Nicole Aucoin (00:05):
Welcome back to the Grow Your Nutrition Business Podcast. at Healthy Steps Nutrition, we believe something as fundamental as nutrition shouldn’t be complicated, which is why we focus on a simple habit-based approach when working with clients. I’m your host, Nicole Aucoin, registered dietitian and founder of Healthy Steps Nutrition, CrossFit HSN, and HSN Mentoring. I’m also the author of the Basics of Nutrition Coaching, CrossFit preferred nutrition course. I’m going to teach you how to take one step at a time to build a successful nutrition program where you finally feel confident talking about nutrition to your members and your communities.

Nicole Aucoin (00:45):
Well, this is the last episode of 2020. This year has been a year I will never forget. I think we can all say that. In fact, it’s been one of the toughest years as a business owner, but I would say one of the best years for our company. It’s forced me to think outside of the box, it’s forced me to level up our programs and services to figure out how we can best support the gyms and nutrition coaches using our platform, and also our clients. We’ve added more to this platform and even more is coming in quarter one of 2021 that I’m so excited about. In this episode, we are going to talk about some of the biggest lessons that we’ve learned, some of the best practices that we’ve found, and some of the biggest improvements that we’ve had with the platform.

Nicole Aucoin (01:37):
Before I get started, I want to give you some free help. January 2nd, we have claimed it as International Nutrition Talk Day. And Nutrition Talk is a virtual nutrition seminar where you can give it to your members and your communities, capture new leads, and most importantly, re-engage past clients. I don’t know about you, but I have thousands of emails of people who maybe were once interested in my service, maybe they were past clients but they’ve fallen off, maybe they moved a little bit further away so they don’t come to the gym anymore, but they would be interested in nutrition. People are more motivated around a milestone like a new year and a nutrition talk is a really great way to re-engage past clients and capture new leads. And I want to give one to you.

Nicole Aucoin (02:24):
We’ve created a presentation, the speaking notes, a printable to give everyone who attends, and a recording of the presentation with Ashley, our director of nutrition education, and I. This will help you re-engage past clients and capture new leads. Gyms are using it to add nutritional only clients and it’s working so, so well. You can access all of it absolutely free by clicking the link in the show notes, entering in your email, and we’ll send everything right over to you. All right, let’s get to this episode, the state of the union for 2020, enjoy.

Nicole Aucoin (03:08):
Welcome back to the Grow Your Nutrition Business Podcast, Ashley.

Ashley Osterman (03:11):
Thanks, Nicole.

Nicole Aucoin (03:12):
Man, we are wrapping up the year. It has been a year to remember, or maybe forget, I don’t know, maybe a combination. Goodness! How we’ve been able to pivot and navigate and support gyms and build the business this year, there’s been so many improvements, so many lessons learned, so many cool things that we’ve added in, to really come from what we needed at our HQ location to support our clients during shutdowns, what gyms were asking for, and our team just rallying together to help support these gyms. And it really has been such a team effort by all of our mentoring team.

Ashley Osterman (03:50):
Yeah. I’m so grateful that we’ve been able to help support so many gyms around the world during this season of uncertainty where unfortunately we’ve seen so many small businesses have to shut down and maybe not even reopen, and being able to support these gyms and provide them with not only the resources to keep their clients retained, but also see and celebrate the growth that has been happening even in the season.

Nicole Aucoin (04:20):
Which has been really cool. I would say that in this season we were actually more facing of nutrition coaches and gym owners. You and I were in front of them every single week when… Previous years, I would talk to people during free calls, onboard them, but then send them off to the mentors and that was kind of it. Now it’s really like our whole team has rallied together to help support. I want to first talk about some of the lessons that we learned during this season. And I think us having our HQ location running a nutrition program, running a CrossFit gym, allowed me to really see what it was going to feel like so that I can share from experience with gyms who hadn’t been yet in that portion of where we were in the shutdown.

Nicole Aucoin (05:05):
So, communication, I think that was such a big part of… Gyms who were successful with retaining their clients and not getting a huge drop-off rate were very good at communicating how they were going to support their clients. And it really came from getting your staff on board with what the plan was, planning ahead, getting your staff on board with what that plan was, and then communicating it out to the members. And one of the things that we did, we actually shut our HQ location down a week before the city required us to just because Jason and I were a little bit nervous, we didn’t know, and we wanted all of our people to be safe.

