How the American Posture Institute Grew From Local Italian Clinic to Monster Online Business with Dr. Krista Burns

Transcription

We were just on a two week trip in Punta Cana with the kids and that was a lot of fun, had a lot of good times. Played a lot of tennis and just chilled out with that space on the beach. I love to break up the winter because I live in Toronto and if you’ve ever been up here, it gets pretty cold in the winter time—snow, slush, not a lot of sunlight. I’m a huge fan of breaking up the winter with small vacations like that and I’m pretty pumped.

So, tomorrow I am traveling out to Aspen, Colorado. I’m actually speaking at The Ad Summit, which is a big event for online advertisers, I think there are about 3-400 attendees this year. A lot of them are doing seven and eight figures in their businesses, and mainly using advertising to grow their businesses.

Now, the reason I’ve been invited to speak there is because they have a lot of attendees who are in the health space. They were looking for someone who could speak to how to grow business with content.

So I was like, “Well, I am your man.” I was introduced to them and that’s why I’m headed out to Vail tomorrow. I’ll be there for a few days at a special mastermind that I’m looking forward to. It’s going to be a fun couple of days, and at least I get to travel a bit and see some parts of the world that I haven’t been able to see. But that’s enough about me, let’s get to today’s episode.

We are speaking with an amazing person and a dear friend of mine, Dr. Krista Burns. She and her partner, Dr. Mark Wade run an amazing company called The American Posture Institute. And this has become a really, really big deal in this space. I don’t know the exact revenue numbers, but I know they’ve grown it into the high seven figures, if not more.

Kris is going to share in this episode how they started from—interestingly enough—a small local clinic in Italy. Here are two Americans that started a clinic out of a school in Italy. She is going to tell you how and why that happened, and how they transitioned to growing a mammoth of a business online and impacting a lot of people.

So, let me give you a rundown of who she is.

Dr. Krista Burns is a certified postural neurologist, certified posture expert, PhD in global health policy and doctor of chiropractic. She is a co-founder of The American Posture Institute and has helped thousands of students in more than 35 countries worldwide. She’s a highly sought after international speaker, speaking at conferences such as the World’s Congress of Neurology and the International Chronic Disease Conference.

As the author of the textbook, “The Posture Principles,” her goal is to inspire audiences worldwide to understand the importance of posture. Unfortunately, posture is declining with the speed of technology and Krista provides modern day postural correction solutions to improve neurological function, energy expenditure for increased productivity, and longevity of vitality.

So, obviously you guys know what that stuff is—neurology, neurological function—but for the average person listening to that, they’ll be like, “What the heck are you talking about?” That’s why we’re here. We’re in the know, right? We’re health and fitness experts, so we kind of know the stuff.

So with that said, let’s welcome Krista Burns to the show. This is going to be a good one.

Krista Burns, welcome to the Healthpreneur podcast. How is it going?

 

Krista:            Doing great. Thank you for having me on, Yuri. Good to connect with you.

Yuri:                Yeah, you’re welcome. Great to have you here.

So, you run a pretty amazing business—The American Posture Institute—along with your colleague and partner, Mark Wade, who in and of himself is an awesome guy and a great character. Talk to us about how that got started.

Because you guys run a really great online platform, but it didn’t start out that way. You started off in the brick and mortar space. Can you walk us through that journey as to how you got started there and then what the pivotal moment was where you decided, “You know what? Maybe we should look at this online thing a little bit more seriously.”

The hero’s journey

Krista:             Absolutely. It has been a fun journey and it’s been a hero’s journey. We graduated from school and full of passion, ready to change the world—just like all of us who get involved in healthcare. We all want to make a difference in lives of our patients.

So right after school, we made this crazy move and we packed up our bags and moved over to Italy … Thinking that we’d have no problem getting new patients, regardless of the fact that Italy was in the worst economic crisis in their history.

We knew nothing, we didn’t speak the language, we had no entrepreneurial experience, we’re fresh out of school.

