with just a next level purity of ingredients, taking pride in our ingredients and how we source our ingredients from all over the world.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome.

Andy Hnilo:                         That’s pretty much, yeah, how it all started.

 

Guerrilla marketing and production struggles

Yuri Elkaim:                         I want to touch on few things just for our listeners to kind of pick up on if they haven’t already. Number one is you’re in Gorilla Marketing. You figured out, “I’m going to come up with a number of combinations for this possible email address.” And you cracked the code. That is so awesome because there’s so many people that might use the excuse, “Well I don’t have the person’s email address, I can’t get in touch with them.” No, nobody is untouchable, nobody is unreachable. You found a way to crack the code, which is awesome. Second …

Andy Hnilo:                         Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         … is you just built the bridge like one step at a time, like, “All right I need this.” “Okay let’s kind of put it together here you go, here’s the price.” And I love that. I love the bootstrapping nature of business. The types of businesses that most of us run because you kind of just figure it out on the go. You don’t have to have all of your ducks lined up, because it probably … do you think that you would’ve been as quick to market … if you spent the time creating a business plan, in boardroom meetings doing all that stuff ahead of time vs what you did?

Andy Hnilo:                         Oh absolutely not. I never wrote a plan it was on the go. After that podcast aired we had so many emails coming back to me I was like,  “Well I could probably do about 70 orders or whatever.” But that’s not the best way to go about it, so just, like you said, “On the run”, we start figuring out cost, how much certain things like the green clay, the ascorbic acid how much stuff would cost to make 6.8 oz container. Just every certain ingredient that we’re using you start calculating cost and you come up with the price just on the go that’s truly how it happened.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome.

 

Getting started and acting ASAP

Andy Hnilo:                         Even some people work better that way with having a plan and taking steps to reach goals in that plan. I just … the adrenaline took over, the excitement took over with someone wanting to buy something that I just truly just made out of an apartment.  It just depends on the individual I think. If I had a plan of … if there were something on the whiteboard that I referred to every single day. I don’t know, I’m on the go constantly just working on what’s next and just from what’s in my head. As far as just following certain … a planned atmosphere … that I could probably adjust to that as well, but that’s truly how Alitura began. I don’t know really if there’s a right or wrong way, but I do think the most important thing is taking that step and just taking action every single day.

The people that try and … paralysis by over analysis … you see that happen so often … and then you end up finding a way to make it seem like it’s so hard and “realistic” is not one of my favorite words. I just … the how are you going to get in touch with … just think you said, “Everybody who’se out there finds a way”. I’ve had meetings with really … just people by finding them through Facebook. That’s not the best way, that’s actually happened to me a couple times and it’s a little annoying, obviously. But hey that’s how I got in there with a couple people so whose to say you can’t do that?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah totally. Well it’s interesting because a lot of our listeners are coaches, or health coaches, trainers, nutritionists, functional medicine doctors and so forth. We also have a lot of listeners who are product owners, right. So they’ve got supplements or physical products and you know regardless of the type of business there’s always that, “All right I have to get everything perfect before I get it out. I’m not quite ready yet. My T’s haven’t been crossed”, and all that kind of stuff and I think you’re a great example of the fact that you don’t have to get it perfect. It never really is perfect, you just have to get it going and get feedback from the market.

I think for you guys listening, please take this example as a great example of how to do that. So in this journey of business what have you learned to be one of the most effective traits for having a successful business or being a successful entrepreneur?

 

The passion and commitment required to excel and succeed

Andy Hnilo:                         Oh man, I would say … I eat, breathe, and sleep this particular industry. It’s so interesting to me. It’s want I do mindlessly throughout the day. It’s constantly part of my life style. So I’m so passionate about it and I’m constantly learning and I’m a sponge as far as seeking knowledge from other experts and … yeah I think you really do have to love.

I would say a relentless pursuit and entrepreneurs for the most part have that. Just staying resilient and firing through and powering through every single day with … the hours are as you know there … you’re working 40 hour weeks, but that’s why you obviously have to love it.

I would say delegating, getting people that are aligned with you in your vision. I did it all by myself up until April 2016 and that’s just not the smartest use of my time.  I was waiting in line self fulfilling. I didn’t find out about shipping easy or stamps.com and just getting the scale out, handwriting to and from slips and we were busy so that’s just … I was spending all day doing that myself, but it was just a fulfilling feeling to go to the post office with orders and just know that every single part of that was done by me. So that was just something that felt good, but imagine delegating that. Paying someone an hourly wage and then being able to advance the business by partnering with people on podcasts or looking for affiliates or influences or just working on my next product. That’s the best use of my time in business.

So that would be my biggest piece of advice right there is getting an assistant to work under you to handle the smaller things that you don’t like doing and then content, content, content. That is huge as well, providing benefit to your audience, and following as well, customer data base, that’s huge.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah totally.

Andy Hnilo:                         Educating on things that separate your brand and your ingredients from others.

 

Creating a product that is branded for men, too

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah totally. Well let’s talk about that because you’re one of the only male that I’m aware of, male driven skin care lines, I’m sure there’s many others. But we’ve spoken to a few people actually on this podcast who had their own skin care lines or a skin care business, but they’re female. So it’s interesting coming at it from a male perspective, but how have you consciously differentiated your brand from others out there?

Andy Hnilo:                        I was talking to Katie, a wellness model last night about that and there’s such a big expanding, growing industry on the male side of skin care and cosmetic industry. Alitura’s 55% women, 45% males are the customer data base and it’s pretty much right down the middle, unisex.

When I first started this people were like a little hesitant with … “All right, well the dark packaging that’s obviously masculine, this is a men’s skin care line.” I’m like, “No, absolutely not. It’s a unisex skin care line.” I just had this vision of brands like Lexus, Hugo Boss, Kenneth Cole, – a Montage if you will.  Something really slick, ultra premium, high performance just like a really good top shelf skin care line. And so that was my vision for it and in doing that it was just about ingredients and letting the customer decide.

If you create something a little bit more with white and turquoise. I got that so much at the beginning, I’m so glad I stayed true to what I wanted.

When you go to a store shelf, the health and beauty isle, there’s so much white may be earthy tone packaging. Very rarely do you see black, black matte with silver foil to make it pop a little bit, it just exactly what I envisioned for it.

If you look in our shelf and you go there now you’re starting to see a couple more all black with gold tones pop up because it’s just to me it’s sexy, it’s something I want to learn more about, find out more about. Look and hold the bottle and then find out it’s nice glass from the miron glass or use it from the Netherlands that blocks out the ultraviolet light or well the bad light. It’s something that I just take a lot of pride in. Not only for the aesthetic part of it, the packaging part of it, but just what it does for my products in general, my liquid products.

We did the Beauty Con Conference over the weekend.  I’d have to say it was 98% women, coming by and just interested in the line and wanting to buy something for their husband, but we’re like, “No, no it’s actually a unisex skin care line.” So it’s one of those things where even to this day I’m still hearing certain things about it looking too masculine, but there’s also … sure I’m only four years into this, there’s a possibility that it’s like you said, “I can’t even name” … John Masters is a good, more hair focused male founded beauty brand.

If you find a way to find a hole in the market and really start marketing that towards men. That could be something maybe even bigger than the unisex duo appeal.  I use to play baseball, a lot of my buddies are still playing and so when I test, demo the products in spring training out in Arizona, they’re interested.

I think men just need … you know, we want to take care of ourselves. We want to look and feel good and we want to be as marketable as possible on the business stand front, but also look and feel good just on the personal side of things and so I get it. Just staying young, feeling young and doing it with good quality ingredients and things that make you look polished and presentable. I think really appeal … not only on a sex appeal side of things, but just as far as just success as just on a business, whether you’re making a presentation you want to look and feel your best and just kind of be as presentable as possible. I think they go hand in hand and so if I were to focus on a male one down … I don’t know, I just don’t

I like the way things are going right now and I want everybody to be able to choose, to make it their decision on what they want to use rather than the company’s side of things. Whether a men’s focus line, women’s… I don’t believe in that right now.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, when you buy, if you’re in a couple, and let’s say the man buys the skin care. The wife or the spouse might be like, “Hey, let me try that as well.” That there’s this kind of…I’ve noticed that in my household with my…’cause I’ve tried a couple different skin care products, now my wife uses them because they’re just like, “Hey, yeah, these are good for both of us.” And kind of by osmosis now, is diffused to become more of a unisex product.

So, I guess you never know how things diffuse as people use them and obviously as the word spreads. And I think also, for men too, it’s nice to have a product that, as a brand, you can kind of associate with where’s it’s not as feminine and airy-fairy. It’s a little bit more, as you mentioned, a little bit more robust, a bit more refined. And I think a lot of men, as well as women, can definitely relate to that, so that’s pretty cool.

Andy Hnilo:                         No, that’s a good point. We hear that a lot, too, especially with our fragrance that we just released because it’s just, I mean, it’s right down the middle. Women love it, men love it, but yet you’ll hear of a man buying it and then the woman coming by sneaking a couple shots, or sprays, before she goes out to work. That’s the goal, I mean that’s the goal. I just want to create great products and let the customer decide who it’s for.

But yeah, it’s a lot of fun, I love what I do.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So we’re gonna jump into the Rapid Five in just a second, but I do have one more question I want to ask you. Do you have a favorite failure in the business that has later set you up for success?

Andy Hnilo:                         Oh man. Let’s see, I’ve had a couple. I just had one recently that, with the manufacturer that we’re using for our body oil blend, it’s the first time we’ve used them. We’ve been working for 14 months on this particular oil blend, right, and we nailed it as peppery, sandalwood…we used two different kinds of sandalwood; Indian and Australian, a little vanilla in there too. It’s perfect, right? An all purpose hair, body, massage, personal lubricant, you name it. And we’re so excited about marketing this and then you approve the production batch and then again, you do that twice, and then you go through its production. So, with the full on purchase order.

Well, they sent a box to me and it was completely different from the production batch that we signed off on. That’s the first time that’s happened to me. Where it’s all based on, I guess, their sense, what they think it smells like to mine, but I’m telling you it’s not like the production batch. So I’m dealing with that right now. And we may just have to eat that which is very frustrating. Not only is that a lot of waste and a lot of capital down the drain, but it’s one of those things, unless we can find an option and go back and refill and they’re able to work with us, we may just have to eat that.

And I don’t know how you prevent that in the future. Just to people out there that are out there working with formulators, and manufacturers and chemists, I think there’s something you can write into the contract to make sure everybody is on the same page with that, with production and just making sure before you get billed for an entire purchase order and it’s a complete waste. So that’s something right now.

I know I’ve had a couple other ones in the past that have led to more posi…you know I really feel like this is gonna to be positive. It’s just that this just happened two days ago so that’s a big one.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Top of mind.

Andy Hnilo:                         Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Well, it’s true though, ’cause there’s a lot of people that have formulations. I don’t know if any of them got it 100% off the bat, right? It’s like, there’s always issues in manufacturers. Like, even for us we had to change manufacturers due to some transparency issues with the wrong ingredients. So there’s all of these things that you learn along the way. And it’s part and parcel of having that kind of business, which is pretty cool.

Andy Hnilo:                         That definitely happened to me, too. I actually had to go down to the lab. I tasted the pearl powder in front of them and it was bitter as opposed to the Jing pearl that I use, which is really nice and kind of creamy. I’m like, “What is this, show me the source?” It was not negotiable from the beginning. And they thought I was crazy, they probably didn’t expect me to taste it, but I’m like, “No, that’s supposed to be Jing pearl powder.” Anyway, yeah, I get it, I get it. It’s a battle.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s cool. Awesome man. So this has been really, really interesting, Andy. Thanks so much for sharing what you’ve shared so far.  Are you ready for the Rapid Five?

Andy Hnilo:                         Absolutely. Go!

Yuri Elkaim:                         Alright, man. So five questions. Whatever comes top of mind is probably the right answer.  Number one: What is your biggest weakness?

Andy Hnilo:                         Perfectionist.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Number two: What is your biggest strength?

Andy Hnilo:                         I’m relentless.

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

Andy Hnilo:                         Numbers. Crunching numbers right off the top of my head.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s important, especially in a physical product business, right?

Andy Hnilo:                         Oh yeah.

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

Andy Hnilo:                         I say, “Today’s going to be a great day. Thank you Lord for another day.” And I’m not that religious, I just have been doing that my entire life. I just want to thank my Higher Power. I’m very grateful, you know?

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

Andy Hnilo:                         I have the ability to do whatever I want, with whoever I want whenever I want. And I hope that doesn’t sound cocky or arrogant, but I work very hard and it’s kinda fun to be able to do that. I just, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Awesome, guys.

So everyone listening, check out alituranaturals.com. I’ll be trying out your products as well. I’m almost fascinated with this kind of stuff, so I’ll definitely be using some of this stuff. So if you guys are listening to this, check it out, alituranaturals.com. We’ll link up to this in the show notes as well.

Andy, thank you so much for taking the time for joining us today. And I wanted to express some gratitude to you in appreciate for turning, seemingly a really catastrophic event into something amazing that is serving so many people now and, obviously, seeing your transition and your growth from that is, as a bystander, pretty amazing. So I just wanted to commend you on that.

Andy Hnilo:                         Hey, Yuri, thank you so much for having me on. I do want to offer a 20% discount code. We’ll just call it Yuri, y-u-r-i, to you and your following.

Just go to https://alituranaturals.com/  Get a 20% discount when you type in Yuri in the code.

But, no, I really appreciate you saying that. I was searching for my purpose up until 30 years old when I got into that accident. And for some reason, as I said in the beginning, I was excited. There was certainly meaning and there was something else out there for me. I wanted a job, and at 30, anxiety starts to happen, starts to set in when you don’t really have something set in stone. But, I just believed there was something else out there for me. And that having the ability to help others and to make a living out of it at the same time. I feel like I won the lotto, I really do. And we’re just gonna maintain that exact feeling of being of service and doing our best to stand out with our products from here on out. I really appreciate you having me on.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely, man. Thank you so much and thank you for all the great work you’re doing and guys hope you enjoyed this episode. Andy, once again, have an awesome day and thanks so much for being with us.

Andy Hnilo:                         Thank you, yeah, you too.

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Yuri’s Take

So I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty inspired. It’s amazing to see how such a tragic, on the surface, accident can be turned into such a positive movement for what he’s been able to do with his skincare company.

One of the things that we didn’t really talk about is the fact that they have well over, they have thousands of reviews for their products and they have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5. I mean, that says a lot, for the quality of stuff that they’re putting out.

So, once again, hopefully this interview has inspired you to recognize, as I mentioned in the interview, that everything happens FOR us, nothing’s happening TO us. And if you live life with that believe, I think you’ll be very empowered at each step of the way because it doesn’t matter if you miss the bus or you’re stuck in traffic or something didn’t happen well with your business or whatever, but if we come from the perspective that every single moment in our life is happening FOR us, that it’s there to serve us, to teach us a lesson, to help us move forward. It’s just a really positive way of going through this journey. So that’s one of the lessons I want you to really leave from this episode with is, go through life, go through your day, just think about this today, be conscious of this today. In any moment where you think it’s not working out for you, understand that it is. If you have a product launch or you’re launching something that doesn’t work out for you, hey, there’s a reason for that and it’s working FOR you, there’s lessons to be learned there. There’s no sense in being a victim and thinking, “Poor me, why hasn’t this worked out.” Think about, “Hey, alright, whatever, it’s all good. There’s got to be a reason. There’s got to be something happening FOR me here. How can I extract the benefit out of this situation?”

So that’s the lesson I want to leave with you from today’s episode. And if you haven’t yet subscribed to the show, be sure to do so on iTunes. Healthpreneur Podcast. Just subscribe.

We’ve got amazing episodes coming your way, as we always have. If you’ve missed any of the previous, I mean, we’ve got so many amazing conversations, terrific solo rounds, it’s just been an amazing journey over the past year. And I guess we’re almost coming up to the year anniversary, which is pretty exciting as well, in a couple months. Yeah, it seems like a long time, but we’re not even at one year old yet. Pretty cool.

Anyways, that is all for today. IF you’ve enjoyed this bad boy, head on over to iTunes, leave a rating or review. That would help me sleep really nicely at night. And for now, hope you have an amazing day. Continue to get out there. Be great, do great and I’ll see you in our next episode.

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Follow Andy Hnilo At:

https://alituranaturals.com/  Get a 20% discount when you type in Yuri in the code.

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Transcription

What does the Wizard of Oz have to do with your business? Well, our guest today, David White is going to share exactly what he has to do with helping you grow your business. And more importantly how to market in a friendly manner, so you don’t come across like a slimy salesy douche bag, because no one likes feeling like that, right? No one likes putting out marketing or general material that makes them feel that way or makes their business look all salesy. Especially as health and fitness wellness entrepreneurs, we come from a heart centered place. We want to serve people, we want to give, give, give. And sometimes we have a tough time selling. And not that there’s nothing wrong with selling, but ideally if it’s done in a friendlier manner.

So, David is going to walk us through what friendly marketing is. And he’s going to share an amazing analogy of the Wizard of Oz that is going to make your understanding of marketing so much more effective and simple. It’s really, really, good. So, he’s going to share that in this interview. And I have to say, I was on David’s podcast about a week before we recorded this, and he’s a legit dude. He’s got an amazing podcast called the Business of Health Show. Check it out on iTunes.