Nicole Aucoin (05:45):
So we made that video, sent it out, and then I typed out a video script of exactly what we said and we gave it to every gym, like, “Hey, this worked really well. We made this video, posted it, and listed on YouTube, and then sent the link out to every single member via text message.” So they got a personal message from us. It was impossible for us to call every single person saying like, “Hey, we were shutting the gym down.” So we did that and then we just pivoted so quickly assigning every person to a coach and gave them support virtually. We actually had people losing weight because they had more accountability in that season of the gym being shut than normally because they weren’t on nutrition coaching, which was really cool. But it came down to communication.

Ashley Osterman (06:26):
It really did. And Nicole, one of the things I just really admired about you in handling the situation is how you would always try out our recommendations first. We would test them first at our HQ location and see what worked, what didn’t work, before we just recommended things to our mentoring team. And I think that’s really what set us apart and allowed our gyms to be able to maintain during this time.

Nicole Aucoin (06:56):
Yeah. So we figured it out, and the cool thing was is you and I like worked on overdrive at the beginning. Right?

Ashley Osterman (07:02):
Yeah.

Nicole Aucoin (07:02):
We had our videographer here within the first week of us shutting down and we made all of this video content specifically for the season that we’re in. So we created this 28-day challenge, stay healthy challenge, that we had and every gym got to use it. There were professional videos talking about grocery stores being out of food, talking about working from home, managing a work-life balance when you are working from home, and kids being homeschooled. There were so many things that we were giving people relevant content to help them in this season. Thank you, but I really go back to, it was a team’s effort.

Ashley Osterman (07:36):
Absolutely.

Nicole Aucoin (07:36):
It was you and I working together, lots of late nights, but the team rallied together to help and we communicated what our vision was, was going to be whatever we need to do to support gyms, that’s what we’re going to do.

Ashley Osterman (07:48):
Yeah. Communication was instrumental during this past year. And I think the second thing that we learned during this time was how important attitude is.

Nicole Aucoin (08:00):
If you look at every obstacle as an opportunity to get better as a leader, as a business, and come out on the other side as a more resilient business, no matter what happens, you’re going to figure it out, right? You just have to pivot. I mean, I feel like 2020 the word is pivot, pivot and resilience. If we need to say pivot, we’re going to think about 2020. Yes, we pivoted the heck out of our entire business, we all moved online overnight, and it was kind of… I would say it was a little bit easier for us, our entire mentoring program is built online. So I would say that gave us a little bit of advantage, but it also gave me ways to think about how could we leverage what we already know works really well in the mentoring program to help our HQ location.

Ashley Osterman (08:46):
Right. We almost had a foot in the door in the virtual communication, so we were able to then take those practices, what works well for us, and share them with all of our mentoring clients.

Nicole Aucoin (08:55):
And as a leader and as a gym owner, your attitudes set the tone for everyone else. So we were like, “Hey, you know what? This is a situation we’re in, we’re going to help you the best that we possibly can, and we’re going to go from there. Whatever I’m telling you to do, I’m going to do it.” I worked out more days when we were shut down than I have ever, like 25, 26 days. It was because if I’m wanting my members to show up for Zoom classes, I’m sure as heck going to show up for Zoom classes so that I can talk to them. And they didn’t show up for Zoom classes because of the workouts, they showed up so that they could have familiar faces and get away from something that was so stressful in all of our lives for this season. So, as a gym owner, as a nutrition coach, you have to walk the walk, but in this season, I feel like it was even more important for us to walk the walk.

Ashley Osterman (09:45):
Yeah, absolutely. Communication and attitude were the top two lessons that we learned during this time. But we also learned about some best practices.

Nicole Aucoin (09:56):
All of these best practices that we’re about to talk about were things that we knew, but it was so eyeopening. I mean, we literally helped over 100 gyms launch nutrition programs in the past few months, 100 gyms, more than that. And it’s so obvious what they’re doing now. I mean, these newer gyms are skyrocketing their programs because of how they’ve set them up. One of the things we did was we revamped our training, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But if we start with what are the top three best practices, the first one goes with consistency. Are you consistently making nutrition a priority in your message and is it a consistent message within your staff?

