How to Give Your Clients Exactly What They Want with Laura Schoenfeld

Transcription

Welcome to the show, guys. Hope you’re doing awesome. I’m doing well, thank you for asking! I’ve got a great guest on our show today. Her name is Laura Schoenfeld. Let me tell you a little bit about her.

Laura is a registered dietician trained in functional medical nutrition therapy. She specializes in women’s health, hormonal balance, and recovering from stress-related conditions. She draws from a variety of sources to form her philosophy on nutrition including ancestral diets, principles of biochemistry, current research, and clinical practice.

She started off working with Chris Kresser as he built his online business, and she’ll share a little bit about that journey. Nonetheless, I think you’ll enjoy this conversation because Laura is going to share some cool things about how to give your clients exactly what they want.

There are a few more things that we’ll touch on, but one of the premises of the show is that, a lot of times, we put stuff out there that we think is cool and we have a tough time attracting clients. We’re so focused on our thing instead of the result that the client is after.

This episode will give you some food for thought and some different perspectives on how to approach the market in a way where people will care about what the heck it is you’re offering.

Without any further ado, let’s welcome Laura onto the show. Laura Schoenfeld, welcome to the Healthpreneur Podcast. How are you?

Laura:             Good! Thanks for having me, Yuri.

Yuri:                You’re very welcome. We’ve given a bit of your introduction before jumping in, but can you give our listeners a better sense of what your business model currently looks like?

Give them a sense of how that looks for you.

 

Laura’s background and how she formed the business she has now

Laura:             I would say most of my business comes from working with one on one clients.

I’ve been doing that since 2014, right out of grad school. I’m a registered dietician, so I do mostly nutrition, but also do lifestyle coaching; so exercise, stress management, supplements, and all the stuff that goes along with lifestyle. Most of my income right now comes from the one on one.

I have a couple of group programs that I run intermittently, and I’m working on doing some ever greening of those products. Also, I’m working on building a membership platform. My hope is that in the next couple of years, I’ll start to transition more to the group-type of atmosphere with some one on one clients. I want to reach a broader audience and not have to rely on booking one on one clients for my business.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. It’s interesting you say that because one of the biggest challenges that we come up against with the people that we serve is transitioning away from one on one to group coaching. It’s not scalable and they feel burnt out. It feels like the natural evolution of how a lot of people want to take their practice, whether that’s in person or virtual.

How did you get into this space in the first place?

Laura:             Back in 2012, I was hired as a content manager for Chris Kresser. I assume you know him.

Yuri:                Yeah. He’s awesome.

Laura:             I feel like everybody knows him. I started off working for him and helping with his blog. I got to see the behind the scenes of running a business, and that was back when Chris had five people max on his team. I was doing all the emails and helping put the content on the blog. I feel like so much has changed because his business is so different now.

I got to learn what it looked like to create content, marketing, emails, and how to construct that. I could see what Chris was doing to build his audience while I was in grad school. I was learning the nuts and bolts of nutrition in grad school while also getting to learn the nuts and bolts of a business working for Chris.

By the time I graduated, I knew right off the bat that I wanted to have that type of business; maybe not as big as Chris’s business, but the style of business where you have the blog, a podcast, and put content out to attract clients to the business. That was pretty much my game plan from day one. I started a blog even before I opened my doors as a nutritionist, so I had people waiting to work with me by the time I had my dietetics degree.

It was a great learning experience, and learning from one of the best was a big blessing. For the last four years, like you said, I love working with people, the interaction, and talking to individuals, but it’s not scalable. I only have so many hours in the week, and everyone that I work with requires a lot of attention and engagement. I don’t have unlimited energy to engage with everyone at the level that I want to.

I’ve been looking at other entrepreneurs and seeing how they’ve built a larger platform that can reach more people. That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out in the last year or so.

Yuri:                Awesome. That’s cool. Either we scale our business or we clone ourselves. I don’t know if cloning of humans is there yet, but maybe down the road.

 

Outsourcing and distinguishing what your clients know and want

Laura:             Yeah, and I’m a huge control freak, which is not great when you’re trying to run a business. It’s hard to build a team when you feel you would do it better. But, you can’t do everything, so I’ve tried to loosen up the reins and hire people to help with things. Even just hiring another RD to work under me, there’s the concern that they don’t recommend what I recommend, or not doing as good of a job?

That’s where I feel like building the platform makes me more comfortable because I’ll still have control over the content.

