Nicole Aucoin (00:02):

Welcome back to the Grow Your Nutrition Business podcast. I’m your host, Nicole Aucoin, founder of Healthy Steps Nutrition, CrossFit HSN, and HSN Mentoring where we believe something as fundamental as nutrition shouldn’t be complicated. Our mission at HSN Mentoring is to empower gym owners and coaches to feel confident talking to their members and their community about nutrition. HSN Mentoring provides a turnkey solution to help gym owners save time and not reinvent the wheel. Before we dive into today’s topic, nutrition challenges, I have some super exciting news, Healthy Steps Nutrition is launching a standalone nutrition coaching course called Basics of Nutrition Coaching on Tuesday, August 18th. This has been in the works for years and after training over 2,000 gym owners and coaches and over 30,000 clients within the HSN app, we have figured out the best practices when it comes to nutrition coaching. The course teaches you the fundamental skills to become an effective nutrition coach.

Nicole Aucoin (01:09):

We are so excited to announce that this course has been recognized as a CrossFit preferred course, a goal of mine for years. If you are a CrossFit trainer, you are able to obtain CEUs for this course, as well as CEUs for our entire mentoring program. All right, let’s get to it.

Nicole Aucoin (01:29):

Today we are starting a series on one of the most popular nutrition topics we get asked by gym owners, nutrition challenges. I’ve done over a thousand, gosh, thousands of free calls with gym owners since 2015. And over 90% of those gym owners tell us that they’ve run nutrition challenges in the past. The problem is their nutrition program ends at the end of the challenge. We call this the challenge trap. Today, Ashley Osterman, our director of nutrition education and I are going to be talking about exactly how to run an effective nutrition challenge. We are going to be discussing topics like what you should charge, what your client experience should be like, what should your challenge be about and how to ensure that your challenge in your nutrition program doesn’t end at the end of the nutrition challenge. Enjoy.

Nicole Aucoin (02:30):

Welcome back to the Grow Your Nutrition Business Podcast. Today we have Ashley Osterman, our director of nutrition education back with us again. Ashley, welcome.

Ashley Osterman (02:39):

Oh, thank you, Nicole. It’s always such a fun time to come on and chat with you.

Nicole Aucoin (02:43):

Man, the last podcast was the most popular podcasts that we have ever done about fad diets.

Ashley Osterman (02:49):

It’s such a popular topic. It’s so prevalent in diet culture marketing. People are bombarded with all this misinformation. So it’s nice to get some good information out there and bite-size information for people to kind of understand and work through the noise that surrounds all these popular, fast acting diets.

Nicole Aucoin (03:06):

Absolutely and today I have a feeling it’s going to be another super popular topic, how to run a successful nutrition challenge.

Ashley Osterman (03:15):

This is a very popular topic. I mean, so many people run challenges. And then at the end, wonder why no one’s converting to ongoing coaching.

Nicole Aucoin (03:25):

Or there is no program after that. They just help their clients with the nutrition challenge. They run multiple throughout the year. And then their program ends at the end of the challenge. I literally hear this during every single free call that I have with gym owners.

Ashley Osterman (03:39):

Yeah. It’s a very popular topic.

Nicole Aucoin (03:42):

So today in this podcast, I want to go through some of the most popular questions that we get asked regarding how to run a successful nutrition challenge and some things that we’ve learned, mistakes that I’ve made along the way since running nutrition challenges, gosh, over the past 15 years, we’ve run nutrition challenges.

Ashley Osterman (04:00):

Yeah, you definitely have some great advice and expertise along the way. I think the first question that we get a lot, Nicole is pricing. How do I price the challenge? Where do I even start when it comes to pricing a challenge?

Nicole Aucoin (04:13):

Especially like, are you running free nutrition challenges? And if you are pricing a nutrition challenge really low, it is going to be very tough to convert people to ongoing nutrition coaching. So what we do at HSN Mentoring, the first mentoring call is really figuring out what’s your standalone nutrition offering for the first three months, which is typically a higher price package. What’s your ongoing nutrition rate? And then your nutrition challenge price needs to be above that ongoing coaching rate because you want people to be able to convert to ongoing coaching and it not go up in price.

Ashley Osterman (04:47):

Right.