Nicole Aucoin (10:43):
Ashley, you and I built some extra support for staff, support training staff, to ensure a consistent message. We started doing so much more role-play so that everyone is comfortable saying the same thing. And when there is inconsistency, it gets people confused. And if you confuse, you lose.

Ashley Osterman (11:04):
Yes, everybody needs to be speaking the same message. Like you said, we did some amazing video content for role-playing with the free intro, and I think that’s so important to that. Anybody on your staff who’s going to be talking to somebody about nutrition whether they’re a nutrition coach or not needs to be saying the same thing, it needs to be comforting.

Nicole Aucoin (11:23):
And I would venture to even bring it broader scale. Everyone on your staff needs to be comfortable with your nutrition program. If I ask anyone on your staff, are they able to tell me what is included in a nutrition program and how to get started? And if you’re thinking about this and you’re like, “No,” then it’s time to have a staff meeting and talk about that, role-play. Ask people, “What would you say if I asked you about my nutrition program? How do I get started?” And if they’re not saying what you want, it’s a learning opportunity and a teaching opportunity for you to get your entire staff on board. And I truly believe that there’s not a coach in the world that would purposely try to hurt your business.

Nicole Aucoin (12:01):
We’re all in this business to help people and they probably just don’t talk about nutrition if you’re talking about someone who’s doing goal settings or free intros. They’re not skipping the nutrition conversation because they don’t want to help you grow your business or they don’t want to help the client, they probably just don’t feel comfortable talking about nutrition and they don’t want to get a question they don’t know the answer to so they just skip right over it. And I’ve heard this over and over and over again, there has to be consistency with that message. And consistency doesn’t just need, “Oh, around this challenge, I’m going to talk about nutrition.”

Nicole Aucoin (12:33):
Are you talking about it in classes regularly? Are you talking about it on social media? What do new people who are interested in your facility see before they come into your facility? And that is such an important piece in building a nutrition program. Actually, one of the cool things that we started to help coaches actually just get their name out there, get authority within the community with nutrition was nutrition talks.

Ashley Osterman (12:58):
Yeah, absolutely. That has been such an amazing thing that we started during the shutdown of the pandemic, but we realized the value and we have continued to do it as a monthly offering for our mentoring clients. Every month, along with all of the amazing content that we give you for the month, you also get a theme nutrition talk, which is slides, speaking notes, and a workbook that you can offer out there for free to capture some leads, get your name out there, get your face out there as being the expert in nutrition in your area.

Nicole Aucoin (13:29):
If you want to build a nutrition program, you have to get people to start associating nutrition help with you and your brand. And if you’re not giving out nutrition help or just charging for a nutrition seminar and expecting people to sign up for your nutrition program, you haven’t built that trust yet, people don’t know that you can help them. But when you’re doing simple things like putting out video content with simple tips, doing these nutrition talks, people are going to start doing those things, and then, “Oh gosh! That worked. All right, now, I’m ready to take the next step. Ashley, you’ve already helped me a little bit and now I’m ready for you to help me more.” And that is the key when we’re talking about building successful nutrition programs and consistency.

Nicole Aucoin (14:11):
The free offering, like the free help, and nutrition seminars, the nutrition talks, was something that we actually did before the shutdown but we never had the turnout rate that I wanted. And when we started doing them virtually just through Zoom, and we actually… CrossFit actually I promoted a community nutrition talk that we gave every single affiliate owner and we wanted people to just get out into their communities and start talking about nutrition, provide free help, and if people want more help, they can come to you or maybe you share a few recipes. But we gave everyone, every affiliate owner, this nutrition talk. We are doing the same exact thing so that more people can do this in the new year. And gyms are… let’s not sugar coat it, it’s been tough.

Nicole Aucoin (15:00):
As a gym owner, it’s been a little bit tough, but people… I think now in the season, health and nutrition has never been more important. It’s a great strategy if your gym was forced to close or is closed right now, it’s a great strategy to add new clients that might just be interested in nutrition but not interested in fitness yet. When I talk to gyms in California specifically, there are so many gyms that… the restrictions are so tight with gyms in many states, but California in particular, they can’t workout outside. There was some fires that were going on. They have to have super small… or can’t workout inside. They had super small classes and they’re like, “Nicole, we had to close registration because we couldn’t actually add any more people.”