Yuri:                Let’s talk about that for a second. This is an area that a lot of entrepreneurs can relate to. If you’re the head of your company, the personality, whatever you want to call it, you have a very particular way of doing things. You’ve had a process for which you help people, you’ve had a process to get stuff done. The challenge is that, a lot of times, we expect what we do at the same level, 100%. Part of the challenge is being okay with 80%.

People listening might be solopreneurs or doing one on ones. Maybe they’re spending an hour a day on Canva, putting in another graphic or whatever. What are some of the initial things that you have had to get off your plate that someone else could take on, so that you could focus more of your energy on what’s most important for you?

Laura:             A colleague and I were doing a podcast for several years, and we recently turned it off because it was sucking time and wasn’t giving us the investment return that we were looking for.

But when we were doing the podcast, we hired someone to do the audio editing, posting, and publishing. That was probably the first hire we made. That saved a lot of time. Even audio editing can take an hour or two per episode. So, if you can hire that out, it’s amazing because then you can put more content out.

I’ve also hired people to help with the actual writing on my blog and research. Some of the stuff that I put out, needs research on new topics or more research to support the recommendations. Just being able to have that stuff more deeply researched is helpful. Having a content editor/research assistant is helpful.

Right now, I’m working on integrating a VA to help me with email management, so I just learned of this customer service email system called Help Scout that seems to be working well. It would help me bring on someone to go through my email and make sure that I’m assigned the emails that are important. Then, they deal with the ones that aren’t important because, as many people know, email can be an insane time-suck.

Also, setting boundaries around things like email, and not checking it at certain times of the day, or promising my clients that I’ll get back to them within two business days, not within two hours, or something like that. Those kinds of things have freed up a lot of time.

I also have a content strategist that I’ve hired who is helping me figure out the nitty gritty details of my ideal client avatar like what they are looking for and what kind of services I could create for a group platform. She’s one of my former clients so it helps to ask, “Well, you tell me what you’d be looking for because you’re one of my clients.”

I think when you’re an expert and you’re in that expert mode all the time, it’s easy to forget what people need help with. Especially when you work with complicated clients, you get into deep, detailed work, and forget that some people don’t even know what an ounce of protein looks like or something simple like that. As an expert, you just take for granted that people know.

Having people to help identify the needs of the clients and the needs of a larger base of clients that would be missed while in that expert mindset has been helpful, too. Sometimes I take for granted that people understand certain details

Yuri:                That’s awesome. That’s such a good point. because I see this maybe more so in the health space than anywhere else: We go to school for so long, we acknowledge this knowledge and wisdom, and then we think everyone know this stuff.

I was in Morocco a couple weeks ago. My dad’s Moroccan, and we took our kids. Everyone speaks Arabic. It’s like we speak Arabic, but the rest of the people we serve speak English, right? They have no idea what we’re talking about, and we have to dumb things down to that level.

A great advantage is that you’ve dealt with people one on one. When you bring that online, I think the unfair advantage for us health experts and entrepreneurs in this space is that you’ve been in the trenches, getting deep with people to find their fears, frustrations, desires, and pain points. In most other industries, they use surveys to figure that out.

We have this in person and we have to get back to that. If we spend more time in our prospective clients’ shoes, it sets us up for success. I say this first and foremost because I spent a long time putting stuff out there that I thought was cool, but no one else did. I learned the hard way that I should just listen to what people are going through and do more of that.

If you were to teach a business course at nutrition school – God forbid there be a business course in a school for nutrition – what are one or two tips you would give future RDs coming out of the programs to get their business off the ground?

 

Why it’s critical to be yourself and build your niche around that

Laura:             It’s funny that you laugh about the business side of nutrition because we didn’t learn anything about running a business. I ended up doing Marie Forleo’s business program when I first graduated because, even with learning from Chris, I still needed more structure.

Having come from working with Chris Kresser, I still struggle with the mindset of, “I can help everybody.” This is something we learn in nutrition programs as well. We learn every single different condition that you could think of, how to work with that person, what labs to look at, and what nutrition guidelines to give that condition. I think a lot of dietitians, and I’m assuming other nutrition students, too, come out not knowing what specific population they want to work with.

They’re afraid that if they niche too specifically, they’ll limit their client base.

