Jake Carter (00:00):

Welcome to Health School where we help health professionals create life-changing results for their clients and patients through functional medicine and nutrition, whilst equally helping them scale their business online and attract high value clients. I'm Jake Carter, your host and the founder of The Institute of Health. Make sure you sit back, grab your pen because we're going to dive in deep.

(00:21)
Most health professionals when they transition online, they're completely winging it, and that just leads to overwhelm and burnout. And it's understandable because they've never been taught how to actually run a business online. And instead what they actually do is they look at what they previously did, which possibly led to some level of success, whether that is a health coach working in a gym, doing one-on-one sessions, or a practitioner such as a naturopath doing consultations. And they apply that same broken model into the online world and they do weekly check-ins or weekly consultations with their clients, which just still creates that self-imposed glass container around them and puts a roof over the head so they can't really scale it as far as they want. Now, don't get me wrong, moving online certainly serves benefits even if you're applying this broken model into your business because you're not going to be limited by geographical location, but it can still be extremely energy taxing and very emotional and very time expensive as well.

(01:17)
And for those which recognize this, when they start to move from one-on-one online to maybe group online, there's still certain setups and certain processes what you have to have in place in order for it to be effective, in order for it to maintain intimacy at scale. And we're going to be going into that just in this session today. For those of you which have possibly tried going into a bit of a group online coaching program, you would've noticed that fair enough, yes, you're not limited by geographical location that you can possibly collect more social proof because there may be more touch points outside of the typical consultations or checking that you're doing, and equally, it is more scalable. But on the flip side of that, if it's not done properly, you can tend to get more surface level results because sometimes clients tend to blur into the background and they can feel a bit unsupported if you don't have the right systems in place to identify that and support them.

(02:09)
Equally on the clients, if the expectation wasn't selp correctly at the start, it requires a strong level of accountability. And equally, it may not be that applicable for new clients because they already may be feeling a little bit daunting about going to a health professional, going to a coach and getting them to support them. So then being in this world and this group where there's other people, it might be a little bit intimidating. And then last but not least, if all of that exists, then it can really jeopardize that lifetime value of the client inside your business. So that's generally what we see. And the byproduct of that is that most health professionals, most coaches, when they're working online and applying a broken model into their business, they tend to feel overwhelmed. They tend to feel burnt out, they tend to feel pulled in every single direction.

(02:58)
And when they are doing these weekly check-ins, they find that they're repeating themselves again and again and again with the same information, just with different clients at different times in their journey. And that can just be depleting. And in fact, it can actually create this level of dread in terms of building your business, scaling it further, because more clients means more energy being spent trying to nurture them. So you can almost have this level of self-sabotage, which comes in as a self-protective mechanism to stop you from feeling that pain. So it's really important to identify if you feel any of these things, and equally understand that it isn't you, it's not the industry, it's probably not your clients, but it's probably the setup in your business, and this is exactly what we're going to solve. And in fact, you may even be finding that you can't really work on your business because you're so stuck inside of it.

(03:46)
That time is a huge limitation for you. And even if you do have some time, you're just so tired and so fatigued and so burnt out and you can't even learn anything because you have to focus on dealing with all these different clients. And the final point here is if you are setting these expectations for clients to have these weekly check-ins and weekly consultations with you, it can really lead to a high level of churn because from the client's perspective, they'll be judging the value of your program based off the time what they have with you because you aren't giving them value outside of that check-in. So by structuring it in the correct way and the way that we're going to break down in the second helps you apply more value outside of that one-to-one time helps relieve you from being the bottleneck in the business and enables them to get that deeper level of support and care from everyone else within the program, not only your team, but also the other peers with them.

(04:39)
Now, before going into the solution to this online model, it's really important to recognize some of the things that we need in your own personal life because when you are in the health industry, when you're in the service of others, we tend to sacrifice our own self. So what I would advise you to do right now is stop this recording and actually make a list of some goals, some goals that you want to achieve for yourself in the next three months, six months, one year and five years. And equally, think about your future self and think about the family. And if you don't have a family yet, do you want to be building the foundations, the lifestyle so that when you have a family, you can be more present, that you can be more engaged with them? Because at the end of the day, we want to make sure we live our life by design and not by default, and the quality of our life is determined by the quality of our experiences.

