Episode 279: How Do I Get Clients? | GET LIFTED
Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify
Today's GLT episode provides a peek into the business content from the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. The module shared today addresses a question from practitioners and business owners alike: "How do I get more clients?"
Connect with Erin on Instagram here to submit questions for future episodes!
Resources mentioned:
Funk’tional Nutrition Academy™
Qualia Senolytic (get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Learn more about Mindset and Business
Related episodes:
278: Magnetism & Aligned Action in Your Business
234: Where Are You Holding Yourself Back?
196: Confidence, Clarity & Courage for Practitioners: The #1 Thing in Your Way
-
Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt, and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast, where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions, and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience, and because of that, I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us. But functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do, and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same.
Erin Holt [00:00:45]:
This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing. You'll get things here that you won't get other places. Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review, and share, because you never know whose life you might change. And of course, keep coming back for more. Now give me the mic so I can take it away. Hello, my friends. Another Get Lifted Thursday. How are you liking these episodes? Give us your feedback.
Erin Holt [00:01:22]:
When I was preparing Tuesday's episode, I wanted to share a series of journal prompts that fit in with the topic. So I went into a business module that I had created for the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. That's our practitioner training program. I knew I had written them down within that module, and I ended up listening to the entire module from start to finish, all 20 minutes of it. And I was like, this is so good. I really actually needed the medicine. I needed to hear a lot of those messages for what I'm currently working on in my business. So it just felt so good that I was like, wow, I should release this as a podcast episode.
Erin Holt [00:01:57]:
So here we are. I'm going to do it, and I think it pairs so nicely with what we were talking about on Tuesday's show. Now, keep in mind that this is 20 minutes of over 32 hours of business modules that you get in the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy. For my practitioners that are tuning into the show, some of our business modules are more mindset based. Some of them are very strategy based. I believe we absolutely need to blend both. I don't think you can run a sustainable, enjoyable, regenerative business without combining both mindset and strategy. So just as a heads up, our practitioner training is officially open for enrollment.
Erin Holt [00:02:38]:
You can head to the link in the bio or go to funktionalnutritionacademy.com that's spelt with a K. Even if you're not a practitioner, though, this episode is still going to be really great advice on how to get clients, because that was the number one question that business owners and practitioners submitted to me on Instagram. How do I get clients? So that's what today's episode is going to be all about.
Erin Holt [00:04:21]:
Okay, so this module can really be used if you've never ever had a client before, or if you've been well underway in your business and you might be looking for more growth. What I find is that anytime we're trying to do something new or start something new, create something new, build something new, or we're experience a period of growth we can hit up against our own upper limit, and lots of limiting beliefs start to come up, lots of feelings of lack start to arise. And so sometimes we need to reframe and think about things in a new light in order to take that step forward. What I want to start off by saying is there's a lot of people in the world, and I think we sometimes forget that. And we can sometimes get tunnel vision because we start to think of just in terms of our audience or the people that we're following on social media or the people that we know in real life. And things can start to feel very small, especially if you follow a lot of colleagues or people doing similar work, it can feel a little bit like an echo chamber. And so it creates this illusion of lack.
Erin Holt [00:05:40]:
There's so many people out there doing what you're doing that there's not enough clients to go around. And the reality of that is that that's not true at all. So if you ever doubt yourself in terms of potentiality of clients, I want you to really pay attention to the outside world. Go into a grocery store, a big box grocery store. Look at the majority of the food on the shelves. That's what the majority of people are actually eating, okay? Notice the food in people's carts. And I don't mean for you to be like a weird lurker. Just take a glance.
Erin Holt [00:06:15]:
I am always shocked and appalled at what the vast majority of people are consuming. There's so much room for education, for learning, and for improvement. Go to a pharmacy and look at the line. There's a lot of sick people in the world, right? Go to a doctor's office. Note how many people are in the waiting room. Log on to a chronic illness Facebook support group or search a hashtag autoimmune warrior or something fibromyalgia. There's a lot of unwell people in the world who are looking to get better. There are so many people in the world with health problems.