So Dr. Mark and I moved over to Italy just full of passion, ready to change the world, and once we got to Italy, we were in for quite a realization that we really did lack that entrepreneurial experience.

We tried opening up a clinic in the beginning—and I refer to that first year in practice as the treadmill effect. The feeling of working so hard to get ahead, but seemingly never moving forward.

We would make a sprint forward and get a couple of new patients in the door, but then we didn’t have the systems in place so we would just lose them out the back end. That first year in practice was nothing but failure, after failure, after failure to the point where we finally looked at each other and said, “Maybe we should just call it quits. Maybe we should move back to America where things are easier. At least we speak the language. We know people. We understand the laws there a little bit better.”

It was that moment where we said, “We either admit failure, give up, and move home—or we make this thing work,” because we hadn’t made money in a year. So we’re sitting in our apartment in Sardinia—the beautiful Mediterranean paradise—and we used to do these things called book reports, because we couldn’t afford to travel to seminars.

So we did book reports where we’d tap into the minds of our favorite authors, our favorite entrepreneurs. And one that really stands out to both Dr. Mark and I is the book, Good to Great by Jim Collins. In that book, he talks about the difference between good companies and great companies. Now, the difference between good companies and great companies is that the good companies mean well, but the great companies are the ones that leave a legacy, the ones that really stand the test of time.

And the main difference between those two businesses is that all the great companies specialize. They all have a hedgehog concept, or unique expert position. Instead of trying to meet the needs of every single person every single day of the week, regardless of their case, presentation, age, niche, you name it—you need to niche down very specifically within your unique expertise.

Looking back in that first year of practice, we thought, “Well, what was one thing that did work? We know that a lot of things didn’t work. What worked?”

And looking back on that year, we started to reflect and what we noticed is that every time we did external ads for postural correction, we got more new patients in the door. Every time that we focused on helping them with their posture transformation, we actually kept them longer. Meaning we were getting more new clients and we had better retention.

So we thought, “Okay. We’re really on to something here. Let’s define our unique expertise as postural correction.”

From that point, we started raising our knowledge to expert level. Now, you can imagine at this point with brick and mortar, we grew our practice tremendously and became one of the most successful practices in the country. We were working with five different professional sports teams. I was doing lectures with all the local corporations—keep in mind, in a second language. They just loved the information so much, they kept inviting us back.

We were able to work in the school systems implementing a postural hygiene program in the schools. And from that point, we realized—I was only 26, 27 years old and I had gone from being in a treadmill effect to failure after failure, to growing a great business. We just couldn’t believe that they didn’t teach us this in school.

We felt like more people need to understand how to define their unique expertise, and really niche down and build out that platform in their community. From that point, we wanted to share our message with more practitioners, more manual therapist out there—and so we put together our first online course, called “The Certified Posture Expert Program.”

Then from that point, we’ve built an entire platform to the point where The American Posture Institute Online grew so much, we were able to actually focus 100% of our attention to the online business, which is where we are today.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. So in Italy, you guys obviously learned how to speak Italian, I’m assuming? Were those lectures and patient interactions in Italian for the most part?

 Krista:             Yes, 100% in Italian. You can imagine, at the beginning, how difficult that was. It is definitely an obstacle when you can hardly communicate what it is that you’re trying to explain.

Yuri:                That’s awesome.

 Krista:             One of the things that is so cool with posture is that posture is a universal language. You can actually demonstrate it without saying any words.

So that was one thing that was really beneficial for us from a communication perspective in the beginning, because we did have that communication barrier. Then I’ll tell you what, once you start learning how to communicate in a second language, it really helps you pull your thoughts together in a more clear and concise way. Sometimes we over-talk things instead of being very niche specific and narrowing our focus, so with that second language, it was much easier to narrow that focus and be more clear and concise with our marketing message.

A lot of us tend to go off for miles and miles in different directions with our marketing messages, instead of keeping it clear and concise.