Nicole Aucoin (15:45):
I’m like, “Well, why don’t you just get them started with nutrition. Instead of putting them on a complete wait list, get them into your community and then upgrade their membership to nutrition and fitness once you can open up more spots in your gym. Now it’s a way for you to add a revenue stream, and again, get them connected with you and your community.” And it was a great strategy. It’s proven to be a great strategy with those gyms that had those really, really tight restrictions. So nutrition talks is a really great strategy. Any gym can do it, just give out some free help. If you’re interested in the one that we’ve created for a new year new you, we’re going to be doing the national nutrition talk, or international I guess now because we have so many gyms international, international nutrition talk.

Nicole Aucoin (16:30):
You can check the link below in the show notes and you can just access the presentation, speaking notes, in a recording of Ashley and I doing it so you can see someone else doing it before you do it. That’s a really great strategy.

Ashley Osterman (16:44):
It is. And it just really ties into that consistent message of nutrition with your brand being out there for everyone to be able to see and know.

Nicole Aucoin (16:54):
Our second best practice that we found during this past year is really being able to clearly define your client journey. If you’re not guiding people to the best option to help them achieve their goals, you’re, in my opinion, doing them a disservice.

Ashley Osterman (17:11):
Oh, absolutely.

Nicole Aucoin (17:12):
If someone’s looking to lose weight, they really need to be guided to an option that includes nutrition and fitness.

Ashley Osterman (17:17):
They do.

Nicole Aucoin (17:18):
And if you’re not confident about your nutrition program, you’re not going to guide them to that option because you just want to get them sold in. One of the cool stories I hear, and Lindsay McDonald, our chief of staff, she does most of the call ones in mentoring, and that’s the call where we go over packages and pricing and she does some role-playing with gym owners and coaches during that time. She’ll tell me, “Nicole, this person went through this call and within the first two weeks they’re already selling people on nutrition because they’re so confident.”

Ashley Osterman (17:46):
Amazing.

Nicole Aucoin (17:47):
“They’ve done it with us and now they’re getting people bought in on nutrition, they haven’t even officially launched their nutrition program yet,” which is exactly what we would want, let’s start recouping that initial investment cost. So you want to guide people to get started with nutrition and fitness, you want to make it so easy for them to get started with both nutrition and fitness, but then you want to make it easy for your current members to upgrade their membership to nutrition and fitness. And when you create that client journey and make it easy, it’s going to help you be more successful with actually building a nutrition.

Ashley Osterman (18:19):
Absolutely. And I think that actually brings us to our third best practice, is actually being able to highlight your nutrition-only offerings, because let’s be real, some people might not be ready to step foot back in a gym yet.

Nicole Aucoin (18:34):
This is a conversation I have with a lot of gym owners depending on where they’re at in this season, and what we’ve recommended to so many gym owners is tag those red flag clients. Who are the people that are paying a membership that are not actually coming in? And those would be my nutrition clients, my first test nutrition clients for the gyms or going through our training. “Hey, I know that Ashley you’re paying a membership and I so appreciate all of your support right now, but I want to make sure that we’re giving you something and we really value you as a member. Would you be interested in getting some nutrition coaching until you feel comfortable coming back into the gym?”

Ashley Osterman (19:09):
Yeah. That is such an amazing retention strategy, because they don’t feel like they’re just paying their monthly membership and not getting any support. And the amazing thing that we saw with a lot of our gyms and at HQ like you mentioned before, is people were actually seeing huge differences by focusing in on their nutrition and getting that support and accountability.

Nicole Aucoin (19:29):
Absolutely. Another cool thing, and I know we’ve seen it a ton, is there has been more and more nutrition-only clients signing up for nutrition that are not members of the gym, not only at our location, but at many gyms around the world. And I think if COVID did anything, I think it woke people up, like, “Hey, I need to improve my health, I need to focus on what I can control, and I know that I can’t do it by myself, I need support. I need to go to the expert.” And my question to you is, are you positioning yourself as the expert? Do they know they can come to you? So many gym owners that I talk to tell me, “I don’t even know if my clients would say yeah for nutrition if you ask them.” And it’s because we’re going back to best practice number one, there’s no consistency.