Erin Holt [00:06:54]:
There are so many people in the world with health overwhelm. There are so many people in the world with healthy eating confusion. They're looking for someone to help them solve their issues. That means there's a lot of potential clients out there for you. So the problem really isn't a lack of clients. The problem is a lack of belief in yourself more often than not. So I really want you to start to think about what is your goal for client load or if you have a new program that you're pitching, what's your goal for participants? What is your goal? Think about it. What do you want it to be? Maybe let's say it's like I want to onboard four individual clients every month.
Erin Holt [00:07:36]:
Think of what your goal is on your own time. Here's exactly what's going to happen once you have that goal. Your mind is going to kick in. The mind's going to do what the mind is going to do, and it's going to say, there's no way in hell that you can do this. This goal doesn't make sense. This is too big. This is too much. Where am I going to find these people? Where are these people going to come from? This is not going to happen.
Erin Holt [00:07:59]:
So your job is to make this big shift. You have to ask yourself the following question, and you have to do this time and time and time and time again. Do you think there are whatever your goal is, let's say four people per month, right? Do you think that there are four people in the entire world that could use your help. Obviously, the answer is yes. Right? You know that logically. You know that. Yes, absolutely. Without question, there are four people in this world that could use my help this month.
Erin Holt [00:08:32]:
Of course there are. Of course there are. Don't overcomplicate it. Your job is to notice the thoughts that come up that say, I can't have this, and to shift those thoughts. Your job is to constantly remind yourself that there are people who need your help. This shift puts you from a place of lack and not enoughness and never enoughness into more of a place of abundance and, like, okay, I'm going to shift the way that I'm seeing things and then the way that things present themselves to me will absolutely change. Right? It's true. So I want to give you a personal example.
Erin Holt [00:09:18]:
My last Carb Compatibility launch, my goal was 143, which seems very arbitrary, but I wanted a $50,000 launch. So in order to do that, I needed 143 participants. Now, that number might seem small to you. It might seem large to you. It was huge to me. It was a very big goal that seemed extremely unrealistic because the group before that had 90 participants. The group before that had 60 participants. I think the group before that had, like, maybe, like, 30 or something.
Erin Holt [00:09:50]:
So to make the jump from 90 to 143, that's a huge jump. That is a massive jump. So of course, my self doubt set in my mind, did what my mind does, and I started thinking, well, this goal is too big. Like, where am I going to get all these people? How am I going to do this? So my job was to continue to ask myself, do I feel that there are 143 people that need this program? That's all I did for the entire three weeks of the launch. I just kept coming back to that. Do I feel that 143 people need this program? And I did. I truly did. I absolutely did.
Erin Holt [00:10:33]:
This program helps folks regulate their blood sugar. It lowers hemoglobin A1C. It changes health markers. It makes people feel so much more confident in their own self. It makes people trust themselves. It forces people to quit dieting on their own terms. It makes people have more energy. Right.
Erin Holt [00:10:57]:
It really changes people. I know that there's 143 people that need that. I know it's been a hard year. Right on the end of pandemic, we were coming out of pandemic. 143 people need that program. This is my inner dialogue. I'm saying it to you into this microphone right now, but this was my inner dialogue through the entire three weeks of my launch. Every time I felt doubt, it was my responsibility to move into the big shift, make that shift.
Erin Holt [00:11:26]:
Do I feel that there's this many people who need my work? And in doing so, you start to energetically call people in. You become an energetic match for the people that your program can help or that your work can help. When you shift from that lack into the abundance, it literally raises your vibration, your bio like the energy around your body, and you pull people in. I know that's kind of far out, but chances are if you're in this program, there's been at least one point where you've looked at my business and you're like, how does she do that? I want to do what she does. Right? This is how I do it. Okay? I'm giving you all my secrets. Some of them are kind of far out. This is how I do it. Would you rather stay in a position where you're like, I don't have enough clients? Boo.