Yuri:                Yeah. This is really a good advice. It’s funny because I speak French, Spanish and Italian. I learned Italian by watching Italian soccer growing up, so that’s my only exposure to the language itself.

I love the language, it’s so amazing. But what I found was—and this is a credit to you guys—is that speaking French or Italian or anything is fine conversationally … But when you started having to speak about anatomy and a lot of those body parts and different systems, that’s a whole other ball game.

Credit to you guys for being able to do that in a foreign country. That is awesome. It’s very interesting to me because I’ve also had an affinity for Italian culture and I love the soccer teams over there.

So one of the things I wanted to touch on was that you hit upon postural correction and one of highlights is that you mentioned correction—which is different from prevention. Can you talk about the difference between trying to convince people that they need to be doing things to improve their posture versus helping those who are already in need of correction?

Kind of like treatment versus prevention, if that makes more sense?

Treatment vs. prevention

Krista:            Yeah, that’s a great question. That’s an incredibly valid point.

Now, if we tell our clients to look around next time they go to the supermarket, next time they go to the airport, and just start being mindful of people’s postures around them—what they’re going to find is that nearly 90% of people have a forward head posture while looking at their cellphone, that tech-neck posture.

We looked at this and we recognized that now 90% of clients out there actually have posture distortion patterns. So this starts the conversation and the mindfulness pattern that we need to prevent it. But also, if you already do have tech-neck posture, forward head posture, then we need to get in and do some correction.

We have a three-component system, which is spinal alignment, posture rehabilitation and posture habit reeducation. That habit re-education is the a re-education, but also a prevention period moving forward. Because we have our posture with us every single day—everywhere we go, we carry our posture.

We’ve had it for however many years up until this point, so we make those corrections and then from a preventative perspective, we put those posture habit reeducation reminders in place.

What’s so interesting, Yuri, is the shift in the societal patterns of this digital age. We used to see that it was just older adults who have postural distortion patterns. But now from a prevention perspective, we’re seeing this so much more rampantly in the younger generations—even adolescents and millennials, especially with the digital age. Talking to them about prevention of tech-neck posture—which is also leading to things like digital dementia, which is a change in brain function due to overuse of technology and poor posture.

So recognizing our prevention ability, our capabilities as healthcare professionals to get in from a prevention perspective for the adolescents. And then of course, making corrections for people who already do have progressive postural distortion patterns.

Yuri:                Yeah. So with that being said, do you find that the majority of people taking action—the people seeking out help and paying for solutions—are they typically people already in pain? Or is the level of awareness at a point now where millennials, for instance, will say, “Hey, you know what? I’m going to hold my cell phone a little bit differently.”

What seems to be the trend there for you guys that you’ve noticed?

Krista:            In brick and mortar, we found that it was more people who had pain. Then, a lot of our referrals were parents for their children. They would come in with pain and then we would start talking to them about tech-neck posture with their adolescents … And what we would find is that we would grow our pediatric population within our practice, because from a preventative perspective, the parents really understood that and wanted to prevent any health distortions for their children.

From an online perspective, I will say that people are recognizing it and it’s almost becoming more cool, if you will, to have ergonomic equipment for the millennials. They understand that they’re working from a coffee shop versus working in a traditional retail office, for example.

So these millennials are working from anywhere on their laptops and they’re starting to notice a new trend in posture, which is pretty cool. So it’s becoming more of the forward front, and we’re seeing this definitely more so from our online platform.

Yuri:                Yes. Cool. Because I remember hearing some stat about millennials … I think relative to their annual income, they spend the most amount on wellness. They may not be making as much money as baby boomers but relative to their income, they’re actually spending the most on preventative type of wellness, which is very, very cool.

They’re the ones getting the $12 juice and doing $18 yoga classes—stuff like what you guys provide, which is awesome.

Krista:            And they’re all on social, so we reach them there, too. Our baby boomer generation, they’re on social as well, but they didn’t grow up in that generation. So with our millennials, if we reach out to them from our online platforms, they’re incredibly receptive to receiving and taking in information on that platform.

