With obesity rates climbing to 36% – 41.9% in the USA, more than ever, we need nutrition coaches to be successful in their nutrition business. We often see nutrition coaches and gym owners running nutrition programs or an online nutrition business struggling to figure out how to maintain their client load in addition to handling the business side of things. With the right systems in place, it is completely possible to do both!
Whether you are an HSN Mentoring client wanting to put some zest into your current program, or you are totally new and wanting to learn how to run a successful nutrition business, this article will help you “spice things up” in 2023!
What Does A Successful Nutrition Business Look Like?
Just like we track our clients’ biometrics to help determine success when considering whether or not a nutrition business is successful, we need to look at some KPIs to determine its success.
If you are a nutrition coach running your own nutrition business or gym owner running a program out of your facility, it’s very important to track certain metrics in order to determine where you currently are and where you need to go in order to stay viable.
At Healthy Steps Nutrition and HSN Mentoring, we like to track the following KPIs.
Leads: Are you getting leads and tracking your leads?
How many potential clients are coming into your funnel on a monthly basis? Where are they coming from? Are you following up with them and are they booking calls or free intros with you?
Conversion To Free Intro: How many leads have booked a consult or free intro for nutrition?
Out of the leads that are coming into your funnel, how many of them are actually booking a free intro or consult with you?
Conversion To Client: Are Free intro's signing up for your nutrition business?
At HSN, we love to see at least 75% of the people attending a free intro move forward with a nutrition business coaching package.
Retention: What does your retention look like?
Are clients staying in your nutrition business longer than the initial 3 months?
Ideally the client lifetime should be approximately 9-12 months. At both my gym and Healthy Steps Nutrition, many clients are staying 12+ months in our programs.
Revenue: Does your nutrition business make money?
You get a lot of leads, schedule a lot of free intros from those leads, and get a lot of people to sign up, but you make next to no money with your program. This is usually due to a poorly priced program where the gym owner or nutrition coach is charging too little for their services. We see undercharging a lot in our mentoring program and it’s usually because the business owner is worried people won’t value the service. Learning how to price and package your services is a must! And creating value comes through educating your community, delivering when given the opportunity, and then showcasing the stories and results when they happen.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that if the captain of the ship goes down because they can’t feed themselves, then the whole ship goes down.
Your business must serve you in order for you to maintain serving others. Just because you got into this field to change the world and save people’s lives doesn’t mean it’s ok to not make money. In my opinion, giving someone the opportunity to lead a better healthier life is worth way more than what they pay for their monthly Starbucks bill.
I started realizing it was ok to charge what I was worth for my services when I walked out of an intro appointment one day, disappointed in myself that I quoted a price way lower than what I wanted to because I was afraid they would say no. As I said goodbye to the client, I watched them drive away in a brand new Porsche. It was the last time I ever underpriced my services.
So, in summary, a nutrition business is successful if you are making money, getting consistent new leads who are signing up for your nutrition coaching, they are staying several months, and getting amazing results! Paying customers are important, but happy paying customers are even better!
TAKE ACTION NOW! Like right now!
If you don’t already track these metrics, I strongly urge you to take the time now, like 10 minutes or so, and determine your baseline with these key point indicators. Use the past 3 months as a reference range. Knowing is half the battle, and by determining where your weak links are, you can move forward in making some changes to improve.
Improving Your Nutrition Business KPIs
By now, you have taken the time to do an assessment of your KPIs. From here, we can provide some insight on ways we can help you if your numbers are not where you would like them to be.
Leads: How Do I Get More Leads?
If you are not getting leads into your program, your nutrition business will slowly die. More nutrition clients are a must if you want to continue to build your own business and become a successful entrepreneur.
This could be you, and if so, then it’s time to look at your marketing. There are so many ways you can market your service to prospective clients in your target market, but here are three great ways to start!
Use social media platforms.
Make sure you are consistently posting and use the content scheduler in Facebook if you don’t pay for another app to help you schedule posts. Determine what consistent is for you and stick with that schedule. If you are not currently posting anything, then a couple of posts a week is a great place to start. Maybe you are posting – but it’s not consistent. Become consistent!
Infographics are great, and shouldn’t be dismissed, but short form video is better! Any use of short form video content whether it be Instagram reels, TikTok, or YouTube is an excellent way to begin marketing your business online.
We say this because short form video is hot right now. It currently has the highest ROI of any social media type marketing strategy. Consumers are viewing videos they can relate to that tell a story, AND the stories are short. Short stories hold people’s attention better than long stories. Use real world examples of your clients’ success or even your own journey to health and wellness.
People buy from people, so make your story the next one people are watching!
If you struggle to create the actual content, a novice friendly graphic design tool such as Canva is a great place to help you create content. There is a free version that doesn’t include all the features, but it includes a ton. And the pro version is only $12.95 per month after your free trial.
Utilizing email and build an email list.
Create something free to help build an email list. People will leave their name and email in order to get in on your freebie. A lead capture in the form of free content helps build your credibility in the nutrition industry and allows you to contact these “warm” leads who have already signed up for your list. Your offer could be a monthly newsletter, an ebook with recipes, some type of free guide, or even a drawing to a free nutrition consultation giveaway.
An email list is yours to keep whereas social media platforms are not owned by you and the account has the potential to be banned or taken away at any time. Although this doesn’t happen often, it’s not unheard of for an influencer or company to lose their social media account and thousands of followers along with it. If these accounts are your only audience, this could be catastrophic for your business.
Get out in the community and meet people.
Making yourself and your business present in the community is a great way to get new leads into your business. Offering free nutrition talks to schools, local businesses, and to your own community is something you should start to do immediately – especially if you are a nutrition coach working in a brick and mortar facility.
