Do Your Own Marketing (without being a genius) with Bonnie Campbell, R.D.

Bonnie Campbell is a registered dietitian who has transitioned from clinical practice to coaching women on their weight loss journeys. This episode delves into the intricacies of programming, marketing, and the essential elements of running a successful online coaching business.

Bonnie shares valuable insights and tools that she employs in her practice, offering listeners practical tips, including how to utilize conversations on Reddit to better understand client needs and struggles. With tons of actionable takeaways, this episode is a must-listen for all you weight loss coaches, young and old.

Episode Overview:

0:00 Intro

4:20 Bonnie's Coaching Business: The Nourished Path

5:45 Specializing in Nutrition for Active Women

7:50 Innovative Coaching Methods: Asynchronous Communication

16:05 Client Management and Scaling the Business

21:45 Marketing Strategies and Future Plans

35:20 Understanding Client Needs & Overwhelm

38:50 The Challenge of Meal Planning

40:55 Leveraging Reddit for Client Engagement

46:50 Transitioning from Clinical to Preventive Care

54:10 Sustainable Macro System Explained

1:01:30 Transparent Pricing and Client Fit

 

Connect with Bonnie on:

Website https://www.thenourishedpath.com

Bonnie on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/user/bonniejo514/

Podcast https://www.thenourishedpath.com/podcast

IG https://www.instagram.com/bonnie.rd/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Bonnie-RD-273482033313995

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Today's conversation is with a business buddy of mine, Bonnie Campbell, who's a registered dietitian who actually kind of turned her back on her clinical dietitian practice and started her own weight loss program where she now works in coaching relationships with women.
Looking to lose weight.
And we had a really deep conversation about programming, marketing, some of the nuts and bolts.

(00:24):
of like the inner workings of becoming a coach and running a coaching business online.
So I really picked Bonnie's brain, how she does what she does, what tools she uses.
She gave me some really cool tips that I think you'll like as well.
On how to leverage conversations on Reddit to understand what your clients are looking for, what they need, what their struggles are

(00:46):
There's tons of actionable takeaways in this conversation with Bonnie, so I do hope you enjoy.
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator, and mentor, and your host of Health Coach Radio.
This podcast delves into the art, science, and business of health coaching.
Whether you're aspiring to land a coaching dream job or to embark on your own entrepreneurial adventure, we cover it all

(01:10):
Our mission is to help you grow your career, elevate your income, change the lives of the clients who need your help, and leave a lasting mark in this rapidly growing field.
It's time for health coaches to make an impact.
It's time for Health Coach Radio.
All right, Bonnie, we're off and running.
I'm excited to.
Chat with you, and I know our listeners are excited to chat with you.

(01:32):
We love talking to folks who are working in the health and wellness space, and you are.

So let's start the way all good podcasts start, which is basically (01:38):
who the heck are you?
And why are you here?
I am Bonnie Campbell.
I have my own coaching business, The Nourished Path, that I started during COVID.
I started to I was going to do it before COVID started, but
You know, it was a jerky at the beginning, and it was a kind of a weird year, but it was almost a blessing because everybody was going through a lot of change.

(02:06):
So it worked out.
And before that, I'm also a registered dietitian.
And so, before I was a coach, I worked at the hospital
And to become a registered dietitian, I got my master's in nutrition.
I did a year-long residency.
I think we're going to maybe get into kind of some details of why I left the hospital, so won't get into that now.

(02:30):
But I just have found nutrition coaching specifically to be self-fulfilling.
And being that part of people's lives.
It's just an amazing place to be.
Oh, wow.
Well, it sounds like you're deeply passionate about what you do.
So you made this move right around COVID time, but you were thinking of doing it anyway.

(02:54):
And what do you do with clients currently?
What is the Nourished Path?
And how do you work with people?
And who are these folks?
Yeah.
So at the Nourished Path, we mostly work with women who are in their thirties and forties and early fifties.
Who are already set in their fitness plans often?
So they already are working out often at Orange Theory, F45, maybe some weightlifting Pilates, all sorts of things like that.

(03:19):
But they know that nutrition is the missing piece for them.
And so we only really focus on the nutrition and giving them that weekly guidance.
Who kind of take their nutrition to the next level, lose the weight that they had joined those gyms trying to lose, but then haven't seen a lot of success.

(03:40):
And we've really kind of honed in this person who's already very passionate about their house.
But is stuck on what they need to do.
Nice.
I love that.
That's really clear.
I think that's really clear.
It's sort of like we.
you know, we can't help everyone.

(04:00):
So this is the benefit of niching or niching down, however you want to pronounce that word.
I like that you focused on
You know, we've the women who have exercise already dialed.
I can relate to this woman too.
Like, we know how to exercise.
We've been doing that forever.
And maybe the food stuff's just not quite working.
And mostly body composition changes.
Is that what you're is it fat loss that you're typically focusing on?

(04:21):
Yes.
So we're usually helping people lose between 20 and 40 pounds.
So a significant amount of weight, but not
Necessarily more than sometimes more than 50.
Yeah.
But usually it's kind of that refining of this person's at more or less healthy weight, maybe a little bit into the overweight category, but they
Work out five days a week and they don't look like it.

(04:43):
And they want to look like they work out.
They don't need abs, but they want to, you know, flex their bicep and actually see a muscle pop out instead of
Just kind of a bingo wing.
A bingo wing.
I hear that a lot from women too, because I'm in the weight loss space for women as well.
I want to look like I work out.
I want to look like the
Effort I'm putting in is somehow paying off.

(05:04):
So it sounds like the woman that you're working with, they have a desire to see a little bit of some muscle definition, which is pretty cool.
Yeah.
And I would say the other person we work with is breastfeeding women and women who are pregnant.
Oh, wow.
That sounds hard
Oh, I love it.
Oh my gosh, you get all the baby pictures when you're or frustrating women and they are excited

(05:29):
They're ready to eat well, but they need to balance the weight loss with keeping their milk supply up, which is a very delicate balance, but we're really specialized at doing that.
Oh, that's incredible.
I think that's a really interesting specialty.
Yeah.
I I wonder because every now and then, not anymore, because I've aged into my fifties basically, but when I was doing this 15 years ago, my clients were in their thirties.

(05:53):
And I would get the occasional woman that said, Okay, I had a baby eight weeks ago.
I'm ready to start losing the baby weight.
And I always felt so nervous about
even going there?
Because it's like, hang on, you're trying to produce milk here.
I don't know.
I don't really know how to support that.
So I think that's a really interesting specialty.

(06:13):
So these women, just to kind of zero in on say these breastfeeding women,
They want to lose weight, so trying to get the baby weight off, and they also have an interest in keeping their milk supply up.
So they're trying to balance both.
Is that what you're finding?
Yes.
It's a tightrope.
Okay.
But it can be walked for most people.
And that's, I think, the real benefit of us being registered dietitians is that we do have that extra clinical training to have that confidence, but also from a liability perspective.

(06:43):
we have a lot more protection by our licensure and our liability than if you were not licensed in a way.
True.
Yeah, good point.
Well, I do want to talk about this whole dietitian thing that you did.
But first of all, like just to kind of zero in on some of the stuff you shared.
You offer weekly guidance to your clients.