Nicole Aucoin (04:48):

So now I would say the average nutrition challenge with HSN gyms is between 89 to 109, 129 for a 28 day challenge. So you’re charging a premium price and people are getting group coaching and then a little bit of individual coaching with that nutrition challenge.

Ashley Osterman (05:10):

And then Nicole, this pricing, you’re talking about just nutrition, not a nutrition and fitness together.

Nicole Aucoin (05:15):

Exactly. So what we do at HSN is we have the nutrition only option and then for new members that are not members of our gym, they can sign up for that nutrition only option. And then they can sign up for the nutrition and fitness option.

Ashley Osterman (05:29):

That’s great. So there’s two options that way you can guide the clients, which would best help them out.

Nicole Aucoin (05:34):

Exactly. And I think more and more gyms are realizing, hey, there are people that are looking for nutrition health that are not interested in my gym, or maybe go to another gym. So offering a nutrition challenge to non-members is a really smart idea. It allows you to expand your reach beyond just your membership.

Ashley Osterman (05:52):

Yeah. Can you have those extra clients that you may not have been able to reach before and may not have even come your doors now coming because they could potentially want that nutrition offering.

Nicole Aucoin (06:01):

Exactly. And a great way to re-engage past clients.

Ashley Osterman (06:04):

Yes. We cannot forget about those past clients. They so often just go dusty in our file cabinet or in our inbox, but reaching out to them, letting them know you’re doing a nutrition challenge, reengaging them can be such a great start to a long relationship.

Nicole Aucoin (06:19):

We had three people that were nutrition clients of mine eight years ago sign up for the nutrition challenge that we ran a couple months ago.

Ashley Osterman (06:28):

Yeah. I remember that. She said, “Nicole, I remember eight years ago I worked with you and I happened to see you guys are doing a challenge. And of course I had to come back. I had such a great experience. I wanted to come back and I wanted to have that great nutrition challenge experience again.”

Nicole Aucoin (06:42):

I think that’s so important when you think about a nutrition challenge, a way to reengage past people, engage people that are not members of your gym. And of course when gyms launch HSN, a lot of them will launch with the nutrition challenge because it’s a way to get your people excited about nutrition, your existing members. So I think we’ve nailed down pricing, right. We want people to have high enough pricing so that people are valuing the service that they’re paying for. Not just free because they’re not going to value what you’re just given for free.

Ashley Osterman (07:14):

Right. Absolutely.

Nicole Aucoin (07:15):

And you also want to think about, okay, what happens after this challenge is over in pricing?

Ashley Osterman (07:22):

Yes. Really, it comes down to clearly defining the client journey in this challenge.

Nicole Aucoin (07:28):

This is the next question that we get asked, right? I’ve done nutrition challenges in the past. How is this going to be different?

Ashley Osterman (07:34):

Yeah. And I think really talking about that journey and what’s happening after the challenge before the challenge starts is so important for that client experience.

Nicole Aucoin (07:45):

You have to have a clear path and be confident that you can support them beyond a nutrition challenge. When we did the kick-off seminar to the last nutrition challenge that we did, I said, “How many of you have done a nutrition challenge before raise your hand?” And we did it all through Zoom and we had a bunch of people raising their hand. “How many people have regained the weight from the past challenge?” Every person raised their hand. Okay. I don’t want this to happen to you. And we have an option for ongoing nutrition coaching to guide you with individualized support after this challenge is over. So don’t think that the support hap ends at the end of this nutrition challenge.

Ashley Osterman (08:19):

Right. Right. And really talking about that individualized support where the magic happens, because the challenge is group support. Yeah, we want to have those individual touch points, but this is in a group atmosphere and they might see some results, but really getting them to understand that you can custom tailor a plan for them and their needs afterwards will get them starting to think about that before the challenge even starts.

Nicole Aucoin (08:39):

Absolutely. So we really need to think of the client journey with a nutrition challenge. So you have members, this is the first time that they might be experiencing your nutrition program, or they’ve done a nutrition challenge with you in the past. Then you have non-members, this is the first experience they have with your business altogether. So, or maybe they’re past members that are coming back. So you want to think about what is the path for them. They’re

going to join this challenge. What happens after the challenge is over. You need to have that planned out before you kick off your challenge.

