How I Grew My Business $100k in One Year
By Erin Holt
As women it can feel a little uncomfortable to talk about money because we're not really taught to do that. In fact, we're often taught the opposite—that talking about money is taboo. That it's tacky. It’s not appropriate.
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But if your goal is to start a private practice—or you currently run a private practice—you're now a business owner. (Congrats!) And as business owners, it’s important that we take a clinical approach to money.
Taking the Emotion Out of Money
Money is a benchmark tool. It is one of the ways that we can measure our success—not our success as humans, but in our practice and in our business. Taking the emotion out of money and using it as a metric helps us narrow in on things that are going well in our business, as well as things that perhaps need more of our attention.
Having said that, “taking the emotion out of money” is easier said than done. A lot of us carry shame, confusion, embarrassment, or mucky energy around money. This is why I spend a good chunk of time addressing this in the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy—understanding our money stories is key to making more of it.
A few years ago when I realized I grew my revenue to $100,000 in one year, I felt like I’d made a significant quantum leap. Since then I’ve been able to carry a similar growth trajectory into subsequent years.
With the discovery of this milestone I knew I needed to unpack what happened in this particular year. It wasn’t just taking on more clients. It was more than raising my rates. It wasn’t jam-packing my schedule. Many factors contributed to that massive leap.
1. Mindset
The first thing I did was shift my mindset around how I saw myself. I started seeing myself as a business owner. Prior to that I had been calling myself a variety of things: a part-time stay-at-home mom, a blogger, yoga teacher, or nutritionist. I had a really hard time claiming the title business owner (even though I did, in fact, run a business).
Around this same time, one of my close friends purchased a franchise of a sub shop. As she ran the franchise, she continued to refer to herself as a small business owner. Whenever she’d say this, I thought of her as the most successful person on the planet…BECAUSE hello! She was a small business owner! She claimed that title, so everyone around her also saw her that way, too.
I realized I had “othered” myself compared to my friend. When I made the connection that we were on the same playing field—small business owners—and my business was equally as worth celebrating—I felt more confident talking about work.
This mindset shift—seeing myself as a business owner—allowed me to take my work more seriously. I claimed and protected my work time (this can be a hard thing to do, especially if there are other things going on in your life, like being a parent or caregiver). This allowed me to invest more time, energy, focus, and MONEY into my business.
2. Investment
Once I made the mental shift of claiming my status as a business owner, I felt more confident in investing in my business. I stopped thinking about it as “spending money on myself” and started seeing it as an “investment in my business”—and this reframe changed the game for me.
The year I made that quantum growth, I invested in two main things.
BUSINESS COACHING
Investing in business coaching is the reason I’ve put so much of what I’ve learned into FNA. I want FNA students to have access to affordable business training—so all the things I’ve learned in business, my mistakes, my skill set that I’ve gleaned over the years—are all detailed throughout the program.
A FUNCTIONAL MEDICINE PROGRAM
I also invested in a functional medicine program. At this point in my life it was the most money I’d EVER spent on any one thing, and I remember feeling buyer’s remorse immediately after. But I wanted to get as much out of the program as I could, so that’s what I set out to do.
While the program itself gave me some valuable information, it was the ACT of investing that changed the game for me. It was the ACT of throwing down that amount of coin for myself. Betting on myself unlocked some hidden potential and helped me overcome some limiting beliefs I wasn’t even aware I had.
I also set the intention that I am going to get EXACTLY what I need out of the program, and because I carried that belief throughout—I did.
If you’re investing a chunk of coin in the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy online program, you need to ROLL UP with the energy that you’re doing this for YOU. You are going to get something out of this because that’s the INTENTION you set for YOURSELF.
Personally, I continue to invest in myself—and my business—because I trust myself to make it back. This is mostly due to the work I have done on my money mindset.
3. I changed my money mindset.
“Money mindset” is kind of a popular term these days, but I think where it can go wrong is when we make money mindset seem overly watered-down. Creating a new relationship with money and receiving is more complex than saying some mantras with a rose quartz crystal in your hand.
For me it was a little more complicated than that. In order for me to create a new narrative around money for myself, I first had to become aware of the stories I was telling myself about money.
That required some deep dives into unpacking the messages I had received around money, worth, and receiving. And then I had to understand how those messages informed my beliefs around myself and money.
For example, realizing the financial ceiling I had unknowingly set for myself.
I didn’t grow up wealthy. My mom was a single mom, working hard to put herself through school while raising three kids. When I was eight, my mother met my stepfather. At the time, he was making about $80,000 per year—a lot more money than our family had ever seen. I didn't realize this until much later in life, but that $80,000 was imprinted on my young brain as the Holy Grail to strive towards. I had subconsciously created that $80,000 as a ceiling for myself.
So when I surpassed this in my own business, a LOT of emotions came up for me (and not just the “good” ones). These emotions needed to be recognized, understood, and appropriately processed. And once I did that, a lot of really powerful things happened—not just for my business, but for myself personally, too.
Because it was so powerful, I outlined this exact process in FNA’s Money Course.
That belief work allowed my relationship with money to change dramatically. I no longer view it as scary or threatening or stressful. I no longer feel shame or incompetence around money. And in my practice I feel very confident and comfortable receiving compensation for my work (which is often a block for many people!!).
4. I stopped promoting MYSELF & started promoting MY WORK.
Many folks, especially those in health and nutrition fields, tend to hide behind their credentials. I was certainly one of them.
When I was getting started, I was teaching yoga. At that time in my local yoga world, there were a lot of health coaches. EVERYBODY and their sister was a health coach. As a way to differentiate myself as a “real expert”, I would talk about the fact that I actually went to school for dietetics and I had a degree in nutrition.