When I first started, I was willing to take anybody with any condition. It’s not that I couldn’t do that. I wasn’t failing at helping people. But from a marketing and expertise perspective, it’s difficult to get consistent clients if you don’t have some level of niche, whether that’s gender, a specific health condition, a certain type of athlete, or something like that. If you don’t already have a decent base and audience when you first graduate, it’s going to be hard to get clients if you’re not niching.

The other issue if you’re not niching is trying to learn protocols and recommendations for every single unique case that you come across. The more you can narrow it down to a specific health topic, the more you can get deep knowledge around that topic. Then, the people that find you for that topic get even better help because you’ve done so much research on that topic. I think the niching thing and the ideal customer avatar piece is most important and, it’s funny, every time I do a business program, making sure that you know your avatar is always number one.

I still struggle with that because I’m in the mindset of helping anybody. I don’t want to get too specific. But it makes a huge difference with not only marketing, but also your ability as a practitioner.

Yuri:                Totally. I’m just going to throw a mic drop on that. If you’re listening to this, that’s where everything starts.

Laura:             I know, and it sounds so basic.

Yuri:                That’s the problem. It’s not sexy, it’s just tactics. I want to piggyback on a few things you mentioned.

Imagine being a pro athlete. Most people start off by trying a couple different sports. Eventually they figure out and decide to master one sport. You can’t be a pro in two, let alone three, different sports. You must narrow down to one.

There are two other important things that I’ve recognized while defining this. One, it helps you stand out in this very crowded marketplace. If you’re coming out as a dietitian, you easily become a commodity, but if you start to narrow down, niche, and say, “Listen, I’m the expert for these types of people with this problem,” you start to stand out.

Second, we talked about scaling and moving from one on one to a group with one specific focus. With groups, it’s easy to put together a very specific protocol that everyone follows. Then, you can scale that. But when we’re dealing with diabetes, heart disease, and all kinds of other conditions, you’re juggling a thousand different balls at the same time. What Laura just said about narrowing down your niche market, should be done before you do anything else in your business. Otherwise, everything else is just going to go off the rails.

So, Laura, thank you so much for mentioning that.

Laura:             I’m preaching to myself because as I work through the process of developing a membership program, I still need to figure out who I’m creating this for.

I’d say it’s an ongoing process because you don’t just pick one and do that for the rest of your life. You might branch out or add a second one, but you can’t do it all, so you have to start somewhere.

The second piece of advice that I would give has helped with my business over the last couple years. It’s to let yourself be yourself with your marketing and social media. Show yourself as part of the brand. Maybe that’s not appropriate if somebody’s got a group brand that isn’t their face, but for me, I have a business that is my name as the brand, so if that’s the plan you have, let yourself be yourself, take a stand on things you believe in, and don’t be afraid to show up in a way that might be a little controversial. Show your personality in the work that you do and in your message.

As an example, I am a Christian and that’s something that, in the health sphere, is not the most popular thing. It’s not horrible, but it’s not exactly super-cool to be Christian in the health world. There’s been this level of fear like, “What if I turn people off or do a faith-based post and people think I’m a hardcore Christian so they unfollow me because they think I’m annoying?” There was the fear at first that there would be backlash because my business got started in the paleo ancestral health sphere, which is obviously not usually Christian and based on evolution.

I was a little worried about that, but I thought, “You know what? I think it’s important for me to share my full belief system because it does impact what I do as an entrepreneur. It impacts my recommendations. It impacts my philosophy on health. Honestly, I feel like that has been a huge benefit to my business because I get people who come to me because they say, “Oh, I’m interested in working with you because you’re Christian.”

I’m not saying that you should use religion. It could be something else like, “I’m a power lifter so I take power lifting clients,” or something like that. The niche thing doesn’t only have to be about health conditions, either. Whatever your personality, passions, and things that shape your mindset and belief system in the world is good to share with people because you’ll find other people who agree with you. Then they’ll be raving fans. That has taken my business to the next level; from being another paleo dietitian to the Christian paleo dietitian. It just gets even more attractive to the right people.

Yuri:                That’s so true. You have to say, “This is who I am.” It’ll repel some people and it’ll attract the right people. It’s like a boomerang, right? You put it out and you’ll attract right back to you the types of people you want to work with. You mentioned earlier that sometimes we’re fearful of putting ourselves out there in an authentic way. We feel we’re going to turn people away and narrow down too deeply. But that’s exactly what we want to do, right?

