To each his own. Our differences are what sets us apart and what works for me may not work for you. And as you work with clients, you’ll find these differences in their diet, health history, and lifestyle, among others, which is a significant factor when considering what program will get them the best results. So the question we often ask is, “what should we actually put in the program?” Kendra Perry answers that question and more in this episode. She also shares how to look at those differences to see the connection and come up with one inclusive and effective approach that you can optimize through coaching. Listen and learn the best way to create your program with a generalized framework that allows your business to scale.
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This Will Help You Build Your Program
You’re going to like this episode. One of the most common questions that I get from my Health Coach Accelerator students and my audience, in general, is usually in regard to how to build the program. It can feel like a really big undertaking and it is. We often are confused as to what we should put in the program that is going to get the person we work with a result. I had a question from an HCA student and I thought this would be helpful to go over how I responded to this question on the show.
I’m paraphrasing this question, but it was something like this. “Kendra, what should I include in my program? I feel like every client I work with is different and it’s so individual. I have no idea what to include in it. How can you make a program when everyone needs something different? There’s a lot to unpack in this, but first, I want to start with this mindset, and yes, it is a mindset that everyone needs something different.
Also, I agree. Health is individualized. Everybody is a little bit different, just like every business is a little bit different, but each person does not need an entirely different thing than the next person. There are a lot of common things that tie together the foundations of health and a healthy lifestyle. The honest truth is if you make an entirely different program for every single client, your business is not scalable. It means that it can’t grow without a lot more work, effort, and time on your end and you are likely to burn out.
It’s going to cap the number of clients you work with. Maybe, your intention is to sell high-ticket one-on-one programs, where you customize and spend a ton of time on a protocol for each individual client. It could work that way and I’m talking about over the $5,000 mark. I’m talking about $10,000 and beyond, but that’s not how everyone wants to work. Still, even with that, not all people need an entirely different program. We make things complex as health coaches. I know this. I did a lot of health coaching certifications and we love to go into the nitty-gritty. We love to understand the little mechanisms of everything.
Oftentimes, we forget about the foundations of health and what ties together a healthy lifestyle. As you may or may not know, I have a program called HTMA Expert. I teach health practitioners, health professionals and health coaches how to interpret Hair Tissue Mineral Analysis, which is a functional test. I do coaching in this program. One thing that we are trying to bring everyone back to over and over again, I talk about this so much that I feel like it’s a broken record or I’m a broken record, but it’s important. I’m always bringing the practitioners back around. We have to make sure our clients have clean food, air and water and live in a clean environment.
In my opinion, those are the foundations of health. What often happens in the HTMA Expert is a lot of the practitioners get sidetracked with supplements, this and that. I’m like, “There’s no point in your clients spending $500 on supplements if they’re drinking the tap water which is full of toxins, drugs, residues, chemicals, metals and all of these things. I’m always bringing them back around. This is me trying to reel you in and start thinking about the foundations of health that tie everyone together or a healthy lifestyle together.
This analogy might help. Imagine that you got a book contract. You were reached out by a publisher and they want you to write a book on your topic, on your niche. People reading a book aren’t going to fill out an intake form. They don’t have access to testing, so you can’t customize anything. You have to write a general book. Let’s say you help women in their 30s resolve bloating, just as an example, what would you put in that book?
You can’t run a gut test on them. You can’t take a health history. You can’t talk to them or try to figure out what the unique things going on in their body are. What would you put in that book? What do you believe are the key things that somebody needs to implement and understand in their life to get the result? In this case, to resolve the bloating. What type of diet are you going to recommend?
Again, you can’t customize. You can’t run a food sensitivity test. You can’t do an elimination diet. What are you going to tell them? Maybe you’re going to tell them, “It’s this modified Paleo diet, a Whole30 diet, the carnivore diet or you’re going to give it a different name and you’re going to describe, “These are the foods that you should be avoiding and these are the foods that you should be eating in order to alleviate the bloating.”
What about the other things? Do you believe in detoxification? Do you believe that they need to balance their hormones? Do you believe that they need to drink bone broth? What is it? Think about what you would put in a book specifically for your person to solve the problem that they have? I hope that helps because, yes, people are different and maybe we all need a little bit of customization and a different approach, but there are certain things that we believe everyone should be doing. I want you to think about this.