He’s one of the few that actually does the research on his guests ahead of time, so his questions are really in depth. And he does a really good job on his podcast.  I’m excited to return the favor and have him here on this show. And what’s nice is that he’s not just teaching other health entrepreneurs and fitness business owners on how to build their business online, he actually had a successful business to begin with. So, he’s one of those guys that has success in his health and business online and now he’s sharing what he knows and his wisdom with others to be able to do the same. So, without any further ado, let’s welcome David White on to the show and let’s have some fun.

David, what’s up my friend. Welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast.

David:                                    Hey, man. Thanks so much for having me on.

Yuri:                                       It’s great to have you here. I think you’re the second Aussie we’ve had on the show.

David                                     Who was the first? I got to ask that one.

Yuri:                                       Aidan Darcy.

David                                     I haven’t heard of him. Was he amazing.

Yuri:                                       Yes, he’s a pretty good dude, for sure. Doing some pretty cool stuff on the online fitness base and it’s amazing how many people in online fitness are in Australia. It just seems like I see them all over the place, it’s pretty awesome.

David                                     Wow, that’s cool.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

David                                     I didn’t know that, but that’s good to know.

Yuri:                                       Yeah. All right. So, let’s jump into this. Let’s talk about friendly marketing today because it’s something that we both share in common. It’s something you’re very passionate about. Before we jump into that,  give our listeners a sense of how you got here because I think your journey’s pretty cool. You’ve had some really cool epiphanies along the way. But give us the Cliff Notes of how you went from trainer to now being somebody who helps other trainers build their online presences.

 

David’s three-part journey to where he is now

David:                                     Well, my journey’s kind of a three parter.  I spend a huge, unfair amount of my time, pretty much from when I was born until I was about 18, being really, really sick. My school attendance record was like 70%. I never had any real health conditions but I used to get these stupid migraines, and they were so painful. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a headache so bad that you would lose your vision for like 30 hours. But that was my reality as a child. And it led to some really unhealthy habits funnily enough, because I had all these food sensitivities and all this kind of weird stuff. I wasn’t allowed to eat chocolate until I was 16 because I was intolerant to it.

And you can imagine telling a 16 year old, “Hey, you can start eating chocolate now. And it’s totally fine. In fact, we encourage you because you’ve missed out for 16 years.”

Yuri:                                       Ta-da.

David:                                   Didn’t really do any good stuff for my eating habits.  When I realized that I could start eating, drinking Coke, eating chocolate, and it wouldn’t wreck me for 30 hours, I got into it. I was into that stuff. And then I left school and I noticed these people walking around, these females and I was like, “Man, I’m really interested in the opposite sex.” And predictably my bad eating habits hadn’t really helped me out there. Once I’ve gotten over these migraines, I started going to the gym because that’s where everyone who was able to function as a normal human, which I now was able to do, was doing.

I was studying business at university and I thought, “Man, this is kind of boring. What about if I just worked in the gym all the time?” So, I did. Got a job, started as a trainer. And patted along for awhile doing reasonably well and at one point I got disturbed which is something we’ll talk about later on in this show. But I looked around and I was seeing all these other people who I was learning from online, who were kind of just maybe doing really different stuff. As wellness experts, we’re all really committed to our craft. And we all really care about what we do. And I was just like everyone who listens to this show and I thought, “Man, it must be so amazing to be able to go to work or be at home and do work and reach … like 10,000 people, like 50,000 people. 100,000 people with what you say and be paid for what you really deserve for sharing that information. Rather than seeing eight people in a day. That must be amazing.”

I spent a lot of time doing personal development stuff, I was bit of a go-getter. I just lept in, I had no idea. I emailed this one guy who I knew who was doing really well. Basically, spammed him, like emailed him about 15 times, “Man, can you teach me how you’re doing this? Hey, I don’t know if you saw my last email, will you teach me how to do this? And I’ll send this guy one more email.” And he responded to it and he started coaching me on this sort of stuff. And I started teaching online about how to get healthy.

Yuri:                                       That’s awesome. So cool, I love the lessons of persistence because so many people give up after one email. “Oh my god, they didn’t get back to me, they hate me.” But we’ve had a few people on the show where there’s a common theme of just keep persisting. It’s almost like they’re testing to see if you have what it takes to keep going. So, that’s pretty awesome. Speaking of successful people, I know you’re a fan of Zig Ziglar and his whole philosophy of helping others get what they want before you can get what you want. Who are some of your initial influencers as you starting to develop your chops business wise? What are some of the big influences in your life?

 

Tim Ferriss, Frank Kern, and the best ways to learn new things

David:                                   So, I read Tim Ferriss’s book, The Four Hour Work Week. Which is full of a lot of stuff that I don’t agree with but it kind of changed my mindset, and all the ideas that were in there.

And I read this other amazing book. I can’t recommend this book highly enough but it was by a guy called MJ DeMarco, called the Millionaire Fastlane. And for me, when I read that I was like …

Yuri:                                       That’s such a good book.

David:                                   I don’t why more people haven’t read it. It’s unbelievable. And when I got my hands on this thing and I read it, I had to leap straight in.

I had heard of this guy called Frank Kern. Dude didn’t have a website, he still doesn’t really have a website now. He just puts together marketing campaigns that will help people and then he offered some expensive products and that kind of stuff.  I bought one that was way too advanced for me, but I was like, “Man, I’m going to figure this stuff out.”

I’ve spent years as a wellness expert, really not knowing what I’m doing. Because when you’re an 18 year old kid and you get a qualification that says you can tell people what to do in the gym and people come up to you and they’re like, “Hey, my back hurts a lot when I try to lift this thing, what am I supposed to do?” And you’re like, “Man, I’m really sorry to hear that. I have to say I’ve got no idea.” It freaks you out and you have to figure stuff out. Anyone that I could find, I would learn from them, I would model them, I would watch people who were doing really well in our space, and I would … Not copy, but I would try and reverse engineer what it was that they were doing and try to figure out why does this kind of stuff work?

And I think that the best education you’ll get is from doing stuff. The next best education you’ll ever get is from like trying to deconstruct how people do stuff really well, and then there’s the books and the courses, and that sort of stuff too.

Yuri:                                       It’s so funny because everyone … In a typical product launch world, right? If people opting in, thousands upon thousands of people, and then they buy the thing. But I don’t think a lot of them realize that they’re in the thing that they’re buying. So, if they just observed the process by which they’re being sold to, that is such a great education. And I agree with you that Frank Kern … It’s actually funny, I’ve got a throw back Thursday shout out to Frank Kern on my Instagram page. Even to this day, I think he’s one of the few people that I really respect in the marketing space because he’s just … He’s just on a different planet, but in a good way.

So, guys, if you’re listening to this, Frank Kern, a great example of how to do marketing in a friendly manner. And let’s talk about that, let’s segway into what is friendly marketing? What was the moments when you’re like, “Yeah, this is a thing versus unfriendly marketing.” And how did this all come together for you?

 

Marketing when it’s done right: Friendly vs. unfriendly marketing

David:                                   This topic is like a four parter, Yuri.  I want to talk about what it looks like when it’s done really well. And what it looks like when marketing’s done really badly. I want to build clarity around what marketing is and then I want to tell a story. And lastly, I want to give the listeners a really direct shot of confidence because I think a lot of things that we all struggle with is, “I’m so well-trained in health, I don’t think any other industry pays as much attention to professional development like the health industry.” So, it’s hard and try market something that you know really works but you don’t know how to talk about it or how to present it or do it justice.

 

The sucky things about unfriendly marketing

We all see ads on Facebook. We’re all exposed to advertising campaigns that just suck.  I hate it when people show up on my Facebook feed and they’re like, “I’m awesome, you should buy my thing.” And I think intuitively we all know that you can’t just put out a marketing message that says, “I exist, you should buy from me. You should give me money.” Or, “I look like this, you should give me money.” Or, “Here’s what my customers, my clients have to say about me, you should give me money.”

I think that sucks, man. That really is awful stuff. That’s really unfriendly marketing because it just turns us off. That’s why no one goes on Facebook anymore. It’s because of all that unfriendly marketing.

 

Examples of friendly marketing

But it’s hard when you’re starting out a business and you don’t know what else to do other than say, “I’ve made this thing, do you want to buy it?” It’s hard. So, what does it look like when marketing’s done really well and when it’s friendly? There are a few people who I know who have done friendly marketing really well. So, first one that comes to mind is Marie Forleo. I’m not in Marie’s customer base. I like her YouTube Channel, but she’s done this to me. Zig Ziglar had done this to me. Frank Kern has done this to me and Brendon Burchard has done marketing to me.

So, let’s say I get one day, like if Zig Ziglar was still alive, I get a phone call one day from Zig and he says to me, “Hey, what? You idiot.  You don’t look like a really successful guy. And I’ve made this product called Over the Top and it’s about how to get successful. You look like you really need some help with that, so you should go and buy from me or you’re stupid.”  I be like, “Okay, where’s the order form?” The sales pitch literally would not matter, it would not matter what this guy said to me, I just have this relationship with him, this bond with him. And I believe in what he does so much, that I go and buy even if he was really, really abusive and uncool about it. And I think that’s what we all want.

Like who wants to have to work really, really hard for a sale? Who wants to learn how to give an amazing speech on a video or write a killer … Spend the week that it takes to write a really good sales letter. Who wants that kind of stuff? We just want people around us who we say, “Look, I’ve got this thing if you want this kind of result. I think it’ll really help you.” And people are, “Let’s go and do it.” “All right, send me to the order form, I want that.” That’s what in my opinion is what friendly marketing is.

Yuri:                                       Yeah. It’s really about building that what I call a KLT -that know, like and trust. I spoke to a lady yesterday —  Once a year for a day or two I do these 10 minute speed consults for free.  I spoke with a lady yesterday who says, “This is weird because I listen to you in the bathtub.” She listens to the podcast, and reads all my stuff, and it’s like … It’s so cool when you can realize that, “Wow, some people just really consume your stuff.” And by the time you talk with them, it’s like they know you. And there’s just so much less resistance in those cases.

For people that are building their business, friendly marketing, whether it’s the form of content or however else that might be, how does somebody balance that with the need to make money? Because you and I both know, it does take time to build a following, it takes time to build that platform. And a lot of people struggle because they’re like, “Okay, I’m putting out free contents. I’ve got a podcast, or I’m doing this thing and no one is buying.” Or, “I’m not making any money.” How do you balance the two so people don’t go off the deep end?

 

Understanding your audience’s circumstances and addressing them; an analogy

David:                                   Good question, I really like that question. To do marketing properly, which marketing has to help people. You can’t just say buy from me now. Marketing has to help people but it also has to lead to a sale because the people who get the best results are your customers. No one will convince of anything other than this. Happy dabblers who listen to your podcast every now and again, even people who religiously watch your YouTube videos will never get the best results or the kind of results that your customers will. So, we need to get the sale which means we need to understand that not everyone is ready to buy from us now.

Yuri, I’d love to hear what your definition of marketing is. Ignoring like the friendly part of it.

Yuri:                                       So, I’ve got two definitions. Number one, is marketing is a process of building relationships with people who don’t know you. To the point where they know, like, and can trust you, so that selling becomes almost unnecessary.

David:                                   Perfect, like you. Let’s end the show here, you just nailed it.

Yuri:                                       It sounds like I just read that. I wrote that statement down years ago and I just kept repeating it to myself and it’s like verbatim now, no problem. So, that’s my first definition. The second definition of marketing which ties in with that is sharing more of what you believe, more than what you know. Because really marketing in my opinion is really attracting people who get you versus people who don’t. And it’s really just kind of a repelling/attracting game. So, sharing your beliefs, not just like the 101 ways to use coconut oil.

David:                                   I know you get this kind of stuff and I’m actually going to use you as an example shortly. I love that first definition that you gave and to do marketing properly, you need to know what a market is. So, whether you are helping people who have digestive problems or who’ve had their thyroid cut out or who worry about what their skin looks like or who have imbalanced hormones, or need to lose weight, or whatever. Your market is anyone who could or should buy from you. So, that could be for some listeners to this show, an enormous amount of people. And if we look at your market, and this is something I’ve learned from Chet Holmes who was an amazing guy. I wish he was still around.

He would say that only about 3% of people in your market are actually buying right now. They’re in the buying process. And this can change … When people who turn 40 are much more likely to buy certain things around New Years, people are buying more … So, generally speaking about 3% of your market is buying right now. So, imagine this is a pyramid and I know that’s the worst word to use when you’re talking about marketing but whatever.

Yuri:                                       That’s a good opportunity for you.

David:                                   Wait until you hear my plug at the end of this episode. We’ll talk about pyramids then. But at the tip of this pyramid, we’ve got 3% of people who are buying right now. And at the bottom of your pyramid, about 30% of the people who could or should get their hands on your product and  just aren’t.  They’re just never going to buy and that’s fine. Maybe they won’t buy from you because you’re a male and they don’t want to learn about digestion from a male, they want to learn about it from a female. Maybe you’re a female and they want … Any number of reasons. Maybe they just literally don’t care enough.

Maybe they’ve got a sick spouse and it’s more important for them to worry about that then going to the gym or anything like that. That doesn’t matter. 30% are never going to buy from you. Above that on the pyramid, we have 30% of people who think they’re not thinking about buying from you, above them we have 30% of people who just aren’t really thinking about it at all. So, the difference between those two levels as someone who might … They’re 30% who think they’re not thinking about it, it might be someone who says, “Well, I don’t have time to go to the gym 10 hours a week to try and lose weight because I’m busy at work.” We know that’s not true, there’s stuff you can do to lose weight that doesn’t take 10 hours a week, but they think they’re not thinking about it.

And then the last level, just below that 3% is 7% of people who are thinking about buying. They’re not actually buying right now, they’re thinking about it. So, really crappy marketing treats everyone in this pyramid like they’re ready to … They’re actually trying to buy stuff right now.

Good marketing, really good marketing understands that some people are thinking about buying, some people aren’t thinking about buying. And some people think they’re not a good match to be buying right now. And it tries to move people up that pyramid. That’s really good marketing.

Friendly marketing is understanding that, hey, for people who have weight problems or who have been told you’ve got this health condition. Or, who really struggle with what they’re trying to achieve. Maybe they’ve been trying to do something about it for years, that’s emotional for all of us. And we’re going to talk about that in just a second. Having a health problem is an emotional thing. And with your marketing, you’re like, yeah, you can ball people. You can make them feel inadequate. You can take their confidence away from them. You can make them feel like I’m the only person in the world who’s got this problem, everyone else has it figured out. All you can make them feel like, “Hey, I got this. I understand what the problem is. I have confidence and competence. I know this is something that I can deal with.

Friendly marketing is moving the people up the pyramid. While understanding that that’s a very emotional journey for someone to go along. Really, really emotional.

Yuri:                                       Yeah, I love that. That’s such a great visual for people to get. And guys. Just to rewind and listen to that again, even write that pyramid down with those percentages, what you’re saying David is that … There’s always going to be people who are not ready to buy. So, friendly marketing, if you understand that is being okay with the fact that … I’m just going to add value of these people’s lives and eventually when they’re ready, I’ll be top of mind, and they’ll most likely do business with me if that’s a good fit for them. Instead of being … All right, they didn’t buy right away, screw them, let’s just spam them with a bunch of promotions and offers. So, I love that analogy, so good. So, let’s keep going. What’s the next points? You had four points, that’s the second one.

David:                                   The third part of this is a really odd story because I wanted to … Man, this is the third time I’ve given this presentation and I tried really hard when I was coming up with it too. Talk about it in a way that people would understand. And I know you’re a stories guy, Yuri.  I know you like stories. Your audience has experienced emotionally with trying to get away from something that they don’t like about their health to a reality that they really enjoy, where they are vibrant. And they’re enjoying all the good things that wellness can give them. It’s predictable and linear.

Now, you said a second ago, we need to be there to nurture the relationship when they’re ready to buy. For some people, their journey’s going to be 30 minutes. For some people, it’s going to be like a year and a half. And that’s totally okay. But, as a friendly marketer, you need to understand that there are four particular circumstances that everyone in your audience will find themselves in. And as a friendly marketer, you have four things that you need to do for people in each one of those situations to really help them out emotionally, help them out with the efforts they’re trying to make to change their health, and to make those sales. Because without making sales, well, we’ll talk about that in just a second. But the results don’t come, unless you can make the sale.

 

What Dorothy needs for her journey so she can get what she wants

So, the story is one that everyone has heard before and I picked this one because it ties up really well, and because I’ll know you’ll remember it. And it’s about this little girl called, Dorothy, who one day just like everyone in your audience gets really disturbed. Her house gets caught up by a hurricane or a tornado, I don’t know what it was, who cares.

Yuri:                                       A tornado, yeah.

David:                                   Her house gets caught up by a tornado and she gets taken away to this foreign land where nothing’s familiar. She’s lost and confused. She has no idea what the heck’s going on and she’s landed in Munchkin land. And obviously I’m talking about Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. but for anyone who’s ever had a health problem, you remember this moment of being disturbed. So, Yuri, I know your moment was when you came home from soccer training one day and exhausted. More exhausted than you should’ve been. And you had a shower and you came out and you were toweling off your hair, and your eyebrows fell out, right? That was the moment that disturbed you, wasn’t it?

Yuri:                                       Yeah, that was definitely, for sure.

David:                                   So, for you, Yuri, and for me when this happened to me when I was overweight and interested in girls.  I was like, “I got to do something about this weight problem I have.” I asked this really attractive girl out and she kind of laughed at me, she was like, “Really?” I was like, “Crap, all right. I got to lose this weight … I’ve got to change this.” The first situation that everyone in your audience find themselves in is they get disturbed and they look around and just like Dorothy, they don’t recognize anything. So, if a Dorothy, everything’s in color now, it used to be in CPO, really weird. There are all these tiny little people, the Munchkins running around. She doesn’t know what’s going on and she has this massive problem.