That’s how you exactly attract the right people to work with. A lot of times, people end up attracting clients that they can’t stand because they’re not being themselves, so they’re attracting the wrong people into their business in the first place, so that’s awesome advice.

 Laura:             People tend to be afraid of turning people off or away because, especially when you’re starting a business, you don’t want to turn anybody away. But honestly, that was probably the biggest mistake I made starting my business. I didn’t have any boundaries for who I was taking on as a client or who I was agreeing to work with, and the more people you work with that are not your ideal clients, the more exhausting the work is.

If 90% of your clients are the exact ideal clients that you’d like to work with, your work week is a lot easier because you don’t get up and dread who you’re about to talk to. I think it’s good for psychological health, for your own sake. The stronger of a stance you take on things, the more that the people who agree with you will be drawn to you. They’ll be willing to pay more money to work with you because they know that you’re on their same wavelength.

Yuri:                100%. Just for reassurance, I know several people in the health space who are crushing it, and they’re very faith-based. They’re very open about that. It doesn’t matter if you’re Muslim, Jewish, Christian, or whatever, just be yourself. Yes, people are going to be turned off, but who cares?

When I go on vacation, I don’t really “vacation,” digital-free. I mean, I do, but sometimes I’m happy to work from a nice destination and people say, “What are you doing working?” But it’s not work for me. I love what I do. But it’d be very different if I was dreading the people that I was serving.

Listeners, make that conscious decision to be yourself and attract the right people. Everything stems from there and becomes a lot more enjoyable.

What do you think is one of the biggest mistakes that you’ve made in your business up until now? And what have you learned from that lesson or that mistake?

Laura:             It’s along the lines of what we’ve been talking about, where I was refusing to niche for a long time. It didn’t kill my business or anything. I mean, I was lucky to have a level of audience right off the bat in the beginning, so it’s not like I was floundering on that. It’s just that the less clarity you have about the kind of people you want to work with, the more you end up working with people that aren’t the right fit.

It’s not that they’re bad people, it’s just that if it’s not a good fit, it takes so much more energy to work with that person than someone who is a good fit. You don’t attract as many people if you’re not niching. Again, I’m preaching to myself because I’m still working on this and working on getting clarity about who my niche is, how detailed I want it to be, and all that good stuff.

There was a long period that I was just a generalist, and I think I would’ve gotten a lot more business advancement in a lot shorter period of time if I had done the work to do the niching in the first place.

The second issue was another thing we talked about, which was doing the solopreneur thing for a long time. Finally, this year I said, “You know what, I’m going to start building my team and get a lot of this stuff automated so I can focus on the more important high-level work that I need to do.” It’s been helpful to loosen up the reins and let other people do the work that I could do but don’t need to.

Letting that stuff go and trusting that another person could do it has been an important thing, and I think I took too long to get to that place.

 

Training and coaching and the balance between investment and benefit

Yuri:                Sure. I want to talk about investing in self/business.

What’s one of the best investments you’ve made – whether it’s money, time, education, etc. – to help you get to where you are now?

Laura:             I’ve done a decent amount of business coaching. The Marie Forleo program was helpful. She’s the one that does B School, and that was my first entry to business coaching. It was funny because back then I thought, “Oh my gosh, $2,000. That’s a lot of money to spend on business.” Now I say, “Oh, $2,000. That’s normal. Everyone charges $2,000.”

It gave me basic starting point information. I have worked with some business coaches in the past. The challenge for me is balancing paying, putting some skin in the game, and taking it seriously with paying too much money and not seeing the return on that investment or getting overwhelmed with the content.

I start to shut down, so I’ve had to be a little bit more thoughtful about the business programs I join. If it’s too much money, too hardcore, or too intense, and I don’t have the bandwidth to implement, then I just think, “Oh my gosh, this is terrible. I can’t do this.”

I’ve found that a lot of these little group courses have been helpful. I just signed up for Stu McLaren’s TRIBE course for helping build a membership. I’ve seen you, Yuri, on some of his marketing.

Yuri:                I know. Stu’s a good buddy of mine. We did a case study together.

Laura:             There’s chunks of practical information. It’s not obviously cheap; it’s not $100 or something, but it’s a low enough cost that I don’t feel a dark cloud of anxiety over my head about making the money back. And the bite-size information is helpful.

Honestly, being a student in these courses has been an education in learning how to break information down for my students. One of the issues that I used to struggle with more in the past – not so much anymore – was just dumping a lot of information on people.