(07:05):
So I'm curious.
I love talking about this.
I don't know if anybody else listening loves talking about this, but I love talking about how do you structure
The coaching relationship.
Is it a weekly one-on-one check-in call?
Is it small group coaching?
Just how is that facilitated?
Yeah, we actually don't do either of those things.
Oh, yes.
Yeah.

(07:26):
So we do our responses to our clients with a recorded video
Oh.
It, I think, marries the convenience for both the coach and the client of asynchronous communication, but it's still very personal to that client.
It's just for them.
And I also find because we've done the live calls and the recorded calls work better because you can be a bit more honest in a recording than you can when you're looking at somebody's face and there's they can't interrupt you and go, oh, but

(07:57):
I'm going to explain myself.
I'm going to give my excuse.
They just need to listen.
And then, when they go and they finish the video and they can type their response back.
Those excuses usually they don't, sometimes they happen, but is a lot less, and we can be a lot more to the point.
Wow.
They get better results.
Yeah, that's fascinating.

(08:19):
It makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.
Because I think
I think sometimes I'd be curious to know what you think, because I hear this a lot from women, is that they think they need this one on one in the moment, very focused, high maintenance support
But at the end of the day, they're busy humans that have a lot on the go.
And do they really have the bandwidth to even take on that kind of support?

(08:42):
So, this asynchronous approach really allows them to fit it into their life.
In a method that fits.
And keeping in mind that we're working with a lot of either women who are breastfeeding, our very new moms, or moms who have young kids.
And there's a lot of interruptions.
So they could pause, rewind, listen to it again, show it to their spouse, revisit it a couple of weeks later if they need to.

(09:08):
And that it's just a lot more convenient for them.
And then we'll have live calls with their coach once every couple of months
And I'm toying with adding as an add on that someone can do maybe a once a month live call edition.
I feel like that I could see the advantage of that back and forth sometimes, but not most of the time.

(09:28):
Wow.
Oh, that's such an interesting question.
Yes, that's almost countercultural.
I like this.
That's cool.
I think this is cool because this is exactly why I asked this question.
Like, what are some different ways we can facilitate the coaching relationship?
So
I just want to get right right right into the absolute weeds.
Okay, so do they receive some kind of weekly

(09:48):
prompt.
Is there something like when they send okay, how does that what kind of thing do you ask them to report on?
Yeah, so they'll report on how well their goal went from the previous week, goal or goals.
what struggles they ran into, whether with those goals or something else, anything at specific questions they have, any meals they want us to look at.

(10:09):
Hey.
I'm having trouble at lunchtime during the week.
Can you help me figure out a different meal option?
Whatever.
What's coming up for the next week?
And then any other things that we need to know, you know, was it their period this last week?
Or, you know, kind of what was going on?
And obviously, for breastfeeding women, how's your supply?
Has there been any changes there?

(10:29):
And that kind of gets to most of what we need to know.
And then on the daily, they track their workouts, water if they need to.
Some people are fine.
Some people need it.
Whatever steps, whatever things that they really
need to kind of be doing on a daily basis.
Cool.
Do you have that all tracked in an app?

(10:50):
Or what kind of platform do you track those daily metrics in?
Yeah.
We use an app called PT Distinction, and we are possibly in transition to a new app that's currently being
being built with our direct involvement.
So as TBD, that'll be specifically for nutrition coaches.

(11:11):
Oh my goodness.
Thank goodness.
I'm really excited because we're getting to form exactly what it looks like.
But it's going really, really slow.
Oh.
As all tech things do.
Yeah.
Cool.
That's exciting.
Okay, amazing.
So there's a weekly check in.
The clients have to reflect on
their goals from last week, what went well, where they struggled, and anything else that comes up.

(11:33):
And then their coach replies with a
Video message.
And then after that, like, is there back and forth?
Or is it like, all right, here's your answer?
It can be.
Yeah, it depends on the client.
Some people do some back and forth.
Some people are like,
Thumbs up, they've got it.
On to the next thing.

(11:54):
And then I'd say the other thing that we really do is we because I know that the other question, when you focus on fat loss and people start with a
Body recomposition phase or a metabolic restoration phase, and they go into fat loss.
We usually go straight into fat loss because most of the time we're working with somebody who they've been working out, they haven't recently been dieting.

(12:16):
Usually, or it's only been for the last couple of weeks.
They're like, hey, I've tried this for a month by myself.
I told myself I'd give it four weeks.
I've been getting no place.
I need help.
And so we're not usually working with someone who's already very depleted.
Got you.
And if we are, then we talk to them, hey, we might be doing this first.
But then we go into a reverse dieting phase.

(12:38):
Usually, we usually do four to six weeks of that, just depends on the person and what they have going on.
And then we'll do some time in maintenance
And encourage them to stop tracking.
Some people, they're like, oh my God, thank you.
Tracking their foods in MyFitnessPal is usually what we use.
Just because it lets us look at their actual food diaries, where a lot of other ones like lose it, it's really hard to see.

(13:00):
what they're eating.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cool.
Okay.
I like that because and I wonder if, you know, from from a from a compliance or execution or client buy-in standpoint,
Moving them right into fat loss so they can get some kind of observable quick win is very motivating.
Do you find is that one of the reasons why you do that?

(13:21):
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yes, because it's they're ready to go.
Why if they're excited and their body is in a good place to be doing this, why wouldn't we?
Just go for it, in my opinion.
I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why someone might not, but that's just not what we do.
Yeah, 100%.
Well, that's the thing, right?

That's the beautiful thing (13:40):
every single person in the
Body change fat loss space for women.
Every single practitioner has got a little bit of a different methodology.
And that's what I love.
I never tire of hearing how other people are doing kind of the same thing that I do.
It's just fascinating because.
I mean, there's no shortage of women in the world seeking fat loss, but every individual woman wants to go about it a certain kind of way.

(14:05):
So, you know, it's the rising tide lifts all boats kind of.
thing.
I just think this is so cool.
And I know a lot of people are doing group programs now.
Every time I have attempted to do a group anything
It is totally fallen flat.
So I don't know if my clients just don't like it, if their schedules don't allow it.
If I'm not flexible, honestly, I'm doing I will not do things in the evening.

(14:28):
So maybe it's on me.
I don't work evenings and weekends.
Generally, that's also possible.
It's so funny that you say that because for years, various business coaches I've had have said you've gotten to the limit of one-on-one.
You have to scale either
Into group coaching or hiring co-coaches to help you facilitate the coaching.

(14:51):
You have to do one of those two scaling options.
Eventually, we have to scale because a one person doing one-on-ones is there's a finite resource.
And I finally hit that wall and three years ago moved to group.
Dragging my heels, kicking and screaming, I moved into group.
I hated everything about it.
I couldn't conceptualize how this would work for people.
And now I will say three years later, it's like, oh my God, this is I love it.

(15:13):
It's amazing.
It's really working.
But it sounds to me you went the other way, which is you have coaches helping you manage the client roster.
Are they all dietitians as well?
I have two coaches.
One's a registered dietitian and the other has her master's in nutrition, but just didn't do the hospital residency part of becoming a dietitian.

