Scaling Your Wellness Practice: Boost Profits Without More Marketing
In this episode of the Thriving Holistic Practitioner podcast, host Lindsay Sutherland, a business consultant, discusses strategies for alternative wellness practitioners to build, grow, and scale their practices sustainably and ethically, without increasing marketing spend. Lindsay shares insights on using existing customer bases to enhance profitability, the importance of mindset in business, and offers a sneak peek into a three-day workshop focused on building systems and automations. The episode features practical tips including creating power offers, upselling, downselling, and raising prices smartly to increase revenue. Lindsay also highlights a case study showing a 50% revenue increase using these strategies and introduces the concept of joint ventures to gain new clients. Additionally, attendees of the workshop can expect to learn about leveraging technology for client follow-ups and maximizing referral business, all aimed at making holistic practices more profitable and impactful.
Meet Lindsay Sutherland, a passionate business consultant with a deep love for holistic modalities. Though her career path diverged from holistic practice, her innate talents and extensive experience have uniquely positioned her to guide others in the field. Lindsay's journey is fueled by a profound desire to combine her expertise in business and marketing with her fascination for holistic modalities. As a consultant, she empowers holistic practitioners to thrive by merging strategic business acumen with holistic principles.
Step into the world of Thriving Holistic Practitioner! Our podcast is tailored for holistic practitioners like you, striving for sustainable business growth, ethical marketing, and a fulfilling, balanced practice. Say goodbye to burnout and confusion as we guide you on a journey to success.
Are you a holistic practitioner ready to take your practice to the next level? Introducing the Thriving Holistic Practitioner Community, your go-to destination for expert guidance and support.
Join us for weekly live business trainings led by experienced consultant Lindsay Sutherland. Get your burning questions answered and connect with like-minded practitioners who are also on the path to success.
But wait, there's more! In celebration of our podcast launch, we're gifting the first 25 members a free Profit Acceleration Audit valued at $500! Discover how you can increase your profit by $40K a year without increasing marketing spend. Plus, receive a detailed PDF blueprint outlining actionable strategies.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity. Text HOLISTIC to 55444 now to join the Thriving Holistic Practitioner Community and claim your free profit acceleration audit. Let's thrive together!
00:00 Welcome to the Thriving Holistic Practitioner Podcast
01:36 Introducing Today's Focus: Increasing Profit Without More Marketing
02:05 Personal Anecdote: Embracing Authenticity in Entrepreneurship
03:13 Reflecting on Your 'Why' as a Practitioner
05:22 Upcoming Workshop Announcement: Boost Your Business
07:06 Five Ways to Boost Profitability in Your Practice
07:39 Deep Dive: Profit Acceleration Audit Case Study
12:18 The Power of Small Price Increases and Creating Value
16:24 Leveraging Joint Ventures for Business Growth
19:28 Closing Thoughts and Workshop Reminder
Transcript
Welcome to the thriving holistic practitioner podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, Lindsay Sutherland, business consultant who specializes
Speaker:in helping alternative wellness practitioners build, grow, and scale
Speaker:their practice sustainably and ethically.
Speaker:I'm so grateful to have you here.
Speaker:If you're an alternative wellness practitioner who is feeling burnt out
Speaker:and just blindsided by the business side of running a business, then you,
Speaker:my friend, are in the right place.
Speaker:On this podcast, I interview amazing, experienced, holistic practitioners
Speaker:who share all the beans and the glory about their business behind the scenes,
Speaker:the struggles, the way they overcame it, the cool things that worked out
Speaker:for them, and the really important piece, I think the mindset solutions
Speaker:that they came up with to help keep their head screwed on straight.
Speaker:I know as an entrepreneur, sometimes that alone can feel like the hardest part.
Speaker:And from time to time, I also do practitioner trainings that you'll see
Speaker:that it's just pure free consulting from a business perspective to help you really
Speaker:dig into your business and get it to grow.
Speaker:And if you'd like more one on one help, join the Thriving Holistic Practitioner
Speaker:community, which is linked below in the description, or you can find it
Speaker:on my website at lindsaysutherland.
Speaker:com.
Speaker:And there you will find other like minded practitioners who are all in the right
Speaker:space of mind to grow their business and
Speaker:be in a community where people are willing to share and there's no hidden agendas.
Speaker:I just love that about this community.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:My friends, as I said, you're in the right place.
Speaker:So let's dig in to today's episode.
Speaker:So welcome to today's practitioner training.
Speaker:What we are talking about is how to increase profit without
Speaker:increasing marketing spend.