Nicole Aucoin (20:15):
And if you don’t have consistency, it’s going to be really tough to do the next two things, getting that client journey lined up to make it easy for people to sign up for both and then highlighting those nutrition-only offerings. Especially if your physical location is closed, this is a really great strategy to add revenue so that you can build a more resilient business and support people, because every gym is closed, not just your gym.

Ashley Osterman (20:38):
Yeah, absolutely. During this past year, Nicole, I know we’ve made so many updates to our platform. And we’ve made updates to help with not only the issues we’ve seen with our nutrition coaches at HSN HQ and the support needed for our clients at HQ, but also to help support all of our mentoring clients with what they need help with the most.

Nicole Aucoin (21:01):
It’s been really fun. I can say that with thousands of people having gone through the training now, it’s just so obvious what do coaches need to… What skills do they need to become a successful nutrition coach? And one of my goals a few years ago was to become an SME for CrossFit. And I have been talking to them for literally years about this and it was a goal of mine and they ended up… we’ve been CEU providers for CrossFit for many years now. But I wanted to become a CrossFit preferred course, that’s like their highest level of like, “Hey, we support everything that this course is about.” And Precision Nutrition, we work with them, we did a podcast with Adam Feit not that long ago.

Nicole Aucoin (21:49):
They are a CrossFit preferred course and I wanted to join them. And we built this Basics of Nutrition Coaching Course. You, myself, Kayla, another dietician on our staff, we built this course to teach the fundamental skills to become an effective nutrition coach. And man, is it good?

Ashley Osterman (22:07):
Yes, that was one of the huge highlights of the year, was getting that SME course approved, so excited. We have so many people who have gone through and are going through that course to become a more effective nutrition coach. But one of the coolest things about us building this brand new course is that all of that amazing content, all that professional video, all the new resources, all the new training materials, and all the new slides all got transferred into our HSN training course.

Nicole Aucoin (22:36):
Yeah. So we have this amazing Basics of Nutrition Coaching Course, and you and I were like, “You know what? We’re going to be doing a disservice to all of our coaches that use HSN mentoring if we don’t give them all this content.” So we started from scratch and rebuilt the entire training based on best practices, based on all the feedback we’ve gotten over the years, to help coaches be more successful. And in that season, we actually added mentoring calls, we added welcome calls to set people up for success, and it worked so, so well. So coaches are graduating confident. They’re ready to go, they have all the tools. There’s a method to our madness and the way we structure the program, going over foundation’s first mailing, pricing and packages, so that you have the repetitions to practice with those free intros.

Nicole Aucoin (23:20):
Talk about marketing so people see nutrition before you actually launch your program. You get all of the content to start using right away. Then of course, all the basics course and launch strategies. But it’s been really fun.

Ashley Osterman (23:32):
Yeah. And one of my favorite additions now is the coach evaluation. Before they graduate the course, they’re having a coach evaluation, they’re getting real-time feedback, and then they’re getting different resources to help improve their skillset to be a more confident nutrition coach. In addition, we’ve also, as Nicole mentioned, we started adding nutrition talks to our monthly content. We do weekly round tables where Nicole and I jump on our Facebook page and we talk to all of our members and talk about what we can help them with, actionable steps, real-life scenarios, and help support them to be the best version of themselves and support their clients as a nutrition coach.

Ashley Osterman (24:10):
In addition, we’ve created over 200 professional app videos with new app content within the HSN app, and we have custom habits as well as habit tracking features in the app now, which is so exciting.

Nicole Aucoin (24:26):
You really need a way to manage all of your clients in one place. And the cool thing about the app is there’s a combination of personal touches. As a nutrition coach, you can schedule messages, you can create those custom habits so that there’s a quick feedback loop with your clients so that you’re not just waiting a month before they come back in. And we look at client retention, it’s so much more successful when you have those bigger touch points with your clients. And then you’ve got all this amazing content coming from us. And we have our videographers come in, we do nutrition tips, we do mindfulness tips, we do healthy recipes, and it’s been really fun.

Nicole Aucoin (25:00):
We have this family nutrition program that’s getting released January 1st, so gyms using our program can have additional reaches for where they want to go with their nutrition program, additional places they can partner and do different sports teams and go into different places to help spread the word about healthy eating within their communities.

