"May You Live in Interesting Times"

This quote is generally purported to be a Chinese curse.  I don't know how much truth there is to that, but we are sure living in interesting times now.

Classic Business advice has always been to avoid the more "controversial" topics for fear of alienating portions of your audience.  While I think there is some validity to that, it is mostly an outdated 20th century idea.

It feels like I've been back in "researcher" mode most of the year.  First, becoming an armchair epidemiologist in March and April as this whole Pandemic thing took hold.

The past 2 weeks it has been diving into more of the history of race in this country.  I was raised with a fairly realistic view, since both of my parents had "fled" the south in the 60's and settled in the Philadelphia suburbs.

If you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have told you that I don't have a racist bone in my body, however I've come to discover that is pretty naive thinking in a country that has it baked into the DNA of many of our laws and systems.

So now I am trying much harder to actually understand the reality of that history better, instead of largely just looking past or around it I guess.  We can't heal what we don't accept and look directly at.

I certainly don't claim to have any answers, but what we have been doing has obviously not been working so I'm hoping that some of the current discussions will lead to some actual change and forward momentum.  My plan is to make this part of my ongoing education and hopefully passing along some of what I learn.

Having said all that, it really feels like the entire world has shifted on it's axis and I'm not sure we are ever going back (or even if we should) to life as it was in 2019.

I asked Susan to share her thoughts on how we could best support each other in helping to "be the change" we wish to see in the world.  Please check out the video on the website in this week's article.

The post Health Coaching in Troubled Times appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

I know it is easy to get caught up in all the other metrics we measure in our business.  How many people are on my email list, how many followers do I have on Facebook, what is the conversion rate on my opt-in page, the list goes on and on.

These are all important things to know and track, but the love metric is infinitely more important.  How do you care for and serve your community?  

This is so much harder to quantify and put down on a spreadsheet and measure, but still, something that we should spend as much time, if not more than worrying about all the numbers. 

In order to have a successful business, I have heard it said that you need 1000 true fans.  Kevin Kelly coined this term years ago, but it is still relevant today.  He was talking about musicians, but it is relevant to any small business I think.

He says:

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce…

Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each spend one day’s wages per year in support of what you do. That “one-day-wage” is an average, because of course your truest fans will spend a lot more than that.  Let’s peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

One thousand is a feasible number. You could count to 1,000. If you added one fan a day, it would take only three years. True Fanship is doable. Pleasing a True Fan is pleasurable, and invigorating. It rewards the artist to remain true, to focus on the unique aspects of their work, the qualities that True Fans appreciate.

So how do you go about creating these true fans?  Fall in love with the process of serving your tribe.  Don’t focus only on building your list, getting clients and making money.  Focus on giving value, serving and nurturing your tribe. 

Of course, you need to learn how to build a list and a community, I am not trying to diminish all the stuff we always talk about.  You absolutely need to know your niche, have an amazing free offer, and a way to make money. 

In fact, you need to really work on having a well-developed sales funnel and strategy if you want to be successful.  But, if you just focus on the marketing and the numbers, you will lose that heart connection with your tribe, which is where you will find those true fans.

This is a huge mistake I made early in my business.  I thought I would just hide behind the computer screen, build a list and make money.  While I suppose this can lead to some level of success I know this was very short-sighted and really not a very rewarding way to build a business.

The post Love Is The Most Important Marketing Metric appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

I have some experience with addiction so this is a topic that is important to me.  I’ll tell you a bit of my story in a minute.

I think as health coaches this is a topic we all need to have at least a basic understanding of since you will definitely have clients that are struggling with this.  I know that as a health coach we DO NOT prescribe or diagnose, but as a trusted advisor, we should at least have some tools in our box to share with people should they want to get some help.  One of the cornerstones of addiction is denial of the problem, usually everyone around the addict knows there is a major problem long before they do.

In the podcast, they share some numbers but one that stuck out to me was that during the aftermath of the Vietnam war, when there was a major heroin problem in this country, the death rate was something like 1.5 per 100,000 and during the crack epidemic of the late 80’s it was around 2.5 per 100,000.  Now the death rate from the current opioid epidemic is somewhere around 20 per 100,000 people.  Some states, like NH and WV are as high as 30-40 per 100,000. 

This article on the NY Times website has some good interactive graphs comparing the current drug crisis with deaths from things like car accidents, guns, and H.I.V.