(15:36):
And because I'm a dietitian, I can always supervise for anybody who needs it, who she's working with, which is, yeah, not that often.
Cool.
Okay.
Okay, so you have these co-coaches or are they how do you what do you call them?
Are they co-coaches?
Is that the right thing to call them?
Are they coaches in the program?
I just call them coaches, but

(15:57):
Yeah.
I think it all works.
It all works, yeah.
And then there are they each individually given a chunk of the roster.
They have their sort of client roster and they're managing those individuals.
Yeah.
Amazing.
That's cool.
I'm just curious how many roughly clients each of your coaches is managing.
Yeah.
So with this
With this method of doing things with the recorded videos, you can generally budget for most times about thirty to thirty five minutes per client per week.

(16:26):
Okay.
And so depending on how many hours they want to work, you can kind of do the math from there.
So
Neither of them wants to.
It's like, who wants to work?
You know, 40 hours a week, nobody.
And so I would say one of my coaches has about 65 clients.
She could probably take a dozen more

(16:47):
And the other one has about thirty five and she could take just a couple more because she's a topo.
And those take time.
No doubt.
Wow, that's that's amazing.
That's a healthy client roster.
I think it's funny when you said nobody wants to work 40 hours a week.
This is one of my great crusades.
I'd like to work 10 hours a week.
How can I make that happen?
I'm always thinking about how to work less.

(17:07):
I love that.
Okay, so.
I guess when I think about like you probably have your sights on growing your business, I imagine.
What's sort of a do you envision it growing even more?
And if so, then is it bringing on more coaches?
Like what's sort of your future plan?
I think the dream would be to have four or five coaches because that gives a bandwidth where if one person goes on a two week vacation, it's fairly easy to spread their client load out among some substitutes.

(17:38):
Without anyone feeling like they're overloaded.
Right now, when someone goes on vacation when my main coach goes on vacation, it is all hands on deck for the other for mostly me and then
my other coach to cover for her.
It's not fun.
No doubt.
Well, what is what is sort of your role?
Who are you in in the in the

(17:59):
I guess from a marketing perspective, when clients come to work with you, are they coming to work with Bonnie?
Or and then what do you offer?
personally?
Or have you marketed it as though this is the Nourish Path, this is our organization, and we will help you?
I'm just curious how you language that.
Yeah.
And that was definitely a concern I had when I started having coaches of how am I going to make it so that people aren't disappointed that they're not working with me.

(18:27):
And my husband actually is a financial advisor, and he has his own business, and he has to do the same thing.
So it's very interesting.
We talked together
He's very jealous that our industry is almost unregulated, and he has so many.
He can't even ask someone for a Google review.
Oh.
It's awful.
Anyway.
So I frame it very early that this is a team and I don't coach.

(18:51):
Okay.
And very rarely are people asking
Can I work with you by the time they get on their discovery call with me?
I do all the discovery calls unless I'm on vacation for an extended period of time or something like that.
And
I always say, well, part of this conversation is going to be deciding which coach is the right fit for you.

(19:14):
And so it's never a question of, I'll be working with Bonnie.
Usually sometimes they're like, oh, I'm just curious.
But they don't expect it.
Okay.
And I also have a video that I send them before there, before that, where I introduce both coaches so that they know.
These are the people who I'm working with.
And when I post wins onto Facebook and all the things like that, I never post my own client wins.

(19:36):
I have a couple of clients still.
I don't post them.
I don't want people to think I have any clients.
Got you.
Untouchable over here.
I like that.
That's cool.
So what then, what do you do?
So you do discovery calls?
Obviously, I mean not obviously I shouldn't say obviously, but I mean at some point you have a methodology that you take your clients through.

(19:58):
The sustainable macro system
So did you create that your program you created and you've sort of trained up your coaches?
I'm just curious, like what's in your day to day sort of
I know.
This is something that I'm actually struggling with because a lot of currently a lot of my time is taken up with all the marketing.
So, Instagram posts, Instagram stories, TikToks.

(20:21):
I have a podcast myself that I do.
So, recording and editing that, blog posts, newsletters, I send out a weekly newsletter.
I am on Reddit very frequently.
Oh, Reddit is amazing.
Good for you.
I want to talk about that a little bit, but yeah, keep.
And so, all of those things keep me very busy.

(20:42):
But I've just hired somebody to help with marketing, and she's going to take a lot of those things over time off of my plate.
And obviously, there will still be time I'm spending with
Planning with her.
I still need one needs to record any reels, all those things.
I'm going to keep Reddit because I love it.
But right now, those things probably take me 10 hours every week.

(21:03):
And I'm hoping for it to be two.
Wow.
Good job.
That should be great.
Yeah.
And
So that's the question is, well, then am I just the email customer service person in IT?
What is going to be what is going to take that space?
And that's something that I'm going to be working on.

(21:24):
Do I have
Do I do maybe a group coaching with some of that extra time?
Do I do more one thing that we really do is work with referral partners
Because we only do nutrition, we work with gym some local gyms, things like that.
I would love to be working with some lactation coaches to get more, hey, you've got a breastfeeding woman who is

(21:46):
Who wants to lose weight and you're worried about her and want her to have the right guidance, Finderva Asan will take care of her.
Okay.
So that is what I'm trying to figure out.
What is going to be
The new role.
But I think as you become, and this is again something I talk with my husband about, because he has his own business and he's struggling with the same thing, with the more you hire people.

(22:08):
The more you're just kind of in charge of a lot of different things, but you don't actually do them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The differentiation between working in the business and working on it, which is
Quite frankly, I think it's amazing because I think my perspective is a lot of us that get into this work, and this is my personal origin story, is we get really, really hooked into the solopreneur world.

(22:34):
where we feel like everything hinges on us doing it all.
And it sounds to me like you don't have that potenti that particular hang up
Well, I'm hoping to get to have my start my own family soon.
And so I'm thinking if I have to, if I get nauseous at the top of the hat, if I'm nauseous, I'll pregnancy and I need to work from the couch thumped over.

(22:57):
Because I'm obnoxious for eight months, nine months, then the business can't fall apart because I can't.
Right.
Work 40.
Maybe I won't be able to work 40 hours a week.
Maybe I will be able to work full time.
But when I have a baby, I can't.
Correct.
Yep
So I need to make sure that the bus the most important thing to me is making sure that the business is solid with the support.

(23:23):
And that's why I hired this person, because if I couldn't
Network with electation consultants.
If I don't feel well enough to do a group coaching, I could just do the core essential things that I need to do.
And I've now shrunk the amount that is to a lot less time.
Yeah.
That's good thinking.
Like, I think that's really good thinking.
What would it t what if I needed to pull myself out of the day to day operations or the day to day front facing stuff?

(23:49):
Could I?
Or is this all hinging on me being up in front of you know, facing clients or doing things?
And so I actually think that you know
Because you have this dream of starting a family, that's a good incentive to do this thought experiment, but probably we all should do it.
How if I wanted to pull myself out operationally from being so involved in the business, how would I do that?

(24:12):
Very cool.
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And if health coaches are having a hard time keeping up, imagine how clients must feel.
To make sense of it all, Primal Health Coach Institute partnered with registered dietitian and health coach Martha Tettenborn

(24:32):
To create a comprehensive functional therapeutic diet specialist certification.
This flexible online course dives deep into the many different types of therapeutic diets.
You'll learn the purpose of each of these diets and how to help your clients map out a
Nutritional plan to resolve their specific health issues.
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(25:00):
For the better.
Find out more at primalhealthcoach.
com.
Okay, so you hired a marketing person.
I love that you brought this around because I said, well, what do you do?
And you said, well, I spend most of my time marketing.
which is one of the things that most health coaches I speak to hate doing.
Yep.
Yep.
Thank you.