(05:24)
So now what I'm going to get into just quickly is the sum of which we can calculate those experiences, which enables us to have those deep and enrichening moments, those three core ingredients. The first one is money, the second one is time, and the third one is health. When you're running a business and it is just so demanding on yourself and consuming so much time, you are pulling away the time component. So you can't be present, you can't capture those precious first moments, but equally with that overwhelm, with that burnout, it stops you from having that force multiplier because when looking into the equation to gauge the quality of any experience that we have, it's simply money plus time times by health, health is that force multiplier. But if you're overwhelmed, if you're burnt out, if you're fatigued, you're not going to be able to experience those experiences you possibly want.

(06:15)
So we need to make sure that we build the business so we can protect your future so we can truly start living by design and not by default, and we need to make sure we can protect your health, protect your time, and equally give you a business which is scalable to get the money you desire. So let's talk about the solution. So one particular model that we teach inside the institute is an evergreen coaching model. There's many different models that we teach. We teach a self-guided model. We teach a many to many model. We teach an Apex model, we teach a hybrid model, but this one in particular is just the basic overview of an evergreen model. Let's just say that you're running this broken online coaching model and you have 30 clients and you do 30 minute check-ins with the clients each week. That means you're going to be spending 15 hours with your clients working in your business.

(07:04)
And we all know it's never just 15 hours. We know that there's check-ins can overrun, people can be late, and we need the gap in between each check-in. And equally, not everyone is booked back to back to back. So realistically, that 15 hours where you're working inside your business actually turns to something like 20 hours and already that's bleeding into so much time where you are now being held back from learning more to impact your clients and enable them to have better results. So this particular model, this evergreen model, is structured in a way which provides intimacy at scale, enables them to have the deep results, but it doesn't pull them away from having that one-on-one support when needed. Hey, if this has been useful so far, we'd love to share some of our resources with you. So simply reach out on Instagram and send the word podcast.

(07:52)
So when we view the week in a Monday to Sunday fashion, let's just say you expect your clients to complete the check-ins on Wednesday, and you might have a hard cutoff point by let's say 5:00 PM where you expect all of your clients to have completed that online check-in form. You could just have a quick look by 5:00 PM see if everyone's completed and if they haven't, you could send them a quick text. There are things we could do to possibly automate that, but it's far ahead of the game right now for what we're talking about. Then you give them that gentle nudge at 5:00 PM if need be to say, Hey, we've not received your check-in form yet. Here's a link in case you're struggling to find it. And then within that check-in, you're going to have a set criteria of about 15 questions, which are the same for every single client.

(08:33)
And then five questions which are client specific, and that's really, really important and most people miss this. The five questions which are client specific need to be based around their phase or their problem or their protocol because that way the client feels truly seen, heard and recognized throughout that journey, and it doesn't feel like they're just following this generic check-in process. Let's say if you're working with gut health, you need to understand exactly how their gut health is improving. And equally, if you're working with clients such as endometriosis, you need to understand possibly a little bit more about their cycle, and you may actually start to include things like the fertility awareness method for their tracking of their cycle and the ovulation. So having that section where there's five core questions relative to that client is absolutely paramount. Then on that check-in sheet, it's going to be a quantitative assessment, and what I mean by that is basically a scale of zero to 10, 10 being awesome, zero being terrible.

(09:26)
It just removes all of that long form text which clients might feel tempted to write in and share with you, which is going to be very time expensive for you to read through every single line with every single client on a weekly basis. So they just need to summarize it on 10 feeling awesome, zero feeling bad, and anywhere in between. And from that process, you can actually get it scoring itself. So let's just say seven and above is going to be green below seven and above four could be orange and below four could be red. And then what you do is if you have 20 questions, well, it's quite easy, you can look at the sum of those questions and determine what percentage they're sitting at for their total health index. If their total health index is above 70% amazing, they're clustered in the green.