She has this green witch in her face problem. Whether it is a green witch or a high profile … Like a diagnosis of hyperthyroidism or this big belly, or someone saying you need to do something about your cholesterol or else you’re going to die. They have this massive problem and they’re like, situation number one, “How did I get here?” So, we all kind of know this stuff. Like I knew when I was overweight that I’m not supposed to drink a liter and a half of Coca Cola every day. I kind of get that’s not right, but I don’t really understand what led me to this place. So, at this point, and this is really important, your audience is far more interested in information about them then they are about you.

So, when people first meet you, I don’t really think you need to talk about yourself at all. They want to know about them. So, Dorothy meets this guardian angel who does friendly marketing to her. And she, her role, the Good Witch of the North. She fills the role of the friendly marketer so well. What she does for Dorothy is she assigns the blame and she builds awareness around the problem. So, she says, “Look, Dorothy. Your house fell down from the sky and crushed that witch’s sister. And now she wants to kill you for those shoes that are on your feet.”

So, Dorothy’s, “Okay, I understand this problem.” If someone had come along to me when I was overweight and been like, “Man, your metabolism is so slow.” I be like, “Okay, I understand now what I need to correct about this so I can do something about it.” Because we all know that, “I should sleep more. I need to drink more water or whatever.” Awareness and clarity around the problem is so huge. So, for you, Yuri, what was the awareness that you needed when your hair started falling out, just to make you not freak out quite so much.

Yuri:                                       It was probably going to the doctor to figure out what the diagnosis was.

David:                                   And being told it’s your immune system, right?

Yuri:                                       Yes, exactly.

David:                                   So, when you hear something like that, this massive problem that’s disturbed your entire life, it’s only about your immune system. It’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay but it’s less of a challenge, you know what I mean?

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

David:                                   So, that’s what we need to do first and foremost for our audience. And once we’ve done that, the next question that people are going to have, the next question that Dorothy has in this story is, “All right, what can I possibly do about this?” So, the Good Witch of the North fulfills the role of a marketer, a friendly marketer once again by saying, “Listen, there is this promise land and it’s called Oz. if you go there, you can find your way home. You can get everything you want if you go to Oz.”

So, depending on what you do as a wellness expert, your role is to explain this promise land. And that might be ketosis, it might be balancing your hormones, it might be speeding up your metabolism. It might be removing all environmental factors that excite your immune system, in your instance, Yuri. Whatever it is, you need to explain to people, “Look, here’s what you do about this. You need to get yourself to Oz. You need to balance your hormones out. You need to calm down your immune system. You need to kill off all these bad bugs in your digestive system. You have to do this to your metabolism.” Whatever it is that you think that people need to do, you got to go out there and you have to tell them, right?

Yuri:                                       That’s good. I like where this is going. So, we start off with awareness. So, once people are aware with the problem, they start looking at, “All right, I’m going to gather some information.” They start becoming aware of possible solutions and we keep going. What’s next?

David:                                   I would love to hear your thoughts on this because you may disagree with me but one thing that I don’t really think matters in marketing, is talking about why people want to get home, right? Why they want to get back to Kansas. So, we talk about this thing, like a faster metabolism or ketosis. And that’s like Oz. and having a fast metabolism, losing weight, in our example, making more money, that’s just like a stepping stone to get what we really want. Like Dorothy doesn’t want to get to Oz. People don’t really care about ketosis, they don’t really care about their metabolism. They just want the end result.

So, I’d encourage the audience to think about when you talk about the promise land, this thing that you make with their health, that’s going to deliver the result that they want, what is that? Because of the example of making money, no one … Really, no one cares about making money. None of us care about making more sales. We care about is freedom, we care about choice, and we care about being able to live a life the way that we want. If you had no money but you had total freedom, that’s totally what we’re looking for.

But what I haven’t mentioned so far, is why Dorothy wants to get home. I didn’t say because she has a wedding to get to. I didn’t say because it’s summer in Kansas now and she wants to go and lie by the beach. I didn’t say it’s because her little dog Toto is enrolled in a dog fighting competition that she has to meet. I don’t think that it’s up to us to second guess why our audience needs to be there. And this is why you’ll never see someone being like, “You should buy my course about how to make money online, so you can buy a $20,000 watch.”

Yuri:                                       Unless you know them intimately and that’s their driving force. But I think what you’re getting at and I think why this is so important is that a lot of … Especially health experts were very guilty of this because as you mentioned earlier, we’re in a professional, we’re certifications, and all that stuff is so important. So, we spend so much time sharing about all this shit that no one cares about. Who cares how your physiology works, just show me the damn path to fixing the problem. But I think the only time really sharing the wise is important, is getting them connected to why this matters that they solve it now.

For instance, with Dorothy, she needs to be connected to the fact that, “Listen, if you don’t solve this now, some really bad stuff is going to happen.” And reminding people that if they don’t take action, here are the consequences. But if you do take action, here’s this beautiful future that lies in front of you.

David:                                   The stakes are high.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

 

Why we are the trusted pilot, not the wizard, and how David helps his clients

David:                                   It’s not like, “Hey, you could buy an air conditioner so you’re not going to be that sweaty this summer.” It’s like, “Hey, this is your body.” And I agree. That if you’re going to do marketing type stuff in any area of this, like traditional marketing stuff, people already know that their health is important to them. You can remind them about that I agree, that’s a really good point.

So, Dorothy knows the problem now. She knows what she needs to do about it, what she needs to achieve. Now, what is Dorothy going to want to do? She is going to want to start walking down that yellow brick road and doing things by herself. She’s going to say, “How can I get this to work for me?” And as she goes along this path, she’s given … She’s given a bunch of really useful but incomplete tools. So, she meets a scarecrow without a brain, she meets a lion without courage. Man, I should’ve studied this before I started. And then she meets a tin man without a heart. And this, this is your content. Your podcast, your Facebook lives, your blog, your YouTube. I say these are useful and incomplete tools because until you make a sale, nothing you can do is going to change this persons life.

So, your role as a marketer here is to pummel your audience with as many useful and incomplete tools as possible. And it’s okay if these tools are eventually going to be part of this system that you’ll offer to them, but here Dorothy wants to do some stuff herself or at the very least she wants to visualize herself doing it. And know what a workout at the gym going to look like for me. Does it go for two and a half hours and I’m going to be wrecked for the rest of the day or is it 35 minutes and I can handle it. You can show them in a video, “Hey, this workout’s 35 minutes. She may not go and do it, but she knows now that is something she can manage.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

David:                                   So, your role as a marketer is to provide useful but incomplete tools.

Yuri:                                       I love that analogy. I just want to jump in. I love that analogy, like the tin man, the heart, the lion and the scarecrow as pieces of content. It’s so good, and useful but incomplete. Guys, you have to understand that you can never giveaway everything in your content because it’s actual disservice to people because they’re not going to figure it out on their own. Anyways, keep going, this is good.

David:                                   Yeah, one thing at a time. One thing. That’s all Dorothy needs. She doesn’t need to meet 50,000 different characters. She just needs some stuff to keep her moving or at the very least give her a little bit more clarity on how to get through this journey.

So, now we move on. Next, and this is kind of sad because you can’t really do anything about this for your Dorothy’s out there. She’s going to start walking down that yellow brick road by herself. And things are kind of … They’re going to go wrong. So, she is equipped with some useful but incomplete tools. She knows where she’s going, she knows what she’s fighting against, but she faces challenge, obstacle, and hardship. So, Dorothy in the movie, she comes across this forest of trees that throws apples at her. and she gets taken away with her little dog by the flying monkeys. And she gets drugged by the Wicked Witch of the West in the poppy field. Which is pretty messed up because she’s like 14 years old.

Yuri:                                       Seriously.

David:                                   Pretty uncalled. Yeah. And then the greatest disservice of them all, she thinks that she’s found her way home by meeting the Wizard and turns out that you’re still not even close at this point, Dorothy. And this is kind of sad. People try things, they fail. You can do your best to prepare them and be like, “Hey, look.” If you walk down this road and you meet this challenge, you can tell them with your content, here’s what you should do about this. There’s going to be a point where people realize, “I need help. I need an expert to help me sort this problem out.”

And not everyone’s going to come to that conclusion, not everyone is going to become a customer of yours and that’s fun. But we’ve been really respectful and considerate of people’s emotional state as we do this kind of stuff, so we’ve helped them as much as we can. And maybe a few years from now, they’ll get disturbed a bit more and maybe they’ll come around then. I don’t know. We done literally as much as we can. You’re never going to get 100% conversion. So, at this point, your role as a friendly marketer is to tell Dorothy what the real solution is. Because again, she doesn’t want to get to the promise land, she wants what the promise land eventually leads her to, which is Kansas, she wants to go home.

She wants to go to a place where everything is comfortable, and she’s worry free, and shes’ happy. And what you know as a wellness expert, what you know as a health expert, what you have in your brain, that is essentially like a J6, it’s like a jet.

Yuri:                                       Yep.

David:                                   Sitting on the runway of all of this airport, waiting to take Dorothy home. And here you need to say to Dorothy, “Look, I know you’re in this troubling place. If you would like to go home to Kansas, I have a seat for you on my jet.” And you can describe what that’s like. You can describe your product. And you’ve got more time in space and grace to do it here, because you’re not just trying to take money of some confused lost girl who’s in an unfamiliar land. You’ve built that relationship with her. You’ve told her what the problem is. You’ve told her where she needs to be, you’ve helped her get pretty close to it, now she will listen.

So, you can describe the features and the benefits of your product. You can say, “Look, we’ve got these really nice comfy seats so you can recline in comfort.” And those are three very important words in marketing. “So, you can.”

We’ve got these stewards and stewardesses who will bring you around some delicious and nutritious food, so you can enjoy your flight, have a nice meal, or if you’re scum class, we’ll bring around some calories and you won’t starve to death.

Yuri:                                       Some salty nuts.

David:                                   Whatever, yes, something. We’ve got these big comfy wheel … These big wheels underneath the plane so you can land safely in Kansas. You can describe your features and your benefits here. And at this point, you need to. Some Dorothys might’ve been on the journey with you for a year. “I need help.”

Yuri:                                       Yeah, that’s so good. Guys this is such a good story. It’s actually … It’s pretty amazing, that when you think about these movies and the hero’s journey, how similar it is to the journey of marketing, which is … What you said at the beginning of this was that most people are narcissistic and they focus on themselves with their marketing, but the key is that it’s not about us being the Wizard and saying, “Hey, look at me, I’m so cool. It’s about us understanding Dorothy and making all of our marketing about Dorothy. And once we’ve got that bond built with them, then they’re like, “Oh, this person gets me. I should do business with them.”

It’s talking about desire and getting to that point where Dorothy’s so lost, that she’s had all this crap to happen to her. It’s the same reason why … If you’re running a marathon, they’re not giving out water and Gatorade at the start of the race. They’re giving out miles into it and at the end when you’re about to collapse on the ground … Because that is where desire is the highest. So, you have to understand this guys because it’s tough to get people to buy who are not ready to buy. But if you understand this process that Dorothy or your customers, your prospects go through, it becomes a whole lot easier to meet them where they’re at, and then engage in that conversation with them. So, this is awesome. Keep going, man.

David:                                   You said we’re not the Wizard and you’re exactly right. And I said at the start of this journey, your audience is not interested in information about you at all at the start. And I want to speak directly to the wellness experts who are listening to this because I know it’s really hard to feel like you’re doing your baby. What you know, what you can do for people. I know it’s really hard to do justice to how much of a change you can make to people. I know it’s really hard to feel like you’re explaining how much of a transformation you can make. And I know it’s really hard to put yourself out there and be like, “Look, if you really want results, I can really help you.”

So, we’ve done everything that we can at this point, but there is one last thing that renders almost everything else obsolete but it still requires these … Your Dorothy to go through these four circumstances and you to do these four things but, the last thing that I need to say is the one thing that is 99% of this journey, because …

Yuri:                                       And on that note, we’ll end it there, tune in next week. Sorry, keep going.

David:                                   We’re not the Wizard but the plane home that Dorothy wants to get a seat on so badly, that plane has something far more important than the comfy seat, and the big wheels, and the flight stewards and stewardesses, the plane has a pilot. And the pilot is you. The pilot knows everything that there is to know about the journey from Oz to Kansas. You notice how the plane handles. She knows where all the flying monkeys and the poppy fields and the apple throwing trees are. They’ve done this journey before a lot. And you have to tell the story of the pilot to make Dorothy feel safe.

So, for some people listening to this, you’ll have what I would call a story of overcoming. You may have found yourself lost in Kansas at one point, yourself. You may have been disturbed and realize, “I’m really overweight. My hormones done work at all. My metabolism is shot. My skin is terrible. My digestion is messed up.” You may have been through the journey yourself. And if you can explain that to Dorothy at this point, she will trust you because you’ve already helped her get so far and she be like of course, of course this person know what they’re talking about. They’ve helped me and they just told me what it was like for them.

Now, if you don’t have a story of overcoming, you have a story of discovery, which is how you figured out the promise land. How you figured out the enemy that you need to identify for Dorothy. How you’ve fought to uncover these useful but incomplete tools that she needs to know about. Because learning about the human body is the hardest thing you can do. It’s harder than shooting a Tesla to Mars. It’s harder than making a billion dollars. Fixing one of these things that we all walk around is the most complex thing we can do and there is so much conflicting misinformation, bad ideas, outdated science, and stuff that is frankly bad advice that we all have to wade through to figure out what the best path is for Dorothy.

So, when you can tell your audience, “Hey, look, people used to come to me in the gym and they’d be like, “My backs hurting all the time and I try to figure it out. And I was told all these different conflicting ideas. And it really pissed me off. This is the battle I went through to figure out how to get back to Kansas. How I can get you back to Kansas. Dorothy is a captive audience and she’ll want to know that story because wouldn’t you want to know that the pilot of your plane has really, really worked hard to figure out how to fly that thing.

So, if all you really wanted to do was make more money and I know this audience is not about that kind of stuff, I know we want to make money by serving. I know we’re all about making a bigger difference. I know we all like getting those testimonials of people who say … Of people who we’ve never met, who say, “You’ve helped me so much. I referred you to all my friends. I can’t believe how good this program was.” I know that’s what matters to most of us. But if all you really wanted to do was make more money, wait for the right time, talk about yourself because you will make more sales that way.

Yuri:                                       Yeah, that’s great. I think an important component that I didn’t mention in the marketing question you asked me was empathy, is when we can understand someone else’s pain and imagine ourselves in that person’s position, we’re more likely to take action. So, if someone, like you said, Dorothy resinates with the pilot’s story of having gone through this journey of several times, “Like, oh my god, you get where I’ve been. You get this journey. I trust that you know what you’re doing.”

And talking about pilots, I was on a flight years ago and it was really turbulence. The flight attendant came on and she said, “Don’t worry, this pilot is former Snow Bird.” So, one of those acrobatic air pilots in Canada.” And so it’s like, “No, problem, we’re good, right?” Because now that this trust has been built, that this pilot’s seen way worse, and they’ve done it a thousand times. So, now it’s like, “Okay, we can relax a little bit more.”

So, dude, this has been really, really good. Really insightful. So many good nuggets and takeaways and guys listen to this story again because there’s so many pieces to what David’s just shared that. If you pull this out and start to build your marketing around this and your whole business, this is the way business is done anyways. If you really examine things done properly, do. So, thanks for sharing this, man, this is really good.

David:                                   So, I’d love to give the audience some homework …

Yuri:                                       Yeah, let’s do it.

David:                                   Around this kind of stuff. I would love to see people start getting out there and do some friendly marketing. So, if you’re still listening to this podcast and you agree with what I’ve said and you can kind of see how it would make sense, I’d love for you to go back and listen to this episode and just think about what I’ve told you to do. Because what did I say circumstance number one is that Dorothy finds herself in? She finds herself in this place where she’s unfamiliar. She doesn’t really know what’s going on and she’s got this big problem staring in her face.

So, for people who started an online business, we don’t really know what’s going on. We don’t really understand what we’re supposed to do. What did I do for you? The first thing that I did in this presentation was I gave you clarity on the problem, which is a … Not everyone’s ready to buy from you now. Then, I told you what the promise land is. I said, treat peoples emotions with the respect as you take them through your journey. Then, I gave you a bunch of useful but incomplete tools, which was the story around how to do friendly marketing. And it is useful, it is incomplete. No ones going to make $10 million after listening to this podcast episode. We all know that but as helpful as I can possibly be and that’s why I deliberately designed this story this way and you know.

The last thing that I could do now and I’m not going to because I don’t have anything to sell. But if I wanted to sell something, I honestly can’t think of a better time to do it than now.

Yuri:                                       Sure, awesome. David, with that said, what is the best place for people to stalk you online? And maybe be like, “Hey, man, tell me more.”

David:                                   You can go to my podcast, it’s on the iTunes. It’s called the Business of Health.  I don’t really work hard on Instagram or any of that kind of stuff. You won’t find too much from me there. But I work really hard on having a really good podcast. So, if you’re a podcast listener, which you probably are if you’re still listening to me. That’s the best place to go and find me. My website is thedavidwhite.com. Don’t go to davidwhite.com, it’s a website for power tools. So, I chose … What did I buy it off? I bought it off GoDaddy. It said, “davidwhite.com is taken, would you like thedavidwhite.com?”

Yuri:                                       That’s even better.

David:                                   I was like, “Yes, I would like thedavidwhite.com, that’s amazing. I will take that.”