The number is skyrocketing and shocking and the causes are complex, but the problem started in the mid 90’s when pharmaceutical companies started widely marketing opioids like oxycontin, even going so far as to market some of these products as “non-addictive”.  I am not a doctor, but I find it really hard to comprehend how anyone could have realistically thought that a compound so closely related to heroin and morphine could be non-addictive.

I don’t have a solution to this, but if we are to solve this growing epidemic it is going to take a lot more than another “war” on drugs.  That, of course, has been wildly ineffective.  We need to become educated, talk about it in a more productive way, and as coaches have empathy for all those people that are suffering from addiction.  My experience with addiction is that it is also a disease of isolation, so just have an empathetic heart can go a long ways.

So, I told you I would share a bit of my story, here it goes.

As a teenager, I experimented with all sort of things, from alcohol and pot to pills and LSD.  I think I exhibited addictive type tendencies from the first time I drank but throughout high school, this was more of a “when I could get away with it” sort of thing. 

This progressed to more daily use after I graduated high school and moved out of the house.  I’m not sure if this was a good thing or not in the long run, but I think perhaps it was.  I ended up living and working around quite a few people that were much older and lived this lifestyle for decades and it nearly scared me straight.  Somewhere around 19, I decided I needed to clean up my act.  First I enrolled in college, then quit all the harder drugs and then got married, in about a 2-year time span.  Of course, there was a lot of drama in between all that, but I’ll spare you all the gory details.

What really ended up happening is that I never really dealt with my addiction problem, I just changed its trajectory.  While I stopped all the drugs, I continued drinking alcohol.  This started off fine and I was quite functional for a long while.  Over the years, however, the drinking became more and more of a problem and led me to make some less than ideal choices for the direction I wanted to go.

During this time I had become a father and now had two small boys.  This all came to a head in March of 2001 when I was home alone with my 2 boys, Jason was 2 are Ryan was 4.  I had what I found out later was a major panic attack but I literally thought I was having a heart attack.  I called 911 and was taken to the hospital with my 2 small boys in the ambulance with me.  The moment I was wheeled into the emergency room on a stretcher was one of those pivotal moments in life when everything changed for me.  I prayed the first honest prayer of my life which I think was “Please help me” and thought I may never see my kids again.

Once in the emergency room, I remember a very nice nurse coming in to check on me and asking if there was anything going on I would like to tell her.  The words “I’m an alcoholic and I need help” came out before I realized what I was saying and that was the beginning of a new life for me.  She was super sweet to me for about 2 minutes, and then she laid into me and lectured me about how I had 2 beautiful kids and had to take responsibility for my life.  I needed a little tough love at that moment and I’m sure as an emergency room nurse she saw people like me every week that said they wanted to straighten out their lives and get clean only to show up in the emergency room again a week or a month later.

That was a little over 16 years ago and I haven’t had a drink since.  I have had lots of other life drama, like we all have, but have not found a good reason to have a drink, and I hope I never do.

For a few years, I was utterly convinced that I would absolutely never drink again.  In fact, my mom has on many occasions questioned whether I was actually and alcoholic.  I’ve also learned that the only person that needs to be convinced is me and maybe I wasn’t at first.  I also quit smoking shortly after getting sober and around 10 years later decided for some unknown reason that it would be OK to have a puff of a tobacco at a Native American ceremony I was attending.  Needless to say, that was a bad idea, and it was nearly 4 years before I was able to put down cigarettes again.  This little experiment convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I suffer from the disease of addiction.  I am good at abstinence, but cannot have 1 cigarette or 1 beer or 1 whatever if I don’t want to get back on that train.

I am really happy to say that neither of my boys remembers me ever drinking and being a sober, recovered alcoholic has made me a far better father than I ever would have been otherwise.

The post Why Health Coaches Need to Understand Addiction appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

All the marketing tips and tricks in the world are great, but at the end of the day the best gift you can give to your clients is the ability to be completely present with them.  This is something that is sorely lacking in most people’s lives.

Being completely present has become even more challenging in our always connected ADD world, where everyone is buried in their mobile devices and continually distracted.

We have all met those people that when we are talking to them we feel like we are the only person in the room.  For the rest of us that weren’t naturally born with this ability, being fully present is a skill we can learn.

Some of the most important aspects of being present are what you are not doing instead of what you are doing.

When talking with another person, what lots of people do is to listen just enough so they can formulate a response or have a running dialog in their head either agreeing or disagreeing with the other person.  Neither of these are remotely related to being present.

When you are BEING with someone and are totally present you focus all your attention on them and actively LISTEN without any agenda.  Not doing anything other than listening, not waiting for your chance to talk, not formulating your reply, just BEING with another person.