Instead of treating everyone super differently and creating an entirely new diet, lifestyle plan, detox plan or whatever for each individual person like you want to figure out what everyone needs and that is going to form the basis of your program. Now, the other thing in this question where I think this student was getting tripped up is the fact that she was saying, “Every client I work with is different.”
What that tells me is the niche isn’t clear. We have to talk about the niche which you are attracting. If you are working with anyone and everyone, they’re all going to come to you at different points in their health journey. They’re going to have all these different issues. Maybe one person has acne. The other person has bloating. This person has Hashimoto’s. This person has rheumatoid arthritis or whatever. In that case, those foundations of health are still going to be important, but each condition has its nuances. That’s where you’re going to get tripped up, having to create this entirely different program for every single different person.
We need to get specific with who you’re trying to attract. We need to understand exactly who we want in our program, who the program is for and where they are in their journey. One thing upon digging deeper with this student, what she was saying is, “I want to recommend this type of diet, but then some people come to me and they’re already doing that. Other people come to me and they’re clueless, so then I need to recommend that.
What that told me is that she’s trying to attract all these different people at different stages in their journey, which is important. We want to know where they’re at. Maybe this is their first time accessing alternative health. Until now, they’ve been eating a chocolate muffin and a double Starbucks latte for breakfast or pizza for lunch with chips or whatever, and they’re wondering why they feel like crap every day.
That’s different than someone who is further along in their journey. Maybe they started having health issues a few years ago, did a lot of their research, and are already eating a paleo diet. They’re already doing yoga and they’re already meditating or whatever. These are different avatars and you need to know who you’re talking to. For example, I did work with a more complex client. I’m science-y and nerdy. I like to talk about all the little details, but by doing that, I attracted a much more complex client who was further along in their journey and I was fine with that.
It’s because I liked working with more complex clients, but obviously, it was trickier. It was harder for me to get people results because the problems were more complex than if I worked with someone earlier in their journey. You get them to eat protein for breakfast, start drinking water and they’re like, “I feel amazing.” You’re like, “There you go.” It’s different.
We want to know who we are attracting and at what point they are in their journey because that’s going to help you build the program. Because if I write a book for the newbie, the person who knows nothing, that book is not going to appeal to someone who’s further along in the journey. It’s important that you understand who you need to attract because you don’t want to be making two versions of your program, one for advanced and one for the newbie. What you need to do first and this always comes first. The niche is the linchpin in the business.
It’s the most important decision that you make when you start a business. It’s critical because it determines every single decision. It creates the foundation for your brand or your program. Everything you do comes back around to the niche and the person you serve. It is true for every business. I’m a business coach. I can help all kinds of businesses. I could help people who do eCommerce. I could help people who run agencies. I could help virtual assistants, but I don’t.
Will the stuff I teach to apply to those types of businesses? Probably, at least, to some degree, but I choose to help health coaches and not only regular coaches. I help health coaches, health practitioners or coaches in the personal development space. I help health and wellness coaches. If you were ever to sign up for Health Coach Accelerator and go through the program, you’ll notice that I’m making specific references to business as a health and wellness practitioner and coach throughout the entire program.
If you were to come into my program as a business coach, it probably wouldn’t resonate with you because all my examples are in health and wellness. The way that we niche and talk about business is different in health and wellness than it is in the B2B, the business-to-business space, someone who is doing business coaching. It’s different than it would be for a service-based business like a virtual assistant. It’s different for an agency.
My program is designed specifically for my person. Now, the business teachings could help a lot of different businesses. I do have people on social media who follow me who were in those different categories, but ultimately, my program is for one person at a very specific stage in their journey. I don’t help people who are further along in their business. I help the newbies. I help coaches and practitioners who are starting out. They literally just did their health coaching certification or maybe they are a chiropractor or a massage therapist or a dietician and they’ve been working offline and they want to start the online business.
They have experience in their craft but no idea about the online business space. I also help people who are maybe a couple of years into it, but they are not getting results. My program is very much for people who are 0 to 2 years into their business, the newbies. The people who need to know the education and understand the basics of online marketing. If somebody came to me and let’s say they were in year five.
They already had all the foundations set up and they were looking to optimize their evergreen funnel. I can help them with that, by the way, but am I going to create an entirely different program and strategy for that person? No, because that’s crazy. That would be an insane amount of work and it would dilute my message so that people really wouldn’t understand what I did. They were like, “Do you help the newbies or do you help the more advanced people?”