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

David:                                   So, I’m on the interwebs at thedavidwhite.com. I’d love for people to go out and check out my podcast. And actually email me and let me know what you think. I’d be really touched to hear any feedback or criticism, good or bad.

Yuri:                                       Yeah, guys. His podcast is awesome. He had me on the podcast last week. I was telling you afterwards, “Dude, you’re one of the few interviewers that does the amount of research that you do on the guest.” It’s pretty amazing. So, if you want to listen to someone who really is a great interviewer and brings on some great people and gets deep into the story and the conversation in a way that’s meaningful, check out the podcast, it’s really good. He’s had some great guests on and can’t recommend highly enough. Yeah.

David:                                   If you want to hear some stories about what your journey’s going to be like to building your health business over the next five to 10 years? Listen to my podcast, because that’s what I try and bring, it’s this story about what you’re going to go through.

Yuri:                                       That’s awesome.

David:                                   And the tools, and the tactics, and the strategies, and stuff, but story.

Yuri:                                       Totally. Well, you have to, you’ve got to bring the power tools because of davidwhite.com, so … Not to be confused with thedavidwhite.com

David:                                   Exactly.

Yuri:                                       Anyways, David, this has been a pleasure. Thanks so much for staying up a little bit later down in Aus land and for joining us on the show. For everyone listening, check out the Business of Health Show on iTunes, subscribe, it’s a great podcast and hope you’ve enjoyed this one. Let us know what you think, we’ll have all the links in the show notes as well as in the blog. And thanks so much for joining us.

 

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Yuri’s Take

Wasn’t that an amazing story, that whole Dorothy, Wizard of Oz. it’s so cool how he’s kind of overlaid … If that’s even a word, that story with marketing. Because marketing really is that type of journey. It really is the hero’s journey, which is the fabric of pretty much every movie where crap happens. Person, who is just the general person has to rise up and become this reluctant hero to go figure a solution, and then bring it back and help others or themselves. And that’s kind of most movies, right? And if we think about marketing, marketing is essentially that process, but your clients, your customers are the hero. We’re simply the guide. We’re the pilots to show them the way. So, it’s never about us. It’s never about us.

And this is the problem that I see that in today’s day and world, everyone … I shouldn’t say everyone, but especially look at things like Instagram and social media but mostly Instagram. It is so narcissistic, it sickens me to see people called influencers who are doing nothing more than taking pictures of their ass with millions of followers because obviously our primal instinct is to be like, “Show me more of that.” And then these individuals are monetizing their but through sponsorship to little to nothing else. There’s no value added, there’s no contribution. And where am I going with this? Where am I going with this? That is a good question. It was more of like a little tangent of a rant than providing of value here. But I’m sure you get what I’m saying.

It’s never about us, okay? Even if you’re sharing stuff about yourself on Instagram or on social, it’s important to share our story because our story shows that we’re empathetic with what our audience is going through. And your audience are your perfect client, should be able to see themselves through your story. And so they can kind of get into your shoes because you’ve got into their shoes, and there’s really cool kind of merging that happens to the point where, “Wow, this person knows exactly what I’m going through.” And when that happens, they are much more receptive to what it is you want them to do, which obviously is going to be a benefit for them.

So, if you’ve enjoyed this episode as much as I have, be sure to subscribe to the Healthpreneur Podcast on iTunes. While you’re there, leave a five star rating or review if you feel this is really five stars, I hope you do. And in the mean time, got lots of good stuff, lots of great interviews, lots of great solo rounds and discussions around really building a bullet proof mindset over the coming weeks. So, be sure to tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Lots of good stuff to help you take your business to the next level. And in the mean time, thank you so much for joining me once again. Have an amazing day, continue to go out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you soon.

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Follow David White At:

https://www.thedavidwhite.com/

The Business of Health Podcast

Transcription

Do you love marketing? Oh, I bet you do, right? Oh, my God, I’ve got such a good episode for you today, because we’re going to talk about the truth about marketing.

This is an area that so many health experts have an issue with, because, for whatever reason, they feel that marketing is slimy and salesy and doesn’t really feel good. Right?

The key word being doesn’t feel good, because I want to be all feel-goody and stuff like that. And, I’m all for feeling good. That’s really the premise of life, I think.

I want to give you some context, to rewire how you think about marketing, and whether you see it as a positive or negative, okay? I think you’ll get some really big a-has out of this episode, so stick with me for about 10 or 12 minutes, as we jump into today’s episode.

 

What is marketing and what should it do?

Let me make this simple. Marketing is everything you do to get people in the door or on the phone. Selling is what you do when people are in the door or on the phone. Okay? That’s the difference.

Marketing is everything you put out. This podcast is an example of marketing. Does it feel slimy to me to be able to share wisdom and education like this? Absolutely 100% not.

Everything you post, whether it’s on Instagram, email, podcast, anything you put out to the world is a form of marketing. So, understand that. Just let that sink in for a second. Every time you speak to somebody. Every time you put something out, it is marketing.

I’m going to give you two ways of thinking about marketing, now that you have the context that marketing is everything that happens to get someone in the door, and then selling is what happens when someone is in the door.

 

Why it’s important to be congruent with your marketing

I’m going to give you two ways of thinking about this a little bit deeper. Marketing is beliefs. Marketing is beliefs. What does that mean? Markets should be not so much about 101 ways to use coconut oil. I think that’s okay. Obviously, you can be helpful in that way. But true marketing should polarize people. And, to polarize people, you have to share what you stand for and what you stand against. Essentially, your beliefs. The more you share what you believe the better off your marketing is going to be.

A lot of people focus on what they know. Right? How to lose weight. How to do squats properly. That stuff is fine, but the more powerful marketing is where you share your beliefs.  You can blend it in with some of that how-to stuff as well, if you like.

When you share a piece of content or marketing material, think of it as a boomerang. You’re going to put something out, and as it comes back to you, like with anything in life, you attract into your life who you are. You attract into your life what you believe. You attract into your life what you focus on. So, when you put stuff out into the world, it is going to repel the wrong people, and it’s going to attract the right people.

This is why it’s super-important to be congruent with who you are, because if you try to be someone who’s fake and you use a different name and you try to be someone you’re not, that’s a very incongruent existence, and I think, eventually, you’re going to run into some type of mental breakdown/life crisis, because it’s just so incongruent with who you are as a person. So, be yourself.

If we ever meet in person, you’re going to see the exact same person you meet in real-life is exactly who’s coming across here over your headphones. I don’t try to pretend to be anything that I’m not. I’m very real. That’s what a lot of people tell me. I am who I am. Right?

So, as a result of that, I attract very specific people to my business, and they’re not necessarily the same people that will resonate with somebody else who might be doing something similar as me, because they’re putting out a different message or belief system that resonates with their tribe. And that’s why there’s really no competition. There really is no competition. And if you think of it that way … the world is abundant.

There is more than enough for everybody, and if you think that because the health and fitness space is super saturated your message doesn’t matter and no one’s going to pay attention to it, you’ve lost. You’ve lost the battle. But, if you think about, “Hey, you know what? There’s going to be a segment of this world that resonates with me, that resonates with my message and me as a person.” Because it’s not just the message. It’s about the messenger as well. Because you matter. Your point of view matters. Your beliefs matter, and the right people are going to be attracted to what you’re doing. So, share your beliefs.

 

Why good marketing makes selling almost unnecessary

This is why I think that, when used properly, Instagram, Facebook to some degree, can be so powerful, because they’re platforms that allow you to share your beliefs. What you stand for. What you stand against. And that’s why, for instance, with Instagram, the power’s in the caption. Having a good image is awesome, but the true power to really amp up that image is what you say in the caption. I recognized this a while ago. I was like, I can’t, and I don’t believe you should outsource what people are saying on your behalf. Do not let some VA write your social captions, because it’s not your voice, and it’s not your belief system. You have to write what you believe. It’s your ideas. Your ideas matter, very much so.

So, sharing your beliefs is a very big piece of marketing, and that’s one definition of marketing, is marketing is sharing your beliefs so that it attracts the right people and repels the wrong people.

The second way of looking at marketing is that it’s a bridge between you and people who don’t yet know you but who would be benefited from what it is you have to offer. So, it’s a bridge, okay? And marketing is essentially building a relationship with these people to the point where they know, like, and trust you, so that selling becomes almost unnecessary. Let me repeat that. Marketing is a process of building relationships with a group of people to the point where they know, like, and trust you, so that selling becomes almost unnecessary.

Let me give you an example of this. One of our Mastermind members, Kate, was asking me, “Hey, Yuri, do you recommend getting people on the phone directly or do you recommend having them go through a webinar first?” And I said, “Hey, that’s a great question,” because there are a lot of people in the coaching space who have a “book a call” button on their website, and I told her, what we find — and we’ve actually tested this ourselves — is when you get people on the phone who have no context for what you’re talking about, you end up having to sell a lot harder. You have to do a lot more explaining about what you’re doing. You have to sell the person on what this is. And the conversions or enrollments from those consultative type of phone calls is much lower.

 

Pre-Suasion book example and takeaway

By contrast, if you have a piece of education like a webinar, this is why I’m such a big fan … I mean, if there were stocks in webinars, I would be full in on webinars, okay? If you’ve got a webinar, think of your webinar as your signature talk. It’s the one thing that you would want everyone to watch to give them a way better understanding of a specific topic, and then, obviously, of how you can serve them and help them. We get this a lot. I get people talking about, “Hey,” you know, “Can you tell me more about how you can help me build my online business?” And I’m like, I can go back and forth 1,000 times with these people, but the easier thing for me to say is like, “Listen. I think it might be best if you just watched our training, because that way you’ll get a much better understanding of what we’re doing, and if you jive with it, then book a call with us. And if you want an example, just go to HealthpreneurGroup.com/Training. Okay? Watch the webinar and see what I mean.”

If you’re like most people who go to the webinar, you’ll be like, “Oh, my God, this guy’s in my head. Oh, my God, I completely resonate with this.” And for some people, they’re like, “Nah, I don’t want to do this,” which, totally fine. But the beautiful thing is that it saves you time. You don’t have to engage in conversations that are going to lead to nowhere, because it might not be a good fit for someone. But they go through a piece of content like a webinar first, they’re immersed in your belief system, in your philosophy and the way that you do business, and the way that you help certain people. And if those people book a call with you after the webinar, they are pre-sold. They are primed. They have context. And now, the phone call is just wrapping up a few details, and that’s it.

If you want a great example of this, another great example is read the book Pre‑Suasion by Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence, one of the most important marketing books you could ever read. Pre-Suasion and Influence, you have to read these books if you care about becoming a good marketer. And don’t think of marketer as this bad word. It’s not. Remember, a marketer is somebody who shares their beliefs and builds relationships with people to the point where they know they can trust them, so that selling becomes almost unnecessary. I don’t think a lot of people like selling. The better you do your marketing, the less you have to sell.

Again, you don’t have to sell like a sleazy salesperson anyways, but it becomes a whole lot easier when you allow a lot of your marketing to be automated through a great tool like a webinar. Then you get people on the phone, you have a conversation with them, whether it’s in person or on the phone, it’s so much easier for them to be like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” You don’t have to really pull teeth or convince anyone of anything, because, like my book agent once told me, when you’re explaining, you’re convincing, you’re losing. That is so good. When you are convincing or explaining, you are losing. Big difference. Okay?

I’m just going to go back to Pre-Suasion for a second, just before I went off on a tangent. Pre-Suasion is a terrific book. The overarching message is, what people see before the offer greatly impacts the results of the conversion of that offer. So, let me give you an example from the book. They did this study where they had this lady who … This was all set up, right? So, they had a lady who had a purse and then four guys took her purse and ran down the street. And then, they started stopping random guys and asking them … The lady would stop them, so, she was in on the study here, right? She would stop these men and be like, “Oh, my God, these four guys down there stole my purse. Can you go get it back?” And a lot of times, the guys were like, “Are you crazy? I’m not going to go afer these four guys. They’re going to kick my butt.” In other cases, the guys were like, “Yeah, for sure. I’ll go do that right now.” What was the difference?

What I’m about to share with you is not going to make sense, but this is how powerful this is. The difference was, the guys who said, “Yes, I’ll do that,” the difference in that case was that these guys were being stopped on a street called Valentine Street. Valentine Street. Now, what the heck does that have to do with running after these four guys and grabbing a purse back? Well, it has to do with chivalry. Because these guys were primed, being on Valentine Street, they were in a context where they associated being a gentleman, being romantic, being chivalrous, however you want to define it, as part of that experience. It makes absolutely no sense.

I mean, that is a very extreme example, but it was crazy to see the difference. I can’t remember the stats, but it was insane, the number of men who said, “Yes,” on Valentine Street versus the men who said, “No,” when it was just a regular, random named street. So, priming really makes a difference. That’s why your marketing, if it’s done properly, gets people to the point where they just like, “Hey, man, how do I sign up with you?” That’s eventually, ultimately, I think, what most people want. Would you not agree? So, that’s a big thing.

 

How my marketing has worked for over a decade

And then, finally, I want to again remind you that everything is marketing. Everything is marketing, and marketing is everything. If you don’t like marketing, guess what? Your business is going to suffer. But if you understand that everything you do, whether you post something on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, everything is marketing, and marketing is everything. It’s the blood of your business. This is why longevity matters. This is why being around for a long time matters.

Listen, I’ve been around since 2006, and our health and fitness business is still crushing it, and I’m super grateful for that. And we’ve had health promotions do awesome as well. There are a lot of people out there teaching how to build a business online, and they’ve been online for maybe a year, maybe a couple months, maybe they had one little success and all of a sudden they’re like, “Oh, cool, I’m going to teach this now.” I don’t want to speak poorly of those people, because, at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. All that matters is that you can help someone, right? And I give my hat off to the people who know how to take someone from where they are to where they want to be, whether that’s in business or in health, it doesn’t matter. That’s why it doesn’t matter if you have a PhD, as long as you can help someone improve their health, that’s really what matters.

But, what I can say is that there are a lot of moments where I speak to people who are like, “Dude, I’ve been following your stuff for five, seven, 10 years. I love your stuff.” If someone has been following you for 10 years, do I really have to sell them? Do I really have to hard sell them? No. They have been drinking my Kool-Aid for 10 years. They either get it or they don’t. They either like it or they don’t. I’m not going to change the way I am. And if you’ve been around for a couple weeks, it’s a little bit tougher to have that type of indoctrination, but it doesn’t mean that you can’t have those types of results, because what we help our clients do, and what I love about what we do with our clients, is that we show them how to go from zero to hero.

 

Why marketing is necessary and how my program can help

So, we have people coming in who have zero following, zero list, nothing, and we help them start enrolling clients right away, because we show them how to do this in a streamlined fashion that doesn’t require them to be around for 10 years. But, it’s nice to start in the right place, because over time, people are just going to continue and continue and continue to see the message and it’s going to make it easier and easier and easier for them to enroll clients over time. So, anyways, if you would like to know more about what this looks like, again, I’m going to point you to our training, HealthpreneurGroup.com/Training.

Seriously, watch the webinar and pay attention to how you’re feeling about what you’re seeing. If you feel like, “Oh, my God, this makes total sense,” if it resonates, that’s awesome. But if it doesn’t, understand that everything I’m sharing is going to repel or attract you, and at a meta level, see what’s happening. Because when you do this in your business, watch what happens. And again, if you like what you see in the training, and you want to go deeper with this, and you want our support to help you deploy this in your business, then just book a call with us at the end of the training. Does that make sense?

So, thank you once again for joining me, hope this lesson has found you well. Marketing is not evil. It is necessary. It is embedded in everything we do in business and life. Take that to heart. Feel good about what you do. Feel good about the message you’re sharing, because it does matter, and it can change a lot of people’s lives.

Transcription

We’ve got a great, great interview coming up your way today with a good buddy of mine. Actually, one of my first mastermind clients, Dr. Stephen Cabral AKA one of the smartest men or people you will ever meet.  I’m not just saying that because he’s a former client.

Everyone I’ve introduced him to, they’re like, “Oh my god, this guy is amazing. He knows everything,” and that’s because he’s committed to mastery.

He’s going to talk a little bit about that in the show, but we’re going to talk a little bit about how he used podcasting to grow his business. He actually sent me a text message saying, “Dude, we can’t even keep up with the number of orders coming through.” That’s the level of success that he’s endured in his business in the last few years. He’s absolutely amazing. I’m super proud of him, but let me give you a bit of context as to who Dr. Stephen Cabral is.

It all started off when he was 17 years old. He was diagnosed with a life-altering illness and given no hope for recovery. Every day, he was suffering with all sorts of stuff for years, and it was only after he traveled the world and discovered how to combine ancient Ayurvedic healing practices with state of the art naturopathic and functional medicine did he understand how to fully rebalance his body and re-energize it with life.

Today, in his online and Boston practice, he and his team have completed over 250,000 client appointments, uses functional medicine, lab testing, and personalized wellness plans to help people rebalance their mind and body to recover from all sorts of different issues, and his mission is to empower people all around the world to take back control of their health, and he does so by producing a daily podcast called The Cabral Concept, which I would strongly recommend you subscribe to.

At the very minimum, from a health perspective, it’s really, really valuable, but even if you want to see how he’s interweaving the business side of things, it’s just a really, really good example. His podcast ranks in the top 100 shows in health on iTunes, and today, he teaches over 20,000 people through the podcast how to become the best version of themselves.

I’m even more excited to let you know that Dr. Stephen Cabral is actually going to be one of five speakers at Healthpreneur Live this year.

