How I Started My Online Nutrition Business (From 0 Clients to 25 in 3 Months – What I Wish I Knew)

hey there Dr Mark here and in today's video I'm going to show you the exact steps I took to start my nutrition coaching business I'm going to show you how I got my first paying clients the exact systems I Ed to coach them and then how I turned this into a full-time job starting with how I got my first paying client I will never forget my first paying client this is a memory that's etched in my brain it was a guy I knew from the gym he handed me over $450 of cash to coach him

for 3 months and I couldn't believe this was happening see at this point I was doing some bartending while in grad school so I was making money but I wasn't making money with my passion and my knowledge and everything I loved and not having to cash out at 3:00 a.m. in the morning so this was incredible and how I started coaching this individual was I just told him how I approached my own nutrition and how it worked better than anything else that I had tried and I was finally getting so much stronger and leaner and

naturally he was curious about this process so instead of telling him how it would work with him I just showed him I took him through an assessment and I showed him what was holding him back from his goals and the next day he showed up in the gym with cash ready to go it was crazy to me your first paying client will come from someone you know you just need to give them the opportunity but you're probably wondering where did this go from here and where did my next 25 paying clients come from taking this

and turning it into a full-on side hustle that's up next and I'm also going to tell you what I wish I knew then that I know now the one thing that I wish I would have known before I started nutrition coaching on the way up to 25 clients is that the people that we're working with they really only care about one thing and that thing is results they don't really care about how you conduct your coaching or what you focus on or really how you do it they really only care about what's in it for

them the thing that they really want is results they are starving for results so if you can deliver on that you're going to land more nutrition clients and that's what's going to fuel your business and once you have that you're going to start to develop something called social proof you're going to have proof that your coaching works and other people are going to see it and they're going to start to visualize themselves getting that result as well so once I started getting clients results I I just started posting about it I tagged my clients in

it so everyone could see it and it didn't matter what the result was if it was small or it was big it really didn't matter you don't have to wait on that stuff you just need to start talking about the results that you're helping your clients get because their friends their family their co-workers their acquaintances are going to see this stuff and they're going to get curious about who is helping them and that's how I started to gain more clients and worked my way up to around 25 clients and this all happened relatively quick but

this was only once I actually had paying clients but it wasn't always that way there was actually a period of time probably about 4 years between 2008 and 2012 where I really wasn't doing anything truth be told I was in learning mode I was consuming content left and right but not taking any action and that was my roadblock I needed to bridge the gap between knowing and doing between watching and implementing and if you're anything like me this is the exact thing you need to do as well but once I started showing up as the

person that could help people with their nutrition my business started taking off and it started to scale but here's how I took it to the next level getting up to around a 100 clients Yes you heard that correctly there was a period of time where I worked with 100 plus clients and here's how I did it if you want to work with more clients getting up all the way to 100 plus clients you need to do it a certain way and it can't be in person with oneon-one meetings or doing anything live there's no one-on-one

sessions or appointments or counseling sessions none of that is going to work you need a coaching system that is scalable and that means delivering your coaching in a non-li way and your clients are going to appreciate this because keep in mind the only thing they really care about is results not how you get them of course they want to be taken care of and learn things and feel like they're being heard but you can do that all through correspondence in an effective way without meeting them and wasting a bunch of time talking about Pleasant trees

and how their week was and that doesn't mean traveling somewhere to meet them or having them meet you at this point in my business most of the clients that I worked with I still knew in person but I didn't conduct any of the coaching that way because it just isn't an effective use of time so you need to create a coaching system around that and you also need to charge accordingly for your services because you don't charge based on the time it takes you to do something you charge based on delivering a result and when

you do that it's not hard to work up to a 100 clients with a coaching product that's scalable that works that your clients love and that you can make money doing and that's The Sweet Spot ideally at some point if you do want more clients you're going to want to focus and get more specific with who you help one type of person one payoff one result for me this was fat loss and improved body composition with strength athletes if I think going all the way back to that first client he definitely was that type of

person looking to optimize his body composition within a weight class that's what I was focusing on this is a Content area I knew like the back of my hand and that's why I was so certain about my Approach and that client was so eager to hand that money over to me if you want to grow your business at some point you want to be known for something something specific and that's the process of niching down now keep in mind there are many ways to skin a cat but this is the process that worked really well

for me while starting my nutrition coaching delivering your coaching in an effective and scalable way not doing live meetings or counseling sessions charging for your coaching as a coaching fee and not for individual sessions if you do everything this way your business will grow that is the best path moving forward it's a path that worked for me it's the path that worked for all the nutrition coaches that I train so I'm confident it'll work for you too but if you still want more information on how to get this started I have an entire program doing

