The past few months I’ve noticed 4 big questions popping up a lot in the Hub and Natupreneur Club so I want to share some insights on these important topics with you. If you have a question, feel free to comment below. Let’s dive in!
1. Should I offer discounts?
I have an epic, epic story about discounting!
When I first got into practice – it was literally the first office that I was in. Some of you may have heard the story of being on the third floor of the practically abandoned building with no sign out front.
I didn’t know a lot about business back then and I thought I’d give a crack at coupon deals. Groupon was a really big deal back when I was first starting (yes, a decade and a bit ago). This guy came around and offered me an amazing deal to go in Groupon.
I was a qualified massage therapist as well as a qualified Naturopath with a background in medical science. I really wanted to boost my naturopathic clients because those of you who have manual therapies as a modality know that it’s fairly easy to fill your books with that, but it’s tiring and it doesn’t give you the same kind of return on investment. People really only come in for the manual therapies and you can’t give them all the other things that they need like herbs and supplements and lifestyle advice and things like that.
So I was trying to increase my naturopathic clients by converting my massage clients and this amazing salesman convinced me to put my then $70 massages on for $35.
The cool thing was I sold 116 of those. Yes, 116 new people came through my doors! And I had to massage every single one of them. The thing about these discounts is that generally, they pay you up front from the sales. But then for the next six months, you are massaging these people essentially for free because you got paid six months ago. That’s what it felt like anyway.
So I’m getting paid nothing and I’m massaging 116 people. Of those, three became my long-term clients.
Generally, only about one out of 25 people (if that) are actually interested in what you do. The rest of those 24 people (or maybe more) are just there for the discount. The remaining 113 people who bought my massage coupon never came back because they were going around doing the exact same thing to all the other practitioners in our area.
Big learning – don’t discount.
If you have something that’s amazing to offer, make it the offer even more amazing in a way that doesn’t drain you and doesn’t change the way the value is perceived. Make sure that you’re giving a bonus and that you’re giving them something that relates to the thing they actually require.
For example, instead of me charging the $70 for the massage and then getting nothing, I could have given them:
- a bag of eight Epsom salts that wouldn’t have cost me very much
- an e-book
- a mini master class on how to look after lower back pain
- stretches
- information about magnesium and where to find it and maybe even a recipe
All of those are things I would only have had to do instead of a hundred and sixteen times!
Then, they would have gotten not only the small amount but a huge amount of value on the back end.
So, bottom line – don’t discount.
2. How do I run online consults?
This is a recurring question that I get, which is why I’ve talked previously about how to run online consults including which platforms to use. I also have a free Consultation Checklist download available.
Online consults are an amazing way to make sure that you are providing time and space for yourself depending on where you are in your life. They’re awesome especially if you are serving mums or busy corporates because they can do it on their lunch break at work. Or, in the case of mums, it’s much easier to be online and talk to you that way if the kids are sick or whatever.
The biggest hurdle I’ve found is our own internal mindset because we aren’t talking about this enough as a way of providing health care for people. We can’t change the customer’s mindset or the client’s mindset if we’re not educating about telehealth.
In the US, telehealth is a really big deal. It’s a wave that’s coming through and they usually get things quicker than we do. It’s coming through quite substantially in things like the allopathic medical field. Telehealth is a really big deal because people who are rural people and can’t access the types of clinic situations that we have and all sorts of other reasons why doing it online makes it easier for them to get the information.
Making the individualised information that’s in your head available online is a great service to offer.
Make sure you are on the right side of insurance, your Association, and current regulations
Of course, you’ve got to double check your insurances and your Association’s current regulations on this. Keep in mind that these change quite quickly depending on which Association you’re with. Make sure you stay legal!
Also, keep in mind that some of these are rules and some of them are recommendations. The recommendations are there because they don’t know what to do. A lot of our associations don’t have the manpower to look after the finer details on this emerging field within our profession.
3. Which online booking system is best?
Usually, when it comes to platforms that you use online, you are working on a scale of:
Zero money but plenty of time <——— to ———> Zero time but a little more money
If you’re at the beginning of your journey and you don’t have a lot of money and you think you don’t have a lot of time, that’s fine. But you will need to have one or the other to actually open up a booking system or any other platform.