Fewer speakers, which means there’s a lot of really good peer-to-peer stuff happening outside of the stage type of speaking, but if you want to connect with Stephen, if you want to learn from him, if you want to hang out with him for three days and myself and a hundred other awesome entrepreneurs in our space, then I would strongly recommend you join us if you’re a good fit for the event.

Now, here’s the deal. We only have a handful of spots left, and we’re about a month away from the event, which is September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale, Arizona.

If you want to join us, send me an email. I’m going to give you my personal email address, [email protected].

Send me an email today if you are serious about taking your business to the next level. Okay? If you want more information about the event, you can go to healthpreneurgroup.com/live

Anyways, without any further ado, let’s bring Dr. Cabral on to the show.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Stephen Cabral, welcome to the show, buddy. How is it going?

Dr. Cabral:                           Everything is going great, and thank you for having me on.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I’m really pumped to have you here because you’re doing some amazing stuff in the health worlds, and for all of our listeners who don’t currently know who you are, guys … okay. First and foremost, let’s give a shout-out to your Instagram. Is it @stephencabral or @drstephencabral?

Dr. Cabral:                           It’s @stephencabral.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, so @stephencabral, guys. Follow him on Instagram first and foremost. He puts out awesome, awesome info, not butt pics and stuff like that, so it’s actually valuable, and we’ll talk a little bit about this business model in a little bit, but talk to us about the journey because I mean, I’m really interested about talking about the journey of entrepreneurship.

Obviously, you’re one of our first mastermind clients, and it was awesome working together and did some cool stuff, and you grew pretty rapidly during that time based on some stuff you were doing with the podcast, and it’s just really cool, so I want to dive into that, but let’s just give our listeners a bit of context to how you got started and from where you were to where you are now.

 

Stephen’s journey to heal himself and share his expertise

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, absolutely. For me, I always say that the Healthpreneur journey didn’t start or was not something that I was looking to do when I was much, much younger. I got very, very sick, and for a lot of people who have listened to my podcast, they know this story, but I got really sick when I was 17 years old, and conventional medicine was not able to figure out what was wrong with me, so I had this mystery-based illness that was literally causing my immune system and my adrenal glands to fail. I was diagnosed later with Addison’s disease, and myalgic encephalomyelitis, rheumatoid arthritis, type two diabetes, and a myriad of symptoms.

The problem was it took more than two years just to get those diagnosis, and after that, I was just given a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to take and was told that I would have to manage my diseases for the rest of my life. Being a stubborn kid from Medford, Massachusetts, that wasn’t good enough for me, and what I did, and this is the late ’90s,  was basically just dive into natural health where I was beginning to be exposed to that a little, and read every book I could get my hands on, and eventually found this thing called functional medicine.

For me, it was a journey. From the beginning, it was a journey to heal myself, and then later, I couldn’t help but want to share that information with others. That started with me as a personal trainer and essentially going from personal training to becoming a nutritionist and certified strength and conditioning specialist to eventually going back to school and getting my degree as a naturopathic doctor, so it’s been a long road. It’s been an amazing road, but really, never one that I ever expected to get into.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, it’s funny because you never really know how the bridges are going to unfold as you cross it, right? I remember when I was in school, I wanted to become a sport medicine doctor so I could play pro soccer, and then retire, and then go back to be the sport med doctor for those teams, and then very quickly after about a year in school, I was like, “Nah, I don’t want to do this anymore.” I’m just really happy that I chose the path that I chose, but we never really know what is coming down the road in three, four, five years down the road even though we visioned certain things.

I have to say, your podcast is awesome. Again, guys listening, girls, guys, The Cabral Concept is tremendous.

I believe, Stephen, you are one of the smartest guys or girls, ladies, men on the planet as it pertains to functional medicine. It’s absolutely incredible what you’re able to do for people.  How many patients did you help on a yearly basis in your practice? It was like tens of thousands or even more?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah. There’s about 20,000 appointments per year and over a quarter million people that we’ve seen and help really over the last 15 years or so.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s incredible. Guys, if you want to like tap into his wisdom, check out his podcast, but also, what I love about you, Stephen, is that you’re the true definition of what I consider to be a healthpreneur, which is someone with deep expertise, but who’s also committed to really mastering the business and marketing side of things. Talk to us a little bit about that journey because you’ve had some really great success with your podcast, but what did things look like when you first started online because I think we first connected maybe 10 years ago at a Ryan Lee event? Obviously, things were different 10 years ago, so what are some of the trials and tribulations that you went through as you started your journey online? Then, obviously, you were balancing both the clinical stuff and the online stuff. What did all that look like from the get-go?

 

How Stephen found what works for him and what doesn’t

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, it’s a great question, and I think I’ve been like the reluctant entrepreneur. I opened my first studio end of 2006, and we quickly scaled that to the point where we were doing over 10,000 appointments per year that first location, and that was it. I was maxed, and I was like, “This is amazing. I really love it.”

I have a great team. Of course, I couldn’t do this alone, but I want to reach more people because it’s great to be doing that, but 10,000, the grand scheme of things, when there is seven billion plus people on earth and you feel like you could affect maybe a little bit more, when you know something that works, and you just want to share it with more people, so I said, “Okay. Why don’t I create an e-book of exactly what we do?”

That was very popular around 2007, so I said, “Okay. I’m going to learn how to do this because whatever I do …” I actually don’t do a lot of things, so it’s like if I choose something, I want to go deep on it. I want to learn it in-depth so I can share it with more people, and that’s always been the goal, but I really had a distaste for the online marketing world and the e-book world where it was basically like, “Okay. Sell an e-book for $7, and then try to upsell someone for another like $39.95, and then put them into a recurring revenue model.”

First of all, that was way too much work for like what I wanted to do, and the second is that I felt no connection with the end-user. There was nothing there. I wasn’t talking to them through video. I wasn’t talking to them with voice, and so I actually left this space. A lot of people don’t know that, but I had an online newsletter that I’ve been doing at least once a week for the past 10 years, but I left in about 2010 and didn’t come back to the online world until about 2016, 2015, 2016, and that’s because it was moving in a direction that I didn’t like where it was going, and I didn’t know a lot of people on a more of a relationship-based level like yourself that were doing good things that were actually trying to help people. All I saw was the … just lazy marketing. That was basically it, and I didn’t want to be involved with that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         No, I get that. I mean, it’s funny actually because our journey is very similar because we both had a health crisis at 17. You took a hiatus from the online world in 2010, which is when I had my breakthrough after 3 years of struggling online, so I could have gone the same route because I was sick and tired of all the nonsense as well. It’s just cool to see how it’s come full circle back to you to where you are now, so what made … What was the moments or the occurrence that happened that made you say to yourself, “All right. I’m going to get back into this game, and I need to figure this out because I have a bigger message to share?” What was that moment, and what did that look like?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, that’s, I mean, a really great question as well, and so what happened was by 2015, I had already opened up my second location. That was in 2014. I opened up my functional medicine practice, and that was a very large wellness center that included the work, functional medicine, specific types of massage therapy like manual lymphatic drainage and Ayurvedic massage, so we had a lot going on, and that’s when we doubled … We were doing another thousand appointments per month, so we were doing 20,000 appointments now per year, and I said then, “Again, this is fantastic. I really enjoy it, but I would never open up another location.”

I had more than 20 people on my team. Again, all of them amazing, but at some point, when you have a larger offline, it comes a lot of human resources like your … There’s a lot of people. It is great, and it’s amazing, but I said, “Even if I opened up 10 more locations, I can only serve so many people,” and then at the same time, podcasting, which had been around, was now starting to really grow, and I saw that as a medium that I was starting to enjoy and that I could now express my vision and words I felt on a more intimate level rather than through writing because although I love writing, I just didn’t … I never felt a connection there like we’re having right now.

That’s why I said, “Okay. This is an opportunity. I like to teach. I just feel like what I do on a podcast is teaching and even when I meet with people,” so this allowed me now to teach at a deeper level where I didn’t have to sell. Again, I have nothing wrong … like nothing against e-books. It just wasn’t for me.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Dr. Cabral:                           That’s it. Again, I have no problem with it because it’s great, and we have a lot of friends that sell e-books or basically digital-based information. Of course, Kindle is very popular now, right? That just wasn’t my thing. This was the opening I needed, and that’s what I try to express to others. Some people love video, some love podcasting, or some love writing. Find out which method works for you, and then just go all in.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. You mentioned a couple moments ago you don’t do a ton of things. You do one thing or a very few things, and that’s definitely something I recognized from you like when we first started working together, and I appreciate that because even to this day, it’s like you got the podcast, you got Instagram, and that’s pretty much it like you’re not chasing shiny objects. Yes, you have some stuff built out in the backend for the products and stuff.

For you guys listening to this, this is an important message because focus is extremely important in any areas of business whether it’s online or offline. Is this something that you’ve always been able to gravitate towards, or have you really been disciplined to like really put on the blinders and stay in your lane?

 

Maximizing productivity and accomplishing goals

Dr. Cabral:                           It’s interesting because I think the reason why I left probably the online world and moved more towards the offline is that there is less to do in the offline world. I mean, like when you have a practice, it’s very straightforward. You know it has to be done, and with online, you have so many different options and different ways to try to reach people that I think it became overwhelming for me.

I’m someone that can get overwhelmed with all the different possibilities and opportunities, so I do try to stay focused in a way for me to stay on target, and that’s because if I have too many options in life in general, and that’s why I keep my day very planned, I pretty much get nothing done like I’m not … I’m a disciplined person if I have a list in front of me of what I have to do, but if I don’t have that list, I’ll just start to read. I’ll go read or I’ll look up articles and nothing gets accomplished, and it was going in that direction since I had no plan.

Now, with this, I had a very specific plan, and I had a very specific goal, so I was doing 20,000 appointments per year in my offline practice. When I went on to podcasting, I had one specific goal, and I said, “I want to reach 20,000 people a day instead of 20,000 people a year, and so that was a big … That was it, and so by going on to YouTube or by doing a lot of different guest article writing, that would take me away from my goal of 20,000 people per day, but I’ll tell you. When I accomplished that, then we’ll move on to the next thing, and I think that’s a tip that I try to share with other health coaches as well and entrepreneurs is that you can do everything that you want to do, but master something first. Build up your audience and brand there, and then you can move into other areas much easier.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I know you’re a martial artist, and one of my favorite quotes is from Bruce Lee, which is, “I fear the man not who has …” I’m butchering this quote, but like he fears the man not who has done a thousand kicks once, but he who has done one kick a thousand times.

Dr. Cabral:                           Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s all about mastery because if you’re dabbling all over the place, you’re really not mastering anything and you’re not able to go deep with any specific topic or area, and especially, as you mentioned, online, there’s so many things we’re distracted by. Just going through your newsfeed or anything else is just overwhelming.

One of the things that I’ve recognized too that you brought up is that if you don’t have the structure, you don’t really get anything done. And this is actually kind of a bit of an oxymoron and something I’ve noticed with a lot of successful people is that, we’re actually inherently lazy and not really productive unless we’re very focused on a goal and we have structure. Can you relate to that or am I, do I feel like I’m alone in this?

Dr. Cabral:                           No, without a doubt. I mean, I say that all the time is … And not only am I not productive if I don’t have that list and goals and 90 days planned out all of that. Is that I actually start to get a little depressed, and I say I’m not accomplishing anything. I’m like literally, I just wasted a week. And so one of the things too is you and I were sick, at a young age, and I think it changes you because I didn’t know how long my life would be. One had all of these different diseases. And again, I’m completely disease free now there’s … I mean I’m in 20 plus years later, I feel better than I had when I was at 15 years older, 20 years older, whatever. I mean I just … I feel fantastic and because of that, of course I want to try to share that, but at the same time I know how short life is and if I waste two weeks of just like, doing research or on YouTube or whatever. That’s … I mean I look at, the year is really not even 52 weeks. It’s like 48 because you’re taking vacations and you want to take some downtime and holiday. So I just wasted a huge part of my year where I’m not moving forward.

Our friend Craig Ballantyne has a line that he says, “Discipline and structure equals freedom.” And I believe that meaning that I actually feel great at the end of the day and I have time off to go to the gym and exercise as long as it’s built into my day. And so when I’m done at the end of the day, I say, “Wow, I still have a lot more to go, but I accomplished all of this. I did my appointments, I met with my team.” But it’s at certain times of the day. I’m not checking email through the whole day. I’m not on slack with my team the whole day. I do that at certain times and everything gets done. And so that’s, that allows me to actually not only enjoy my work, but get excited to even take on new projects as long as they fit into my schedule.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. What do you do when you get into a funk? If you ever have those days where you’re like, man, I just don’t want to get up today or earlier, or I don’t want to do this today. Or periods of time where you’re maybe not as focused or motivated. How do you get through those times?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, and for me. So that, it just comes with experience and going through it. That’s why if anyone’s struggling right now, this is just part of the process. Every I found myself … Well so I would get into funks every two years or so, and that’s because I realized I have a shelf life for what I’m doing, for about two to three years maximum and it starts at about 18 months and I’m like, “oh, it’s starting to creep in at two years.” And it doesn’t mean that I’m looking to switch fields. It means that I need to get myself a new challenge. That’s all. So when I get the funk I look, and again the funk could happen every other month. It could happen whenever, but I know when it comes on that I’m complacent. The only reason I get into a funk is that I like a challenge.

I used to play sports and all these different things that I’m quite competitive, not in like used to be at a more aggressive competitive way when I was younger, but again, you learn things through life and now it’s more like how can I challenge myself? And so I always look at it as, okay, I’m in a funk, what am I doing right now? What am I not getting enough of? Is it just that I need a week off? Like maybe I just need some time off and if that’s the case, fine. But a lot of times it’s that I’m not doing anything to help me to grow. That’s it. When I’m growing and I’m being creative, I’m never in a funk.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s awesome. It really is. I think a lot of people are looking for the easy way out, but as you mentioned it really is the challenges that help us rise to that occasion. And complacency is definitely something I think a lot of people can relate to. In fact, in the airline industry, the number one cause of airplane accidents is complacency where pilots are not doing what they’re supposed to do in terms of their checklist. And they kind of, they’re like, “Yeah, I kind of get this already.” So they’re not really on their toes. And I think the same happens for athletes. The same happens for entrepreneurs and that’s why a lot of businesses hit plateaus where they’re just kind of like lost the zest for a new challenge and yeah, it’s a really, it’s definitely something to think about because I think with that said, how do you balance the … Because I think a lot of people in business suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome because they’re looking for new and exciting. And how do you balance, I need something challenging, but also that’s not going to get me way off course into something that’s new and exciting. So it just for that perspective, it kind of riles them up as opposed to staying on course, but still being challenged on that same course.

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, it’s interesting. And I refer this back to our natural health practices well and in functional medicine is that a lot of people, they say, “okay, I don’t have a lot of energy, so why don’t I take some B12 and take some coenzyme Q10.” Because those things are great and they’ve been looking at this market and an article and this company says this, or maybe I should try a little licorice root as well, but what they’re not doing is looking at you need to actually have a foundation for any of those other things to work in the first place because I’ve never seen someone take just vitamin B12. I mean there’s always rare instances of course that they were just vitamin B12 deficient and it made a huge difference.

But for most people taking one single silver bullet, it’s never going to work, right? Because you need the actual foundation. So what we do and all of our practices, right? So I have a personal training, nutrition studio, and then I have a functional medicine concierge practice, is we always have a foundation and the foundation is helping people in the world. Now again, it’s grown with the podcast and everything online, more than two thirds of our appointments are all over the world over Skype. But those are still appointments.

Right. And so were their one on ones and their appointments and we do a lot of those, like that’s our foundation and then after that I have my book and I have my podcast and then you say, well how do you, how do you grow from there? Well, you never lose track of your foundation of what got you there. It’s serving people, helping people. That’s again, this is our example and then what we’re doing now is we’re adding on things that we’re passionate about and that would be like our certification to teach other people how to become a great health practitioner. So that’s how I look at it and I never take on more than one new project every 90 days and it has to fit in though with our foundation of teaching basically, serving in the form of health and fitness.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Love it. Yeah. So it’s still on kind of on that vision. Still ties in with the mission that you’re working on and not taking you off into all sorts of tangents.

Dr. Cabral:                           Right.

 

Maintaining a foundation in business and Stephen’s podcast

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let’s talk about the podcast because you’ve done an amazing job with your podcast. So when did you start it and did you have an expectation that may or may not have been met within a certain timeframe? And how do you approach or did you have the same outlook when you started as you do now with the podcast in terms of what it can do for your business?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yeah, so that’s the interesting thing and I know that I keep saying it’s interesting, but like I, you have expectations and they just change meaning that you can’t get too fixed on what any one path is going to lead to in life. So you know that what you want in the future. So in my future always said is what I want it to be able to do is take what I learned in order to get well. So again, I’m not against conventional medicine or pharmaceuticals or anything like that, but what I’m pro is I’m pro people and I’m pro helping people and what I’ve also realized because again, this is completely different than what I was like growing up in my culture and in my community and my family and all of that is that one thing was always the best. That’s just the way it was.

And that was either better than everything, you judged everything and that’s just the way it was and that’s fine. I can look back at it now and say, “okay, will that help me to have this new outlook on life.” Where all my internship is I traveled all around the world. I was in India and Sri Lanka and China and Europe and I was studying with all these great hospitals and clinics and I was simply looking for what is the best form of medicine because whatever that is, that’s what I’m going to use to help people. And of course I quickly realized that every form of medicine was able to help people. But you had to know when to use it and with who, because not everything works all the time. So what I said was, “Okay, this is one thing that I’m doing a little bit different.”