That person, while I could help them, I’m probably going to refer them to someone else who is a better fit to serve them. You need to know where they’re at in their journey and where they’re at in their health journey. What you need to do is you need to create the generalized program that everybody needs who fits into that niche so the person they are, where they are in their journey, the problem they have and the outcome they want, just like you would write a book.
Does that mean there’s no customization? Absolutely not. I am someone who never believes in a one-size-all approach. I think everyone is a little bit different, but that’s why we give people a flexible framework, which is your program. The customization comes through coaching and, in some cases, additions to a protocol. For example, in Health Coach Accelerator, I give you a framework. You get an online course that you follow that gives you the framework, but we have live group coaching calls every week.
We do live coaching on the call because everyone is a little bit different. Sometimes we have to tweak things or give them adaptations for certain people based on their unique life situations or the experience they’re having in their business. We also do weekly reviews so people can submit things like their lead magnet, their nurture sequence or whatever. We also give them feedback because, again, I don’t believe in a one size fits all approach, but I believe in flexible frameworks, which is what you need to start thinking about.
What is that generalized framework that you can create in your program that is flexible that you will help people customize through your coaching? The other way you can do it is with additions to a protocol. What I mean by that is you create that baseline protocol that everybody needs and then you give some minor customizations based on maybe a health history or if you’re a functional health coach, functional medicine, doctor or someone who runs labs, then you can customize it a little bit further.
To give you an example. When I was a health coach, I had a Google doc and in that Google doc, I had my entire generalized protocol written out into this Google document. It basically said, “These are the diet recommendations. I recommend that you eat this type of diet. Eat these foods, not these. I would then link to like the food list, the shopping list, the meal plan or whatever. I’d have that generalized thing, but then I would have the customizations based on the labs that I ran. I did hair tissue mineral analysis.
Sometimes, it would come up that people had high levels of calcium, so I wanted them to reduce the high calcium foods. I’d say, “Don’t prioritize these foods in your diet. Reduce these as much as possible,” and then I’ll give them a list of those high calcium foods. You can see there’s a generalized program with that little bit of customization. Also, I would have my sleep recommendations because, for the most part, everyone needs to follow the same sleep routine recommendations.
No screens at night. No exercise at night. Sleep in a dark room, sleep in a cold room and all of those things, but maybe there’d be some additional customizations because maybe in their intake, it showed up that they would watch movies late into the night. I’d say, “You’re watching movies until 11:00 every single night. Let’s cut that down. Let’s do that two times a week.” We’re then going to work towards eliminating that altogether or maybe allowing yourself to do that one time per week.
You can add in the little customizations, but that takes significantly less time than creating an entirely brand new protocol for each and every person, which again, is not scalable. It will not allow your business to grow because the great thing about the generalized program that you create, you do it one-on-one, which allows for a lot of customization. At some point, when you optimize that generalized program because you’re going to learn a lot from your one-on-one clients. You can repurpose that into a group coaching program where there is still customization through group coaching calls.
Also, at some point, you may want to transform that generalized program into an online course with no support. It’s just a DIY thing. You better be sure that your program will get people a result without support. The same thing goes for a book. This allows you to improve your program over time and get it to the point where the program on its own is someone worth following up without your support that could get a result.
The beauty of creating this generalized protocol document for your clients is that it’s easy when you bring another coach into your business. Maybe at some point, you’re going to have a group coaching program and you’re going to bring another coach to help you out in that program. Maybe you’re going to bring someone into your business to create protocols for you. That’s going to save you a lot of money, right? Because they don’t have to create a program from scratch every time a client comes in. They follow that generalized protocol and then make the customizations based on the intake or lab results.
I hope this helps because if we can’t move away from this customized-only mindset, then you’re going to be stuck with growing in your business and again, if you want to do that, that’s fine, but in a lot of time, it’s a lot of effort and it’s going to cap your income, so you better be charging big top dollar for that. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you want to support me and you love this show, you love the information I bring you, you can go to Apple Podcasts and give me a five-star review.
If that is too much effort for you, I understand, the next best way that you can support me is to make sure you are subscribed to the show. Hit download on the last three episodes because what that does is it helps me get in front of other health coaches who need help. I would greatly appreciate your support. My friend, I love you. You’ve got this. You’re going to build that amazing program and you’re going to scale the crap out of it. I will see you at the same time and place where I help you become a wealthy AF.
Important Links
- Apple Podcasts – The Wealthy Coach
- https://Training.KendraPerry.net/s/lDo3UK
- https://Go.KendraPerry.net/hca