Speaker:A lot of times when I talk to business owners and we talk
Speaker:about increasing profit, their first thing is I need more sales.
Speaker:I need more customers.
Speaker:And the reality is there are ways to use your existing customer
Speaker:base to be more profitable.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we're going to dive into that here in just a moment.
Speaker:Before I do that, I just want to say how, um, I went live on Instagram
Speaker:this morning and I was out gardening.
Speaker:I wanted to share with you a little bit of my takeaway there, because it does
Speaker:tie into what we're talking about today.
Speaker:And that was, I went out to the garden and I knew I wanted to go live.
Speaker:But I hadn't put on any makeup yet.
Speaker:I just, my hair was still wet from the shower I'd taken and I was hesitant at
Speaker:first to go live because I thought, Oh, you know, I don't really look that great.
Speaker:Blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:You know how we tell ourselves those things.
Speaker:Well, I said, you know what?
Speaker:Fooey with that.
Speaker:I'm going to do it anyway because one of the biggest reasons why I wanted
Speaker:to be an entrepreneur, why I wanted to work for myself is so that I don't have
Speaker:to answer to somebody else's agenda.
Speaker:That means I don't need somebody else's dress code.
Speaker:I don't need somebody else's, I don't need my appearance to
Speaker:match their expectation of me.
Speaker:And I thought, heck, I'm going to be authentic and just lean into this
Speaker:truth of who I am and why I did this.
Speaker:And I did.
Speaker:Um, and I want you to think about that too.
Speaker:You know, when you started your journey, uh, in your practice
Speaker:or as an entrepreneur, I'm sure that you had a mission, right?
Speaker:You had a personal mission, something you were, you were shooting for.
Speaker:Was it time freedom?
Speaker:Was it expression freedom?
Speaker:Was it the ability to run a practice your way instead of, you know,
Speaker:maybe from a corporate perspective, you had a different vision for how
Speaker:you wanted to take care of people.
Speaker:It doesn't really matter what it was that got you there.
Speaker:I want you to lean into that and just remind yourself of your why, because
Speaker:see what can happen is we can get.
Speaker:So busy and so bogged down with the ins and outs of running our business
Speaker:that we might forget that we did that.
Speaker:You know, I've been there too.
Speaker:I've gotten caught up in, oh, I can't do YouTube unless I
Speaker:have the right video style.
Speaker:If I don't have the right image, et cetera.
Speaker:Well, at the end of the day, you know, I am here to be myself and I'm here to
Speaker:do what this gift God gave me to do.
Speaker:And that's to help business owners thrive.
Speaker:I don't need to look a certain way to do that.
Speaker:Although my mind will get myself caught up into that, or I'll get
Speaker:caught up into the weeds of, you know, making sure everything online,
Speaker:my digital presence is to perfection.
Speaker:You know, all these little things that we can get our busy ness, but you know,
Speaker:what I'm here to do is serve people.
Speaker:And when I'm busy working.
Speaker:On my business, like in my business, doing the day to day operations,
Speaker:building the landing page to perfection.
Speaker:Um, I'm not working on my business in a way that serves me.
Speaker:to the highest capacity, which means then that I'm serving you.
Speaker:And so I just invite us all to take a moment and reflect on our why and what
Speaker:was our mission when we got into this, just to bring it back to the forefront.
Speaker:Because, you know, when we talk about being profitable, I think what's
Speaker:really important is to remember that The reason we want to be profitable
Speaker:is so that we can make a bigger impact so that our business can be healthy.
Speaker:You know, just like our bodies need health, our business needs health as well.
Speaker:And, um, I wanted to share with you, we have a three day workshop
Speaker:coming up starting May 28th.
Speaker:Go register.
Speaker:This is going to be a hands on Workshop so one hour a day for three days, and
Speaker:we're talking about building systems and automations in your business so
Speaker:that you can get your time back so you can get back to doing these things
Speaker:that you started wanted to do from the beginning or so that you could be more
Speaker:intentional on working on your business, scaling it so you're not getting stuck.
Speaker:in the weeds as much because we can we can get some of these things that you're
Speaker:spending a lot of time on off your plate.
Speaker:So head over to lindsaysutherland.
Speaker:com forward slash organize your practice and there's a registration form there
Speaker:you can get signed up it's totally free and then those for those of you that
Speaker:are prize motivated kind of like Me.
Speaker:Um, we have some amazing giveaways.
Speaker:So we're having fun with this.
Speaker:We're going to be doing a group, a Facebook pop up group.
Speaker:We want you to get in there and get engaged and have a good time
Speaker:in the process because we're giving away some amazing, amazing gifts.