Again, people teach functional medicine. People teach natural health all the time, but maybe I can say it and help people a little different way. And so my expectation going in with a podcast is that I had a message that I wanted to share with others and people kept telling me that … Because here’s the thing. Everyone goes into things saying like, “It’s already been done, like why should I post an article? Because everyone’s already talked about super foods before.” Whatever it is. But what they don’t do is they don’t say it from your perspective. And remember, not everyone resonates with everyone. So not everyone’s going to resonate with me and not everyone’s going to resonate with Uri. And that’s the great thing is that we gravitate towards certain people. So I said, Okay, what I’m doing works because I’ve proven in the offline world and I want to share that now with others online. My expectation was actually to be able to teach then hopefully to kind of build my small community. By … So I’ll just give you the stats. The first month, every show got a couple hundred downloads. That’s it. So we’re not talking anything very spectacular, and then-

Yuri Elkaim:                         How did people find out about the podcast initially?

Dr. Cabral:                           So initially I would email out to my email newsletter group and so again, like it would get a little bit of traction there, but remember I had left those people kind of in the dust, not on purpose, but I hadn’t really communicated very well when I decided to leave the whole online space. So what I did was I first brought it out to my local community, which is basically Boston and the practice that I currently had. And then I started to share a little bit about more about it on social media with Instagram. And all I asked was that if the information was helpful for you, please just share it with one other person. And that’s always how we’ve grown. So we just grew and grew and I didn’t do a single interview on another podcast for about 18 months. And so it was literally all word of mouth.

Now the Nice thing is the people that tuned in though were really building that community from the beginning and those are the people though that you want on your side because they begin to know you and then they begin to trust you and when you make recommendations, that’s why it’s very important that you really believe in your recommendations that they will really get behind you in whatever you are doing. And so that’s why again podcasting is one of my favorite things to do is that each day or each week, and I don’t recommend you do a daily podcast, we can get into that if you want. But it is that you try to bring something more that will enrich their lives. And if you do that on a consistent basis, I think that you will continue to grow and I can share a little bit about my growth if that’s of interest.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I think that would be of high interest for our listeners. So you have a daily podcast. Two questions, was it set out from the get go as a daily podcast? Did you know what you’re getting into? And then second is how do you come up with content for every single day?

 

How Stephen organizes the content of his daily podcast

Dr. Cabral:                           So it was a five day a week podcast and then I said I’m doing Q and A’s at the end, why don’t I just break up the show to do Q and A’s on the weekends? So essentially what it is, is each day of the week is a different topic, motivation and mindset Monday, total wellness Tuesday, wellness weight loss Wednesday, training Thursday and our Friday review where I’m reviewing products and all sorts of different things that we use in our practice. And then I do a super nutrient of the week which basically teach people about vitamins and minerals and herbs and all those things and actually show the science behind it. Because in the conventional medicine world they’re like “Oh there is no science behind any of that.” Meanwhile, there’s hundreds of thousands of data points that come out every single month at all this. So I just tried to bring that to people.

And then on the weekend we answer our community’s questions and people can write in and so there’s lots and lots of questions that come in to answer. So I did set out on a daily podcast and the reason I did that is because I wanted to fully commit and I knew I had the contents, but anyone that I teach now are trying to share with now. I say, twice a week is probably a good place to start. One could be an interview interviewing guests so that your content is … The guest basically coming on, you’re asking really engaging questions and then once a week you could do maybe a solo if you chose to, which would be, you connecting with your audience. And so I think that’s a great model to start with, but it’s only one model. Again, you can do whatever you’d like. However, I had a set out and committed to do the daily podcast. And so that is where I wanted to start.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. And you don’t butcher recordings, right? You’d do them every day or like kind of on fly?

Dr. Cabral:                           I do them three to four days per week, so it used to be every day and now just how the practice is set up. Some days I’m just not able to. Like on a Wednesday, I’m essentially in my office from seven to seven and I see people appointments all day, so on that day not and then the weekends I try to keep that as just a family time, but again every once a while be recording and a podcast, so that leaves me Monday and Thursday I’m creative days, so if you really want to get in scheduled, Monday and Thursdays are no appointments and that is for me to write and to do podcasts and to do interviews and meet with my team and all of that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s cool. Let’s talk about the growth. So when you started off you had a couple of hundred downloads per month or per a prep sowed. How quickly did things change and where are you at now?

Dr. Cabral:                           So the crazy thing is this, is that we grew by about 20% month over month and still continue to do that basically to this day, now we’ve had some spikes for sure, but all it shows is that it believe it’s the Japanese principle or ward Kai Zen, right? So it’s just your every single day you’re just putting one more step forward. And then let’s just say like you and your backyard and you took one shovel worth of dirt every single day, right? You can do that. That’s all you’re doing. Eventually you’d be digging a giant pit, right? You’d accomplish something out there and it’s the same thing. You’re putting together a car, you put one piece together every single day you will eventually get that done. And that was my philosophy was not to hit 20,000 downloads a day because that would be completely insane.

So what I wanted to do though is put out content on a daily basis that I would hopefully be able to again, reach some people. And from there I had … So I have a product called the Dr. Ball Detox. And really the goal was to say like, Hey, I know I’m not going to be able to see every single person in my practice. I know that I can’t do that. I can’t do that now. All right, so what’s one thing that I can do and that I can share with someone will they get probably like 80% of the results. They would feel something right away without having to see me in person. So that was the goal and that’s the only thing that actually promoted. But I didn’t do a single promotion on the podcast. Recommendation for, I think it was five months. It might have even been six months. So the goal was to give as much content as possible, really just teaching people and then say, hey, if you want to take the next step, here’s what I have. So we grew from a maybe a 1000 or so downloads the first month to now I’m approaching 20,000 downloads a day. We’re not there yet. Hoping to have that by Healthpreneur LIVE. But we’ll see if that happens.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome.

Dr. Cabral:                           But we’re about a half million downloads a month and so again, never planned on that, but now that it’s there, you can do fun things like I do plan to hit a million downloads a month and I plan to get there in 2019.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I bet you will. It’s amazing.  Steven will be speaking at Healthpreneur Live September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale. We do have a few spots left if you want to join us, we’ll talk about that in a second. But I want to give some context because our blog, we get about a million unique visitors per month. And so if we compare, okay, is it better to have that type of traffic from a blog or from a podcast? I would definitely say that having a captive audience, like a podcast listener is way more valuable than a blog visitor who on average spends about a minute and 20 seconds on the site. And this is why I’m like, if I were to invest in stocks and stocks were like YouTube, podcasting, blogging, I’d be all in on podcasting because there is no other medium that I’m aware of that you can captivate someone’s attention for 30 minutes an hour or.

You can captivate someone’s attention for 30 minutes to an hour several times a week. It’s an experience really. People are like walking their dogs, they’re in their car, they’re working out. These types of conversations, if you think about … I’m sure, Stephen. I’m sure you have listeners who’ve listened to almost every single episode you’ve ever put out. If you were to add up all that time, that’s potentially hundreds of hours of audios of you in their ears. That makes a huge difference eventually when you want them to do something, right?

Dr. Cabral:                           It does. You’re also able to get your point across I think at a deeper level.

Yuri Elkaim:                         For sure.

Dr. Cabral:                           That’s the difference, meaning that they can hear the inflection in your voice. They can hear where you’re kind of taking them on a journey. They do relate to you better. I do think that it’s three ways. Basically it’s seeing something written on paper and there’s not a lot of feeling necessarily behind it, but some people are great writers. They get a little feeling behind that. Then there’s audio where they can’t see you, but they can hear you, and then there is video. Okay, so there’s four levels. Then there’s in person, right? I think as you get in person, that’s obviously the best. Video’s fantastic. I don’t deny that.

The difference is that there’s a lot more production that goes into video than there is to podcasting. I travel with a recorder, a microphone, and a wire that connects the two, and that’s it. Like it’s very straightforward. I can do it anywhere. There’s no production. There’s really no cost to it. Like you said, people are downloading or listening to way more podcast than video. The reason they are is because they can do it on the way to work. The average commute’s a half hour or so. I’m listening to podcasts all the time. I love it. I think it’s fantastic. That to me it’s only going to grow where video and YouTube has already grown, right? Like look how busy the space is.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I mean it’s so important. I talk a lot about the importance of your inputs, right? Because we’re all brought up with parents who watch the news or have maybe a slightly negative view of the world. If these are the inputs that we’re hearing or seeing for years, I don’t think there is as valuable a medium as podcasting to flood your brain with the right message. If you’re somebody who really wants to take your health to the next level, your podcast, The Cabral Concept, is a great place to flood your brain with that … But not only the knowledge. It’s not even just the knowledge.

What I think happens is like when you listen to interviews or inspiring audios, it changes the way you view the world. It changes the way you view yourself. I think you start taking action in a much more empowered way than any other medium. I mean video’s powerful as well, but the rate of consumption I think is so much greater through a podcast in an audio format. That’s why I’m so pumped to have you talk about this at Healthpreneur Live. You did a breakout session on podcasting at last year’s event and everyone was like, “That was absolutely amazing.” We’re like, “You know what? Let’s have you up on stage. Let’s have you share the goods.”

For all you guys listening, right now as we’re recording this, we have probably about a half a dozen spots left. Maybe a little bit more. If you do want to join us, I’m going to give you my personal email. Okay? If you’re interested, Yuri, Y-U-R-I, @healthpreneurgroup.com. Send me an email. Again it’s September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale. Dude, I’m so pumped to have you speak at the event. It’s going to be amazing.

Dr. Cabral:                           I just want to say, I was at last year’s event. I was on a panel, but I was in the audience and I was just absorbing all of this information because that is … I just believe that people should become a master of their craft, whatever that might be. Do it to the best of your ability. You don’t have to compare yourself to anyone else, meaning that there are other podcasts with more downloads than mine, but this is my journey, right? This is what I want to do with my life and I want to do it in my way.

What I have grown faster if I were to have done more of an interview-based process or tried to get people aboard, sure, but at the same time, you’re pulling everything that you want into your life I believe at the right time. We started to grow too fast when I went on other people’s interviews. That’s kind of like all the process well. I’ll teach that more at Healthpreneur Live as well, that growing too fast is not always what you want as well. Really what you need to focus on is not what you want to sell, but what you want to teach and what your message is.

If you can start to refine what your message is, like what you really stand for, then it becomes really easy because you don’t have to market as much. People gravitate to you. We spend zero dollars every single month in marketing. Literally zero. None at all. Every once in a way we might boost an Instagram post just to again reach more people, but we really don’t market anything, the podcast. That’s the amazing thing. I have no problem with marketing. No problem spending dollars on advertising. If people come to you rather than you searching them out, it’s just a totally different ballgame.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri Elkaim:                         Oh yeah. 100%. I don’t think anyone loves knocking on people’s doors, but having people knocking your door is a good position to be in. Stephen, this has been awesome. Before we finish off, we do have the rapid five. Are you ready for it?

Dr. Cabral:                           I think I am. I don’t know what’s coming, but I’m ready.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right, buddy. Here we go. Five rapid fire questions. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Dr. Cabral:                           Biggest weakness is managing other people. I’m just not good at it. I’ve known for a long time that I’m not good at it. That’s why since 2009, I have always had a different manager for each facet of my company. I’m a teacher. I know that that’s what I am and so I stick to that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. What’s your biggest strength?

Dr. Cabral:                           Biggest strength is just consuming massive amounts of information and just trying to distill that in a way that I think can reach people. For me, I have more of that obsessive-based personality and it’s very easy for me to just sit down with a book and consume it and then figure out what the details are that really matter.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. What’s one skill you become dangerously good at in order to grow your business?

Dr. Cabral:                           That I became dangerously good at?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Dr. Cabral:                           I think that’s why if people go back and listen to The Cabral Concept, the first 50 to 100 episodes were really not that great. I think the content was there, but my voice wasn’t there, meaning that I was a little bit more timid. Just I wasn’t able to really be my true self. It’s funny what happens over the course of 900 podcasts, and I think that got a little bit better. Again I’m not going to resonate with everyone, but I am talking in my own unique voice right now.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. I want to just highlight that for a second, the first 50 to 100 episodes. This is such an important take home message is you don’t have to get it perfect. Like you just get better over time. I think that’s a great example of not allowing the need to be perfect stop you before moving forward.

Dr. Cabral:                           I just want to add one thing to that because not only will you not be perfect, you can’t be because you need to learn all the mistakes that you have to make. Think of any sport that you might have entered into. Anytime you learned to do anything, you can’t do it well because you have no frame of reference of how to do it in the first place. You have to be willing to be poor at it in the beginning. That’s okay and then move forward. That’s the nice thing is when you only get a hundred downloads an episode, only a hundred people are hearing it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Exactly.

Dr. Cabral:                           It’s better to get in those practice reps first.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally. That’s great advice. Number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Dr. Cabral:                           First thing in the morning I have the same exact routine every single morning. That’s one of the ways that I stay out of a funk. That’s basically I do my daily fruit and vegetable blend, my greens in the morning. I get ready right into the day. A lot of people like to read and they like to … I don’t know, because I ease into my morning, but I actually just get ready for the day. I shave and shower and get right into it. Then at that same time, I’m actually listening to a motivational-based podcast or a video or something like that to get my mind in the right place. I grab a smoothie and I’m out the door. I really just get right into my day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Finally, complete the sentence, I know I’m being successful when?

Dr. Cabral:                           When I feel like I’m speaking in my unique voice and sharing my message with as many people as possible.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome, buddy. That’s why I think you’re a successful dude because you’re doing that every single day in a big way. Stephen, thanks so much for being here, buddy. This has been tremendous. Let’s give a couple places for people to follow your stuff online. First would be the podcast on iTunes, The Cabral Concepts, right?

Dr. Cabral:                           Yes. The podcast and on Instagram. That’s pretty much the only social media place I hang out. That’s just my name Stephen Cabral. On Facebook, we have a private Facebook group where we answer people’s health-based questions. That’s Cabral Support Group. My main hub is just my name, StephenCabral.com. Pretty much you can find everything from there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Once again guys, we’ll have those linked up in the show notes. Just one final word, if you want to join as at Healthpreneur Live and actually hang out with Stephen and myself and a hundred amazing health entrepreneurs, join us. September 20th to 23rd. Again we have a limited number of spots left. You can email me personally, Yuri, Y-U-R-I, @healthpreneurgroup.com, if you’re interested in joining us. It’s just going to be an amazing time. It’s actually going to be even better than last year. We got some really cool surprises in store for you guys. I’m not even going to share with you, Stephen, what we’re doing. It’ll be fun.

Dr. Cabral:                           It was an amazing event last year. I can’t recommend enough coming to join.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. All right, buddy. Thanks so much.

Dr. Cabral:                           Take care.

 

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Wrap Up with Yuri

Awesome stuff, right? One of the things I love about Stephen is when we’re talking about the title for his talk for Healthpreneur Live, I made a suggestion and he’s like, “You know what? I want to kind of tone that down a bit because I still really want to get across the message that first and foremost, I’m a naturopathic doctor. Not so much of like a business guy teaching you how to make money, all this kind of stuff.” I really respect that about him because he’s always … For as long as I’ve known him, always stayed true to his values, to his mission, to his place of coming from service of really, really wanting to help people.

 

Healthpreneur Live!

That’s why I’m so excited and honored to have him speak at Healthpreneur Live this year. Listen guys, if you want to be able to do what Stephen has done with a podcast, it’s possible. As we talked about in the show, it’s not going to happen overnight. I mean even with the Healthpreneur Podcast. For me, this is like a three year game plan. I’m not even looking at stats for the first one or two years. I don’t even care. I just love doing this. I love bringing great people on the show. Exposing them to you. Sharing a bit of my mind here and there.

If you have expertise that can make a difference in someone’s life, if you love teaching, if you love speaking, if you love just sharing your knowledge, there is no way better medium than having a podcast to be able to do that. I mean look what’s happened with friends like Lewis Howes. What Lewis Howes has done with his podcast is tremendous. I’ll tell you this, there’s no secret sauce. I mean there’s a couple things that you obviously need to know, but the key is just getting started, doing it the right way, and doing it with integrity.

If you want to learn how Stephen has built his podcast from like nothing to 20,000 listeners per day and how you can do something similar to grow your business, to spread your message, to get a tribe of people around you who really resonate with your beliefs, what you stand for, your whole message, and as a byproduct to that, want to do business with you, then that’s exactly what he’s going to be sharing at Healthpreneur Live. Now as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we only have a little handful of spots left. If you’re interested in joining us, here’s the thing, Healthpreneur Live is a highly curated event.

We only allow about a hundred people in. It’s only for health and wellness experts or fitness professionals as well. You have to have some existing presence online or you’re strongly ambitious to getting started online. Most of the people in attendance already have an established presence. Some of them are doing seven and eight figures in their business. Others a little bit more novice in their journey, but we bring them all together because I think there’s a lot of value there and there’s no ego. There’s no elitism. There’s no “I’m so cool I can’t sit beside you.” There’s none of that stuff.

No matter where you are in your business, if you want to be surrounded by great people who can really take things to the next level for you or be introduced to new ideas, new ways of thinking beyond just learning how to podcast effectively in a way that’s going to serve your business, but just being able to really think of what’s possible through business, then here’s what I want you to do right now.