(10:08)
If it's between 40 and 70, they're amber, and if it's below 40%, the class is red, and that's going to determine what happens next. So remember we talked about them completing their check-in form on Wednesday. They go through this and because they're adults, they can look at where they are and if they're classed as red, they can click into book in a red 20 check-in form the following day. That is part of their responsibility in order for you to be able to help them. They look at their check-in form. If they're red, they click the link, they book in, and on a Thursday you'll have a section blocked out for red 20 minute check-ins, and these red 20 minute check-ins are basically red flag check-ins where you can assess them and see exactly why they are red and you're going to be speaking about the things what they need to do to turn that red into amber, and that is it entirely for anyone which is amber and green.

(11:01)
Well, the green are welcomed to a group coaching call on Friday. Anyone who is Amber is highly recommended to attend that group coaching call and the people which are red have to attend that group coaching call, that group coaching call, let's just say for arbitrary sake, it could be at something like 6:00 PM on Friday, 5:00 PM It just depends on whether you working with general pop or not. When the people attend that group coaching call, that's going to do a number of benefits. Number one, it's going to create collective accountability because people there are going to be seeing other people putting in the graft, putting in the work and getting results, and that's going to lead to collective inspiration and equally pay setting. On top of that, it enables more support from peer to peer along with if you have a team, because then they aren't expecting you to be running the show you having all the answers.

(11:52)
And instead, you can build this cohesive network with breakout rooms and other guest experts coming in and teaching it and supporting your clients. Then on top of this, it equally gives other clients insights for upcoming challenges, what they are may possibly yet to experience. For instance, if you're working with female clients, one individual is explaining how they're suffering from constipation. Other clients may not have experienced constipation yet, but then in the following weeks, when they do, they can recall back to the answers what you had already shared on that group coaching call. So that means that you don't have to repeat yourself again and again and again, and you can actually upload these into a Facebook group into a guide section. On top of this, it creates a deeper experience because there's this famous quote, the coaching gets the client's results, your content gets the client, but your community gets them to stay, and it's all about the community where they can create this social being the social interaction where they feel seen, heard, understood, they feel part of a tribe, and that actually gets them to stay and play for longer.

(12:53)
Then on top of this, we can actually use this as a way to generate social proof because when they're sharing wins, they feel more compelled, they feel heard, they feel a sense of responsibility, and that can help you collect this social proof, these testimonials, and that can turn more into marketing, which can get you more leads and get you more sales. Equally with this, because people are staying playing and paying longer, that helps extend the lifetime value of your clients. So it means you now keep clients for longer because they don't just use the value of the program based on the time what they have with you, but on the experience what they having. And you can create this deeper experience because you can pull in guest lectures and you can pull in other industry leaders to possibly run a workshop once a month on a particular topic, which now means the program is always evolving and changing, and then on top of this enables you to have that opportunity to introduce team members because there isn't that bottleneck anymore of you running these sessions.

(13:46)
And equally, it enables your clients to overcome that self-doubt. It helps 'em overcome isolation because when they're struggling with health challenges, it's quite easy to internalize it and think it is only them. But if they're in a room with people similar to themselves, they're going to feel like they belong, they're going to feel like they're not strangers, they're going to feel like it's not suffering alone and they're going to feel welcomed. So that's the benefit of the group call. Now remember that red flag 20 minute call, what we talked about on Thursday the day before Friday. Well, the benefits here is that it enables you to go deeper with your clients in a more intimate session where you can actually get to the pinpoint problem and unpack that further. Because let's face it, if they're in the red, they may have more emotions related into their challenges and it requires that level of intimacy.

(14:30)
Equally with this, it protects your boundaries because you don't have to do check-ins week after week after week, which equally removes codependency because when you are there every single week for the clients on a one-on-one session, you actually become this emotional support blanket and they start leaning on you to spoonfeed them, and it becomes too energy taxing and too time expensive. So having that there only when they need it means they'll respect it when they book in and it enables you to cut straight through to the point. So that's the overview of it. Now, in regards to the check-in itself, because you're using a red, Amber Green process, not only are we doing this in a quantitative measure, but as they go through this check-in, they can see this heat map change from possibly more red over here, and then it could go more amber and go more green, and that's just a nice way for them to reflect and connect into how far they've come because people usually only associate you your service and the value that you provide with the goal what they have, and they forget all these other peripheral benefits such as their confidence, improving their relationships, improving their energy, their gut health, and all these other elements there.

