Let me introduce you to Debbie.
Her full name is DIY, Distracted, Discouraged Debbie.
NOTE: I taught an entire class on Debbie's case study and you can watch the replay HERE if video is more your style
Debbie really wants a full-time nutrition practice that she can run from her laptop anywhere in the world, on her own schedule.
She knows it's possible to create a business that far surpasses a corporate income, but it seems really far away.
Like she just can't quite get there.
She thinks she hasn't figured out the right niche, the right offer, or the right certification yet.
Debbie keeps quitting and starting over right before she sees big payoffs in her efforts.
And don't get me wrong, she is putting forth HUGE EFFORTS.
Debbie obsesses about her business day in and day out.
She's always thinking about what she "should" be doing, and feels guilty when she's taking any time off.
Even if it's to spend time with her family, which she thought was the whole reason she wanted her own business in the first place.
Debbie keeps grinding away.
She's constantly taking more online courses (that get half-finished), posting on social media, "engaging" in free groups, networking with other practitioners about offering discounted services to their clients (which never actually come to her)...
...Not to mention creating tons of free content that hardly anyone ever sees, and trying exhaustively to build her email list (but never feeling like she has enough subscribers to actually send consistent emails to).
She sees other influencers online killing it selling digital products "passively" to their huge audiences, so she assumes she needs a huge audience to be successful.
Which is problematic, because Debbie hates being on social media.
Somewhere along the way, Debbie got so busy growing her audience that she forgot the reason she wanted that audience in the first place: To make money and grow a profitable business by helping people improve their health.
Ironically, she's now helping no one and her business is making no money because all her focus is on getting a bigger audience.
Debbie is working really hard, but on all the wrong things.
But let's back up for a second.
When Debbie started her practice, she wanted to take 1:1 clients. She looked around at what her classmates and colleagues were charging for 1:1 sessions on their websites, and settled on offering her sessions at $150.
She got her first paying client at $150 and spent 6 hours preparing for the session, and going over the clients' intake paperwork to create a custom plan.
When the initial session was almost over and it was time to sell her 6 month package, she chickened out and gave a vague promise to email the next steps and got off the session as quickly as possible.
(Which is totally normal at first, by the way.)
Debbie sees she cannot replace her corporate income and go full time in her practice at this rate by just having random one-off hourly clients.
Remember, she actually spent 7 hours preparing for and running the session, so her hourly rate was $21.
After figuring in taxes and expenses, Debbie realized she was going to make less than she would as a cashier at Target.
She (incorrectly) decides that taking 1:1 clients won't be sustainable and completely unplugs from her business for a month.
Although this is where many of her colleagues call it quits for good, Debbie perseveres. Yay, Debbie!
She's committed to getting her practice off the ground, so she sets out to get more clients in her new 5 week group program.
She's convinced it will be sustainable to do one weekly session and serve a bunch of clients at once in her group.
Yep, Debbie is sure this 5 week group program is the ticket.
Even though everyone she talks to has health problems they're trying to address through dietary changes, it's hard to get clients in her 5 week sugar detox group.
How can that be?!
Everyone is sick and looking for help, but getting paying clients isn't easy for Debbie.
Naturally, Debbie assumes she needs to lower her prices or offer more free stuff to get interest.
Debbie (incorrectly) thinks money is the biggest objection her potential clients have, so if she can make her offer really inexpensive, it will be an easy yes for them.
The 5 week group program only gets one participant.
Although that solo participant LOVED working with Debbie and experienced great results, Debbie is still averaging sub-Target cashier income.
Clearly she just needs more clients.
So, Debbie scraps the 5 week group program and re-launches her one hour consultation to new clients for free instead of charging $150.
She's sure this is the key.
But her calendar doesn't fill up with consults. Her social media posts get crickets.
Debbie goes back to overwhelm mode and completely quits engaging with her business for another month.
But she can't just quit. She goes back to the drawing board to give it another shot.
Debbie decides she needs a digital, passive product to sell instead of getting 1:1 clients.
She just can't get enough clients to make a full time income (or so she thinks), so she decides to create a membership instead where she can create content once a month and sell an unlimited amount of members for a low monthly fee.
Really, Debbie wants to sell this cheap membership instead of facing rejection on consult calls or running her group with only one participant, again.
She thinks she'll be able to avoid the pressure of working with 1:1 clients and it will save time in the long run.
So Debbie spends hundreds of hours on this "cheap" thing in an effort to save time.
Are you seeing the irony, here?
Debbie launches her membership and gets 10 members. YAY!!!
Except Debbie didn't heed the advice to always charge premium pricing.
Her members are paying $25 a month, which means Debbie is still working full-time creating her membership experience but is only making $250 a month.
(And she still needs to develop the skill of selling. There's no shortcut around that part.)
After 3 months, Debbie is burned out and has no desire to launch her membership again because she knows the math just doesn't work.
Her motivation is gone, and her members can feel her pulling away and resenting the time she's spending there, so they start to drop like flies.
She closes the membership and feels so defeated that she doesn't do anything in her business for two months.
Every time she even thinks about it she gets a feeling of dread and overwhelm.
There's a pretty loud voice in her head that's questioning whether or not she can really do this.
Maybe she should just work for someone else that has a bigger network so she can stop worrying about getting clients and just help people get healthier without the money stress.
2 months later, Debbie can't quite shake the vision of going full-time and is ready to reengage with her business again and start the momentum from zero again.
She completely starts over with a different niche and a new idea for an online course.
Back to the drawing board. Again.
It feels comfortable though, because Debbie is really good at starting over.