Speaker:So, for example, some systems that are pre built that you can get tap into.
Speaker:Thousands of dollars worth of coaching, just so many good things.
Speaker:These profit acceleration audits that you might've heard me talk about,
Speaker:which I'm going to be talking about a little bit more today, because I
Speaker:have a story I want to share with you.
Speaker:Um, but anyway, I think it all adds up.
Speaker:We were doing the math the other day.
Speaker:3, 500 worth of prize drawing.
Speaker:So head over there, check it out.
Speaker:Let's get in there and get going and get excited.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:So for today's episode, we're talking again, like I said, about five ways
Speaker:you can become more profitable.
Speaker:Now I'm going to keep this short and sweet and to the point, just because I know
Speaker:that when we're listening to podcasts, we don't always have a whole lot of
Speaker:time, but So right off the bat, I want to let you know on lindsaysutherland.
Speaker:com you can download a PDF that will go into a little bit more elaboration,
Speaker:um, that I might go into today.
Speaker:It's called five steps to more profit in your business without
Speaker:increasing marketing spend.
Speaker:Again, it's a free download for you.
Speaker:Which we're going to dive into now.
Speaker:One of the things that I do for, for new clients is a profit acceleration audit.
Speaker:Uh, we spend about 90 minutes on a phone call and my software, I'm going
Speaker:to plug your business into my software.
Speaker:And when we do that, there's 12 different areas, impact areas
Speaker:where we could pull from to.
Speaker:Find ways to boost profit in your business.
Speaker:And usually when I'm meeting with you, I only get to go over maybe
Speaker:three or four, but first I listen to you, listen to your business.
Speaker:What, tell me a little bit about your business and what's going on.
Speaker:And then based on what I know, I'm going to choose three or four that are going
Speaker:to be the most significant for you.
Speaker:So for example, recently, and this ties into the, the download, because
Speaker:I did a profit acceleration software, audit for one of the gentlemen who
Speaker:was on our podcast, which I haven't shared his episode yet, it's coming up.
Speaker:So you definitely want to subscribe.
Speaker:He's a foot zoner and, um, cool story.
Speaker:He got, he learned his craft in Idaho where I'm from, uh, or where I live now,
Speaker:I guess I'm actually from Arizona, but now he lives in Utah and he's a foot zoner.
Speaker:And we got talking about his business and, you know, he has a mission.
Speaker:He has a goal.
Speaker:Um, That he wanted to achieve.
Speaker:Now, I'm not going to divulge his personal business information, because I wouldn't
Speaker:do that anyway, but I want to share with you the gist of our conversation and the
Speaker:overarching result, because honestly, that's what's the most significant.
Speaker:Anyway, the cool thing was that with the current clientele he has, we were able
Speaker:to get some actual numbers on paper of how many clients he sees pretty much
Speaker:consistently on a month to month basis.
Speaker:And we were able to figure out how much dollars each client is generating.
Speaker:Then based on that, using the software, we picked out, well, I picked out
Speaker:three, uh, I think we ended up with four different areas, but three to start with.
Speaker:And then we were That are, um, really significant and these
Speaker:three, what we were able to do is using his current client base.
Speaker:We were able to increase his revenue yearly revenue by 50%.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So what does that mean?
Speaker:So if a business is making 100, 000.
Speaker:A 50 percent increase would be 50, 000.
Speaker:A 100 percent increase would be 100, 000.
Speaker:So we were able to get him a 50 percent increase with just three key areas.
Speaker:And a lot of it came down to, um, creating products, unique products
Speaker:that he could upsell or downsell.
Speaker:So if you look at this, uh, the PDF that I just mentioned a little
Speaker:bit ago, upsell and downsell are two really significant, um, areas.
Speaker:That's an easy way to start incorporating more, um, more revenue
Speaker:from the current client base you have.
Speaker:Now, if you don't have packages that, I call them power offers, okay?
Speaker:So, in our conversation, Dave's in my conversation, we kind of outlined
Speaker:a power offer that makes made him a little bit less commoditizable.
Speaker:So what do I mean by that?
Speaker:Well, as a foot zoner, he was charging the same way that like,
Speaker:um, a massage therapist charges by the minute or by the hour.
Speaker:So by creating bundled packages, it made it so that his packages
Speaker:were not based on time.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Because it's very easy for somebody to shop.
Speaker:Let's say we're shopping a massage therapist.
Speaker:This massage therapist is charging a dollar a minute.
Speaker:This is charging 75 cents a minute.
Speaker:Well, okay.