Erin Holt [00:12:17]:
I don't have enough clients. Or would you rather try something that you've never tried before with the potential to get a lot more clients? Right? Would you rather stay stuck, or would you rather try to do something different? You have nothing to lose. So I really recommend moving into this shift. Okay. We're going to get more into the specifics of that magnet work when we talk more about selling, but really, this is a big one. Whatever your goal is, whatever client you're trying to bring in, do you feel that there are that many people that could use your work now if you've never had a client before, and you're like, Where do I actually get started? And you don't have a social media presence, and if you're totally like, I literally just need you to tell me the very first place to start email your contact list. Right? Your friends, your family, whoever's on your contact list, not to sell to them. Right.
Erin Holt [00:13:14]:
Your goal is not to pitch to your family and friends and make it weird. I would never tell you to do that. What you're doing is you're announcing what you're doing. I am so excited to share with my family and friends that I'm starting a private nutrition practice. Chances are your family and your friends, like, knew you've been in school for nutrition. They know you're into nutrition, right? So this is not going to become as a huge shock. So they'll probably celebrate that with you. They'll be excited for you.
Erin Holt [00:13:39]:
Then you can go on to say, I am focused on women's hormones and digestive health, whatever slot in whatever you want to focus on. Do you have anyone in your network that you know would love this? I'd love for you to forward this email to them or share my contact information with them. Right? This is not weird. This is not salesy. This is not awkward. It's just like, hey, super stoked to announce this. Please pass it on if you know anybody that could help. I mean, I have a lot of people that are like, oh, my aunt could really use your help.
Erin Holt [00:14:13]:
My sister could really use your help. My blah, blah, blah, right? People want to share resources. That's kind of why I have this line here. I'm focused on specific call outs, right? So somebody reading this being like, oh, you know what? My coworker has really bad acid reflux. I'm going to send this to them. I'm going to send this to them. Okay? And then where do you start? And you could do this again if you've never had a client before or if you're starting a new program, what do you want to give to people? What transformation do you want to provide? Really list out all of these things. And we're going to get into more specifics.
Erin Holt [00:14:55]:
When we get into the ideal customer avatar module, we can start to really unpack. What's your goal here? What are you aiming to do specifically? The next step is to go test it out on people. Validate your ability to get results. Now, there's an option to take on a few pro bono clients or deeply discounted clients. You could even throw that out in the email to your if you're making an email announcement, you could throw that out like, hey, I'm taking on three pro bono clients. Let me know if you know anyone that might be interested. Now, one of my secrets is that I definitely start before I'm ready. And I like having a beta price point because it allows me the permission to figure it out as I go.
Erin Holt [00:15:43]:
So everything I've ever launched always had a beta price because I do things I start before I'm ready, and I just do things as I go. So to me, it feels like it builds in some flexibility. Now, the downside to doing totally pro bono, so free offering your work for free is that people really do tend to prioritize what they pay for. But I know that the cost thing, if you've never traded your services for dollars, it can feel very scary at first. So this takes the fear right out of it. So I don't recommend this for everybody, but I do recommend this approach for folks who are just not getting started. Like you're, like, I've been wanting to start a practice for two years, and I just can't get out of my own way. Do the work for free.
Erin Holt [00:16:34]:
Just give it away. Get testimonials. You can do them in exchange for testimonials and then validate to yourself your ability to get other people results. The next step is to grab three to five paying clients so you can validate your offer and your price point. We'll talk about that in the figuring out your fees modules. Confirm that this transformation that you're offering is really worth people's money. It absolutely is. But you might need to learn this for yourself, right? You might need to prove this to yourself to help you move through the fear of doing something new.