(25:22):
But we have to.
We have to do it.
We have to be somebody has to be the marketing manager, and it usually starts out being us, and we figure out how to do it.
So you mentioned you're doing socials, Instagram, TikTok, you've got an email, you've got a podcast.
I do want to talk about how you use Reddit
But I mean, just for the benefit of our audience, are you a leading world expert at marketing?

(25:45):
Or did you learn how to do it?
I would say the other bucket of places we get way more clients
Is Google.
Really?
Great.
Yeah.
I've been working on things like SEO.
If you are a coach, you listen to the podcast and you do not have a Google My Business page.
Please get one.
Get reviews on there.
We have, I think, close to 60 reviews now on our Google Business page.

(26:09):
And when someone in Seattle
Wants a nutrition coach and they just look up nutrition coach near me, we pop up.
I don't think we pop up first.
I'm working on that.
But we're on the first page.
And that is lately where most of our new inquiries have been coming from, who are not referrals.

(26:32):
Dang.
See, now you just added something to my to-do list.
I want to just share something with you.
I got this email literally yesterday from a woman who replied to one of my nurture emails.
And the nurture email that she received said something like, Just curious, why haven't you booked a call with me yet?

That was basically kind of tongue-in-cheek call to action (26:47):
like, hey, you're reading this, like, why aren't we talking on the phone so we can start working through this?
And she said, literally, this is a quote.
Honestly, my big hesitation is that I can't find any third-party reviews of your program under any of your trademark names on TrustPilot, BBB, or Google.

(27:08):
Dang.
Like, I do have a Google business page, but I've just never asked for reviews.
And it feels to me like so late to start 15 years later.
And it's not.
It's not at all.
That's a limiting belief.
That's really good advice.
When I look for a small business, I look for what their Google reviews say and how often are they getting new ones?
Was that last one four years ago?

(27:33):
I mean, the next best time to start best time to start would have been 15 years ago, and the second best time is now.
I know.
I say that to my clients all the time.
It takes an hour to set it up.
You've already set up.
Yeah.
So maybe thirty minutes to spruce it up.
Send an email to current and your former clients within the last year.
But don't do it all at once because you don't want 30 reviews that all came on the same day, because that's correct.

(27:57):
That's also a red flag.
Yeah.
No, I'm doing it.
I'm writing it down right now.
I'm going to do it.
Google.
But so you, so.
An SEO is something you've been working on as well.
Because you blog.
Yes.
See, now, this is where
I want to validate to the coach listening, like, well, this sounds like a lot.
So you're posting on socials, you're writing an email, you're writing a blog, SEO, Google Reviews, Reddit.

(28:22):
But you managed to figure out how to do it all.
And it seems to me that you see the value despite the fact that you, like all of us, never really wanted to be a marketing manager.
No.
So you see the value.
And what's your marketing manager going to take over for you?
Or your marketing hire that you just hired?
God, Instagram is the biggest thing I want off my plate.

(28:43):
Amazing.
So they're going to p do the posting for you and all the engaging in the DMs?
I have somebody doing DMs already.
So when someone sends a message, I don't like being on social media very much, except for Reddit.
Like I said, I like Reddit and Discord, but that goes with Reddit
And for me, not in general, just for me.

(29:06):
But I just don't particularly like Instagram.
I don't like being there.
I do like putting posting on stories, but that's about it.
So
And then as far as SEO and the blog go, I when I started the podcast, I let the blog slide.
And I'm recently pulling that back.
I hired someone who specifically does blogging.

(29:27):
So she has been kind of getting it back up and running, and then my new person will take that over once she's done in September.
I think just you don't need to have a blog if that's too much.
But having the Google that's why I say just have the Google My Business page and have reviews on it, because that is not actually allowed to work for you.

(29:50):
Lots of things on the to-do list.
You made me think about the fact that since I started my podcast, my blog also has been neglected.
Well, you could hire somebody take the podcast and repurpose them into blog posts
But and people say that like it's easy.
If it is, I don't have the two hours every podcast to do that.
I don't have it.
But my new person will.

(30:10):
So I can be recording the podcast, she can be doing the audio editing, all of those things, post it.
And write a blog post, and I can then review it and just say, hey, make these couple changes for me.
Well, this is where I'm going to make a little tech shout out.
I'm sure you've heard of this, Bonnie, but for anybody listening
The tool Descript has saved the game for me.
Because I do my own podcast editing, because hello, I'm still solopreneuring.

(30:32):
In fact, that was an episode I just recorded, a solo episode for this podcast, which is in defense of the solopreneur, just in case anybody else is still.
Grinding it out by themselves.
But with Descript, you can and this is not sponsored, by the way.
You can, but it pulls up this transcript of your whole podcast.
And you can take that transcript and they have AI tools to generate a blog post.

(30:53):
Now
I don't recommend using AI to write your blogs, but it at least summarizes the transcript into a blog-ish
Cluster of words that then you can finesse.
And so, quite honestly, to your point, you're still looking at two hours because you're editing and you're pulling all this stuff together.
Definitely the kind of thing that could be somebody else's job for sure.

(31:14):
But just anybody who's listening, Descript is a great tool for that.
And Descript, you can have one hour a month of free
Transcription, and then you can just take that and copy and paste it in Chet GPT, which you can also get a certain amount free per month and use that.
So
That is what I do as well, because I don't know a lot of podcasting tools.
That's one of the few I do know.

(31:35):
Oh my gosh, that's a game changer
Yeah, I'll take the write-up that DScript gives me and I'll paste it into I have the paid ChatGPT, and I'll say, DScript gave me this lame summary.
Can you make it sound better?
And it will.
So I'm like I've got like dueling robots basically writing my YouTube descriptions.
It gives you a good spot to start editing from instead of starting from.

(31:58):
I don't, a lot of times I record a podcast and then I do the rest of it another day.
Yeah.
And I've already forgotten what 100%.
That's my model.
That's my process is I record the thing, and once it's done recording, I immediately pop it up into DScript.
I just upload it and then I walk away
I'll come back two days later and Descript has already populated the transcript and then you're editing through the transcript.

(32:22):
Yeah, it's a really useful tool, but it's interesting because
Podcasting being a long-form content model, it lends itself to YouTube, it lends itself to a blog if you just repurpose it as such.
I think that
You know, I really do love hearing that coaches are still using long form content in marketing because I think the short form thing, for me, it's just gotten really old.

(32:45):
I'm just, I'm just, I'm with you.
I'm like, get me off of Instagram.
Like, as soon as I win the lottery, I'm deleting Instagram off my phone or whatever.
I just can't deal with it.
So being able to record one thing, a podcast chat, and turn it into a few other long form things is actually quite sweet.
I find well, and as a if I'm looking to spend as a client, I'm like, this no no no coaching is cheap.