This may sound very simplistic but give it a try.

It is likely that any coaching client you are working with has either nobody or very few people in their life who truly know how to be present with them.  There are some good practices to make this easier for you to be able to do.  These apply whether you are live in person with someone or talking with them on the phone,

• Put away all your devices.  If you are in person, put away your phone and turn off the ringer; if you are on the phone with someone just be on the phone, turn off your computer and don’t go checking facebook while you are talking with someone.
• Take 2 minutes to ground yourself before talking with your client.  This can be as simple as putting away all distractions, rooting your feet into the ground and taking 10 deep breaths.
• Ask yourself how you can be of service.  Instead of thinking what you want out of the conversation (a new client, a product sale, etc.), think of how you can be of benefit to this person.  If your product or service is the thing that will benefit them, fantastic; if not, don’t make the mistake of trying to force your agenda.
• Listen way more than you talk.  Learning to ask open ended, high mileage questions is a great skill whether you are talking with your clients, your kids, or anyone else in your life.

When you are completely present, it is easier to dig deeper instead of taking the first short answer someone gives you at face value.  We are all basically the same in wanting to feel an authentic connection with another human being.  I have found that for lots of people that have tons of “problems” in their life, the biggest problem is that no one has taken the time to truly listen to them and care.

This will actually help your clients infinitely more than you knowing the latest diet fad or super supplement.  Once they can feel and know that you truly care about them, all of that other stuff becomes infinitely easier.

The post The best gift you can give to your clients. appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

I fell for the network marketing myth.  I signed up (under someone who really didn’t understand the business), learned all I could about the products and the company and started doing what the company told me to do.  Basically, it was the same story, go approach every person you have ever met and tell them how awesome this business is and how they can make a good income by just sharing the business with a couple of people.

If you have ever joined a network marketing (sometimes referred to as MLM, or multi-level marketing) you may have run into some of the same stumbling blocks I did.  I hated “selling”, I got a knot in my stomach whenever I would go tell a friend of mine about the business, and after about 5 months, I became one of the huge numbers of people that were happy to tell everyone that network marketing doesn’t work.

So fast forward quite a few years.  When I started Health Coach Weekly a few years ago, I brought this baggage with me.  I said I will “never” promote anything in the network marketing industry.  Then a funny thing happened.  I met person after person that had made it work for them.  Sure, many of them were promoting products that there was no way I would put my seal of approval on, but I started to pay attention.  Then I met someone that had built some enormous organizations without ever approaching her warm market (now I’ve met quite a few more).  I even have a friend that almost never calls someone to get them to join her business.  Either they call her or just show up, and she is more successful than all the “old school” marketers in her organization.

I had seen enough to know that my judgment of the business model was wrong but I still was hard pressed to find a company that I could really get behind.

I basically found 3 kinds of companies when I started really doing my research.

1. The products were not something I could be passionate about without “apologizing” for some of the ingredients.  Either they were not organic, had GMO ingredients, were full of fillers, binders or they were just some “wonder” juice, pill, or potion, no thanks.
2. The products were good but the company had been around so long that I already knew hundreds of independent representatives from the business.  As you can imagine, with a site like mine, I get approached pretty much on a weekly basis with the next “big opportunity”.  Some of these companies are great but I have an obligation to help others be successful which is harder when everyone you know is already involved or has heard of your company.
3. The products seemed good but they were so expensive, no one would be buying them unless they were a distributor and making money.

I’m sure you have sat in on some of these “opportunity” calls or webinars.  They all sound great, just get a few customers and sign up 3 more “business builders”, help them do what you did and you will be all set.  Like most things in marketing, there is a kernel of truth to this.  In theory, at least…in reality, it is a lot of hard work, just like every other kind of business.  I do think, however, for health coaches, there is a good place for network marketing for many coaches.  At the least, you are probably wanting to be able to give your clients access to some really excellent products, and if you find a company that has managed to keep the pricing competitive, this can be a nice extra income source.  Most coaches I talk to already recommend certain products from the health food store.  If you can find similar products that are valuable for your client and you make money on, I look at that as a win-win.

Of course, the big thing that seduces people into looking at network marketing is the promise of “residual income”, basically earning money tomorrow for work you have done today.  Anyone I have talked to that has actually built up a substantial residual income did not do it by signing up 3 people into their business and then helping them.  I know some people that have done it in an amazingly short amount of times by working incredibly hard and following some very good systems and training.  But even the friends I’ve met who took 3 to 5 years to build up a $10,000 – $20,000 + / month “residual income” still worked very hard.