My thought was, “They’re paying for this. I need to make sure they get a lot of value, so I’m just going to give them everything all at once.” I wasn’t doing the coaching piece where I picked the information they need to start with and build on that.

By going through these courses, not only do I get to learn actual strategy, but I get to see what is a good course. What does that look like? How do they drip it out? What do they do with videos or handouts? What makes this valuable to me?

Then, I can apply that to the work that I’m doing and say, “Okay, if I’m trying to solve x problem, what bite size chunks do I need or how can I use their structure? Oh, they did videos. Maybe I could do videos about my topic.”

It’s a combination learning experience. I think all entrepreneurs should be doing some coaching or business program to not only learn themselves, but also to experience the customer side of the equation. If we’re not acting as a customer for other higher ticket items, then it’s going to be hard for us to understand what other people are willing to pay for with our business.

 

Investing in coaching programs to learning and attract the right clients

Yuri:                That’s good. It’s true. One of the best ways to learn is to be a student of other programs or other coaching programs. Obviously, there’s some that are better than others. What Stu’s done on TRIBE is a tremendous example of how to drip content out in a way that doesn’t overwhelm you.

Again, especially in the health space, one of the things we’ve noticed is that so many people are focused more on the information than the transformation.

If we say, “I spent 1,000 hours developing this course.” No one cares about that. And I say that because I spent 1,000 developing one of my courses years ago and, sadly, no one cares about that. It’s about the problem they want solved. Focus on that. If you’re adding something in, is it moving them closer to their goal, or is it a distraction?

Is it just overwhelming them with more stuff? I think it’s a good process to think about. I believe we’re in a day in age where product matters, product meaning the deliverable you’re offering and thinking through. If you create something magical, marketing becomes a whole lot easier.

One more question on this. What do you say to someone who is either starting out or looking to grow their business and they’re reluctant to invest in themselves?

I ask this because when I started my business, I decided I was going to do it on my own. I didn’t need any help. I was smart enough. I could figure it out. Three years later, I said, “You know what? Maybe I’m not as smart as I thought I was.” I eventually invested in my first coach who was $18,000, and that was more than I had made online in the previous two years.

I tell people that most of the investments that I make are above my pay grade and they make me feel uncomfortable, but that’s the only way that I know I’m moving in the right direction. What do you say to that?

Laura:             I think the amount you’re willing to spend will change over time, so don’t think that the first thing you have to buy must be $18,000. The first thing I bought was $2,000 and that felt uncomfortable at the time. It should be a level of discomfort that’s like, “Okay, this is something I’m going to take seriously,” because if there’s not enough of an investment, you won’t take it seriously. Then, you won’t get the results. I think people get better results when they invest more money into the work that they’re doing with a coach or with a program.

Honestly, I’ve just found over the last couple years that it’s easier to sell to potential clients if I’m also spending money on my own self-development, because basically you’re trying to convince someone that spending money on themselves is worth doing. If you’re not doing that yourself because you don’t think it’s worth it, then why should they think it’s worth it, right?

I do business coaching stuff. I have been working with a personal strength and conditioning coach for about three years now to work on my own fitness. It’s one of these things where I say, “Yeah, I don’t technically need a coach for that.” I could go to the gym by myself, but I see the value in outsourcing that. I get better results. I’m more committed. My entire day is structured around that workout session. I make sure I eat enough. I make sure I sleep well the night before.

It has this ripple effect in my life where it’s not that my coach is telling me anything about how to eat or sleep or anything like that, but I’m taking it seriously because I’m investing money in it and I want it to be worthwhile. I think just being willing to spend money on your own self-development makes you more legitimate when trying to get other people to spend money on self-development.

Also, the amount of time you save learning from an expert on a certain topic is invaluable. With online business, there are so many different things that you could do, so many different directions you could take, so many different trial and error experiences you’d have to go through to figure out what’s going to work.

Find an expert that you trust, and obviously do your due diligence and don’t just sign up for every single different coaching program that’s pitched to you. Make sure you feel like the person knows what they’re talking about. If it’s a one on one coach, get some testimonials or see some examples of their work. The amount of time you save for money you spend working with a coach…I can pretty much guarantee it’s going to pay out in the end.