(33:10):
And none of it should be, except maybe maybe there's some groups that are.
But if this one on one
or a very high touch group, there's no way it can be cheap.
And if all I'm seeing from you is a little Instagram post, I want more somewhere.
That's an interesting perspective.
Okay, I want to pull this thread because we're kind of dancing around pricing, which I don't talk about a ton, but I think it'd be really cool to talk about.

(33:35):
And here's my beef.
Maybe you can relate to this.
Is right now in our line of work, when it comes to marketing, there's a big push, at least this is how I interpret it, big push on trying to get these viral
moments on Instagram.
This hook that doesn't say anything, does the hook on the reel doesn't say anything at all, and then it tricks you into reading the caption.

(33:57):
I hate that.
As a consumer of social content, it's like, what are we doing here?
This isn't useful
And it feels cheap to me.
That feels cheap.
It's like what kind of junky Timu thing are you peddling here if that's your marketing strategy
And I feel the same way as you.
I actually have a methodology that I want to teach and bring you into.

(34:18):
So, my content is a little more talking head, a little more long-winded, because I want you to understand that I'm a knowledgeable practitioner and we're going to work together.
I kind of is that sort of how you're thinking through this?
Like the long form content feels like it's queuing up somebody for higher expectations on the value?
Maybe.
I think it's just getting to know you as a person a little bit more.

(34:42):
Well, this is a person like I like what they're saying.
But something that I've I heard recently, and I don't remember where this was anymore.
But they were talking about how it's really important not only people a lot of times, if you're hiring a professional, if you're hiring a
Plumber.

(35:02):
You don't give two hoots how they do what they do as long as they show up when they said they're going to show up, charge you the price they said they were going to charge you, and fix your problem.
Now, are things a lot harder because they have to do some of the work?
But I think something that I'm going to focus on going forward is, yes, give people tips, give them recipes, all those things.
But also say, hey, what we do is we make it so you don't have to worry about

(35:28):
What so-and-so, you don't have to worry about X, Y, and Z.
Yes.
Because we're going to take that off your hands.
Right.
Okay.
So is it, when you say that, do you mean
Do you mean you don't have to worry about what?
What is it that you don't have to worry about anymore?
That's kind of what I'm trying to figure out is how to phrase these things.

(35:51):
So I asked our current clients, hey, what did we how do we make this easier for you?
Because we can't come to your house and cook your food.
Like we're not delivering your meals.
Right.
And they said, well, I just don't they don't have to worry that but what I'm doing is the right thing anymore.
I don't have to if somebody says oats are bad for me, I can just ignore them
Okay, good.
Yes, that's what I was wondering if you were getting.

(36:12):
I think this is an opportunity, right?
Because tell me if you hear this on your discovery calls, because I certainly do every single time.
A woman comes on the call and says, I know what to do.
I'm doing it all.
None of it's working.
And by the way, I'm so overwhelmed because everywhere I turn my head, I'm supposed to do something different.
And there's this overwhelm that is now honestly the front, the front-running barrier to a person making a move to health.

(36:39):
It's like, but then I heard cortisol is bad.
I'm not supposed to drink my coffee on an empty stomach.
I'm not supposed to train on or I'm supposed to eat something before I train or not.
And they're just completely overwhelmed by noise.
And so what we can say is, hey, come on into my world
And I'm going to sort of re-empower you with your own intrinsic knowledge so that you can tune that out.

(36:59):
Is that kind of what you mean?
Yes.
Like let's get let's just like make it so that you have a plan of what you need to do, and you can just go and actually execute it instead of worrying about what the plan is.
Yes.
And worry about feeling it's the same thing with a workout.
You know, you go and you still have to lift the weight, but the trainer says, hey, you need to do this.

(37:20):
Oh, looks like your form's a little off here.
Let me fix it.
Yeah.
I actually think that's a really interesting little thought experiment, imagination exercise to run people through on a discovery call, which should be like, okay, let's imagine we have this whole like magic wand and I can create this white glove
Perfect weight loss solution for you, what would it include?
And they might say, Well, you come live at my house and you cook my meals and you put me to bed and you take me for the walks, and they'll say, Okay, great.

(37:46):
What's the closest we could get to that without me actually coming to live at your house, which, by the way, would cost you millions of dollars?
So let's come up with something a little bit more like what's the closest we can get to that?
I think that's a really cool way of approaching programming.
Yeah, and that's something something we're working on.
Also behind the scenes, one of my other friends is making a

(38:07):
I don't know, something to do with AI that would help people with meal planning and things like that with their macros in mind.
And I'm like, oh, please finish this so that I can use it with my
I will pay you money per client so that they can use it.
Because that's the one thing that we don't do, is do all the meal planning for them.
Right.
Because it's, if you've ever tried meal planning for somebody else that's not you.

(38:29):
It's always wrong.
There's always a food on there they don't like.
There's always something they don't want to do.
There's always, oh, but my daughter won't eat this.
Oh, but we're going to be on the road that day.
Oh, but this plan changed.
Can you write it again?
It's, I don't think people, when they ask for a meal plan, realize how intensive it is to write one.

(38:49):
I know.
On that topic, as soon as I graduated with my nutrition credential, I swore I was never doing a meal plan again as long as I lived.
A.
B, fun fact about meal plans.
I just always have to mention this because I'm.
I'm very staunch about scope of practice.
Did you know that actually only registered dietitians and registered nutritionists are even allowed to do meal plans

(39:13):
Yep.
Oh, I do.
But no one's getting sued for doing them anyway.
So we're not very good about protecting our licensure.
No.
That's what I'm saying, dietitian.
But honestly, meal plans
They're a pain in the ass to do as the practitioner.
And I just don't really see that they're, I don't think they're helpful for the user.

(39:33):
We do examples when they first start, because a lot of times, especially if someone's never done macros before, they're like, I don't even know what a day it looks like unless.
So I've got some that I've made that I usually think for graphics on social media, and some that are just screenshots of, hey, here's what another client did.
And I try to do lots of different examples.
We have a lot of people who are of an Indian diet because Seattle just happens to have a lot of Indian population.

(39:56):
So I've got several that are like, hey, you're on an Indian diet?
You're a vegetarian on an Indian diet.
Here's like.
Six different ways that that could work for you because I that's not all I eat.
Yeah, a lot of other clients do.
Yep, it can be done.
Cool.
I want to circle back to Reddit.
Oh, yes.
How are you using Reddit?

(40:17):
I am on the Orange Theory subreddit.
They like they are huge on recommending registered dietitians there.
Cool.
I've been there for seven or eight years posting and responding consistently to people's questions.
So every day I check well, every most every day I check for any new question questions and I answer them.

(40:40):
And it's great because Reddit is indexed by Google.
So the number of people who've Googled something, they have a question, they Google it, they find my Reddit post.
I cannot say in the Reddit post who I am.
You will get kicked off if you say you have a business, if you try to promote it in any way.
I read it.
You will get kicked out of the group, or you'll get a warning and then you'll get kicked out.

(41:01):
Like Facebook, I feel like sometimes they'll let you slide.
But not, you can't even say like some I got in trouble because I said, well, my client did this.
Oh.
They're like, you can't say that you had a client.
And I'm like, well, I'm just trying to give an example.
Like that, I wasn't trying to do anything.
But then they'll go to my profile where I have everything.