Her brain likes the clean slate and all the possibilities ahead because it's easy to hustle to create more content and do more busywork.
Debbie is hustling like crazy because she thinks there is a "right" way that she just hasn't found yet. She's chasing every sparkly squirrel that passes by thinking it's the secret she hasn't found, yet.
She's buying all the courses.
Watching all the webinars.
Doing all the certifications.
Posting on all the socials.
Creating all the free lead magnets.
"Growing her audience" like nobody's business. (But seriously, it's not helping nobody's business.)
Debbie wants to help people improve their health and live a fuller, more vibrant life. She knows deep in her bones that she can really help people.
But is she supposed to be growing a bigger audience first or starting right now?
She doesn't even know, anymore. It all seems very complicated.
If she could just crack the code on how to get enough paying clients and not burn herself out, she could create the freedom lifestyle and impact that she wants so bad.
It feels like she might get there someday but not now. She doesn't have all the pieces in place, yet.
Success is just around the corner but always out of reach.
Debbie is spinning her wheels and is keeping herself stuck because she doesn't yet know what Courtney knows.
(But don't worry. There's hope for Debbie.)
Now meet Courtney.
She has the exact same credentials and experience that Debbie has, but that's where the similarities end.
Calm, confident, coachable Courtney is approaching her practice differently.
She's going to make $100k in income this year because the process she's following is going to help her figure out all the details as they come up with the most ease and simplicity possible.
Courtney has a "figure it out" mentality.
She's also very certain about the direction she's headed and why she wants to go there.
Courtney isn't looking for lots of new certifications to get or wondering what courses to take.
She is laser focused on following the ONE process she's invested in learning, and building her business following that simple, sustainable format.
When it comes to making the "big decisions" like choosing a niche that trip up many of her colleagues, Courtney is decisive and doesn't second guess herself.
She doesn't think there is a right niche or a right offer to sell them.
Courtney doesn't even have a niche, yet.
And it's working just fine.
Read that again. She's making her way "right" instead of trying to find the right way.
It's easy for Courtney to stick to her process and not be tempted to quit and try another method because her business is organically growing massively just through word of mouth.
The clients that are coming to her through her organic, simple, repeatable marketing are her absolute dream clients.
Courtney's clients don't need convincing, or promotions, or discounts and BOGOs to invest in themselves.
They show up ready to start working with her right away.
She's found that "selling" isn't hard or uncomfortable at all when the clients coming to her are already a "HELL YES! I'm ready!" and want to start immediately.
Courtney's expensive to work with, by the way. And she isn't discounting her services or trying to sell a low-priced offer because it seems like the easy way.
Instead, she's following a proven method for getting good at selling and marketing her premium package so she will have that skill nailed for the rest of her career. (Which is the actual easy way.)
Courtney doesn't want shortcuts, as you can probably imagine.
She likes to have a new mountain to climb. And she especially likes that this new business mountain she gets paid to climb.
She loves the new skills that come with figuring out how to be a profitable business owner.
It's like personal development heaven.
Bottom line is this: Courtney doesn't second guess her niche or her business model. She's not trying to create a course or membership to scale with in the beginning because she's still figuring out how to grow her demand.
She's not in a hurry. She knows those digital products are coming when her business is ready for them, and by that time her skills are going to be even sharper and she'll know exactly what content to share and how she wants to teach it.
It's easy for Courtney to feel calm and enjoy the success she's having because she's following a system that works.
She has access to coaching and Q&A from a real, live person when she needs it.
Her coach is someone who has already done what she's doing and can help her find the best strategy when she's unsure of the best choice to make or what to do next.
She gets her coaching, then she confidently takes action on that decision and doesn't second guess herself.
And it's working. She's making money, helping so many people, and getting better and better at her skills and her messaging, and her clients are getting better and better results because of it.
That's why Courtney is calm and confident. She's having so much fun in her business because it's working.
The clients are reaching out to her, not the other way around.
Courtney just keeps focusing on her clients and their results, and they keep telling everyone they can to work with her. The new clients just keep showing up ready to get started.
The premium membership program Courtney's planning to launch in the future is practically creating itself because her clients are asking how to keep working with her long-term.
She knows exactly how she is going to support them through that offer and she already has the demand to fill it whenever she wants to launch it.
That's because Courtney knows how to sell and make money in her business on demand. She doesn't stress about getting clients because they are always coming.
Courtney knows she has the resources to figure anything out. She's totally supported and surrounded by others who have already built profitable practices and are helping her do it faster and with less stress.
Courtney is giddy with excitement when she thinks about her business three years from now.
She cannot wait to meet the version of her that is even better at selling to and serving her dreamiest clients.
If her business is this fun already, she can't even imagine what the future holds.
She can see that as she gets more clarity and confidence in her skills and processes, she will help her clients get better results as well. As her results come faster, so will theirs.
Courtney knows her success is inevitable. There is zero doubt whatsoever.
She will get there no matter what, and she's enjoying the milestones and new skills she's developing along the way.
What is the takeaway, here?
Debbie spins in confusion, doubt and overwhelm. She always feels behind and she's so hard on herself that she never gets a moment to feel proud of her successes.
Courtney is celebrating successes in her business and other areas of her life daily. She feels purposeful and light when she thinks about her practice.
She's so solid in her own ability to always "figure it out" and not quit that her confidence is spilling over into her marriage and her parenting, and, of course, her clients' results.
Everyone in her life can feel her calm confidence. More and more clients are being pulled towards her like bees to honey because they want to hire the calm, confident practitioner, too.
It's stressful to be Debbie.
It's fun and profitable to be Courtney.