Ashley Osterman (09:11):

Absolutely. And talking about planning, this is another question that we get quite often is how do I figure out the challenge content? And I cannot express how important it is to plan out your content before the challenge starts. You need to have a clear path with what your clients are going to be working on, what you’re going to be focused on, what your nutrition coaches are going to be talking about, what’s going to be talked about in the gym before it happens. Because if you’re not planning yourself for success, you’re going to be frustrated and scrambling at the end.

Nicole Aucoin (09:44):

Absolutely. And it’s just, again, going back to the client experience, you want clients to have an amazing experience so they want to continue with you. There are so many times I’ve talked to gym owners and they say, “You know, I’ve run a paleo challenges, I’ve run zone challenges. I’ve run keto challenges. I’ve allowed people to pick what kind of diet they want to go on.” People are already confused because there’s so much misinformation out there and they have no idea what diet is best for them. Don’t make them choose another diet. Ashley, you’ve done a ton of research on habit formation and maintaining habits.

Ashley Osterman (10:18):

Mm-hmm (affirmative). I think it’s so important, Nicole, like you said, people are coming to you and they want you to provide them a clear path. Do not make your clients choose which type of a challenge they want to do. Have a challenge prepared, focus on one habit per week. That is definitely my recommendation. When we did our last challenge, we had a kickoff meeting with our coaches, with our staff two weeks before the challenge even started. And I had already planned out the content that we were going to be doing each and every week, we focused on water goals one week. We focused on adding non-starchy veggies to our lunch and dinner another week, focused on limiting sweets and making healthy swaps on another week. And then the fourth week was meal planning. Every week had a theme.

Ashley Osterman (11:00):

This was really great because our challenge participants in the group setting can encourage each other and share what they’re doing. Our coaches were all speaking the same language and us using the HSN app, we could in advance program out all of the habits, all of the check-ins and all of the topics that we’re going to be keeping our clients focused on for those habits weekly.

Nicole Aucoin (11:20):

Absolutely. And the challenge that we did, the last one, we charged appropriately. So we charged more than the standard nutrition challenge because we had a little bit more touch points with those clients individually, with those virtual check-ins. And when you’re talking about the kickoff meeting, you’re really talking about a staff meeting prior to the actual kickoff with the challenge participants. So we had a staff meeting to ensure everyone was on the same page so that the client experience was the same because with multiple nutrition coaches, if I’m doing something different than you’re doing it with your clients, our clients talk to each other at a gym.

Ashley Osterman (11:54):

They’re going to hear about it. Everyone’s going to talk to each other. So having that same message that consistency throughout the entire challenge really helps that client experience.

Nicole Aucoin (12:04):

Absolutely. So content is really important. Through the HSN app, we have the automated email videos that pop up each week that are all professional videos of me and you, the dieticians on staff, that give bite-size information, little tips to help people and then of course, there’s a recipe video because everyone loves a recipe.

Ashley Osterman (12:22):

Everybody loves recipes. And you can choose from either the 28 day challenge content or the six week challenge content, depending on which type of program you’re going to be running.

Nicole Aucoin (12:30):

And then we made, we had the videographer comes to the house during COVID and made all new video content based on grocery stores, not having food based on increased alcohol intake, boredom, getting everything that people are dealing with right now. And that’s an important piece of the puzzle, depending on what time of year you’re running a challenge, you want to have relevant content in that challenge.

Ashley Osterman (12:54):

Absolutely. I won’t have the same content if I’m running a fall challenge, as I would kick off the New Year challenge in January, there’s going to be different touch points there, different times of the year coming up. We want to make sure that we’re modifying our content to help best serve our clients. What are your clients looking for help with?

Nicole Aucoin (13:11):

Absolutely. So HSN Mentoring clients have the HSN app to manage their clients, have those automations in there. But if you’re listening to this and you’re not an HSN client, then I would plan out the content and do what we did prior to. Set up automation, email sequences that have that content. You can set that up easily through MailChimp. That’s what we used before having the HSN app. We would have a different email sequences based on the type of challenge and we would subscribe the person to the list and then immediately they would get one email. Seven days later, they’ll get another email. Seven days later, they would get another email. So the email content was consistent. The problem is you need a two way form of communication. You can’t just give them information. You need to get some way to communicate with your clients so that there’s support between those meetings. Because if you want to convert people to ongoing coaching, you need to have time to build that relationship.