I led with credentialing as a way to feel I was differentiating myself from someone else who perhaps did not do those things, but it always left me feeling I was in competition with everyone else. In order to move away from that feeling, I had to shift into letting my work do the talking for me. Getting my hands dirty and my feet wet, diving in with clients and letting client testimonials and word-of-mouth referrals speak for me. I focused on content marketing and putting out good quality information to showcase my expertise.
I also lived my life as a testimony to my work. I embody what I teach and what I stand for, and people really feel that authenticity. The motto I often think of is: Don’t tell ‘em—SHOW ‘em.
Are you promoting YOURSELF or YOUR WORK?
Are you talking about your credentials or about what you can offer someone & the results you can generate?
These are the questions I had to ask myself, and the questions you need to ask yourself if you want to increase your confidence and level up your practice. When we lack confidence, we can get lost and stuck behind credentials. Talking about your credentials is great in a room full of your peers, but not when you’re talking to your potential clients.
Your potential clients only care about ONE thing:
Can you get them better?
Can you get them results?
Can you help them reach their goals?
I didn’t do well when I hid behind my credentials, but things started to change for me when I led with my work and when I communicated with potential clients: here’s how I can help you. THIS is the stuff people need to hear. We have to understand what people actually care about—make it less about us and more about them.
You might have all the credentials, but can you implement your knowledge? Do you know how to apply this to others? Do you know how to help people integrate info? Can you help them implement so it they can have a transformation?
This is the main focus of Funk’tional Nutrition Academy.
The way you help people is the thing that’s going to validate you.
If you struggle with confidence, if you struggle with imposter syndrome, know this: It’s not the credentialing that validates you, it’s your ability to help people. You are going to provide value when you give someone a transformation. More credentialing does not necessarily lead to transformation. This is what I focus on in FNA: I want to teach you how to create a transformative experience for your clients.
5. I worked smarter, not harder—through boundary work.
Practitioner burnout is NO JOKE. It is my belief that boundary work is THE antidote to practitioner burnout. There’s no longevity in this business, no sustainability, and no place for growth if we’re burning out doing what we’re doing now.
Getting clear on my own boundaries allowed me to say no to the things that were stressing me out and leading to burnout. It allowed me to attract my ideal customer. We talk a lot about calling in your ideal customer in FNA—this is so important because these are the people you actually enjoy working with. There’s a reciprocity to the relationship, an equal exchange between you and your client. It actually fills your cup rather than draining it.
Another important aspect to remember: YESes & NOs LOOK DIFFERENT ON EVERYBODY.
Not every decision is the right decision for everyone. You have to do what’s best for your emotional well-being over and above what’s going to grow your business. If it’s in alignment with our higher selves, it will be in alignment with our business. When we start focusing on monetary goals as primary, we can sometimes lose sight of aligning with our well-being.
I’ve seen a lot of people start working with business coaches or money coaches, and it often becomes a tunnel vision of growing the business. When that happens we fail to stop and ask the question: At the expense of what?
At the expense of our integrity?
At the expense of our well-being?
At the expense of our physical or mental health? Our piece of mind?
The reason I can handle so much in my business is because I have grown it in alignment with my Self. Capital S. My higher Self. That means doing what feels right TO ME even if it doesn’t feel right to someone else.
This IS the process of boundary work. Learning how to set and maintain boundaries increases feelings of abundance and prosperity, which then attracts more abundance and prosperity into my business.
You don’t have to do it the way that everyone else is telling you you have to do it. This is a central theme throughout the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy—there is not one KEY recipe for success. We have to do what’s right for us and tap into our own intuition, our own inner knowing—even if it isn’t what someone else is doing. This is the same stuff we help our clients with, and we can do it within our business, too.
6. Multiple income streams.
This may be the most obvious one, but I left it for last because all the above mentioned things have to come before this in order to be successful.
When you’re relying on your clients as your only source of income, it creates three distinct problems.
SELLING GETS AWKWARD
If you need clients in order to pay your bills, it creates an intense pressure cooker of a situation. If clients become the source of your money—that puts a lot of pressure on the client and relationship. Your sales approach becomes more about YOU & YOUR NEEDS vs. THEM & THEIR HEALING.
An energy shift needs to occur in how you approach sales with your clients.
“I need this sale to pay my bills”
verses
“I feel so confident in what I’m offering—I’ve done my market research, I’ve listened to people and I know this meets the needs and desires of people.”
WHEN YOU’RE TRADING HOURS FOR DOLLARS, IT CAN LEAD TO BURNOUT
We all have a finite amount of time, so if you’re jam-packing your schedule so full in order to make more money, that leaves no space for you. I see so many practitioners and coaches preaching about “self care” to their clients, yet unable to create the space in their OWN lives for their OWN self care.
TRADING HOURS FOR DOLLARS IS NOT SCALABLE
This is why people shy away from 1:1 work after a few years then move into coaching or group programs. Personally, I find that the reason I’ve become such a good clinician is because I stay in the trenches working 1:1 with people. It allows me to stay learning and growing my clinical skills, so it’s never been a goal of mine to never work 1:1 with clients.
You can keep 1:1 work as part of your business and still scale by opening up different income streams. My income streams include private clients, membership for 1:1 clients, group coaching programs, lab packages, plus sponsorships and partnerships with other brands. We talk through all these options in detail in FNA so you can start to see where you can shift away from trading your hours for dollars.
Because I am not overly reliant on ONE income stream, nothing feels overly stressful.
Talking about money and gaining a better understanding of how we think about money can only help propel you in your business and in life. These are the things I unpacked for myself, and because my goal is to help other practitioners level up their own businesses, these concepts are discussed in deep detail within and throughout the Funk’tional Nutrition Academy.
Ready to expand your private practice & get compensated for your expertise?
The business modules in FNA’s 14-month online program will help you do just that.