So basically, what I am saying, is don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater like I did.  Network marketing is a perfectly fine business model as long as it is done right.  Just like there are slimy internet marketers and used car salesman, you can find the same thing in network marketing.  There are also lots of heart-centered network marketers full of integrity just like in any other field.  They are just not always the ones that are speaking the loudest.  Just don’t fall for all the low-work, get-rich hype that still exists in the industry and fuels this whole network marketing myth.

The industry is evolving again, and in next week’s article I will talk a little about this evolution and how this will be a very good thing for anyone who is involved or wants to be involved in one of the companies that makes this crucial shift and matures.

The post The Network Marketing Myth appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

With the publishing in The New England Journal of Medicine “GMO’s, Herbicides, and Public Health”, I am hoping we can reverse this trend of accepting this notion that GMO safety is “settled” science.  Just because someone questions the safety of GMO foods does not really make them anti-science, a point I hope to drive home in this rant, I mean article.

I have seen a shift in strategy in the media over how to frame the question of GMO safety.  This new strategy involves making it sound that the overwhelming majority of science points to the safety of Genetically Modified Organisms. 

This takes on several disguises.

1. “We have been genetically modifying foods for millennia.”  Modern GMO technology cannot be compared to historical genetic crossbreeding where two somewhat similar plants were cross breeded.  Things like inserting fish genes into tomatoes and strawberries is a little different than crossing 2 apples to make them a little sweeter, or redder, or more drought resistant.  
2. “The majority of scientists agree on the safety of GMO’s”.  I hate to say this, but just because a body like the American Medical Association says something is safe, I am not going to automatically take that as gospel.  Especially in the USA, many of the scientific institutions that our government relies on in setting policy are funded by and/or headed by industry insiders.  There is a well known “revolving door between industry and political appointments.  If there were true scientific consensus, why do around 64 other countries in the world require labeling of GM foods?
3. “There may be some safety issues with herbicides, but this is not the same as GMO’s”.  This is, in my opinion, the crux of the problem right here.  This is both brilliant as a marketing strategy and ridiculous as a matter of practicality.

In this country at least, the vast majority of GM crops are genetically modified for basically 2 purposes, either to withstand the spraying of large amounts of herbicides such as Monsanto’s Roundup, or to actually engineer a pesticide to be contained within the seed or plant itself, such as Bt corn.

In a very popular article on Slate.com last month, William Saletan basically took this approach.  I must say, I don’t entirely disagree with him.  Perhaps there are some compelling uses for GM crops, although I would say the science is still out on most of them.  The favorite of the pro-GMO crowd is Golden Rice, which was promoted as a solution to Vitamin A deficiency in third world countries.  This has become a very hot button issue with some very questionable scientific ethics in the studies, like feeding this rice to children without disclosing the source. 

The reality is that in most of the developed world, the separation of GMO’s and pesticides is not a realistic argument.  The vast majority of GM crops grown and consumed in the USA are either designed to be herbicide resistant or to contain internal pesticides.

Yesterday’s article in NEJM raises some excellent points in this discussion.

The first of the two developments that raise fresh concerns about the safety of GM crops is a 2014 decision by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to approve Enlist Duo, a new combination herbicide comprising glyphosate plus 2,4-D. Enlist Duo was formulated to combat herbicide resistance. It will be marketed in tandem with newly approved seeds genetically engineered to resist glyphosate, 2,4-D, and multiple other herbicides. The EPA anticipates that a 3-to-7-fold increase in 2,4-D use will result.

In our view, the science and the risk assessment supporting the Enlist Duo decision are flawed. The science consisted solely of toxicologic studies commissioned by the herbicide manufacturers in the 1980s and 1990s and never published, not an uncommon practice in U.S. pesticide regulation. These studies predated current knowledge of low-dose, endocrine-mediated, and epigenetic effects and were not designed to detect them. The risk assessment gave little consideration to potential health effects in infants and children, thus contravening federal pesticide law. It failed to consider ecologic impact, such as effects on the monarch butterfly and other pollinators. It considered only pure glyphosate, despite studies showing that formulated glyphosate that contains surfactants and adjuvants is more toxic than the pure compound.

The second new development is the determination by the IARC in 2015 that glyphosate is a “probable human carcinogen”1 and 2,4-D a “possible human carcinogen.”2 These classifications were based on comprehensive assessments of the toxicologic and epidemiologic literature that linked both herbicides to dose-related increases in malignant tumors at multiple anatomical sites in animals and linked glyphosate to an increased incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in humans.