Erin Holt [00:17:14]:
Seeing the people's transformation, you're like, oh, okay, maybe I do know. Maybe I do have something here after all. This is the hardest part because we make it hard. Asking to be paid is where the wheels start to fly off the train. Okay? It's that exchanging our services for dollars that bring up all the limiting beliefs, that bring up all the self worth issues. So this becomes the most challenging part. This is where people get stuck. This is where people say, well, I just can't get clients.
Erin Holt [00:17:43]:
I can't do this work. Right? It's that what I need you to understand is that a no is not a failure. It's an opportunity. If you can get this tattooed on your thigh, if you can commit this to memory, and if you can truly believe this, you will have success in business. If every no makes the wheels come off the train, you're not going to get very far. So we have to flip everything around on its head. And those things that we have labeled as failing in the past actually just become opportunities for growth. We have to learn to have a sales conversation.
Erin Holt [00:18:23]:
And when I say a sales conversation, it's putting out your offer. It's as simple as that. It's saying, here's the offer, here's the price. Are you in? That's what a sales conversation is. And then getting comfortable with no, because, hey, guess what? You're going to hear no. It's going to happen. But that no is not a failure. It's an opportunity.
Erin Holt [00:18:40]:
Your market will always tell you what they want. You just have to listen. So if somebody says no, cool. Why ask questions about their objections? So the next time you have that conversation, you can actually speak to their objections right up front. Make a list of all the reasons why somebody wouldn't buy your thing. If you start to collect your no's, okay, great. No, how come? Okay, jot it down. And then you answer all of those objections right up front. You can write it into your copy.
Erin Holt [00:19:14]:
We'll talk about this in Copywriting 101. You can put it into the FAQ list of a sales page. You can address it in one on one calls. If you're doing discovery calls, you bake that right into your marketing. So you answer those objections right up front. You don't know those objections to answer unless people are telling you. That's why we have to have conversations. We always want to give people an opportunity to ask questions.
Erin Holt [00:19:44]:
Number one, people like to feel heard. They want to feel supported in a buying decision. So give them the opportunity to feel heard. They're going to give you good information. They're going to let you know where your customers heads are at, what they're struggling with, what they're struggling with in terms of a buying decision, what they're struggling with in general. And you can address all of those things moving forward. You can address them right out of the gate, right? Discovery calls, DMs, emails, Q and S's, Instagram Lives, right? All of these are opportunities for you to hear from your audience. So be asking questions and let them ask their questions too.
Erin Holt [00:20:26]:
You have to put your offer out, okay? You have to put your offer out so you can get proof of concept. Here is an example. I'll use a couple of examples from my own business to drive home this point. I've used this example before, but it bears repeating. Quite a few years ago, I was developing a detox program. So it was a three month program, and it was going to be all based on liver health detoxification. And I kept seeing this come up in my private practice. I'm like, holy smokes, people really need help with this.
Erin Holt [00:21:03]:
So I developed the outline and then as my lead magnet, or excuse me, as my funnel, my sales funnel. I used to travel around and teach live workshops. And when I taught workshops, there was a huge close rate. After the workshop, people would want to sign up to work with me. So it was a really successful sales funnel. And they were paid workshops. So people would pay. They would come hear me talk, they would receive something.
Erin Holt [00:21:26]:
And then a lot of people wanted to work with me. So I was scheduling all of these detox workshops, and I had a ton on the schedule, maybe like eight to twelve. And I had a specific attendance rate that I needed in order for me to travel. And only two places actually hit that attendance rate. So I only taught two of these workshops. So what did that tell me? Because my other workshops had been very successful. What did this tell me? This told me that nobody gave a flying F about detox. Nobody cared.
Erin Holt [00:21:56]:
Nobody was willing to invest their time or their money to come out and learn about it. So did I create the detox program? Heck no. Right? I put my offer out there and I did not get proof of concept. I did not. So I'm like, okay, there's no sense. This is not going to work for me. So we'll move on to the next idea. What I'm doing right now, as we speak, as I'm recording this, I had this idea to teach some of the business modules for FNA as live classes and invite more people, people outside of FNA and have them pay me.