It may not pay out within the first month or the first year that you do it, but I am confident that if you pick a good coach to work with, you’ll see that return on your investment very quickly. It may even be something that you see a return on within the first couple months of the investment. I think if you’re comfortable, it shouldn’t be so expensive that you feel like you’re going to have to take out a second mortgage on your house to afford it, but it should be expensive enough that you feel a little nervous doing it. Those slight nerves when you’re going to sign up is not a bad thing, it’s actually a good thing.

Yuri:                Great advice. It’s so true.

Listeners, if you’re coaching people, whether online or in person, and you run into the situation where people say, “You know what? I think I’m just going to do this on my own for a bit, figure things out, and then I’ll come back to you,” I’d like you to look in the mirror.

If you’re not working with a coach because you think you can figure things out, you’re going to attract the same people into your business. Be the client you want to attract. If you want people to invest in you or in themselves, you must invest in you and yourself. If you’re not, it’s incongruent and you’re simply going to hit a wall every single time.

 

The Rapid Five

I don’t know if it’s an energetic thing, but it just happens. Awesome advice Laura. You ready for The Rapid Five?

Laura:             No, but you can go for it.

Yuri:                Laura has no idea what these questions are so let’s jump into it.

Number one, what is your biggest weakness?

 Laura:             Worrying about what other people think of me.

There’s a double edge to that sword, where I’m empathetic, want people to be happy, and want to take care of people, but sometimes it turns into being afraid to speak my mind or do what I want to do because I’m worried what my mom, friends, or some Joe Schmoe on Instagram is going to say. That’s been a bit of a barrier to get past in my business.

Yuri:                Sure. That’s understandable. Number two, what’s your biggest strength?

Laura:             I would say the other edge of that sword is my empathy for people, my compassion. I care a lot about the people I work with, and I’m very committed to doing what I can to help them. If part of what I do is send them to someone else, I feel like my clients can tell that I do honestly care about them and their results, so my empathy tends to be one of my best strengths.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. I’ll let you and our listeners know, I believe empathy is the secret sauce to success in business because if you don’t have that, you have no way of relating to the people you’re serving. It’s a good strength to have.

Number three, what’s one skill you’ve become dangerously good at to grow your business?

 Laura:             I would say I’ve gotten a lot better at selling.

So, doing free consults and getting people to book packages. I’ve been trying to hone in on my skills with that. It used to be a lot harder in the past, and I was very afraid of it. I didn’t like selling. Now, I’ve gotten to a place where I feel good about my skills when it comes to pitching my services in a way that’s successful.

That’s an important skill to have as a business owner, being able to sell your services and look at it as I’m not just taking money from someone, I’m doing an exchange of value. It’s been a big mental shift that I’ve gone through in the last year or so.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. It’s also challenging when you say your biggest weakness is the fear of what other people think of you, right? Selling is on the opposite end of the spectrum, right? A lot of people don’t want to be too pushy or ask for money because they might say no.

I tell people entrepreneurship is the ultimate spiritual journey. It’s the ultimate way to grow as a person because you must go through all this internal junk and say, “Alright, let’s just make this happen.” I’m sure you’ve recognized that it’s a great growth curve to go through.

Laura:             Yeah. It’s made me be okay with rejection, but it’s also taught me that if I believe I can help a person, then it’s not a bad thing for them to pay me money to help them. It’s just getting that negative connotation out of the money exchange piece, because I’m happy to pay for services. Every time my strength and conditioning coach says, “Do you want to re-up your package?” I say, “Yeah.”

It doesn’t even cross my mind if I should keep doing what I’m doing. I know that if I’m working with the right person, shouldn’t be this horrible experience for them to pay me money. It’s something they’re happy to do. It’s been a big mental shift to say, “I’m just helping them and if they don’t want to do it, it’s fine.”

That doesn’t say anything about me or my skills, but it is my job to prepare them and to ready them to make that commitment, and that’s something that I’ve taken into the sales process.

Yuri:                That’s awesome. Good for you.

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

Laura:             I do a Christian gratitude journal by Ben Greenfield.

Yuri:                Ben’s a good friend of mine.

Laura:             You have a lot of friends, don’t you?

Yuri:                I pretty much know everyone in this space, yeah. I’ve been around for a while.

Laura:             Yeah, I’m friendly with Ben and his wife. He released his Christian gratitude journal, which is the Christian version of The Five Minute journal, I would say. I have that next to my bed and I make sure I do that before getting ready for the day, on weekdays at least.

Weekends I feel a little bit less structured.