These developments suggest that GM foods and the herbicides applied to them may pose hazards to human health that were not examined in previous assessments. We believe that the time has therefore come to thoroughly reconsider all aspects of the safety of plant biotechnology. The National Academy of Sciences has convened a new committee to reassess the social, economic, environmental, and human health effects of GM crops. This development is welcome, but the committee’s report is not expected until at least 2016.

In the meantime, we offer two recommendations. First, we believe the EPA should delay implementation of its decision to permit use of Enlist Duo. This decision was made in haste. It was based on poorly designed and outdated studies and on an incomplete assessment of human exposure and environmental effects. It would have benefited from deeper consideration of independently funded studies published in the peer-reviewed literature. And it preceded the recent IARC determinations on glyphosate and 2,4-D. Second, the National Toxicology Program should urgently assess the toxicology of pure glyphosate, formulated glyphosate, and mixtures of glyphosate and other herbicides.

Finally, we believe the time has come to revisit the United States’ reluctance to label GM foods.

“GMOs, Herbicides, and Public Health.”
Philip J. Landrigan, M.D., and Charles Benbrook, Ph.D.
N Engl J Med 2015; 373:693-695 August 20, 2015

My friends over at The Food Revolution Network did a great summary of the article HERE.

I think the next year or 2 will be the deciding factor of the future of GM foods in the US.  It has finally reached the mainstream and if we can all get well educated so we are not painted into an “anti-science” corner as the food industry would like, we have a real shot at getting GM labeling laws passed in the near future.  Of course, it could easily go the other way, similar to the vaccine debate, the choice is up to us.

The post The New Industrial Food Complex Strategy to make any questions of GMO Food safety anti-science appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

Look around, there are plenty of so called push button systems out there promising instant riches, tons of traffic to your website and all with no work on your part.  Most reasonable people know in their gut that if it sounds to good to be true it probably is but still many get swept away by the excitement and allure of easy money and waste a lot of time and money in the process.

Don’t get me wrong, I think an online business is a great idea and can be very lucrative, but I don’t think it is any easier than any other type of business.  It does have certain advantages and for me the main ones are time and location freedom.  It is just as easy to type a blog post at midnight as it is from 9-5 and anywhere your laptop is located can be your office.

Just realize that no matter what you may hear, running an online business is work, and actually getting it started is a lot of work.  No more than any other business and in my experience it actually has quite a few parallels with the off line world.  You need to build a community of people that are interested in your specialty ( A niche market is even more important online) and grow a relationship with them.  If you focus on just making money, chances are you will burn out long before you are making enough to pay the bills.

My steps for building an online business are focused on using your passions and talents as fuel to get you over the initial hump of starting an online business.  In the beginning, any new business venture is usually a lot of work for little financial reward, which means that you need to be doing something that fires you up so that when you feel like throwing in the towel and giving up it is not so hard to get motivated.  At least for myself, if I am only motivating myself with money, it is hard to stay passionate about what I am doing.

Find A Niche You Are Passionate About

I know you are passionate about health and wellness, but you will need to narrow it down to a very specific target market if you want to succeed online.  Many people have this chosen for them, usually through some health challenge they have or someone they love has had.  Make sure it is something you can stay really interested in and focused on for at least a few years.  Nobody says you can’t broaden your scope, but initially you need to focus on a very specific audience.

Do Keyword Research Before Anything Else

So many people get a great idea, build a website, create a product and then wonder why they can’t get anyone to find them online.

There are a few ways to get people to find you online, but targeted search engine traffic should be a cornerstone of your strategy.  It takes awhile to master, but once you have your content on page 1 of Google for a decent search term, you WILL get traffic.

It is amazing the difference one letter can make when doing keyword research.  Let take 2 search terms that someone whose target audience is people struggling with Diabetes might think of using.

Even if you got on page 1 of Google for the term “diabetes diets” you still wouldn’t get a lot of search engine traffic.  This doesn’t mean this is a horrible keyword, and lower searched keyword terms are very useful for doing things like targeted blog posts, but you don’t want something like this as one of your main keywords.

Build Your Tribe

Whatever your niche is, they key to online marketing is to grow a community of people who are interested in what you are doing.  Just writing a blog is not enough anymore.  Social networking has made it easier to connect with people than ever before, but there is a catch.  If you join a group or forum on places like Facebook or LinkedIn, you will find lots of people interested in your topic.  Just going here and “selling” your services is not usually the best plan of attack.