(15:40)
So this is a nice way that they can connect and reflect into that so they can truly begin to really appreciate their growth, their journey, and that helps build and protect momentum because at the end of the day, the key thing for your client's results is their adherence. So the more we can keep the momentum high, the better results they're going to get. So let's actually crunch the numbers and let's look at how this is more beneficial. Obviously, we discussed how this is going to be more beneficial from you with enabling deeper results for your clients and how they're going to have a better experience. But when we look into this logistically, well, if you had 30 clients and you're doing 30 minute sessions with them each week, that's 15 hours plus the extra either side with this particular model, if we're looking at that group coaching call being a maximum of 90 minutes and then the red flag check-in 20 minutes is allocated to a maximum of 30% of your total client volume.

(16:32)
If you are hitting 30% of your total client volume requiring this red flag, 20 minute check-in, you're doing a bad job. But let's just allocate that as a buffer and then let's just be realistic. Let's just say 10% of your clients require this red flag 20 check-in. So we can gauge between 10 and 30% of those clients requiring this red flag, 20 minute check-in. Now we can reverse engineer the time. So you've got the 90 minute group call, you've got, let's say maximum nine out of the 30. 30% require a 20 minute check-in which is 180 minutes in total. Or realistically, there's only going to be three clients, 10%, which require this red flag, 20 minute check-in, which will be around 60 minutes time. Okay? So when we add this together, we've got 90 minutes plus 60 all the way up to 180 minutes. It now means the total time that you're working in your business is two and a half hours to four and a half hours per week.

(17:29)
That's a huge difference from working 15 hours in your business every single week. In fact, it actually pulls down the time that you have to work inside the business by 70% all the way up to 84%. You've now reduced on a weekly basis from working inside the business. So you take that massive haircut of you having to be stuck inside the business, which now means you can work on the business, which now means that you can focus more on learning, marketing, growing, and leading your team, which is going to help you scale further and further and further. So the bottom line of this is that it enables you to have the structure for you to scale your business beyond the restrictions, beyond the constraints of what you have possibly got set up already enables you to implement more of your team because you can implement community managers or client success managers and makes it more scalable In that sense, it enables you to actually handle more clients, enables you to keep clients for longer, enables better results, a deeper experience, and it enables you to collect more testimonials and referrals, which is all fantastic.

(18:27)
Now, there are some prerequisites for getting this set up. Now, number one, you're going to need about at least 10 clients in order for this to work effectively. If you have less than 10 clients, your goal should be making 10 clients. Additionally, you're going to make sure you have the correct transition support, whether that is emails, communications, and posts, to effectively transition your clients from the model that you have them Now to this evergreen model. On the top of this, you need to make sure you have the right onboarding process in place so they can have the correct level of perceived value and expectations. You equally need to know how to conduct the group calls effectively so they can stay engaged and show up. You also need to make sure that you can manage the community with a weekly rhythm, and then you need to make sure that you have a good understanding of the blueprint, which is the depth behind that check-in form, so you know exactly what key questions to include so you can have a good oversight of how they're progressing.

(19:19)
Sections may be related to their progress and their enjoyment of the nutrition and the training. Other sections may be gut health related, other sections might be related to hormones, other sections might be related to their energy and sleep. And then remember, there's that client specific section, but you need to have those other elements in that weekly check-in form so you can understand what foods to change in terms of macronutrients, how to change them accordingly, specific foods, how to change that accordingly, and also supplementation. So that is the overview of the evergreen model. Once you've mastered that, you can take that step up by adding in hot seats, by pulling in other industry leaders, and then equally, you can start looking at running quarterly or at least buying the events so you can go from a high tech world to a high touch world. I hope this helps. You've made it to the end, and that means not only are you committed to yourself, your business, but also your clients and would love to support you. So whether that means attracting high value clients, scaling your business online, or simply creating life changing results, head over to my Instagram, Mr. Jake Carter, and send the word ready.