(41:21):
And the number of clients they've gotten from who've gone from Google to Reddit to finding me is a decent number.
And it also and those posts might be from five years ago.
Mm-hmm.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, the second you said it, I was like, every single thing I Google
I go to a Reddit thread that Google indexes.

(41:42):
And the thread is often old.
It doesn't matter.
It still gives me the answer to my question.
And Google's still indexed at top.
And i if I I could spend more time on I really am only in the Orange Theory subreddit, I'm nowhere else.
But if I went to some of these other ones, the MyFitnessPals subreddit, to the Lose It, subreddit, all sorts of different places, I could be posting more content.

(42:04):
Right.
That people might find, that people might be looking for, questions that people might be asking.
I could do even more of it if I wanted to.
But right now, I probably spend five minutes a day
That's amazing.
And why did you so understanding that Orange Theory is a proponent of dietitians, is that why you landed on Orange Theory?

(42:24):
Is it because this is where or is it because this is where women who exercise and struggle with their weight are?
Both.
Yeah.
They liked me.
I was doing Orange Theory at the time.
I'm not anymore.
And so I was already there.
And it's got enough posts that
There's enough people there, there are enough post in action going on that there's something to do, but there's not so many that it feels like a fire hose.

(42:48):
It's like there might be a new three new nutrition questions a week.
Yeah, that's clever.
That's actually really clever.
So I've looked at other similar ones, like F forty five is not as nearly as active.
There might be one post every other day.
So it's not nearly as active as Barry's boot camp, I checked out.
It's a little bit sad there.

(43:09):
So it takes a while to find the right spot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was going to say, but that's and it takes, and it's a long game.
It is a long game, but again, I enjoy it.
If I didn't like doing it.
I would have given up years ago because it took me two or three years to get into traction.
Got you.
Well, also, I think what's useful about that, a couple things.

(43:29):
First of all,
I mean, talk about market research, the literal questions that your literal ideal client are asking in their literal words.
Because we have to a lot of times do that, those imagination sort of like
what's the unwanted experience your client your ideal client is having?
And we try to articulate it, but in those Reddit threads, you're seeing it in their own words.

(43:53):
Also, I just, you know, again, just thinking about Orange Theory, who goes to Orange Theory?
Women.
I know there's some dudes there.
I know there are, but women in their sort of.
thirties and forties, who care about fitness and are willing to put up with that hard ass workout five times a week.
and probably aren't probably aren't seeing great results from it just because of what we kinda know about how exercise and diet play off each other.

(44:19):
Have a sense of frustration 'cause they're working out so hard and not seeing the results they think they should be seeing.
Like to do Orange Theory a couple of times a week and feel like you're not
Seeing the commensurate results is a frustrating experience, which is the exact experience that you help solve for people.
So it's really, really well thought out to go to the Orange Theory subreddit, actually.
Because I mean, you could have gone to.

(44:40):
a ginormous weight loss subreddit or something.
I've tried those.
I haven't gotten much movement there.
But yeah, I have my ideal client and I could see eventually going to R slash breastfeeding or r slash new moms or something like that when we get to that point, because I think it'll be kind of similar.

(45:01):
That's where my people already are.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah, I think that's neat because as soon as you said Reddit, I was thinking about a business coach I had that always said, you know, when you're trying to come up with ideas for what content to produce or whatever,
Just go to Reddit and start poking around and see what people are asking about.
And I was like, I go to r/slash nutrition all the time.

(45:22):
And sometimes they'll just be asking you like.
Just a silly question that gets a lot of engagement.
I'm like, oh, and I post that same questions on my Instagram stories, and people love it.
Oh.
Fascinating.
I don't know what to do.
That's what I do.
That's cool.
That's a great use of like that's that's a great use of

(45:45):
leveraging what real health consumers are asking, wanting, talking about.
Otherwise, we it's like shooting fish.
We get so in the weeds because we know so much more that we don't realize people are still asking, can I eat fruit?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, cool.

(46:05):
Okay, let's talk about a couple of things.
I want to
I want to talk about your dietitianess, the path to being a registered dietitian and how you've kind of moved away from the clinical dietitian space.
And just take me through, like why how did that all come about for you?
Yeah, so when I was before I became a registered dietitian, I was going to be a math teacher

(46:28):
I wanted to teach, started student teaching.
It was everyone said, you don't want to be a teacher.
The industry all my teachers
We're saying, Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, stay away.
And I was 18 when I went to college, and I was like, No, you're telling me not to do it, so now I want to do it more.
I'm going to prove you wrong.
And they were right.
It, but I like teaching.

(46:51):
And so, when I thought, well, what do I want to teach people?
I really liked nutrition, and that's when I went to get my master's.
When I started working in the hospital, what I really realized was that I was talking to this person.
They had a heart attack two days ago, went to the hospital, had double bypass, and that I'm going to see them.

(47:12):
They're in a hospital bed, barely conscious, with a jello cup.
And I'm sitting with them, and maybe their spouse, and telling them about the Daesh diet.
And then they go home.
And I don't know whatever happened to them.
Don't know if they ever did anything.

(47:34):
I don't know if I really made a difference.
And I just got to thinking, what if I had talked to this person 20 years ago?
And
Help them with these things so that the heart attack either never happened, or instead of happening at 65, it happened at 85.
Because a lot of these health conditions, if someone's going to get diabetes when they're 45, they're going to get diabetes.

(48:00):
But we can get them di like they're going to get diabetes, but maybe we can make it at 75 instead of forty five.
And now, A, thirty years from now, who knows what technologies, how our medical advancements are going to go.
But also,
I don't know.
I think medications you have to start taking after 85 don't count.
You already made it to 85.
You're doing great.
Fair enough.

(48:20):
Yeah.
That's a good philosophy
So I just felt like it could make so much more of a difference in really helping people with those changes.
And the other thing I saw when I was working in the nursing home specifically
Is there were no old people who were what we would consider obese.
Maybe they were obese on the BMI, but it'd be barely.

(48:42):
But no people who were old in the nursing home who had 100 pounds of weight to lose.
The people who had 100 pounds to lose who were in the nursing home were 65, 70.
Or they never made it that far.
And it was just like we have a problem.
And there's not a lot of people in this industry who are credentialed

(49:07):
And I think having us in this space lifts the whole industry up because we can talk about these things.
A lot of registered dietitians think weight loss is beneath them.
And I just don't think I think that's not true.
Can I just I want to pull that a little bit, because I'm really curious about that.
So kind of going back to how you use Reddit, I'm in a Facebook group, and long story short, it's a women's Facebook group, a local here, and there's always

(49:33):
weight loss questions because what else would women talk about?
So a woman comes into the group and says, I need to lose thirty pounds, what should I do?
And then of course, it's just an absolute ridiculous poopstorm of idiotic comments from people who say
Try all these crazy things, but somebody will inevitably say, You should track down a dietitian to help you lose weight.

(49:54):
And I think to myself, I don't think I know any dietitian that does weight loss.
Like to me, when I think of only weight loss with surgery, weight loss surgery, or maybe if you're taking Ozempic, you also have a dietician.
Usually it's before bariatric surgery, you have to see a dietician.
Correct.
I have no training in weight loss in school.

(50:14):
No.
Because when you're in the hospital, our goal is to keep you from losing weight.
Yeah.
Generally, you have a little old lady whose BMI is 19.
And you don't want it to you know, get too low because she was she couldn't eat anything for two days because she had three surgeries.