People go to social networks to connect with others that have similar interests, not to be “sold”.  Use these places to connect with people and be seen as an expert in your field.  This is not an overnight plan, but over time you will be able to establish yourself as an authority.

Create Programs and Products That Your Niche Wants and Needs

While you are spending time in social networks becoming an “authority” in your field make sure to pay attention to what people are saying and what questions they are asking.  It’s much easier to promote a program you create if it is something people want and need.  Another important piece of this is don’t spend years creating the “perfect” program.  When you get a great idea, go for it!  If it is an online coaching program, try to find a few people who are interested and just do it.

I know I have fallen into the trap of having to have everything perfect before taking any action, which can become an endless cycle.  Once you do an online program once, you will have the confidence and momentum to create something bigger.  The best part of this strategy is that you can get paid to actually create your content.  I’m not suggesting flying blind, but as you teach others, it will become more apparent what works and what doesn’t.  Keep what works, and improve on the rest.

Summary

Taking your practice online is a wonderful way to grow your business, increase your freedom and get your message out to the world.  It is not usually an overnight success, but if you do your research and create great programs that people want and need, you will succeed.  I look forward to seeing what you create as you take your message online and positively affect a greater audience.

By Geoff Young

The post The Online Marketing Myth appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

When it comes to marketing yourself and making a living as a health coach, there are a few challenges that everyone goes through.

• What target audience (or niche) should I serve, should I even have a niche?
• How do I build my email list.
• What are my income goals.  For some, an extra $1-2 K per month is what they want while being able to stay at home.  I have found the sweet spot for many is $3-5 K per month, and some people are aiming a multiple 6 figure businesses.
• How should I earn money (Most successful coaches do more than 1 of these)

1. Single client, 1:1 sessions.
2. Group classes
3. Online programs
4. Being a distributor for a network marketing product.
5. Building a network marketing team (which most “distributors” never do)

With all of these things, there has been a lot of hype in the marketing circles as to how 1 or the other is the key to having a successful business and will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

A few years ago, the idea of a passive info-product empire that would make you rich was all the rage.  I took a $2,000 course from Brendon Burchard called “Total Product Blueprint”.  The premise was all you need to do is sell online information products and you will quickly be raking in the dough.

While there is a nugget of truth to this, it leaves out a lot of reality in the direction things are going.  The days of selling “information only” products for hundreds or thousands of dollars is quickly disappearing as this sort of thing becomes more commodified.

The truth is an ebook is no longer going to effectively sell at $47 or $67 dollars, no matter how much of a marketing wizard you are.

This doesn’t mean you should not create online programs, but the focus going forward is going to need to be on education and engagement, not just information.  If I can get a 10 hours video course on Udemy for $25 on how to do something, why would I pay someone $997 for the same info?

The value comes from engagement, support and “education”, not just the information.  Just putting a bunch of videos and support material in a membership site and selling it without your personal involvement will still work, but don’t expect to be able to charge a whole lot for it.  This will still be a good model for your lower priced offerings but not for your “signature system.”

The same hype has been around in network marketing for years as well.  “Just find 3 people who want to find 3 people and you’ll be making 6 figures in no time.  Again, there is a bit of truth in that but it is so oversimplified as to be laughable.  The truth is, like any other business model, in order to be successful in network marketing takes a lot of time, education, and sweat equity, just like any other business.

This frustrates me to end when I hear from people “I tried that and it didn’t work” when what they really did was treated their business like a lottery ticket and when the first couple of tickets didn’t pay out decided it “didn’t work”.

Talk to anyone who is successful in any entrepreneurial adventure.  It takes way more work than most people will tell you.  More education, dedication, shifts in mindset and plain old hard work than most people are willing to do.  This is actually a good thing for those of us that are willing to do the work.

The post What is Your Biggest Struggle? appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

Weren’t all these devices supposed to make our lives simpler and more efficient?  That has not been my experience.

First, let me say that I love technology and all that it helps me do.  There is no way I could run a business like I do today out of my home without these wonderful modern digital devices.

However, along with all the benefits they bring, there is a dark side to technology.  I have noticed for myself over the past 5 years or so that I keep feeling that I am moving faster and faster without necessarily being any more productive.  I took some a long, hard look at my habits over the holiday season and decided on three main things that I am doing in the new year that I am about 99% sure will make me more productive, lower my stress, and help me sleep better.