Yuri:                Yeah. That’s awesome. Walk us through the initial first year, I guess, online whether it’s in the transition period or when you guys are full time online. What were some of the initial challenges that you guys had to learn about and overcome with this whole thing called “the internet?”

Videos, list building, engagement

 Krista:            Yeah. It’s amazing, our ability to stay connected via social media now.

In the beginning, I tried to put together my first online course and I had no experience. What I did, Yuri, is I actually wrote out 200 pages of material. And then I remember my first time standing in front of the camera, to record my first online course, and I just totally froze.

I thought, “I have 200 pages of great content. How come I can’t communicate it in front of the camera?”

That first day brought me to tears because I thought, “Well, that’s going out the window. I’m never going to be an online YouTube star. I’m never going to have an online course.” But then I got into my flow and I figured out that I could break up my course material in a way where I could do more bite-sized videos and put that information all together through a great platform.

Our courses are anywhere from 20 to 30 hours of edited video, and so we try to break that down into bite-sized pieces, instead of just standing in front of the camera with 200 pages of content—which is really just like having a blank sheet of paper with the camera staring at you. Getting over that and going in with a plan when you start recording is really important.

Now, before we released that first course, I remember thinking, “Oh, I hope we just make a couple of thousand dollars on this thing.” Because we had no list, I mean we built a list of 900 people when we did our first online launch.

So out of a list of just 900 people—just healthcare professionals—we actually did a six-figure launch our first go around. So it was a big success, but the reason it was successful was not because we have thousands of people in our list, but because we really nurtured the people that we did have.

It’s really true what they say in the online space, that it’s not about having millions of followers, it’s about having a smaller number of engaged followers. We really engaged with our people, we created a whole community around it, and we made it about becoming an expert.

So with the certified posture expert program, it is clinical. It is a clinically based program, but it also teaches you how to become an expert and position yourself as the go-to expert within your community.

So it was a clinically based program, but it also had the marketing support to help you position yourself as a go-to expert. And I really feel that everybody can connect with this—and in the Healthpreneur space, I feel like we were left behind when it comes to marketing.

We were all taught how to be great healthcare professionals, but if anybody is listening to this—they’re a little bit further ahead than everybody else who’s not listening to the podcast—but we need to share this marketing information to our fellow colleagues who don’t know anything about online marketing.

By being able to position yourself as go-to experts within the community, it’s now raising our knowledge and our prices to expert level versus a race to the bottom to be the less expensive guy in town.

Yuri:                Yeah, that’s great. It’s so true, because no one has ever taught this stuff in school, which is a shame.

 Krista:             Right.

 Yuri:                It’s good that you guys are doing this stuff and we’ve got stuff that’s supporting our audience too, because it’s definitely needed. The way I see it is that every single health professional has an amazing gift that can transform people’s lives in a bigger way than almost any other profession.

And it is a shame that schools aren’t teaching people how to build businesses because if you can’t get in front of anyone, your gift is not going to help them.

With that said, how did you start? What were the first couple of things you guys did to acquire that list of 900 people? And since then, what’s been your go-to strategy for getting new people into your world and then converting them into paying clients and customers?

Krista:            Yeah. Great question. It all started with Facebook ads, and we still do Facebook ads on an ongoing basis for lead generation. And then, nurture sequences. Once we get them on our email list, if they opt in for a lead magnet, then we want to nurture that lead, and we have multiple different programs at this point.

We make sure that we have a very segmented list where we’re actually providing them with the information that they want to know based upon what they opted in for, so we don’t keep it generic. We keep it very specific to what it is their interests are.

Another great tip that I want to give everybody—that I wish I had known in the beginning—is to have a Facebook group for prospects, and one for members.

So for prospects, we actually had a point one time where we were in the middle of a launch and our email got blacklisted. So we were going crazy, we weren’t sure what to do with our emails—but because we had set up a prospect Facebook group, we were able to communicate with them via Facebook in addition to email.