Focusing on partnering with a local small business to increase the reach of both your businesses is a strategy that could work very well. At HSN Mentoring, we have an entire platform dedicated to teaching nutrition business owners and coaches how to collaborate and co market with local small businesses.
Conversions To Free Intros: Are people booking appointments?
If you are getting leads but they aren’t booking appointments, it’s time to look at your calls to action in the stories you are telling and the marketing information you are putting out there. Are you clear about what you want your potential clients to do when they visit your website, social media content or flyers?
Do you clearly state on your website and marketing material to BOOK A FREE INTRO at least 3 -4 times in a bold color? It’s extremely important that you make it very clear what you want the lead to do next. If you are not clear, they will move on to the next person who is.
Check out the Grow Your Nutrition Business website homepage! As you scroll down, count how many times BOOK A FREE CALL is listed in bright red.
Kind of like this!
Conversions to Client: Are the leads booking appointments or free intros signing up for nutrition coaching?
In your self assessment, how many free intro appointments are becoming actual clients of your program? Better yet, if you are also a fitness business, are intros signing up for a hybrid membership that includes both fitness and nutrition?
Do you have a front end offer that doesn’t confuse and makes it easy for people to sign up?
In your intros, are you helping the potential customers envision how they will feel when they have reached their goal?
We would love to see your conversion rate from free intro to sale above 75%! If it isn’t, the person conducting your free intro appointments needs to work on their sales skills.
Listen to this podcast episode about how to nail that free intro and turn leads into clients!
Retention: Do you get a lot of conversions, but they don't stay in your program for very long?
The cost of time and resources to acquire a new client is way more than the resources used to keep an existing one. A lot of us focus a ton on getting new people into our pipeline but sometimes we forget to maintain the effort needed to keep our current client relationships.
Your job as a nutrition coach is to provide an amazing client experience. In addition to this, your clients need to know that the program they have signed up for can grow with them as they begin to reach some of their initial milestones and their needs begin to change.
This comes down to really showcasing that client journey during that initial intro visit and initial consult. Ensuring they know that you have the skills and resources to help them long term is extremely important. On top of this, you need to make sure that you are providing the excellent service this person signed up for.
Revenue: Are you making money?
Your nutrition business needs to make money! Many coaches start a nutrition business as a part time side gig in conjunction with another full or part time job. They desire to have the ability to make enough money to quit their other job, but initially the revenue isn’t there.
As a nutrition coach, if this is you, it’s time to create a business plan!
Have a goal in mind as to how much money you need your nutrition coaching to pay you in order for you to be able to quit your full time job.
After you have figured this number, based on the fees you are charging for your services, determine how many clients monthly you need in order to hit the target.
Take into consideration new clients and also the length of engagement of each client that starts with you. Your ideal client starting a nutrition journey should stay with you between 6-12 months.
As your business grows, you will become closer and closer to being able to quit the 9-5
Keep in mind that a nutrition business has the opportunity to diversify its revenue streams by offering other services in addition to individual coaching. One of the big opportunities our HSN Mentoring clients tap into is offering corporate or workplace wellness initiatives to local businesses.
Nutrition coaches are wellness professionals who improve the overall health and well being of our community. Client reach is so much higher when they incorporate corporate programs into their offerings. Offering these programs also helps increase profit margins. Using professional connections in your local community, and relationships from your current client base is a great place to start when looking for corporate and workplace wellness clients.
No matter what your revenue streams are, it’s very important to structure your offerings and services to reflect your effort and allow for this business model to serve two purposes. As we stated above, pricing and packaging services at a price that reflects effort and accountability IS A MUST.
It should serve your community by providing options to help people living a long and healthy lifestyle.
Secondly it should provide you, the nutrition business owner or coach the ability to live the lifestyle you want to live.
Conclusion
The purpose of this article is to get you to take action!
Those of you not tracking these numbers on a monthly basis need to start tracking. And, if you are tracking but not making changes to improve when considering the results, begin to make changes!
Looking at this as an opportunity to improve and get more members reflects a growth mindset. Even with this, you may be the type of person that hates tracking numbers and you struggle to think of yourself doing this on a monthly basis. When something isn’t part of your perfect day, find a way to outsource it. Initially you are going to have to start it in order to teach someone else the task. But after this is done, look for a head coach, a partner, your ex accountant mother or simply hire a bookkeeper to help you!
If all this is too much for you and you are stuck – we can help!
Our specialty is teaching gym owners and nutrition coaches how to run a turnkey nutrition business!
Our program teaches:
How to set up a website using the StoryBrand Framework
Marketing and social media PLUS access to free graphics, reels, video scripts and emails that are new every month
Nutrition coaching and certification with a practical application component
You become a nutrition client of an HSN Registered Dietitian for 6 weeks during your training
How to use the exclusive HSN app to run your program and give your clients a portal to track progress and communicate with coaches
Leadership and oversight skills for business owners leading a team of nutrition coaches
- Ongoing monthly mentoring support after the initial 5 training calls
All you have to do to find out how to build an ongoing nutrition coaching business is…
Now who’s ready to take action and crush 2023??!!?
More FREE Nutrition Business Help
WATCH & LISTEN – Webinar Recording; How To Build A Professional Habit Based Nutrition Coaching Program In Your Gym – HERE
WATCH & LISTEN – 4 Best Practices When Launching A Nutrition Challenge In A Gym & Top Mistakes To Avoid – HERE
WATCH & LISTEN – Addressing Hormone Health When Coaching Female Clients – HERE