(50:36):
Yeah.
And you're advocating for her.
So that's who we're talking about.
That's what we're really trained for is hospital work, nursing home, school food service.
Things like that.
We're not really trained for weight loss.
I had to do extra training in that.
Yeah.
And so a lot of dietitians won't even know anything.

(50:57):
You can go see a dietitian, but most people say, I've seen a dietitian, but she kind of just said.
The my plate, like make sure you're eating some vegetables.
Because most of the people that you talk to as a dietitian are like they're eating McDonald's three times a day and their diet's really, really poor.
Most people I talk to, they're already doing like 85% of the things they need to be doing.
Let's just, I want to go back to you what you said about the nursing home, how the people in the nursing home who are overweight

(51:24):
Aren't the very elderly, because if they live to be very el if they live to be old enough, they're
Metabolic health, shall we say, is good enough that they aren't obese.
This is how I interpreted what you said.
Usually, yeah.
I mean, there's exceptions to anything.
Someone's like, well, my friend's granddad, yeah, maybe.
But yeah, yeah.
But what you're seeing is sort of in the younger seniors.

(51:46):
That's where you're starting to see more obese people come in.
And then they don't make it to those they generally.
That's my supposition, my correlation.
No, I think that's interesting.
And so and so is the origin of that supposition that obesity and weight struggles metabolic health

(52:09):
Are epidemic in younger and younger and younger.
And no.
Okay.
I think it's that, I'm going to be frank, people die before they get to 85.
Got you.
Yeah.
So it's interesting because I work as an educator in a health coaching school that certifies and trains health coaches.
And in the last few years

(52:31):
We've seen an incredible shift to people coming from licensed health fields, dieticians, nurses, and some doctors to a certain extent.
who want to train to be a coach and are contemplating turning their back on their licensure and their clinical sort of life
kind of for the same reason you just said, is I don't I want to be more in the preventive space.

(52:56):
I want to get ahead of people being in the hospital.
It sounds like that's a big part of your origin as well.
Yes, and my Tricia, who is my registered dietitian coach, that's what she did
She got her health coaching certification to make sure she was like, I want to make sure I have all the tools I need.
Because, like I said, our schooling doesn't necessarily, we do counseling training, but it's not the same.

(53:20):
No.
Cool.
That's really cool.
Amazing.
So t take me through, like just give us a little rundown of
the core philosophy behind the sustainable macro system.
Talk a little bit about your program.
What are the sort of moving parts in there that might be interesting for us to know about?

(53:42):
Yeah, I think that that's again something I notice is you're talking about getting all sorts of crazy advice on a Facebook group.
A lot of times people think they need to be doing a million things, so they do nothing because they're like, well, anything that I do seems to be wrong.

(54:02):
So I'm going to do nothing.
So we start with, well, why don't we just focus on one thing?
That's what makes us sustainable.
So we focus on macronutrients, teaching them if they don't already know about protein, carbs, and fat
Keeping a good balance of those.
We don't go for super high protein or super high fat or super low carb or anything.
It's all very balanc

(54:24):
And I would say, to give an exact example, I'd say most of the time we're in the ballpark of 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat, somewhere near there.
And making it so that that's sustainable in their everyday life and that they're making changes that they can continue.

(54:45):
Because so many people have done these diets that were too extreme or didn't work with their lives and they couldn't keep it up.
So, somebody's drinking wine, this happens a lot, they're drinking wine every day after work.
Well, saying no wine, probably not going to work for them long term.
Sometimes we will do a one month, like, hey, I just want to kind of get you set on a new baseline, make some new habits, but it's only going to be a month.

(55:11):
And sometimes we'll just say, okay, we're going to have wine every day after work, but we're going to have a smaller glass.
Nice.
And then eventually
Hey, let's take Tuesday and Thursday and not have the wine and let's have something else.
And then eventually, it's like the eventual dream is we'll just have wine on the weekends.
And that for them is going to be moderate.

(55:33):
Yeah.
But like working towards that.
And what do they want to do?
Do they want to be like, yeah, I'm drinking way too much?
Okay, maybe we'll cut back more.
Yeah.
For that.
That's cool.
I like this because I've long felt that maybe we differ on this.
I'll have to see when I say it.
We'll see what we think.
But I've long felt that in fat loss

(55:55):
the maintenance program actually needs to be built in from jump.
And what I mean by that is there's not like a fat loss phase and then this whole different maintenance phase.
It's like we've got to build something that's maintainable right out the gate.
Yeah.
And I talked with them about, hey, this this you might be more strict while you are in the fat loss phase, but

(56:17):
It's not going to be completely different.
Right.
It might be that during the fat loss phase, you can only have one Oreo, but then in maintenance, you can have two or three.
Cool.
How long do you work with clients?
The average for people who have success and meet their goals is nine ish months, but it depends on what their

(56:40):
Goal is.
I love to hear that.
I love to hear a longer term weight loss program.
I really do.
Oh, yeah.
I tell people I'm like
I know we have the option of 12 weeks to start, but unless someone has, sometimes I'll get we'll get somebody who's like, yeah, I think I'm doing pretty well.
I just
I'm going into a, you know, I'm starting to get into perimenopause and I just kind of want to make sure I'm doing things good.

(57:01):
And that person may be only needs 12 weeks, or they say,
I hid five pounds and they want to lose five pounds.
Maybe that person can do lose five pounds, learn to maintain it in 12 weeks.
But everyone else, they say, hey, you don't know me, you find me Google.
Let's start with 12 weeks.
Make sure that it's good fit.
But you're not going to be dumb.
You've got to be transparent.
And they say thank you.

(57:23):
Almost every time they say, I didn't want fast results.
Everyone's saying you've got to promise these fast results.
You have to promise somebody 20 pounds in 12 weeks.
You have to promise.
Unlike.
People are sick of that.
I've found maybe that's just our people.
I've been messaging super slow weight loss for 15 years.
And at first, it didn't land, but now it is.

(57:44):
Okay, so people do so then so if I'm reading this right, then the baseline, shall we say, program, it kicks off with twelve weeks and but it extends beyond that?
Or do you prescribe the duration based on the individual in front of you?
We start with either three months, 12 weeks, or six.
I don't accept someone who I'd never worked with for more than six months at the junk.

(58:04):
Okay.
Because sometimes
Things don't work out well, personality-wise, or whatever.
Yep.
And when they're done with that initial period, they'll have a discussion with their coach actually a couple weeks before, decide if they want to renew for a longer package, or they can go month to month.
Gotcha.
So they have that flexibility.
Yeah.

(58:25):
I love that.
And I do just because our coaches listening to this, I do automatic billing month to month because if I did manual billing month to month, I would drown
And I tell them that.
I say, hey, this is going to be an auto-renewal.
I'm going to tell you that date.
You have to give me a week's notice when you're done.
I say a week because I feel like that's enough time for me to get to it, but not.

(58:46):
Some people, it's like it's got to be 60-day.
No, I personally don't do that.
I get why somebody would.
I just don't.
And
And I tell them, frankly, I say, it's just me doing billing along with everything else.
And I just can't do it manually every month.
So this is so you have the convenience
But I don't drown.
And they're always like, oh, yeah, that makes sense.
They're always good with it when I explain it.