If you don’t have any money for this kind of thing, the two that I highly recommend are:
HealthKit I’ve personally found complicated. But if you’ve got plenty of time, it is easy to Google it or search for tutorials on YouTube.
(Sidenote: This actually applies to any of your questions. If you search Youtube with any question, you will find amazing gold of people that have already lived through these problems and have created a video for you about it. So if you are starting with Acuity, MailChimp HealthKit, or whatever there are so many videos out there about it.)
If you have some money available but no time, try (listed less expensive to more expensive):
The more expensive ones are going to cut down on your time because people like SimpleClinic do your setup for you, you don’t have to do any of that work. That’s why they’re a little bit more expensive. so if it’s acuity health care calendar practice better clinic Oh simple clinic like that cool all righty
4. Is expanding and retracting normal?
Many of you are going harder than you have ever gone before. I don’t mean that you’re pushing yourself too hard or you’re gonna give yourself adrenal fatigue.
What I’m talking about is that you’re:
- taking on many more new ideas than you ever have
- changing the paradigm of the way that you do business
- changing the way that you’ve probably been taught to do business and practice
- transforming the way that you think about money
- completely upskilling when it comes to the things that you’re learning around the online component of your business
- upgrading your mindset
There so many different things that you are going harder at than you ever have before and I want to remind you that there is a kind of ‘concertina’ effect that happens. It’s like you’re stretching, learning all these things, you’re expanding and there’s amazingness and then all of a sudden, you contract.
Expanding and retracting is normal
And that’s totally okay. Just like when we breathe – we’re breathing in, we’re being inspired, and then there’s an expiration on the inspiration.
This is the thing, right? So many of you are learning so many cool things about your business and your mindset, you’re taking on challenges, busting up against your comfort zones in ways that you haven’t before and I want to acknowledge every single one of you who is.
And also those who are sitting behind the scenes wondering if you could do that and planting that seed in the back of your mind. When you are ready to do it, you will.
But the thing about this expansion is that it comes with contractions. The more you expand, the more you contract. This is something I’ve noticed in the Hub as well as in the Club.
Celebrate your wins
Many of you are going through amazing growth periods. When you are growing and making changes, and things are happening for you particularly around your mindset, then the flow and effect after that is financial as well as the number of people that you can help. And you need to celebrate those wins!
But to get there, you have to expand and contract, expand and contract.
The reason that we celebrate the expansion is because sometimes it feels a bit uncomfortable. When contraction happens, sometimes we can get a bit stuck in that contraction.
I want you to know that the expansion and contraction happens faster and faster, the more you grow. It’s really easy to forget it in those times when it feels really hard, and it hurts and you’re tired. You feel like you’ve been going at it for such a long time and you’re not seeing the results that you have randomly created in your brain by a certain amount of time.
But those things are all arbitrary. We’re all literally making this stuff up in our heads. I love celebrating the quiet contraction moments because they are followed by moments of inspiration and expansion.
You’re not going crazy. You’re busting through upper limits.
So don’t feel like you’re going a little bit crazy sometimes when you’re taking on things that you’ve never done before. You are busting through upper limits that you didn’t even know were there and glass ceilings that you created only moments ago. You are doing and taking on things that you had no idea you would do as a practitioner.
We’re not taught how to use MailChimp or Facebook Ads, talking to people and getting out there in front of the public. There are so many different things that are shifting and changing the way that we thought it would be in practice. So I want to acknowledge all of you for doing it.
When those frustrating times come up, they’re going to come up more frequently the more that you are expanding and pushing up against your comfort zone. That’s completely and utterly normal and it needs to be celebrated.
Everyone who is celebrating – I’m high-fiving you the whole time! Learn to notice when those contractual times come up. It may feel like it hurts and it feels so hard. That’s awesome because that means you’ve just bumped up against your comfort zone and something else is on the other side of it for you.
Remember that you are unique, stronger than you think, and smarter than you know. Thank you for being a part of where our profession is going!
If you need a bit of a pep-in-your-step, check out my free downloadable mindset posters.
Hugs,
Tammy
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