just that so go to the first link in my description and check it out now at this point though there were some mistakes I was making so I want to save you the headache and the struggle of making them yourself so here's the advice that I would give myself now now the one thing that I really struggled with at the beginning of my nutrition coaching and I know this now because it cost me a lot of money and it also impacted my client's results was that I was focusing on being right and not being helpful

and the differen between these two things as I approach my coaching but also my marketing or how I talked about my coaching as someone that was science-based that wanted to give all the correct informations there were times where I really wasn't listening well enough to my clients and what they wanted and how they wanted to do things and supporting them through that as well as how I talked about my coaching on social media but also in the correspondence it was suited to my language and what worked for me and my peers and other coaches and

not the people that I wanted to help so a lot of time the best advice I can give to new coaches is focus on being helpful and not just being right because those are two different things and here's a good example of that let's talk about the concept of toning up most coaches in the space know that this isn't a real thing what most people are trying to describe is getting leaner and gaining some muscle and Visually looking different but toning up scientifically isn't an actual thing but that's okay because that's what the people that

we want to help that's what they know it as so if you're trying to be right you're going to drag that concept down you're going to say it's not true you need to focus on this or this is what you really want but if people know that's what they want they want to tone up what's the worst thing that could happen if you talk about it they actually do the things that they need to do to get leaner and gain muscle and then they actually tone up so if you start to do that now at

the beginning of your nutrition coaching career you'll be in a great spot so that's the advice I would give you at this point but at this point in my career I had everything going I was working through some of those mistakes and getting some great results with my clients and my business in spite of some of these knucklehead mistakes I was making but business was growing and I had a decision to make between the safe path and staying with teaching and doing some research in the University system or would I say on this entrepreneurial coaching

path and that's what I needed to decide and you may have guessed I decided to stick with coaching and it was the best decision that I ever made there's absolutely nothing wrong with the conventional path there is some security there's less uncertainty but that wasn't for me number one I don't like to see my effort be wasted and there's a cap on how how much money you can make and how much impact you can have and not to mention the red tape of having others weighing in on important decisions and the meetings I will not

miss the meetings so if you're someone that wants to do their own thing on their own path just like me then you can take your passion for nutrition and turn it into a profitable business it's totally doable and why I decided to leave the university system and it's been totally worth it I got young kids at home and I don't need to miss anything with them and I get to live during the middle of the day or whenever I want it's totally worth it but there were some low points in this transition and I want

to tell you about that and this one aspect was even when I was working with all of those clients all of 100 of them the unfortunate part about that situation was even though I had a bunch of clients and I was working really hard I wasn't making crazy money and that's because I wasn't charging enough so I was working non-stop managing and coaching clients but I wasn't really being rewarded for it and that's because I wasn't charging it enough and it wasn't until I raised my prices that I had a more more manageable client roster

full of clients that listened to me that wanted to work with me that were getting great results that I found this balance you don't want to leave a standard job for a flexible one only to find out that you're going to be working the entire time and this usually comes down to price now most business problems are actually just personal problems in Disguise so charge what you're worth and business will take care of itself now there are a few other things that you should be doing just from the beginning one piece of advice that I

have for a nutrition coach that is just starting is that you need to make it really obvious that there's an opportunity to work with you so many coaches are really embarrassed to be salesy and that really limits them you need to make it known that you are a coach that can be hired and this means in social media posts but it also means in person you need to talk about the opportunity when you don't no one will hire you and that isn't because you're not good it's not a reflection of your coaching it's because no

one knows about it and in that way no one wins but when you can do this you'll have no problem getting your nutrition coaching started which will turn this into the best career and here's why here's what drives me as a nutrition coach and it's my guiding Northstar I get to help people with my passion and see their lives change imagine having a career that doesn't just give you a paycheck you actually bend the rules of time yes I have the flexibility to work when it suits me and the best part I have the opportunity

to scale up my business to see my effort turn into things that are more than just numbers more like real life growth and well more money too I get more time to spend with my friends and family never asking for time off but let me share with you the core reason the why that really fuels my fire in this career it's about making a difference that goes beyond nutrition and fitness coaching is about leaving people in a better place than you found them and when you can take people that have struggled with this their entire

lives either they haven't been shown the right way or got the right guidance or had someone that believed in them that's where I get to help with nutrition and fitness being the most important vehicle for personal change it changes lives man and I will never take that for granted and that's how I got started in my nutrition coaching business now as great as all those tips are if you're really serious about starting a nutrition coaching business the next thing I'll have you do is check out this video I've linked up right here let me show

you exactly what a nutrition coach making six figures a year dozen a day so make sure to check it out now and I'll see you in the next video