Ashley Osterman (14:09):

Absolutely. And that kind of brings us to our next frequently asked question about challenges. When should I run a challenge? When is the best time, when is a bad time?

Nicole Aucoin (14:19):

I would say what we recommend doing, one to two challenges a year. You do not need to run more than two challenges in a year.

Ashley Osterman (14:31):

Because people would be confused then. They think that you just offer challenges.

Nicole Aucoin (14:35):

And they think that they’ll just wait until the next challenge to help them with nutrition after this challenge ends. So running one to two challenges a year, I think is a really good path. The beginning of the year, like mid January to the end of January into February, has been proven to be a good time. Launching a nutrition challenge on the first doesn’t tend to have as many signups and the reason is people overspend during the holidays. So you want to give them one to two pay cycles to catch back up. As well as, they’re still on vacation. A lot of people still … Kids are not back in school. Give them a little bit of time and then the fall, right? So after kids are back in school in the fall, you want to run another challenge before the holidays.

Ashley Osterman (15:25):

Also another time to think about running a challenge is if you hire a new nutrition coach. This is a great way to kind of get them acclimated to nutrition coaching and your facility, get your members seeing them, hearing about them and really getting them comfortable with your business.

Nicole Aucoin (15:41):

A challenge is a great way to kick start a program. It’s also a really great way to get someone’s feet wet and a great way to pass off clients. So if you are a gym owner that has worn all the hats and you’ve hired someone to be this nutrition coach, and you’re like, “I need to offload some of my nutrition clients,” having a newer nutrition coach run a challenge with you, having them lead it, but you’re there to support, and then having that new coach take on your existing clients after the challenge is over, is a really good strategy.

Nicole Aucoin (16:15):

At HSN we allow our current nutrition ongoing clients to join in on the challenge and they don’t have to pay extra for that. It’s just the price of their ongoing coaching rate. But we also ask them like, “Hey, do you have a spouse? Do you have a coworker that can join the challenge with you to help support? I know your wife has been on the fence about joining nutrition. Can we help support her during this challenge? We’d love for her to join.” And that is often a great way to get people’s feet wet who are on the outskirts of the nutrition program, maybe a spouse that’s a nutrition client.

Ashley Osterman (16:51):

Yeah, that is a great strategy.

Nicole Aucoin (16:53):

So we’ve got new nutrition coaches, a great way to onboard a new nutrition coach, get them into a challenge. I wouldn’t have them run a nutrition challenge by themselves.

Ashley Osterman (17:06):

Might be a little overwhelming at first. Yeah.

Nicole Aucoin (17:09):

And just knowing like, hey, when you were in a challenge, it’s oftentimes the first time people are trying something new, everyone’s very, very excited to get started and they try to change everything at one time. But going back to the fact of, we know if people just change one thing at a time when you keep things super, super simple, people will be more successful longterm. So no matter how excited you are as a new nutrition coach, just focusing on one thing at a time, keeping it simple. So people see those little wins is really, really important. Ashley, we adjusted a webinar.

Ashley Osterman (17:45):

We did. Last week. We did. That was probably of the most engaging webinars that we’ve done for our clients. We talked about tips for marketing your fall challenge. And one of the biggest questions that kept coming up over and over in the chat as we were talking through some of the scenarios was, “Well, what do I do at the end of the challenge if my client does not want to sign up for ongoing coaching?”

Nicole Aucoin (18:11):

Yeah. I think the challenge trap means that you end your challenge. People don’t convert to ongoing nutrition coaching after the challenge is over. Likely you’re going to have some people that might not want to convert right away or think, “Hey, I can do it on my own.”

Ashley Osterman (18:23):

Yeah. A lot of people think, “I can do it on my own.” But even though we know that two thirds of people who lose weight or have some progress during a short time will ultimately gain the weight back if they don’t continuously commit to those habits and get that support and accountability.