Because we have that prospect group, it saved our launch and we were able to hit $800,000 in revenue. But if we just had email in that situation, we would have been toast. Our launch would have been over.

So when doing an online launch, always set up a prospect group where you’re really nurturing those leads with email but also through that Facebook group. You’re connecting directly with them on precisely what it is that they want to know.

For example, I have a very niche course called “Postural Neurology,” which is neurology to posture system. It doesn’t get more niche than that, right? We’re really breaking it down.

So everybody in that group has a very high interest in posture and neurology. And what do I talk to them about? Neurology and posture, right? We meet those needs very, very specifically.

We talk about where they’re at in practice, where they can go and how they can get to the next level with these implementation protocols. Always speak to them about what they want to learn and understand their needs.

And also, in those Facebook groups it’s really easy to do polls and engagement questions, “Hey, tell me what you’re struggling with. Tell me what you want to learn more about.” And then, of course, I look back on that and say, “Okay. I need to write a blog post today. What do they want to know?” That’s my blog post.

Or if I’m going to go live on Facebook in that group, I’m just going to answer the questions that they already have. So, being able to communicate with email as well as Facebook is a huge tip that I want everybody to be aware of, because if you ever have a problem with your email, at least you can still communicate via Facebook.

Yuri:                Totally. Great advice. And a lot of times, the engagement is actually better in those groups than with email.

One of the things we’re finding is that nowadays, people gets so many emails that they don’t even care about them anymore. They’re just like, “Oh my God, get me out of my inbox.”

So I think, moving forward—especially with a lot of people talking with deliverability issues nowadays—it’s really important to look at alternative channels like you just mentioned.

And at Healthpreneur live, Mark did a breakout session on how to run a launch and it was so popular. People were like, spilling over. He was so popular, and people got so much value out of that—obviously, he was sharing some of the stuff you just mentioned.

One of the things that a lot of healthpreneurs deal with is … They just want to do their thing. They just want to share their content, teach and not worry about the marketing and the business side of things. I know you and Mark have different roles in the business, but what advice do you give to someone who is starting their business online has that mentality where they’re just like, “I don’t want to learn the marketing, I just want to teach.”

What do you say to them?

Honing in on your unique skill

Krista:            Yuri, what I say to them and to everybody listening is, “If I can do it, you can do it.” I’m the type of person who struggles to turn my computer on, who always has an audio issue, who has recorded more videos in mute than anybody else. I make these technology glitches literally on a daily basis. So I just want to let you know that if I can run an online business, I promise you can too.

And then just as you mentioned, it’s playing to your strengths. I’m in the front of the business. I do all the video, all the content creation, all the blogs. I’m going live on Facebook, to our Facebook groups. I teach all of our courses, I speak on stage, and I thrive in that arena.

Where I do not thrive is running and evaluating Facebook ads and engagement or setting up the emails to then go out through Infusionsoft.

I recognize that my quality talent is spent on stage or on a platform, teaching—versus Mark, who is fantastic when it comes to marketing strategies. If you can play to your strengths and then find a partner or find employees to help support you where you’re weak, then you’re not going to burn yourself out.

You get to stay within your zone of genius where you thrive. Because when you’re thriving, that’s when you get really engaged followers, versus if you were trying to do every single thing in your business. If that’s case, you get stuck working in the business and just looking at how to go from 1% to 2%. You get stuck in the numbers versus thinking of the overall picture.

So, play to your strengths. If you’re really good at the marketing aspect, then find somebody else who loves doing the teaching. If you love doing the teaching like I do, then find somebody to support you—to run the numbers on Facebook and email and get those conversions, so that you can stay within your zone of genius.

I’m glad you brought that up because that’s important. If not, it’s a quick road to burnout. We can also prevent a lot of obstacles by staying within our zone of genius within our businesses.

Yuri:                Yeah. That’s really good advice. What do you think is the one big skill or trait entrepreneurs must have for lasting success, especially online?