Speaker:It's easy to press shop, right?
Speaker:Because we know we have a general expectation of what we're
Speaker:going to get in that same time.
Speaker:Well, when you create a power offer and you, um, I'd be, I call it bedazzled.
Speaker:You get yourself to a position where it's harder to shop.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:It's harder to say that one person is offering the same service
Speaker:than another person is offering.
Speaker:And when you create that power offer, and then you tie in a way to
Speaker:upsell in a way to downsell, you can significantly increase your profitability.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:And in the three day workshop, one of the things we're going to be talking
Speaker:about is how having extra time in your business allows you to work on
Speaker:things like creating a power offer.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Because once you have the extra time and you're not so busy doing the day to day
Speaker:things in your business, you have time to really think and get creative and really
Speaker:start putting your business into motion, into getting some juice back into it.
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we talked about, um, Oh, one of the other things on this,
Speaker:on this PDF is raising prices.
Speaker:And that's something else that Dave and I did is we just
Speaker:looked at raising his prices.
Speaker:And here's the crazy thing.
Speaker:A lot of times people think, Oh my goodness, I can't raise my prices.
Speaker:And the part of the reason is a lot of times because they're thinking about their
Speaker:competition from a commoditizable type of perspective, just like I described
Speaker:with the massage therapist, right?
Speaker:A massage therapist who charges a dollar 25 a minute.
Speaker:Is pricing themselves out of the market.
Speaker:If all they're doing is offering the massage for that price, you know,
Speaker:there's got to be an experience.
Speaker:There's got to be other things around it that make it worth that extra,
Speaker:um, and you really need it to be what we call a no brainer offer.
Speaker:Something that's so, um, Obvious that people will want to say yes, so that's
Speaker:what's a no brainer offer now what I would say With raising the prices is
Speaker:when you create a power offer That gives you the ability to raise your prices
Speaker:just ever so slightly to the point where You are now more profitable, but
Speaker:another way to go about this is to think about things on a small micro scale.
Speaker:A lot of times when people think about raising their prices, you know, like
Speaker:just recently I went to get some pizza at the pizza, this local pizza place and
Speaker:their pizza price online was 18 a pizza.
Speaker:Well, when I got there, it was now 22 a pizza and they hadn't raised,
Speaker:they hadn't updated their website.
Speaker:They were just making this transition literally that day.
Speaker:And I was a little bummed because I had ordered two pizzas.
Speaker:And so I was thinking about this later.
Speaker:I thought, you know, from 18 to 22, that's like a 40 percent increase.
Speaker:And on one pizza, it may not have been a deal breaker for me, but when my.
Speaker:I had planned on spending roughly 40 and then afterwards ended
Speaker:up spending 50, closer to 50.
Speaker:That 10 bump really felt like a lot as a consumer.
Speaker:I know it's simple.
Speaker:It's just 10, but my expectation was 40.
Speaker:So it just threw me for a loop.
Speaker:And I asked the guy, I said, what's up?
Speaker:Because your price is like, what's happening?
Speaker:I thought he was Um, and I asked him about it and he said, Oh, we just raised
Speaker:our prices and we just haven't updated our website and I got thinking about it.
Speaker:If he would have only increased his prices by 2 a pizza versus the
Speaker:4 a pizza, I think that would have been a little bit more palatable.
Speaker:And just thinking about it from a consumer slash marketing perspective.
Speaker:Now he may be a corporate run.
Speaker:He's got some corporations and they're dictating the prices.
Speaker:I'm not really sure, but at the end of the day, you know, just looking at
Speaker:this, my point is to say, you don't have to jack your prices sky high
Speaker:to see significant results you can simply, you know, 5 percent is so
Speaker:nominal, uh, increase It it really adds up over time, and even 2 in his case
Speaker:would have been a 20 percent increase.
Speaker:So even a 20 percent increase could have been absorbed by the consumer
Speaker:mentally speaking so much easier, right?
Speaker:So just think through that.
Speaker:It doesn't have to be.
Speaker:The Mac daddy price increase.
Speaker:It could just simply be a small increase.
Speaker:And another thing too, is you don't have to increase all of your prices.
Speaker:If you want to keep your entry level price low, do that and
Speaker:raise the ancillary products that you're upselling or downselling.
Speaker:There is something I did with Dave.
Speaker:That's not on this, um, PDF.
Speaker:Ooh, you guys are going to get a benefit here.
Speaker:This is a bonus benefit.
Speaker:All right, here's how I'm going to wrap it up.
Speaker:I'm going to share with you what.