1.  Turn off all phone notifications.

Ever since getting a smart phone a couple of years ago, the little notifications on the screen have been taking up a larger and larger bandwidth in my mind and of my time.  When I switched to an iPhone last year, I did turn off a lot of the notifications.  Do I really need to get a message every time someone likes one of my Instagram pictures or starts following me on twitter? 

For the new year, I am getting a lot more drastic.  I turned off ALL the  notifications, badges, beeps, and buzzers from every app including Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Gmail.  These were definitely the big 3 time suckers for me.  The only ones I left on were for the phone, calendar and messaging.

I really love all the cool apps I can put on my iPhone.  My meditation timer that keeps track of how many minutes a day and how many days in a row I keep up with my practice.  I have become much more diligent about my daily meditation practice since using the Insight Timer app.  The banking app that lets me deposit checks without even leaving my desk and Scannable, that lets me scan my restaurant receipts straight into Evernote before I even pay the bill. 

I can tell you that I have noticed a big difference in my relationship with my phone since it no longer lights up every time I get an email or a Facebook message.  My goal is to get back to using it as the amazing tool it is rather than the relentless task master it was quickly becoming.

2.  Take Gmail off my pinned browser apps.

I use Google Chrome, which lets you “pin” open tabs to your browser that always open when you open up your computer browser.  I used to work with people that had a ding go over every time an email gets done.  I find it hard to believe that any focused work could ever get done like that.

Gmail used to be the first thing on this pinned tab but not anymore.  I did my yearly email inbox purge over the holidays as well which is always fun.  Someday I want to learn how to work out of inbox zero, but that is a topic for another post.

Much like my phone, email has slowly gone from useful tool to time sucking monster over the years.  To deal with this, my new way of dealing with email is to bulk process it a couple times a day.  My old habit was to open my phone before I meditated in the morning and check my email.  Now, I will not check my email until I have started work for the day and then I give myself a window of time to sort through all the email I have received, decide what is important and made a list of things that need to get done and then I close Gmail. 

I haven’t yet figured out if I will go through email 2 or 3 times per day, for now I am doing 3 and see how that goes, but the rest of the day my email is off.

3.  Only go on social media during schedule times.

The last major distraction and potential massive time waster is social media for me.  Yet again, this is a 2 edged sword.  I have built most of my business off of Facebook (and now to a lesser degree Instagram) so I still want to be active and nurture relationships.  However, when I find myself watching cat videos or reading endless trolling comment threads on Facebook maybe I could be doing something more productive.

My new rule with Social Media for myself is to schedule the time in my day.  If I give myself an hour for Facebook, I make sure to get all the things done that I need before scrolling through my newsfeed.  A large part of the communication I do with my team is on Facebook through groups, so I spend some time there and updating my posts and then close the damn browser.

This is where mobile devices come in handy.  There are lots of times throughout the week when I am just sitting around with nothing to do and as entertainment, scrolling through Facebook or Instagram feed  reading random posts can be a fine activity as long as you don’t confuse it with work or being productive.

This is a big sticking point for a lot of new entrepreneurs that are just starting to do this whole online business thing.  It is easy to spend 2, 3 or 8 hours a day listening to videos, attending webinars and chatting with folks on Facebook.  All of these things are fine, but if you are not spending any time doing income producing activities, your are not really in business.  What you have is a hobby.

This is the tough love piece.  Sure, we all need to learn new skills and to do that we need to take courses, read articles, and watch videos.  The trick is QUICKLY putting what you have learned into place and not perpetually jumping on to the next bright shiny object when you have not developed a business that is paying the bills.

Find a few people to follow that have the results you want and then do what they say.  The biggest determination of whether you will attain your goals or keep your resolutions is if you have a plan in place to track your progress and keep you accountable.

So how does this all help improve your sleep.  I forgot my last piece of the puzzle.  Around 10 PM now, I take my phone and put it in “Do Not Disturb” mode until after my morning meditation.  I can already feel my adrenal glands starting to recover and heal themselves.

I would love to hear what sort of tricks you have to keep yourself focused and on track.

The post 3 Easy Steps to Become More Productive, Lower Your Stress and Improve Your Sleep appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.

If that is you, stick around.

Before we start talking about sales funnels and marketing strategies there are some more fundamental pieces you need to get squared away.  Today I am going to talk about these at a higher level, we will dive into some of them deeper in future editions, stay tuned.

Your WHY!