Nicole Aucoin (18:38):

Absolutely. So there’s a few different strategies. Number one, I would make sure the coach’s role playing that ending conversion meeting. They need to be practice. Role-play with the owner, role-play with another coach so you feel comfortable and confident guiding people to the next step to get started. The more you talk about what happens after the challenge is over during the challenge, the more likely people will email you reach out to you before the

challenge even ends to continue with ongoing nutrition coaching, because you’ve set up a clear path for success. But in reality, sometimes people might think like, “Oh, I can do it on my own.” Okay. “Well, you know what? I hope that you can write and know that the door’s always open and you’re always welcome to come back and get started with individual coaching.” We give a little bit of a financial incentive for people to get started with ongoing coaching, right after a nutrition challenge.

Ashley Osterman (19:39):

We do. Because normally we have our rate for nutrition coaching. It’s a little bit higher for the first three month commitment. And then it drops down for after ongoing, they graduate from their first three months. So we offer our challenge clients, the opportunity to get right in at that ongoing rate. So they’re already getting in at a little bit of a discount. So that’s a great incentive for them to sign up and convert to ongoing coaching.

Nicole Aucoin (20:01):

Absolutely. And I think when you’re meeting with clients individually talking about their progress, all the awesome things that have happened, the struggles they had, how did they progress towards their short and long-term goals? You can guide yourself into the longterm plan of that client. But I think it’s really important if they say like, “Hey, I don’t want to do it.” You need to ask multiple times. You need to not just at the first time, say, “Okay, no problem.” You need to talk about it and talk through it. “What’s holding you back from committing to your health? I want to see you be successful long-term and I know that the support and accountability that we can provide through individual coaching will help you. What’s holding you back?”

Ashley Osterman (20:41):

Yeah. And ask that. Handle the objection before it even becomes an objection. So I love asking that question, “What would prevent you from moving forward with ongoing coaching today?” We might hear several things. Like you talked about, want to try it on my own. Okay, great, good luck. But know the door is open. I’m here to provide that accountability and support should you change your mind.

Ashley Osterman (21:01):

Or another one I hear is I just don’t have the time. I just don’t have the time. And nutrition coaches are really the experts at time management. So I like to ask them, “Okay, tell me what a typical day looks like. Where do you see any bit of a time gap that we can look at? Let me help you with that.” Looking really at a holistic approach, finding out about what their day looks like, what stress they’re dealing with, what inner circle they have, what support they have at home and accountability partners, you can really work with them to build that time in. And also maybe looking at working with them, virtually doing the check-in meetings on a Zoom call or a video call and just having them come into your facility to do biometrics when needed.

Nicole Aucoin (21:42):

I think that’s a great, great idea because you can help people virtually through Zoom. We’ve all done it during, when we were shut down during COVID and you can easily do that. Another thing that you might think about when talking about nutrition and financial problems, like people might say, “I just can’t afford it.” I always like the last week of the challenge to ask, “How much money have you saved not eating out?”

Ashley Osterman (22:06):

Yes.

Nicole Aucoin (22:07):

Let’s start that conversation and get them thinking about how much money they’ve saved not drinking alcohol and partying and eating out as much. So then you can say like, “Hey, you said last week that you’re saving over $200 and this is only 100 bucks per month. Let’s continue this and you can continue to save money because you’re not eating out as much.”

Ashley Osterman (22:27):

Yeah. It’s a win-win and you’re working on your health. I mean really when it comes down to it, your health is an investment. It’s not an expense. It really is. And I think that looking at the holistic approach, really talking about the end of the challenge before it actually starts and handling those common objections before they might come up, is really important. And we can’t say it enough, definitely practice, practice, practice. Role play these meetings.

Nicole Aucoin (22:51):

Absolutely. So today we talked a lot about challenges and this is the first of a series of podcasts that we’re going to talk about challenges because this is the question that gets asked so often, how do I run a successful challenge? And it really comes down to planning. Planning everything, planning, what you want your client experience to look like, planning what happens after the challenge is over, pricing your challenge appropriately, and planning the content because this is the first impression of a nutrition program. And if you want people to convert to ongoing coaching, it needs to be a good one.

Ashley Osterman (23:25):

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah really wants that client experience to be amazing.

Nicole Aucoin (23:29):

So I want to talk about two of the most common mistakes that we see with gyms that run nutrition challenges. And the first one is that I hear it almost every free call. My program ends, my nutrition program ends at the end of the challenge.

Ashley Osterman (23:46):

Oh, you’re just really doing yourself a disservice because you’re missing out on that continued investment with the revenue of your ongoing clients.