I’m going to give you my personal email again. It’s Yuri, Y-U-R-I, @healthpreneurgroup.com. Send me an email today if you’re interested in joining us. We have a handful of spots left. If you want to learn more about the event, it’s:

healthpreneurgroup.com/live

September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale, Arizona. Send me an email. Give me a bit of context as to who you are, what you do, what you want to get out of the events, what you can give and bring to the event as well, and we’ll take it from there. Does that sound good?

That’s all for today. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you’ve enjoyed this one. Stephen’s awesome. Hope you got some really good insights out of this interview.

I look forward to seeing you at Healthpreneur Live because the one final thing I’ll say about this event is this year we’ve made the decision that starting in 2019, Healthpreneur Live will no longer be open to the public in the way that it currently is now.

It’s only going to be available to clients that we work with. This is the final year we’re basically giving the general public the opportunity to join us at this remarkable three day experience.

If you want in, you know what to do. Send me an email and we’ll take it from there. Talk to you soon.

 

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Transcription

Today we’re speaking with the co-founder and president of a company called Sweet Defeat. Her name is Arianne Perry. Now, she’s an elite athlete turned health entrepreneur. Having discovered the incredible benefit of a low sugar lifestyle through her personal nutrition journey, she launched Sweet Defeat to help millions of people live healthier, happier lives by making it easy to eat less sugar. Now, what is Sweet Defeat? Well, it’s a minty lozenge made from plant-based ingredients that is clinically proven to reduce the desire for sugar. She brought Sweet Defeat from concept to market by leading in product design and branding, securing patents and clinical studies, establishing a transparent supply change, and building a community of raving fans.

In this episode, Arianne’s going to share how they took this product, how to bring a product to market properly. We’re not talking about an eBook here. We’re talking about a legitimate consumable product and what they did to take it from concept all the way to launching this bad boy. I think you’ll get a lot of value out of this one. Before her company, she actually went to school, got her MBA from Columbia Business School, a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. She was also the captain of the varsity track and cross country teams, which won several national titles back in those days. So she’s a big, big health enthusiast. She’s active. She’s a former big time runner, and she’s brought all that stuff together into an amazing company that is doing some really cool things to help people get through their sugar cravings. So without any further ado, let’s welcome Arianne to the Healthpreneur podcast.

Arianne, welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. How are you?

Arianne Perry:                   I am good, Yuri. How are you?

Yuri Elkaim:                         I’m doing very well, thank you. I’m excited to have you on the show, because you’re up to some pretty cool stuff, and you’re a former high-level athlete, but I’m assuming you’re still a pretty competitive athlete, right?

Arianne Perry:                   Once an athlete, always an athlete.

Yuri Elkaim:                        That’s right.

Arianne Perry:                   I didn’t know you were a pro soccer player.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. It’s a disease that we have. If you’re listening to this and you’re a former athlete, I really think it’s a good disease to have, because more than anything, I think it’s a mindset. Would you agree?

Arianne Perry:                   I absolutely agree. It’s the mindset of thinking … It’s competitive, but it’s with one’s self and with others, so it’s this constant pursuit of excellence in what we do, in what we build and setting goals and figuring out how to get there, because I think that what applies physically also applies to a business or a personal goal or really anything.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I’ve taken it almost as far as not publicly saying this, but it actually makes a lot of sense just to hire other athletes to work with, because it’s just like it’s that common breed of people who get this. It’s just a cool mindset.

I’m excited to have you here. You’ve run. You’re a former runner. That was your gig?

Arianne Perry:                   Yeah. I did a bunch of sports growing up. I started running in middle school. The first race I was ever in, I shocked myself and everyone around me by winning an 800-meter race by over 100 meters. I think I fell in love with winning, but what I really fell in love with was the sport when I started training and enjoying the act of going on a long run with friends or going on a run alone and having that be meditative time. So that became my main high school sport. I ran in college at the University of Michigan. My team won the Big 10 champion seven times over, because when you’re a runner, you’re always in season. You’re running cross country in the fall, then you’re doing indoor track in the winter and then outdoor track in the spring. So I was part of a really incredible team. Had a good coach.

I didn’t go pro in my sport, but I took my running with me, if you will, to New York City where I started working in finance and joined a running club and I ran some marathons. I still jump in a road race every now and then, because I just love to compete, even if it’s not my personal best.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. That’s awesome. You’ve run three sub-hour … Sorry. You’ve run three hour or sub-three hour marathons. Is that correct?

Arianne Perry:                   Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever run a marathon. I think for me, a marathon is like 5K. I’m good.

Arianne Perry:                   It’s not for everybody. For me, it’s not even a frequent thing. It’s very hard on your body.

 

Running, how she began her entrepreneurial journey, and her struggle with sweets

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. How did you go from running to finance to building out this company? Just so everyone knows, the product is called Sweet Defeat.  Can tell our listeners a bit more about it?  It’s a really interesting concept. How did this journey all come about?

Arianne Perry:                   With the running background and also with a personal interest in nutrition, I’ve been committed to health and fitness my entire life. It’s always been a priority for me, something I love learning about and sharing with others. I’m an intellectually curious person, so I love learning about everything, whether scientific or economic or financial. Back to our earlier conversation about being competitive, it’s like what’s the job that you’re supposed to get after college? Well, you’re supposed to work for a bank. That’s how it was when I graduated. I was lucky enough to get a job at JP Morgan, which is an incredible firm, and really by the CEO Jamie Diamond. I’m not going pro in my sport. I’m working corporate finance. Health and fitness are a priority, and I’m working this demanding desk job. I’m like life is different.

I found it really difficult to eat healthy, even though I knew what I should be eating, and I tried all these different things. I was falling into the late lunch trap of waiting until the last minute and I’m running out and making a bad choice, eating it really fast, and then feeling way too full. Ordering to the office at night and then going to the vending machine. These bad habits. Why am I falling into these habits? I know they’re not good ones. What I realized is I was just eating way too much sugar in unexpected places. In yogurt and green juice and granola bars, things that I had thought of as healthy in the past, but I realized I was eating way too much sugar. So low sugar became my philosophy.

I had a number of different roles at JP Morgan and was really looking for more out of my career. I went to Columbia Business School and was exploring a lot of different options and met my co-founder, Rob Goldstein. He’s a successful investor, so we shared that finance background. He had this idea that taste is connected to how much we eat. I thought that was really interesting. We dug into that, and the research that we did talking to doctors and scientists and nutritionists, and we’ll talk more about developing Sweet Defeat, but that led to the business that is Sweet Defeat. It’s about a low sugar lifestyle, which is my nutritional philosophy. With the product is also content, and we’re just obsessed with customer results. That’s really my journey.

It’s so cool to have my day-to-day be integrating these things that I care so much about personally. The business itself has attracted talented team members that also share that interest in health and wellness. Obviously our customers are looking for results and interested in their health and wellness. So it’s great to be surrounded in my personal and professional life by something that has always been a priority for me and something that I care very much about.

 

The inspiration, science, and creation of the Sweet Defeat product

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. That’s great. You had the idea of low sugar lifestyle. What was the thinking to develop a product like Sweet Defeat, which is essentially a … It’s a lozenge that’s plant-based and reduces sugar cravings pretty much, right?

Arianne Perry:                   Yes. The thought behind it is very simple. What Rob and I thought was what’s with the sweet tooth? Why, after you have a meal, and you’ve had a big meal, maybe, if you’ve been out or if it’s a holiday, why do you still crave dessert? If you have one bite of dessert and then you want the second bite more than the first. What is that about? With that thought in mind, and then also the knowledge that 90% of foods today have some form of sugar, and food tastes awesome. That’s very different from how our ancestors evolved. We evolved in this world of scarcity, where sugar really only existed in fruit. Now it’s added to many foods, and it’s available in all kinds of different forms. So sugar is everywhere.

What’s a sweet tooth? Well, it’s how our brains evolved. We are hard wired to crave sweet things, because sweet was this source of or this signal that there was nutrient and calorically dense food. So we thought okay, sweet taste, connected to how much we eat, for sure. If we affect taste, can that affect desire for food? Could you do the reverse? Take a bite of cake, you want the second bite more.

So we talked to a bunch of experts, and we ended up speaking with the scientists at the Monell Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, Research Institute for Taste and Smell leading institute. They suggested gymnema, an herb, which is the key ingredient in Sweet Defeat. It’s something that you can buy in teas and you can buy in capsules. Unfortunately, it’s very bitter, like most herbs. We thought this works. This is something that can actually give people the edge to stick to their healthy eating plans, but it’s got to taste good and it’s got to be in a form where you can use it at any moment. If you’re at a party or if you’re at home or you’re at your desk. It’s got to be portable.

Our early development was can we make this taste good? What the result ended up being is a patent on a combination of ingredients, gymnema, zinc, and mint. They work synergistically and taste much, much better than just the herb on its own. So yes, all the ingredients in our lozenge are plant-based. We’re obsessed with that. We own the supply chain for gymnema, because we wanted to control end to end and have full transparency into that ingredient, because it had to have consistent quality, purity, and taste. All of our early work was really done on both the supply chain, the patents, and there are three clinical studies demonstrating that in this lozenge form, gymnema reduces the desire for sugar.  Two have been published in peer review journals. So it’s really cool new science.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. This is obviously a lot of people get into supplements or consumables. A lot of times they just weight label stuff or they slap their own label on something pretty generic. You guys have pretty much customized this from scratch and controlled the whole process, which is awesome. What have you learned in that process? What are some of the challenges that you had to overcome? What have you learned in that process of taking that concept to market from a production standpoint?

Arianne Perry:                   From a production standpoint, I have learned everything about the regulatory environment, both in the US and globally. How to select and maintain a relationship with the contract manufacturer. All about the GNPs, and some scary stuff, too, about the ingredient industry and the bare rudimentary quality testing that’s accepted. We’ve actually looked to pharmaceutical techniques. Our first hire was an incredible PhD organic chemist, who is dedicated to nutrition herself. She really brings techniques from the pharmaceutical world to managing our supplement supply chain.

There’s  lots of really cool learnings about manufacturing and sourcing and supply chains from business perspective. Then some scientifically interesting learnings about analysis techniques, and then kind of some scary learnings about industry practices. We have been able to find some really great partners that believe in the same methodologies that we do, so there are some awesome partners out there.

 

Creating a movement and marketing strategy

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great. That’s awesome. In the business right now, what is your unique genius? What’s the thing that you do? If there was nothing, if you could delegate everything except one thing or activity, what is that thing for you?

Arianne Perry:                   For me, it’s the vision . We started with a product, but we’re a movement. We will always focus on our customer. We will always be dedicated to changing their lives and to delivering real information that’s based on science and innovative products. We have our key product. We’ve got other products in the pipeline. We want to be a voice in this global conversation about low sugar as a lifestyle. I think that where many leaders end up is they are the inspiration. You’re the cheerleader. You’re the coach. You’re the vision. You’re the voice.  I want to hire people that are better than me at everything. But at the end of the day, the inspiration I think has to come from a leader. Yeah. I do everything else. I wear lots of different hats. I’ve started to be able to delegate more by building my team, but yeah. It’s that vision.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Talking about taking the product to market, what does the business model look like? How did you get this product into the hands of your customers? What does that look like?

 

What’s to come in the next six months, branding, and community-building

Arianne Perry:                   We launched in January with a multi-channel approach, multi-channel marketing approach and a single sales channel approach. We deliberately wanted to sell through sweetdefeat.com so that we could have a direct line to our customer. They can have a direct line to us, and we get them talking to each other. We wanted to build a community. So we sell through sweetdefeat.com. We actually do have retail on the roadmap for the fall, national retail partnership, but in January we launched with all these tactics, both online and offline. We just immediately got a lot of traction online.

I think that what’s really special about paid social marketing … Which is a little bit in the spotlight right now with a negative lens. There’s obviously been changes to the Facebook algorithm, but what’s special about it is you can find people very quickly that you can help. You can get in front of them and you can give them information. You can drive them to your site and get them product and get them results, and then they talk back to you. They come and they review on your page and they like it and they comment and they leave reviews. So it becomes this way to accelerate what used to just be word of mouth. We can measure and we can understand who is our customer even more quickly than we could if we launched and got customers and then did focus groups. We know analytically something about our customer in addition to what they tell us. So that’s been some really incredible traction.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. When you say social marketing, you’re talking specifically about Facebook ads, Instagram ads? Or are you talking about with influencer marketing?

Arianne Perry:                   All of the above. Facebook ads and Instagram ads are both managed through the Facebook ad manager. Then we do paid search as well through Google and Bing. We have an SEO strategy that’s building, so in addition to our content that is our brand voice and basically delivers our philosophy and great information to our customers is also optimized for search engines. We also do influencer. We’re not doing a ton, because we didn’t really … We want to do it a little bit more authentically, so we’ve identified a few pockets where it’s authentic for the influencer and it’s very interesting to their following. So we’d love to build that more, but we also work with publishers that have relevant audiences to either they’ll write about us, and then we’ll do some paid promotion like through their email channels or their social channels. Those are all really great tactics to get in front of people that are relevant.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Facebook advertising, for anyone listening who is not using it, you’re crazy. It levels the playing field, because you can come from ground zero to scaling very quickly assuming you have a great product and you know your numbers properly. It’s the easiest way to get started for any business. I still don’t know why a lot of people are afraid of it. I think … Who knows. It’s probably the easiest platform to advertise on, but as you said, you guys started in January, which as of this recording, that’s six, seven months ago, which is fairly recent. You can get a lot of traction very quickly. So search I think is really valuable, too. You guys are obviously building that on the back end. That’s a long-term strategy, but we know that most people are going to research online before buying things anyway, so it’s nice to have the best of both worlds there.

What is the next six months? What does the rest of the year look like from a marketing standpoint? You talked about getting into retail. Is it just more of the same in terms of the current model and getting more traction with that, or is there anything new that you guys are building out?

Arianne Perry:                   It is more of the same, but it’s also some new tactics and some exciting new partnerships. With the retail launch, we’ll want to have a digital strategy that supports retail, but there’s so much more optimization that we can do with the digital channels. Probably you could optimize forever. We just try to keep our metrics in mind. I offer to your listeners and to all my friends and people that ask me about my experience, just make a reasonable estimate about what each customer is worth to you in a dollar amount. Then get comfortable with what percent of that you’re willing to spend to acquire that customer. You should always be thinking my cost of acquisition is X. My lifetime value of a customer is two and a half, three, four times X, depending on your cost structure. I always offer that up as a metric. For us, it’s just continuing to optimize that through all of our paid channels.

The new exciting things we’re considering are things like podcasts and also radio and some alternative print media that has a low cost per million impressions. Sorry. Cost impressions, CPM. I just want to say millions, but yeah. Cost per CPM. We’re looking for also other channels, like Home Shopping, and we’re planning to launch on Amazon. We’re planning to do some bigger partnerships. It’s all going to definitely play into each other and have a ripple effect, but we’re always thinking about how can we do what we’re doing now better? What are some other really effective tactics we could be using?

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Very cool. You don’t have to disclose your LTV, but I can only imagine that it’s not thousands of dollars. How do you guys … Obviously the name of the game for you guys is going to be scale in terms of volume. How do you guys maximize lifetime customer value with a product that is lower priced with what you guys currently have?

Arianne Perry:                   It really comes down to the community and being a source for people of information, where it’s not just getting product in their hand, but it’s getting them the information that they need to use it to make a serious change in their lives.

What we hear from our customers is that they’ll use Sweet Defeat for several months. They’ll make this change to a low sugar lifestyle, but then life happens. Maybe you go on vacation and you need to get back on track, or it’s the holidays and then it’s time for a cleanse maybe afterwards. That’s where Sweet Defeat can really be a great tool in getting back on track.

What we believe is if we can deliver our customers great information, great customer experience on top of a really great product that delivers on its promise, that they’ll stay with us and they’ll bring other customers to us. When we roll out products in the future, they’ll be interested in those products. So it’s really about that community, building a community.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s smart. A lesson for everyone listening. What I think you guys have done really well, Arianne, is you’re building a brand. You’re building a … It’s a company. It’s not a product. I think that’s really, really smart, because it’s never just about a product, because if you build the infrastructure and the visibility around content, around the platform, it’s market centric. It’s customer centric, and you can always pivot. You can always introduce new things. I think a lot of people in the consumables space, they just slap stuff up on Amazon, and then they just hope stuff will work or they have an eCommerce site that sells stuff.

I think the biggest opportunity … This is one of the things we work a lot with our clients on is you have more than a product. It’s a movement. You guys are a great example of this. It’s like if you build a movement around a product, it’s not about the product anymore, because your customers will be asking for more stuff from you eventually. They’ll be like, “What do you have coming out of the pipeline? I think this would be a good idea.” They want to be more involved with your brand. So I think you guys are a great example of doing something meaningful beyond just put this in your mouth. I just want to commend you on that.

Arianne Perry:                   Thank you. That means a lot.

 

The challenges when starting and running a business and doing what it takes

Yuri Elkaim:                         Since you guys have started, what’s one of the biggest challenges you’ve had to face from a production, marketing, operations standpoint? What’s maybe something that was not foreseen or forecasted that you ran into? What was the lesson that you had to learn from that?

Arianne Perry:                   We had everything. Yeah. I tell everyone that’s starting a business it will take longer, it will be harder, and you can never predict everything. That’s what makes it fun.

Production was really hard for us early on, just because of owning the entire supply chain. That’s no longer an issue. When I say hard, just took longer, and because of the quality metrics and wanting everything to be very, very consistent every time, it just took some time to lock that down before we started producing product for sale. So that was a challenge early on.