Krista:             I think it all goes back to the unique expert position. If you are not 100% passionate about something that can be profitable and that you can be the best at, then it’s the road to the bottom. It’s going to be burnout. So when we defined our unique expert position with postural correction, we really thought hard about this—like, what can we be the best in the world at?

I’m not trying to be all things health. Of course exercise and nutrition and stress management is important, but there’s other experts out there who address that and they do a better job than I do.

Instead of trying to be everything to everybody, define and hone in and really own in your unique expertise. If we can take an old concept like posture—which is classically one of the most boring concepts on planet earth—and turn it around to make it more sexy and exciting in a modern day and age, make it relevant to millennials and the digital age … then you guys can do it within any aspect of health.

Just hone in. Instead of trying to be everything health—find your unique expert position, really own that, stay passionate about it and always be raising your knowledge to expert level. Always be learning the next best thing within your niche, so that you can stay cutting edge and revolutionary with how you’re presenting this material to your clients, your target base. As well as staying at the forefront of correction for healthcare.

Yuri:                Nice. Good stuff. If you look back over the years you guys have had online so far … Other than the creation of content—you mentioned spending so much time in front of the camera and not knowing what to say—was there another big challenge or obstacle?

A pivotal moment where you guys were like, “Holy shit. Stuff’s about to go wrong if we don’t fix this or figure this out.” Was there a moment like that for you guys?

Getting back to your core and engaging your raving fans

Krista:            Yeah. I’ll be honest, we actually just recently went through this. We live in Puerto Rico now, where Hurricane Maria just hit and that totally wiped us out.

It was in this moment where we started realizing that we got a little bit too big. Does that make sense? We started having great success within the business and then the obstacle was almost that we were expanding too much and we were doing too many different things.

This hurricane moment was one of those things that put us in our place and we said, “Okay. Let’s get back to basics. Let’s not try and do every single thing. Let’s get back to our core. Let’s get back to our people.” And what I started doing from that point was an enthusiastic customer campaign. It really brought me back to the core of our business and reengaging.

I was sending out personal emails to thousands of our people, and I said, “Hey, here’s my individual email. If you have any questions, let me know. I want to help you be successful.”

Instead of going too big, we got back to our core, back to basics, back to our people, and we’re sending out personal emails to help them be more successful. You’re at that point in the beginning where you feel like you’re never going to grow and then suddenly, you grow very fast.

Then, you get to a point where you’re expanding at such a rapid rate … You’re bringing on new employees, you’re all over the place on social media and then suddenly you get to a point where you think, “Maybe I’m doing too much and I need to go back to my people, back to the core.”

So that was an obstacle that we recently went through. Hurricane Maria was one of those reminders for us to get back to the core, don’t try to go too big, deliver the most value possible to your members and then grow from there. Increasing profit per X instead of always trying to get new people on board.

I mean, you should continue doing lead generation, but instead of just focusing on new people, also focus on increasing your profit per X with your current members.

Yuri:                Yeah. That’s such a huge takeaway. This was kind of the overarching theme of our entire Healthpreneur live event. We went through a similar situation—minus the hurricane—where you kind of climb this mountain and you’re like, “Wow. I actually don’t want to be on top of this mountain anymore.”

It’s really about going deeper with people as opposed to going wider, and it’s a tough thing as an entrepreneur because we’re always looking to expand in terms of our reach, our growth and a lot of times we think that expansion needs to be in terms of numbers. More followers, more customers.

But as you said, if you just focus on serving your existing customer base even better, like sending them a personal email—which is, “Oh. God forbid!” as you said. I really believe that’s where the future is when it comes to online marketing.

Mass marketing? We’re in a day and age now where I think what you’re doing with the micro marketing is going to make a huge difference, and it’s going to really help you, and anyone listening, to really stand out.

So I’m excited that you guys went through that. Obviously, without the hurricane stuff, but to have that realization is so powerful.