This is something I don’t think coaches spend enough time or energy getting clear with themselves on.  Why are you doing this business?  Just saying “Because I want to help people” is not going to keep you going when the entrepreneurial roller coaster has one of its downswings.  Without a real plan, you may end up helping some people, but you likely won’t make a business out of it.

We all go through ups and downs building a business and without a strong foundation, it is easy to get sidetracked temporarily or permanently.

Of course, I know you are passionate about helping other people live a healthier life, but when it comes to sustained motivation through all the stages of business growth you need a rock solid Dream to keep you motivated.  Something that will get you out of bed in the morning, get you to make that one extra phone call, produce that next piece of content.

I am not one of those people that believes you need to work 90 hours a week and always be in hustle mode to build a decent business, but you do need to be consistent.  Just working on your biz when you feel “in the mood” is what is known as a hobby, not a business.  This is a trap I see tons of people fall into.  They spend hours a week chatting in FB groups with their peers, get on several free webinars to learn some new marketing technique, and countless other things that are not really working on your business.

Assuming your goal is to have 1:1 clients, if you are not having several consultations on a weekly basis with the intention of enrolling a client, then you probably are “struggling” in the client department.  I know, at school, they made it sound easy.  Just give a few public talks and the clients will come knocking down your door.  Well, you’ve probably figured out by know, there’s a bit more to it than that.

This all is not meant to discourage you, just be realistic.  Building a business is a process, it takes time, energy, focus, determination and a BIG DREAM to fuel it all.  Why are you really doing this?  Do you want to live the laptop lifestyle?  Do you want to be able to work from home while your kids are in school?  Do you want to be able to travel the world while working your business?

There is no right or wrong answer.  My experience is that most people are just looking to make enough income that they can make coaching their full-time job, maybe that is $3,000 to $5,000 per month, maybe it is considerably more than that.  All of that is most certainly possible, but without a big dream and knowing your why the chances are you will find ways to put it off until “I have more time” or some other nonsense.  That day will likely never come.  We could…and will, write a whole article all about this but for now what you really need is just to make a decision that you are going to do this.

My Turning Point – The Decision

For me, this happened in August of 2010.  The pharmaceutical company I was working for (Did I ever tell you I used to be a chemist?), laid off my entire department.  I was recently divorced and had been “playing around” with starting my own business for a few years.  Really, it was a hobby more than anything.  I remember there were only 2 people in my entire department that were not devastated by the news.  One was my director, who was 62 years old and had almost retired the year before.  Since he decided to stick around, he got a huge golden parachute between all the severance and retirement, you could literally hear the cheer from his office.

I wasn’t quite that elated, but I knew this was my chance.  I took the severance I received and enrolled in the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and never looked back.  It turned out I was better at the marketing end of things than most of my fellow health coaches and before long Health Coach Weekly was born.  This is not to say that it has been a smooth and linear growth curve.  There have been tons of ups and downs.  I have done lots of things right, but even more things wrong along the journey. 

The main thing I did right was to stay consistent and never give up.  I decided the week I heard I was getting laid off that I would be home when my 2 young boys (who are now 18 and 20) got off the bus every day.  PERIOD.  It was not “I hope I am able to be there”, it was a flag in the ground, no turning back major DECISION in my life.  Whatever I had to do, this was my why for the longest time.  I’m happy to say, I’m still home every day when Jason gets off the bus, but my why and dream have grown substantially since then.  Now I am looking more to the future and the impact I can have on other’s lives.

Your WHO

Who is it that you want to serve?  You hear people talking about niche or target markets all the time, but most people don’t spend enough time on this piece either.  “I help people get healthy” is not a business model. 

Especially if you are trying to market yourself online, you need to be much more specific in exactly who it is that you are going to serve. 

This should not be some vague thing like “I help women lose weight”, you need to drill down to exactly who your ideal client is.  What is her name?  How old is she?  How many kids does she have?  What result is she looking for and WHY is it important for her to get this result.  This is an entire exercise in itself, but the key is that your ideal client is a specific person who you will be able to deliver specific results for.

Again, all of these points deserve entire articles about them, but for now, after you have nailed down who it is you are serving, the next step is…

Your WHAT

What sort of transformation are you offering to your clients?  Hopefully, this is in alignment with the results she is looking for.  Now, do you see why it is important to do these exercises in order?  Just going out and developing a program with some generic client in mind before you have done all the work of determining who your ideal client avatar is will result in having a program that probably won’t sell because your client doesn’t want it.

The post Where Should You Start With Your Marketing Plan appeared first on Health Coach Weekly.