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

Laura:             When I finish the day and I feel satisfied with the work I did.

Yuri:                Wicked. I love it. Laura, thank you so much for being with us on the show. This has been a great interview. I’ve enjoyed our time together. What is the best place for our listeners to check you out online, follow your work, and inquire about your services?

Laura:             My home base is lauraschoenfeldrd.com. If you want to see the blogs that I’m putting out or the programs or the services that I offer, all of that is found there. As far as getting to know me more as a person, I like Instagram.

I don’t know what it is about Instagram, but I’ve latched on to that one as my social media of choice. I try to share little personal anecdotes, things that I’m doing, and things that I’m learning in my own life. That’s where you can get to know me more as a person. A lot of what’s on my website is health information. Those would be the two best places to find me.

Yuri:                Awesome. Laura, thank you once again for being with us. It’s always great to connect with people doing awesome stuff in our space and I want to express my gratitude and appreciation for you and the work that you’re doing to serve your clients and pay it forward to making this world a healthier place. Thank you so much.

Laura:             Thanks for having me, Yuri.

Yuri:                You’re welcome.

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Yuri’s Take

Alright, I hope you enjoyed that bad boy. One of the things I wanted to touch on from our interview was how Laura talked about not being afraid to be controversial and taking a stand for what you believe.

I need you to understand this because if you play plain vanilla with your business and the way you put yourself out on the marketplace, you’re going to have a tough time standing out. If, like Laura, you’re a registered dietitian, there are hundreds of thousands of registered dietitians across North America and the world. How do you stand out from every single one of them?

If you’re a trainer, doctor, chiropractor, it doesn’t matter. Whoever it is you are what you do, it’s not your information. It’s not the information you provide that’s going to be valuable to people. They can get information from anyone. It’s how you present it. It’s how you approach working with your clients. It’s your philosophy, and that’s why I often say, “Don’t just share what you know. Share what you believe because when you share what you believe, you’re going to attract and repel people to and away from your business.”

That is golden because you only want people who believe or agree with what you’re doing to be in your tribe.

For example, I don’t believe that it’s a smart business plan for most entrepreneurs to be selling low end information products. The only caveat to that is if you have a huge list, a huge following, and you know how to drive massive amounts of traffic and make it profitable. Otherwise, if you want to create transformation for people, if you want to help them go from where they are to where they want to be, it’s going to come from some type of hand holding coaching program.

I’m not talking, “Hey, here’s a course. Go do it on your own.” It’s a done-with-you type of model, where it’s not necessarily one on one, but it’s done in a group with higher price points. You’re selectively choosing the people you work with and that is it. Premium pricing. Premium clients. Premium results. That’s what I believe in.

That’s what Healthpreneur is built upon, and because of that, we don’t offer any $7 e-books, or any of that nonsense. We have a workshop, our mastermind, and Healthpreneur Live, which is our annual event. That’s it. And, obviously, our podcast, which is completely free. So, if you don’t like the podcast, please email us and we’ll refund you.

But that’s the key. You must take a stance for what you believe in, whether it’s your position on a specific diet or the way people approach life or whatever you believe in. Share that overtly. Let people know what you stand for and stand against. That’s how you’re going to attract the right people into your business. That is how you’re going to stand out. That’s how you’re going to grow and enjoy the process a lot more.

If you want help with this stuff and want to attract clients more effectively, enroll them without feeling salesy, and deliver amazing results, we can help you.

We can do so in the form of a 45-minute free call. This is our opportunity to jump on the phone together and figure out exactly those three things. We’ll figure out where you are, where you want to go, and where you’re stuck, so we can get you clarity on how to approach those elements of your business and you can move forward with more ease. If that sounds good to you, head on over to healthtrainergroup.com/book to book your call today.

Again, it’s totally free. If you’re wondering if this is going to be a sales pitch, it’s not. In fact, we don’t even invite a lot of the people we speak with to work with us at a higher level. If you are interested in that we can tell you more about that at the end of the call. But again, for us, we must make sure that it’s a good fit as well.

The call is all about you. It’s all about being of service and that’s it. It’s all about helping you move forward with a lot more clarity. Sound good? Thank you once again for joining me on the show today and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you have, subscribe to the podcast Healthpreneur Podcast on iTunes, and leave a rating or review if you’d like. On that note, I bid you farewell, and hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I will see you in our next episode.

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https://lauraschoenfeldrd.com/

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