Ashley Osterman (25:22):
One other thing that we did actually released on the beginning of last month is we also provided an accountability challenge, a six-week accountability challenge, for those gyms who are dealing with a second shutdown. We wanted to give them that extra support to keep their clients engaged and retained even while being shut down for a second time.

Nicole Aucoin (25:41):
And I think that’s how gyms have been successful, right? They’ve just been using our content. There’s so many other things going on right now in the world of owning a business and owning a gym that this is one piece of the puzzle they don’t have to worry about. Let us worry about it for you, let us create all the content, and you just facilitate it because things are moving so fast. And you have so many things you have to worry about, just use what we’re providing you and not reinvent the wheel. And at the end of the day, that’s our goal, right? We want to save gym owners and coaches time so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel and they can focus on helping their clients and providing this amazing client experience to expand their program and build a more resilient business.

Ashley Osterman (26:20):
Absolutely. Nicole, to wrap up, are there any final thoughts that you want to leave with our listeners about 2020?

Nicole Aucoin (26:28):
Well, Ashley, you and I are doing something really fun. One of our missions at HSN Mentoring is to help gyms build resilient businesses and help them build nutrition programs that are absolutely amazing. And one of the things that we’ve decided to do was create a whole another podcast. And we created the Nutrition Made Simple Podcast and we’re so excited about it because what we’re going to do is teach something related to nutrition using that holistic approach that we talk about with stress management, support, lifestyle, exercise, sleep, and then we are going to interview someone who’s had an amazing transformation, so a client of a gym that runs our program. We’re just going to share their story and give that gym some exposure.

Nicole Aucoin (27:17):
And it’s going to be so much fun. I’m so excited to see where this podcast takes us and how many more people we can inspire by just creating simple habits one step at a time and also helping gyms get some additional exposure using our platform.

Ashley Osterman (27:36):
Absolutely. We’ve had so many amazing… hundreds and hundreds of amazing nutrition coaches who have helped so many people and we’re so excited to highlight all of the success that they have helped their clients achieve.

Nicole Aucoin (27:48):
So if you are thinking, “Hey, I need to add nutrition, it’s the missing piece of the puzzle in my business,” we’d love to help you. Click the link in the show notes, book a free call with me. I’d love to just talk to you, get to know a little bit more about your business, and provide you some free help to help you build a more resilient business.

Nicole Aucoin (28:06):
I hope you enjoyed that episode, definitely so many nuggets in there to take away. And one of the biggest things that I found is having a growth mindset as a business owner, you have to constantly be improving your service if you want to retain your clients. You have to provide this world-class experience, and what works today is not necessarily going to work a month from now, so you have to be open-minded with how to best serve your clients. Is your nutrition program stagnant? Are you looking for support from the expert so that you can focus on working with your clients and not spend all that time reinventing the wheel with figuring out how to make your program better? HSN Mentoring has set the gold standard for building a nutrition program in a gym.

Nicole Aucoin (28:56):
Frankly, we are the first to ever do this, and since we started in 2015, many companies have tried to replicate what we’ve done. But this is our sole focus, we are 100% committed to making it easy for gym owners and coaches to build nutrition programs and provide all the support you need to make it easy and help gym owners and coaches feel confident. It really comes down to these two things; how do we make it easy for gym owners to build successful nutrition programs? Which means, how do you get the best return on investment with your investment with HSN? And how do we keep gym owners increasing retention with their nutrition clients? We have figured it out and we’re constantly building even more improvements with the platform.

Nicole Aucoin (29:47):
So if you’re looking to have the support, if your nutrition program is stagnant, or you’re like, “Hey, I need to build a nutrition program beyond a nutrition challenge or beyond an informal conversation at my gym,” I want to help. Book a free call with me and I’ll give you a demo of the platform and answer any questions that you have. Of course, you can always take advantage of all the free help that we give you. The first thing you should do is subscribe to this podcast if you haven’t already. Every single week, we give free help, 30-minute episodes released every Monday to help you build a successful nutrition program. Next thing, we do webinars every single month that are public-facing and that you can ask questions live and have tips to help you grow your program.

Nicole Aucoin (30:36):
Finally, there are a few starter guides on our website. Go to growyournutritionbusiness.com and access this free help today. But at the end of the day, it still takes time to build a nutrition program, so if you’re looking to save time and not reinvent the wheel, we want to help. Book a free call with me today.