Now I think that it’s just that constant iteration about around the marketing channel. It’s how can we do better in the channels that we have traction? How can we add other channels cost effectively? How can we as a team maintain priorities and not get sucked into too many small things and just keep the big picture in mind?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yep. Cool. That’s valuable. You have an MBA. Do you find when you look back at your time going through business school, do you think that prepared you well for having your own business?

Arianne Perry:                   Yes and no. I don’t know that anything can necessarily prepare you for having your own business. What was very valuable to me in business school … Well, let me start with what’s valuable now is my network from business school. My classmates and even other alumni that have businesses in similar spaces, beauty and personal care included, so it’s just this automatic network of people to compare notes and help each other. That’s really valuable.

Then I took a lot of investing classes in business school, where you really dig in and try to understand a business, its customers, its vendors, its industry, the tailwinds evaluation. I think that that work in particular helped me develop the research skills that have actually translated really well to entrepreneurship. How do I figure out what I need to know about something I know nothing about and then actually figure those things out so that I can quickly become not a thorough expert, not like I know every detail, but an expert in the sense that I know what is most important. So I think that that was a really helpful skill from business school.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. Awesome. What advice would you give to other MBA grads or other coaches or entrepreneurs coming into the health space, building their own businesses? Knowing what you know now, what advice, whether it’s a product based business or more of a service based? What from your experience would you tell them if you were sitting down over a green juice or coffee with them?

Arianne Perry:                   Do your research. Understand how many people might be after the exact same thing you’re after, and try to find something that is unique. And be authentic. It has to be authentic to you, because it’s going to start to be 24/7, and the more authentic it is to your own beliefs, the more successful you’ll be.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. What do you think is one skill entrepreneurs must have for lasting success?

Arianne Perry:                   Grit. Never give up.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally.

Arianne Perry:                   Being able to roll up your sleeves and be comfortable with doing whatever it takes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I call it delusional optimism. Like you have to be delusionally optimistic when everything is falling apart around you.

Arianne Perry:                   That’s really well put.

Yuri Elkaim:                         There’s a reason why most businesses don’t succeed, because I don’t believe most people have what it takes to take the risk to continually get up after being knocked down. I think it’s really a tremendous personal growth journey to have your own business.

Arianne Perry:                   It’s been amazing. I feel really lucky to have met my co-founder, to have great investors, and to be working on this product that is making such an incredible impact on people’s lives. I love it myself, too. So I’m very grateful for this journey that I’m on.

 

The Rapid Five

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, totally. That’s great. Arianne, this has been really, really awesome. Thank you for sharing everything you’ve shared so far. Are you ready for the rapid five?

Arianne Perry:                   Oh, my gosh.

Yuri Elkaim:                         All right.  Let’s do this. Okay. Five rapid questions. Nothing too incriminating. Don’t worry. It’s all good, so whatever comes top of mind. Okay.

Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

Arianne Perry:                   I take on too much.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. I don’t think anyone here can relate to that in the entrepreneurial space. Number two, what is your biggest strength?

Arianne Perry:                   Determination.

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

Arianne Perry:                   Analysis.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. Number four. What do you do first thing in the morning?

Arianne Perry:                   Work out.

Yuri Elkaim:                         What does a workout look like for you?

Arianne Perry:                   I primarily alternate between lifting and running. I also do … I like Pilates classes that are Inspire classes. I like those a lot.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice.

Arianne Perry:                   I’m off, and then on a weekend I’ll do boot camps or high intensity interval training. But yeah, during the week, I get up, I work out, and that’s my time to clear my head and think about the day. I try not to get my email immediately, but rather write down some notes. I also have a gratitude practice. I recommend that for anybody that is feeling a little negative or is fighting some demons. Just first thing you do when you wake up in the morning, write down three things you’re thankful for and that … There’s even research behind it. That will just turn your own personal energy.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Big time. You can’t be stressed when you’re thankful.

Arianne Perry:                   I know, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. It’s like, “No, I’m going to feel bad. I refuse to be grateful about stuff. No.”

Arianne Perry:                   You have to master your emotion.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, exactly. Finally, complete this sentence. “I know I’m being successful when … ”

Arianne Perry:                   I know I’m being successful when I’m having a positive impact on other people’s lives. Customers, team members.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Beautiful. Love it. Arianne Perry. There we go, guys. Arianne, thank you so much for being with us today. This has been a lot of fun.

Arianne Perry:                   Likewise. Yuri, it was so nice to meet you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Likewise.  What is the best place for our listeners to check out what you guys are up to and maybe get their hands on it as well?

Arianne Perry:                   Yes. Sweetdefeat.com or go to any of our social pages. Obviously love to answer any questions and love to bring more people into the movement.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally. Guys, we’ll link up to that on the show notes as well for you guys. Try it out for yourself. All of you listening are in the health space. You’re coaching and working with clients who most likely have sugar addictions or cravings. This is a product that can tremendously help them, so check it out for yourself. If it’s a good fit, recommend it to your clients, your patients, your colleagues, your friends, your family. I think it would be a great addition to their pantry and their lifestyle regime. So thank you once again, Arianne.

Arianne Perry:                   Thanks, Yuri.

 

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Wrap Up with Yuri

There we go. I hope you enjoyed this one. Always good to connect with people doing great stuff in this world. My goal is to bring different guests of different walks of life in the health space. Some are product creators. Some are coaches. Some are info marketers. I want to bring you these different people to show you that there’s a lot of common themes and trends, no matter what type of business you have. There’s a lot of the same obstacles, a lot of the same mindset stuff. I hope you really enjoyed this interview for what Arianne was able to do and what they are currently doing with Sweet Defeat, because their company still is fairly young in its evolution.

 

Healthpreneur Live!

Now, if you want to connect with amazing people in the health space, you want to really get behind the curtains of what’s happening in their businesses and really get a better understanding of what goes into creating a product or what goes into launching a coaching business or what goes into all this stuff and spend more time with these individuals to just to get to know them and get to know their businesses and have them support you and vice versa, then I want to urge you to check out our Healthpreneur Live event. Again, this is 150 people. We cap it at that. It’s by invitation, by application only.

It takes place September 20th to 23rd in Scottsdale, Arizona. That’s a little bit more than a month away. Spots are obviously almost gone. We have to let the venue know by the end of August. That’s the final cut off date.

Here is what I want you to do if you want to be surrounded by a group of amazing health entrepreneurs to help you connect with great people, connect with big ideas, and really take your mindset to the next level to create amazing things in your business. If you want to join us, here’s where you’re going to go right now.

Healthpreneurgroup.com/live.

That’s healthpreneurgroup.com/live. On the page, there’s a red button that says, “Request an invitation.” Click on that. Fill out the questions on the following page, and submit. We’ll get that information. We’ll review it, and we’ll get back to you within a day or two, and we’ll let you know if you’re good to go to join us at the events.

We have a whole spectrum of people from kind of beginner-ish, people who … If you have nothing going on, this is probably not the right event, but if you have an existing business, whether it’s … No matter where it is in its evolution or if you’re super successful already and you want to connect with other great successful leaders in our space, this is a great event to be at.

There’s no ego, and that’s why we bring the two spectrums together. It’s really important to be surrounded with people that are playing at a higher level than you, but I also believe that it’s important to connect with people that are maybe at a lower level than you, not on the sense that they’re lower human beings, but just maybe they’re one or two steps behind in their business journey, because the teacher learns most. So I really believe that it’s important to give and share and help people a little bit behind you, but it’s also really great to be pulled ahead from people in front of you. That’s part of what we’re doing with this event.

Last year’s event, we had 110 amazing people. They said it was the best event they’ve ever been to. It’s a really, really unique experience. It’s not your typical conference where you sit down and you get fire hosed information for three days straight. We only have six speakers this year. We have a lot of downtime, a lot of connection time, and most of the sharing. We’ve had a lot of people who want to speak at the event. I say, “Listen, we only have six speakers.” Most of the sharing and the teaching is happening peer-to-peer at the tables and during breaks. It’s very, very unique from any event you’ve ever been to. I guarantee if you come to this event, you will be floored by what you experience. That’s just because we are so dedicated to creating an amazing experience that is at the level of connection that you’re probably not going to see anywhere else.

So if you’re interested in joining us, again, go right now to healthpreneurgroup.com/live, submit your application, and let’s make that happen. Cool? We only have a few spots left. The cut off is only a few weeks away, and it would suck to miss out on this once again. This is our annual family gathering. We only do this once a year, and it’s pretty awesome.

So thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I look forward to seeing you at HP Live, which is my short form version of saying Healthpreneur Live. I’ll see you in the next episode.

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Transcription

Do you ever feel like everything has to be perfect before you get it out to the world, that it’s never quite good enough?

Well, if so, we’re going to talk about that in this episode. I’m going to give you a couple insights to help you go from being a perfectionist to being somebody who seeks excellence and just gets stuff out there to really serve people and obviously serve yourself as well.

 

The perfectionism trap and why it stalls the progress of your business and clients

Let’s talk about the perfectionism trap.  Based on our client feedback, that that’s one of the biggest areas that’s holding people back. It’s really stalling their progress because they’re trying to get everything perfect. They’re trying to get their messaging perfect. They’re trying to get their websites perfect. They’re trying to get all this nonsense that they’re doing perfect, and at the end of the day, here’s the realization…

the more time you spend trying to get things perfect, the more time the people you’re trying to serve are suffering without your help.

That’s one thing I really want you to remember is that the longer it takes you to get something out there, the longer your potential clients are suffering without your help.

 

Working on your internal program; how we change during our journey

Why do we feel we need to be perfect? Well, if you think about it, it all stems back down to what’s going on inside of us, like with everything. Everything is all but between the ears. I mean, if you haven’t gotten this yet, it’s so important.

The reason we become obsessed with perfectionism is because nothing is ever good enough because inherently, we don’t feel good enough. That’s where perfectionism stems from. We don’t feel good enough about ourselves; therefore, if we put something out there that’s not 100% perfect, what might other people think, and if they don’t approve of us, then that’s something which you solidify our own belief that we’re not good enough, so we do whatever we can. We iron out all the details, cross the Ts, dot the Is to make sure that every single possible thing is perfect, it’s shiny, it’s polished, and there’s no cracks, there’s no way that anyone can see any problems with our programs or with our service or anything else.

The first thing to remember is that, like with many things, it’s not about making your program better, it’s about making your internal program better, which means going to work on yourself and understanding that you are good enough just as you are, and you really have to believe that.

Here’s a spiritual lesson for you.  You can only handle what you can handle. You only get what you can handle. What that means is that everything you have and who you are now is perfect because it has to be, but if you want bigger things in the future, who you are now is not good enough to get to that next level.

Now, don’t confuse that with not being good enough as a person. That’s where we’re constantly growing and so forth to meet up with our higher self, our better version of ourself, but in this moment, you’re perfect how you are, who you are, where you are because you have to be. That’s just the way it is. You couldn’t be anything less.

 

Getting things out there and improving upon them as you grow and evolve

If you’re working on something, if you’re putting out a program, if you’re putting out a coaching program or a product, what you are working on now can only be perfect based on who and where you are right now in your journey. What a lot of people do, and I’ll just include my wife in this, is that she’s working on a book, she’s an amazing writer, she has some amazing insights to help people, but she’s been working on this book for almost a year and a half. Why? I’m not sure. I don’t push her. I don’t coach her. If you have a spouse, it’s very tough to do that kind of stuff. You might resonate with that, but my feeling, based on what I’ve seen and what we’ve spoken about is that it’s never complete for her. It’s not perfect based on what she wants it to be, but the thing is that the book that she started writing a year and a half ago is no longer the same book as it is now because she’s a different person.

What, in my case, in my mind, should’ve happen is that she should’ve written a shorter book a year and a half ago, got it out there, help some people, and then as she evolved, she writes another book based on where she is in her journey now. That’s really, really important to remember is that you have to get out the minimum viable product, MVP, as they say in Silicon Valley, and yet improve it with market feedback or improve it as you evolve and learn more things.

That is the key because, again, this is, again, I’ll use my wife, Amy, as an example who has a year and a half now of this amazing knowledge sitting on her computer. Meanwhile, hundreds or potentially thousands of people that she could be helping are not being served because she’s trying to get everything perfect, she’s trying to get all of her ducks in a row. Please don’t share this with her. I speak very highly of her, but sometimes, I gotta call BS where I see BS, right?

Let me give you an example from our Health Business Accelerator Workshop. I started doing workshops even before I started Healthpreneur. I was doing my closed private behind-closed-doors masterminds almost, I believe the first one was almost six years ago. We started Healthpreneur two and a half years ago as of this recording, so I was doing workshops behind closed doors even before I started this. Over time, I was just kind of, initially, I just brought people together, and I was sharing some stuff that I was working in our business. I would do one or two of those a year. Then eventually, people are like, “Hey, why don’t you do something more formal with this?” and I was like, “Hey, you know what, maybe I’ll do that.”

Anyways, eventually, we started doing content, mastery workshops, teaching people our content marketing strategies. Then I realized, “You know what? This isn’t the best way to serve people. It’s taking them forever to see any kind of result with this, plus I don’t really believe it’s the best way for most people to build a business. It’s going to take them forever,” so then we kind of evolved into looking, “What are we with Healthpreneur, how are we building Healthpreneur, and let’s teach that,” and that’s kind of how our Health Business Accelerator Workshop morphed into what it is today.

But when we first started doing it, it was two-day, actually, most of the workshops that I’d done previously were two-day live workshops. It is kind of like, “All right, thanks for coming out. All the best,” and then I realized, “Well, if we really want to help our clients get results, how can we better serve them?” Now, when people engage in our workshops, they’re in it for life. Whether they come to two-day live, whether they do the online six module version of it, they get access to our coaching for as long as they need until they hit specific results, and then they can move to the next level.

The reason we did that is not out of the gates. I didn’t have that in my mind. It’s we just saw over time that the best way to serve people based on the feedback we were getting and seeing where people were stuck was just to continually coach them and give them specific deadlines and hold them accountable to achieving certain milestones.

We’ve always improved, like the workshop is always evolving. We’ve brought on coaches, we’ve brought in better ways of delivering it, and this has morphed over time, so the workshop we started with when we started at day zero, even though the content is kind of the same, we added in a couple tweaks here and there, the way it’s been delivered has evolved and improved based on market feedback. We put out our minimum viable product because we knew that that was good enough to help a lot of people, and we just said, “Listen, let’s see where people get stuck, what they like, what can be improved,” and we just made it better and better and better, and that’s a really cool place to be.

 

You are good enough and are exactly where you’re supposed to be

Here’s another way to think about this, is that the perfect anything does not exist: the perfect car, the perfect computer, the perfect workshop, the perfect hairstyle, the perfect gel, the perfect whatever it is, it doesn’t exist, and we can never get there. It’s almost like the pursuit of infinity. You can never reach the horizon. You can never reach infinity. What we’re doing as humans is we’re constantly evolving and improving and getting better. We can’t strive for perfection. I mean, we can strive for perfection, but that’s kind of like going towards the horizon. I like think, striving for excellence. How do we make things better, how do we make them more excellent, and constantly having that mindset of “what do we have to do to make things a little bit better every single day or every single week or every single time we deploy this?”

That’s something I really want you to think about because if you’re waiting for all of your ducks to be in a row, it’s just not going to happen. You’re never going to have all your ducks in a row. It’s not like when you hit a certain level of success, all of your problems go away. You get more problems. You get bigger problems. You just have to be a bigger version of yourself to be able to handle them, so just get it done, and get it out. Get it done, and get it out. Even if it’s 80% of where you want to be, it’s going to be good enough to help people get a result.

If it’s not, I’m not saying put crap out there, I’m not saying turn a Word Doc into a simple PDF and put it out to the world. I think those days are long gone. I’m assuming what you have to offer is high quality stuff. Remember that you don’t have to be this guru the top of the mountain. You just have to be a few steps ahead of the people you want to serve because if you think you have to get certifications and degrees and have all this experience and years of testimonials, you don’t have to. Even if it’s just worked for you, if your program, if you’re, the way you help people, even if that’s just worked for you, and you’re starting to look just to attract your first couple of clients, you don’t need tons of social proof because you are the social proof. You are good enough.

The right people will resonate with that, and you can get this in their hands, you can walk them through this process, and you can help them. In the process, you’re going to figure out what can be better, what can be changed, and that is how you improve upon what you’ve put out. Does that make sense?

That is how we overcome the perfectionism trap. We forget about trying to be perfect because it doesn’t exist. We focus on, first and foremost, ourselves and really understanding that we are good enough, you are good enough just as you are because where you are right now is exactly where you need to be in your journey, and tomorrow, you’ll be a bit better, and the next day will be a bit better, and then all you have to do is based on what you know, based on who you are now is put out what you can to serve the people you want to serve, and with their feedback, make it better over time. That’s the key. Do not let perfectionism hold you back from serving people and helping them because it’s a disservice to them. It really, really is, and it’s a disservice to you because think about all the money you could be making, all the people you’d be transforming. That’s not happening if you’re sitting on this and you’re waiting for it to be perfect.

That’s today’s message, perfectionism sucks. It’s not worth it. Don’t play the game.

If you need help with your business and crafting a good offer, really helping people at a high level, and getting out of that perfectionism trap, then, again, I’d strongly recommend you attend our free training, the 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint. If you like what you see, you could also book a call with us, and we could really help you a lot more specifically there.

What I’d like you to do right now is head on over to healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

Watch the training now if you haven’t already. Take notes, get some light bulb moments, and then book a call with us if it makes sense. Sound good?

All right, so thank you so much for joining me once again for another solo round. I will see you on Wednesday. We’ve got some really cool interviews coming up this week. Until then, continue to go out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you soon.