Erin Holt [00:22:36]:
So it's another revenue stream. I'm creating the content anyway. Anybody within this container gets access to that curriculum for free. But because so many people have asked me for business training and business education, I thought, well, I could teach some of these as live workshops and sell them to the public. So I am trying it out as a test drive to see, is this a viable option, can I get proof of concept? So I'm creating a boundaries workshop. This is going into the FNA curriculum, but I'm also selling it as a live workshop. So far, I have three sign ups. That's not very good.
Erin Holt [00:23:17]:
I have quite a few weeks to actually market this. Three sign ups is not that great. I do have an idea in mind of what I feel would be a successful number. So if I hit that, hey, you know what? I just got proof of concept. I'm going to move forward and do more of these. And if I don't, okay, no big deal. That idea doesn't work for my business at this stage. You get what I'm saying? But there's no way to know what's going to work and what's not going to work
Erin Holt [00:23:42]:
if we never put our offers out there. We have to be willing to put our stuff out there, put the offer out, and fall flat on our face. It's not a big deal. If you're not comfortable with falling flat on your face, I am sorry to say you shouldn't be in business because you're going to have to do it. And I say that as kind of tough love, but also to normalize failure, to normalize falling flat on our face. We're all doing it. It's totally fine. We all have, like, dirt on our face. It's good.
Erin Holt [00:24:08]:
You get back up and you keep going. One of my business coaches said, being in business for yourself is like getting punched in the face, like six times a day. That sounds terrible and also very true. Anyway, from there, everything you create really should lead to your offer. Once you have proof of concept, once you're like, yeah, people actually want this, then it becomes easy because everything you create is essentially going to funnel into your offer. Whether you're on somebody's podcast or you're writing a blog or you're sending out a newsletter or you're talking on Instagram, you can always talk about your offer. You can always refer back to your offer. So it doesn't always have to feel like a hard sell.
Erin Holt [00:24:48]:
We're going to talk about content marketing. All of that content marketing can go back to your offer. Hey, guess what? If you don't have an offer, if you've never put your offer out there, then you have nothing to send people to. You have no call to action, right? So this is when we start to build the funnel, right? This is where we book out the business. We create lead magnets. Lead magnets, opt in freebies. All of those are the same thing. It's basically like a free thing that you're giving to people so you can get their email access.
Erin Holt [00:25:19]:
You're trading their email for a PDF guide or something. You start to build out your email list. You start to build out your sales funnels. My sales funnels, because I was historically very overwhelmed by the concept of a sales funnel. I'm like, you have to do webinars and paid ads and what's going on? Mine's very simple. I have a podcast, right? I have a podcast, and I send people to my website. I have a podcast and I send people to Instagram or people find me through Instagram and then they learn from me and then they make a purchase, right? It's really pretty basic. There's nothing fancy fancy about it at all.
Erin Holt [00:26:00]:
But the issue is that people usually just jump right to this step and they wonder why it's not working. Well, if you don't have proof of concept, if you've never put your offer out there, then this whole thing is going to come crumbling down. We also have to dig deeper, right? I said that there are some mindset shifts that need to take place when we're worried about not having enough clients. Where were you rejected in your life? Or when were you rejected in your life? When I say that I'm sure at least one memory comes popping right back right up into your head, right? And do you see how that is still playing out right now in real time? By you not extending your offer, by you not offering the world your services, by you not, dare I say it, selling yourself. Do you see? Because we're terrified. We're terrified of being rejected. We're terrified of people leaving us. We're terrified of abandonment.
Erin Holt [00:26:59]:
We're terrified that people won't love us. We're terrified that people won't like us. We're terrified of being rejected because it's happened before, chances are. So where has that happened? And do you see how you are living out your past right now in current time, because you're too afraid to extend your offer? We can't live like that anymore, right? That's no good for anybody. Your work will change people if you let it. Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.