(59:07):
Yeah.
No, I do the same thing.
My month a month is just a subscription.
that's run on their credit card through Stripe.
And then they just if as soon as they let me know they're done, I I can cancel it when I get to it.
And it's an instant cancel.
But I I don't know.
My clients have have to me, like I think about it
And I hate using this analogy, but it's just like any other subscription I pay for.
Like, I know it's hitting my credit card.

(59:29):
It's a service I use.
I'm happy to keep paying for it as long as I'm using it
And then if I want to cancel, just like be relatively nimble with that.
And I think that's how that's kind of the consumer experience that a lot of people are used to.
Yeah.
I think the tricky part is if you made the payment six months ago
And now it's auto-renewing.
That's what I like to make sure that I'm like, hey, you're responsible for the state.
We will hopefully talk before then, but sometimes.

(59:53):
Things get postponed or whatever, and you're ultimately in charge of that date.
Just because it is six months away, and I do get like being like, oh crap, I forgot.
Yeah.
Yeah, what did I just get billed for?
I got billed for some app that I was on a trial period for and the trial period ended.
It was a three month trial and I forgot.
I was like, of course I forgot.
I always put a reminder in my but yes, it's easy to forget.

(01:00:15):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amazing.
This is this is I really do appreciate you just like kind of taking this journey with me through kind of how you work with folks.
This is the kind of conversation I do love having with health coaches, like into the weeds to an extent of how we work with people, how we run our businesses.
How you got into it, how you've evolved.
Is there anything that I didn't ask that you wish I had asked?

(01:00:37):
No.
Gosh, I mean, I feel like we just talked about so much, but maybe it's not something that you asked, but I some a lesson I've learned is the more transparent I've been, the more successful things have been.
Although you talk about pricing, my pricing's on the website.
Okay.

(01:00:58):
I do everything.
I do not have time to be getting on a call with somebody only for them to be like, oh, I thought this was going to be $30 a month
That's not going to work for me.
And the number of people who think it's going to be.

And as a again, always think of it (01:01:11):
like if I was going to me and I didn't know me.
Maybe somebody my friend referred me.
So I kind of have a connection, but what am I seeing?
And what would I want to know?
I personally like to scroll around from my couch and look at whoever and kind of just kind of look into things.

(01:01:38):
I want to do the research on my own.
I want to stalk them a little bit.
I want to look and see what things are.
I personally hate those sales pages where you have to scroll 55 times.
And the font is size 30, and I can't figure out what they're saying.
I often, sometimes if I want to hire someone like that, I will put what their sales page into Chat GPT and I'm like, summarize this for me because this is a mess.

(01:02:03):
I can't read it.
Smart.
But.
So, because that's not what I want, I don't do that.
I'm not going to do this account unless it's a real countdown.
I'm not going to put some fake countdown on because I just can't.
I just can't do that.
I'm sick of it.
I don't want to do it.
Maybe it's what's best.
I don't know.
But we've had a lot more success with having really clients that really get what we're doing.

(01:02:29):
And when I get on a Discovery call
They already know the price.
They already know more or less what they're getting.
They're there to clarify some things, make sure I'm not some weirdo.
And they're almost always literally on the call.
They get signed up and ready to go.
Yeah.
That's great advice.
And I the reason why I'm so glad you dropped that in is because that's been a push-pull freaking argument in the industry

(01:02:55):
Forever, which is yes, you should post your prices.
No, you shouldn't.
It's interesting, you reminded me that I used to have my prices posted on my website, and then I got convinced to pull them off.
And do the whole when somebody inquires and says, I'm just curious how much is it to work with you, I do the all, well, we have to get on a conversa consultation to have the discussion around whether I can even help you.
But I don't shop that way.
And I like on some level, I like

(01:03:18):
I trust myself to know what I'm willing to invest in something, whatever the thing is I'm buying, and I kind of want people in my roster who are at my level.
Who have done their own due diligence, they know what they want, they're going to budget for it.
So I really liked that.
I like that as sort of a parting thought.
Because for you, it's like whether or not this is best practices in the industry, it's what I like.

(01:03:42):
This is how I shop as a consumer, and that's how I've aligned
my perspective on this.
I think we can all Well, and a lot of times I feel like the advice we're getting is was the best practice six years ago.
Mm-hmm.
True.
That's the other thing, like people say don't use and I try not to use too fancy terminology.
But usually the person who's looking for a registered dietitian is a little they're already a little bit more there.

(01:04:07):
We were talking about not wanting to have the dumb down, kind of.
Vapid Instagram posts.
And if a person's looking for a registered dietitian, they also probably aren't looking for
Foods with basically zero calories.
Maybe they are.
I mean, actually, that could be kind of interesting, but it depends on how you frame it.

(01:04:30):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's so we can just extrapolate that piece of advice and say I think it goes back to your point, the marketing conversation we had, because it's something that
coaches hate doing, but essentially marketing, pricing, programming all of it what do you like?
What would you like
What would you like to consume content-wise?

(01:04:50):
What would you like to pay?
How long would you like to work with somebody?
How would you like the coaching relationship to be?
Do you want it to be more high-touch or low-touch, synchronous or asynchronous?
Anything goes.
And I am not a marketing expert, by the way.
It's just what makes me sleep at night.
And I noticed that the people who do reach out to them like Fed, almost always are the MixFed.
Yeah.
Well, so the thing is, you're not a marketing expert.

(01:05:11):
None of us is, but we have to do it.
We just have to do it.
So we figure it out.
And in the process of figuring it out, you're leaning on your own personal preferences
And that's to me, that always makes it easy.
Like any part of my customer journey, my user customer experience, it's like
What would I like?
What would I hate?

(01:05:32):
And I don't include things that I hate, and I do include things that I like.
And I don't care if it's best practices, it's what I like.
And, you know, I think there's people out there just like me.
And if they come into my roster, all the better.
So.
I think that's actually, to a certain extent, a very expert piece of advice you just gave us.
Do what you like.
Do what you like.

(01:05:53):
You can change your mind at any time.
The stakes are low.
Just give it away.
If you put your pricing on your website, do it for three months.
See what happens.
Take it off with ref.
I mean, the problem is different times a year are different, but you know, compare this.
If you do it this fall, compare it to last fall.
Yep.
Yeah, that's great.
I really appreciate that.

(01:06:13):
Bonnie, this has been a great chat.
We really I like the ground we covered.
I think this is going to be really useful for a lot of our audience.
I hope so.
Yeah.
So just fill us in where we can all follow along with you and keep tabs on what you're doing.
Yeah.
So I have my own podcast, The Nourished Fat, and that is more
Specific tactics that people can use for their own nutrition journey.

(01:06:37):
And I'm assuming you'll probably link that below.
And then on Instagram and Reddit, everywhere else, I am bonnie.
rd.
Cool.
Joe.
They like to say Bonnie Road when I am at.
Like
I don't know any way you register your business.
They're like Bonnie Road.
No, Bonnie RD.

(01:06:57):
Thank you.
Amazing.
Well, I really do appreciate it, Bonnie.
This was so wonderful, and I just appreciate your time and sharing all your wisdom.
Thank you so much for having me.
This podcast was brought to you by Primal Health Coach Institute.
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(01:07:18):
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