Krista:            Yeah. It was powerful. Again, always be doing lead generation—never fall flat and get to the point where you plateau—but never give up on the fact that you have these followers from the beginning. You can always provide more value to them and keep them as raving fans.

It’s so much better to have raving fans.

I mean, I told you at the beginning, we did a six-figure launch with 900 people in our email list. That’s because they were raving. Versus having 30,000 people who don’t really care or don’t really open your emails. Always focus on developing that raving fan.

Yuri:                Yeah. One of my favorite books, as a reminder of this, is Acres of Diamonds. You don’t even have to read the book. The whole concept is that you’ve got acres of diamonds sitting under your nose. So instead of chasing the next shiny object, it’s like, “Let’s deal with what have.” And it’s a good reminder, so I’m happy that you were able to bring this up and help our listeners realize this as well.

But I think it’s one of those things too, where … You almost have to experience it. You can tell people, “Okay, think about this,” and they’re just like, “Yeah, whatever. I want to build my list.”

They’ll get to a point where they’re like, “Holy shit. Maybe they were right.”

Krista:            You’re correct. Because the big thing you think is, “Oh, if I just have 30,000 people on my list, if I just have 100,000 people on my email list…” and that is great. Please work towards that and continue developing that lead generation.

But again, always provide value to your raving fans and don’t lose touch with them because they’re your people at the end of the day. They’re your tribe.

Yuri:                Your peeps. All right. Krista, this has been awesome. Are you ready for the rapid five? This is our five rapid fire question session.

The Rapid Five questions

Krista:            Absolutely.

 Yuri:                All right. You’ve got no idea what these questions are, so here we go. Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

 Krista:            My biggest weakness is technology. Which is funny, because I own an online business. Anybody can do it if I can do it.

 Yuri:                Yeah. I would actually say the less time you spend worrying about the technology, the better off you’re going to be. It’s actually a good weakness to have. Cool.

Number two, what is your biggest strength?

 Krista:            My biggest strength is teaching and content creation. I absolutely love my material. I love teaching, I love connecting, and I stay in that zone of genius.

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

Krista:            I become dangerously good at doing Facebook lives. I used to be so terrified to get on screen without a script, and then once I started doing Facebook lives it was such a great way to connect without being too scripted and too wordy. Just honestly connecting as a conversation.

Yuri:                So just as an offshoot to that … It’s one thing to get in front of the camera, it’s another thing to get in front of that live camera and maybe have zero people watching you.

What advice do you give to someone who might have zero people watching them? Or even a bunch of people watching? Is it just a matter of putting the reps to get more comfortable with it?

Krista:            Yeah, 100%. I started off on Periscope before Facebook live even came out, and I used to have no followers on Periscope, but I used to get on there anyway and just made myself commit to a consistent practice of doing live video. It’s so important that even if nobody’s watching, recognize that probably 90% are going to watch the replay anyway, so talk to them.

You can talk to your replay followers. You don’t need to say, “Okay. We’re waiting for more people to get on. We’re waiting for people to get on.” No, no, no. Skip all of that, go straight to the point, right into the meat and potatoes of what it is that you want to provide value on. And recognize that you’re going to get a ton of replay watches.

Yuri:                I love it. Good stuff. All right, number four, what do you do first thing in the morning?

Krista:             First thing in the morning is always a morning workout. I was a bodybuilder before, so I always get up, drink some water, some coffee, and I go to the gym or go for a run in nature. I promise you, any problem that you ever have can be solved over a run in nature.

Yuri:                It’s so funny because I woke up and I was like, “Uhhh, it’s a little chilly outside…” We have a gym in our garage and I’m like, “God, I don’t know if I want to work out,” but I love exercising first thing in the morning.

I’m like, “I need to get out of my funk, so I’m going to go for a run.” I dropped the kids off at school, went for a 3K run, nothing crazy, but it’s amazing what it does.

Krista:            It’s therapy.

Yuri:                Oh, it’s huge. I don’t know how you feel about running as a postural expert—I’m not a huge fan doing too much of it—but there is something for creative types with running. There’s a very expansive thing that happens when you run, just the mental clarity that comes from it, so I think it’s great.