Nicole Aucoin (23:55):

Absolutely. And your clients are not going to be able to see lasting results if you’re only helping them with the challenge. We know people need accountability and support to see lasting results. And you can only change so much in 28 days, six weeks. You really need to have support for them long after the challenge is over. So don’t make this mistake. You have to really figure out what your client journey looks like. For us at HSN, we meet with people at the end and we guide them to the option to continue with ongoing coaching a minimum of three months. So we don’t have to have that sales conversation every single time. So can you commit to three months of working with us ongoing coaching? It is X number of dollars. We can upgrade your membership today and it will renew on the first or the day that they sign up. And there we go.

Ashley Osterman (24:43):

Yeah. And I think that’s our second most common mistake, right. Is not meeting people individually. Challenge, yes. You think of a group challenge, group atmosphere, group support, but there also has to be those individual touch points.

Nicole Aucoin (24:56):

If you want to build a relationship with clients, they have to know that you care about them, not the group.

Ashley Osterman (25:02):

Yep. You have to build that individual rapport.

Nicole Aucoin (25:05):

Absolutely. So I made this mistake. I remember running nutrition challenges and we’ve done so many challenges over the years and people would line up like in a conveyor belt, I would say, “Hey, I’m going to be at the gym from 2:00 to 4:00 on this day, come in and get your biometrics.” And then we would, at the end of the challenge, your eyes just got really big. Those people who cannot see. I know I made a common mistake and then I would wonder, “Okay, why are people not engaged with my program after?” I didn’t invest the time in them and clearly sit down and build myself into their long-term plan.

Ashley Osterman (25:43):

That is just such an important piece of the puzzle if you want to have a successful nutrition program.

Nicole Aucoin (25:48):

Absolutely. So, if you, I just got off … A new gym signed up with our program and I just got off a call with them, a welcome call. And they said, they’re ending their nutrition challenge on August 15th. I was like, “Okay, perfect timing. You’re going to have your first two mentoring calls where we are going to role play the conversation because you need to have a clear path for people at the end of this challenge on August 15th to guide them.” If you are not doing individual appointments or you’re planning on running a nutrition challenge, a pro-tip for you would be set up a short individual meeting at the beginning, a longer individual meeting at the end. Have people book the ending individual appointment at the beginning so it’s like an end date. They have an individual touch point. If they have to move it around or if they have to reschedule it, fine. But there’s an end date with that appointment. Having a follow-up visit on the books is going to sky rocket completion rate of your nutrition challenge.

Ashley Osterman (26:45):

Yeah. That’s a very important thing to remember. Definitely scheduling that final visit at the beginning.

Nicole Aucoin (26:51):

So, we talked about two of the most common mistakes. We talked about best practices when building a successful nutrition challenge. Again, this is the first of a few webinars that we’re going to do talking and really diving into nutrition challenges because it’s such a popular topic. And I think it’s a great way to kick start a nutrition program, get excitement, and just build momentum with nutrition. Right now people are really looking to take control of their health. It’s a good time.

Ashley Osterman (27:15):

It is. It is the best time.

Nicole Aucoin (27:17):

So next week on the podcast, we are talking about five strategies to avoid the challenge trap. And if you’re thinking, “Look, I don’t know what the challenge trap is.” It is common mistake number one, essentially. Your nutrition program ends at the end of a challenge. And I think every gym owner has made this mistake. Every gym owner has fallen for the challenge trap, your nutrition program, engagement with nutrition ends at the end of the challenge. You don’t want that. You want to be able to build a clear path to support people with ongoing nutrition coaching after the challenge is over. Make sure that you check out next week’s episode.

Ashley Osterman (27:56):

You don’t want to miss it.

Nicole Aucoin (27:59):

I hope you enjoyed that episode on how to build a successful nutrition challenge. If you’re planning on running a challenge or you’re running a challenge in the future, join our free webinar on August 14th at 2:00 PM Eastern standard time on Five Strategies To Avoid The Challenge Trap. If you are unable to make that webinar live, you can always watch their recording. Guess what? We give downloadable guides and checklists with people who join our webinars. So you definitely want to check that out. If you’re overwhelmed at the thought of building a nutrition program, but you understand it’s a missing piece of the puzzle, we want to help.

Head over to growyournutritionbusiness.com and book a free call today!