Speaker:I did with Dave that took him to 100 percent increase in his, um, revenue,
Speaker:and I want you to go download the PDF.
Speaker:I talked about to get the extra two, um, ways to increase your profitability
Speaker:without increasing marketing spend.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So the last thing that we did.
Speaker:was called a joint venture.
Speaker:Now, you've already heard on this podcast.
Speaker:If you've been listening, you know, this is something that I talk about
Speaker:a lot with a lot of the guests.
Speaker:It is such a significant way to increase your profitability.
Speaker:Now, how we did it is this.
Speaker:I talked to him.
Speaker:I said, Hey, What if you could only get and I want to say it was let me
Speaker:think for the math for just a second.
Speaker:Actually, I think it was about 40 percent more customers per month.
Speaker:But let me double check just because I want to be accurate.
Speaker:Oh, no, 15 percent 15 percent more clients a month.
Speaker:With a joint venture opportunity.
Speaker:And what if now here's the really beautiful part about it.
Speaker:So pretend let's just use easy math.
Speaker:Okay, say you have 20 customers a month.
Speaker:15 percent is a roughly three new customers a month.
Speaker:It's so small.
Speaker:It's so small.
Speaker:But now if you, if you partner that with a power offer or a reoccurring
Speaker:offer, like for example, a membership or a, um, Subscription model.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:You get that, that, that three new customers.
Speaker:If only 50 percent of them sign up for that, then we'll
Speaker:say only one, you know, 50%.
Speaker:So 1.
Speaker:5 gets a singular product from you and they don't sign up for
Speaker:a long term offer, but one to 1.
Speaker:5 does, and you build a new relationship every month.
Speaker:So you're getting Let's just use easy math.
Speaker:One new customer from every new relationship that compounds monthly.
Speaker:And let's say that relationship is worth 50.
Speaker:So that one person is equal 50 a month, times that by 12 months.
Speaker:Now that's 600 a year.
Speaker:And then every month you get that, you get 12 new people a month.
Speaker:60 or 600 times 12 is, I know that 7, 200, 7, 200 more a year compounding, right?
Speaker:Every every this builds on itself.
Speaker:That's not even taking into account the extra 1.
Speaker:5 customer who comes in and does buys one thing and maybe comes back
Speaker:in six months and buys one thing.
Speaker:You know what I mean?
Speaker:Like when you think about it.
Speaker:On a global scale like that, like a year long scale versus just a
Speaker:one and done, those relationships become so, so, so critical.
Speaker:Now, I want to finish this up and button this up with one last piece.
Speaker:It will not serve you to go out and make a relationship and not have a
Speaker:system in place to follow up with them.
Speaker:It would not serve you to have to build that relationship, be getting the leads
Speaker:and then not have systems in place to service those leads and ensure that those
Speaker:customers are happy that you get not just that one time business or that reoccurring
Speaker:business, but referral business.
Speaker:Okay, capitalize on this opportunity and be prepared.
Speaker:By joining us for this three day workshop, be prepared, but systems
Speaker:that are going to help you leverage technology so that you don't leave
Speaker:any stone unturned in your business.
Speaker:And so that also you don't have to have that mental load trying
Speaker:to build those relationships.
Speaker:It's one off, one off, one off every single time.
Speaker:What do I mean by that?
Speaker:That means like having automations in place so that when somebody joins you for
Speaker:the first time, you want to serve them with the highest level of service you can.
Speaker:That means they get that welcome email.
Speaker:Maybe they even get a letter in the mail.
Speaker:They get that personalized text message from you, thanking you,
Speaker:thanking them for coming aboard.
Speaker:Then three months later, they get.
Speaker:You know, a review process or a referral request.
Speaker:You see where I'm coming from?
Speaker:Like there's so many ways to capitalize on this beautiful opportunity, and it
Speaker:doesn't cost you any money to do that.
Speaker:Like as far as marketing dollars go.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So that's the training today.
Speaker:Powerful training, lots of good details here.
Speaker:And I know you might have a lot of questions.
Speaker:If you do join us for this workshop, because you're going to meet me
Speaker:and my, my business partner, Emily Tornateur, who's a business organizer.
Speaker:She also used to run her own massage therapy practice.
Speaker:And so between the two of us, man, you are going to get some good
Speaker:Experience coming out of this.
Speaker:You're going to get time back.
Speaker:You're going to have fun doing it.
Speaker:And you're going to really set your business up to scale so that you
Speaker:could build out these things that are going to make you more profitable.
Speaker:All right, my friends, thanks for tuning in this week until next time.
Speaker:Bye for now.