Krista:            And the parasympathetic feeling of being in nature. And you throw a great podcast like Healthpreneur on top of it and now you’re learning while you’re working out.

You’re challenging your mind and your body physically. There’s nothing better.

Yuri:                Here you go. Finally, complete this sentence: “I know I’m being successful when …” 

Krista:             I know I’m being successful when I’m over delivering on my number one core value—that your success is our priority—to our raving fans and followers at The American Posture Institute.

Yuri:                Awesome. I love it. Krista, what’s the best place for our listeners to find out more about what you guys are up to and follow your work online?

Krista:            Yeah, we would love it if you join us at americanpostureinstitute.com or follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/americanpostureinstitute.

 Yuri:                Wicked. Krista, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been awesome.

I want to acknowledge the amazing work that you, Mark, and your whole company have done to really expand this message. And obviously for bringing your passion and expertise to the marketplace and just continuing to deliver so much value.

So I want to thank you for all that you do and for joining us today.

Krista:             Thank you. And I want to acknowledge you for the amazing platform that you provide, because this is the information that we needed to know when we had our brick and mortar business.

For everybody who’s listening to Healthpreneur, just know that you’re in good hands. You have a good mentor, a good leader that’s helping you be successful. Stay tuned in, keep listening, keep attending the Healthpreneur events and stay connected in this community.

Yuri:                Awesome. Thanks so much, Krista.

Krista:            Thanks.

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Yuri’s take

I hope you enjoyed our interview. Krista is very articulate, you can tell she’s very passionate about what she does.

One of the things I wanted to bring up was how she talked about really finding your magic. The secret sauce that you love to do, the way you can specialize and stand out in your marketplace. And I say “your marketplace” in a very specific way because, as you know, the health industry is very wide. There’s a lot of different marketplaces and niches within it and it’s also very competitive.

So one of the best things you can do, as she mentioned, is really figure out how you can specialize. If you come out with another weight loss program like I did with my health and fitness business, you’re going to be the generalist. It’s a very, very tough hill to climb.

But if you can look at what you’re really good at doing and say, “Listen, I’m just going to focus on posture. That’s my thing. I’m going to focus on leg exercise. I’m going to be the dude who focuses on helping tennis players improve their serve.”

Whatever your thing is, really own that.

And that’s what I’ve done with Healthpreneurs. I said, “Listen, I am the guy.” When health experts think of building a business using the internet, we are the company they think about. We are the go-to solution for that. What we’re sharing here and all the stuff that I provide could be very relevant—and is very relevant—to every single business in every single industry because the fundamentals are the same.

I’ve just made a conscious decision and said, “Listen, I only want to serve people in the health space because I have an affinity to that and because that’s really how I want to specialize.” I want you to think about this today.

If you haven’t already, how do you carve out a segment for yourself, within your marketplace? Really define what that is and who you want to be an expert and a hero to.

Because if you can do that and communicate that, and have other people tell a story of who you are in a very conducive and congruent way that fits with your message … They’re able to share with their friends and family, “Hey, this is the person who was this, for me.”

Right? Anytime we do business with someone or anytime we think about anyone, we’re always putting people and businesses into a category. If you think about your head and your brain as a chest of drawers, think about each one of those drawers, each one of those components as a different business or person that might be influential in your life.

So you want to occupy a specific drawer in your prospects’ minds. When they think about pancakes, they think about you. I don’t know why I said pancakes … But when they think about getting fit, they think of you. When they think about posture, they think of the American Posture Institute.

If you try to be everything to everyone, it’s very tough for people to say, “Okay. How does this person really help me? How are they different from everyone else?” But if you can carve out that niche and occupy that one space in the drawer, it’s really going to help you in the long run as well as in the short run.

That’s my little challenge for you today.

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Follow Dr. Krista Burns At:

https://americanpostureinstitute.com/

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