The Good & The Bad from Building a 7-Figure Nutrition Business
Jan 30, 2024 9:45AM • 10:01
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coaches, key learnings, business, grow, nutrition, client, numbers, invest, moved, episode, big, appointment, hire, Stacey, nurture, podcast, helped, list, Pete, Central Queensland
00:00
We were pretty blind to our numbers. Financially, we were illiterate. I think early on, it was probably a good thing. I think if we knew our numbers, we would shut the doors much earlier. Welcome to How to Build a Profitable nutrition business. If you love nutrition, and you love helping people, and you want to be in the game long enough to keep doing that, then this is the podcast for you. Let's get into it. Welcome to our very first episode of How to Build a Profitable nutrition business. I am here with my business partner and wife, Stacey Hughes. And we're here to talk about Well, firstly, why we're qualified to even talk about the subject. And then our key learnings, a brief overview our key learnings from our time of having a nutrition business where we went from negative dollars, essentially to about 1.4 million in a very short period of time. So what are we doing with this podcast, I'll go into depth about all the things that we did right to get there. And then they'll be another episode and all our key learnings on things that we could have done differently. I'll be bringing on guest experts with key knowledge areas to help you grow your business. And then we'll also be interviewing expert nutritionists who have grown profitable nutrition businesses. Right this? So quick history of of our background and why we're qualified to talk about it. Yeah,
01:18
well, we started our business in 2015. We just had our third child. And we had three boys under three and we moved to your Poon, Central Queensland. We come from western Queensland, and Chris needed a bigger center to start nutrition business. So we moved to your pain and opened doors.
01:37
Yes, so it was my idea to move. So there was a bit of pressure on me to make it work into those first two or three years was basically just head down Bama seeing as many people as or could not providing a good service, really. But it was just a numbers game for me. I had kids to feed. And we set up in different locations, didn't we? So a lot of travel, a lot of travel. I remember traveling to Emerald for hours each way and then seeing clients for eight to 10 hours. I'd only ever do it on Friday, because I'd be exhausted then. Oh, you know, wouldn't work Saturday. But yeah, massive. But in the in those sitting up in different locations. The initial initial plan was to fill the calendar, I had to be full every day to make it worthwhile. In the end that actually helped helped us grow, though. I know you're against it, but because you had three kids at home. Yeah. But it enabled us to sort of have a footprint in these locations before we then put staff there. So yeah, anyway, we grew.
02:34
So yeah, and then we hired staff, and then actually
02:41
myself about that end up being fantastic. Yeah.
02:44
And that's the only way we could really grow our business. So we use government grants to do that, to hire the dieticians, and to hire the admin staff in each location. So that really helped us grow. And then we sold the business at the end of 2021. When
02:58
traveling in our Caribbean, which was a lifelong dream. The sell the business was a bit of a disaster in itself. But that's probably another episode. We sold it to quicken in a rush, but in the end, we just wanted out. Okay, so just looking at the the three things and what like I said, we'll go into depth about this in another episode. But what are the three things that we did? Well, that enabled us to go from negative dollars to 1.4 million over essentially four years? We grew in that that space? Yeah,
03:29
one was productizing. Our service. So moving, you wrote a book moving into the online space, creating health challenges that people could sign up to? Yeah, so really just offering more than just the traditional one on one consults.
03:44
Yeah, yeah, we had embodied machines, indirect colorimeters, where we'd measure people's metabolism, all things that would help clinically but they were that was the big thing was actually getting a coach because one of our coaches gave us that advice. That's right, Pete Clark. And he said, You've got to provide something that they can't get at home. And you can get information on the internet these days. But what are you providing that they can't get at home?
04:10
Yeah, so hiring coaches was another one. Because yeah, you you saw that web webinar that Pete Clark was running one night, he's like a late at night, I remember and you will, you couldn't believe the numbers that he was throwing around, and what his practice was doing, and you were like, wow, I need to learn from this guy. So you made contact with Peter and we did some coaching with Peter and that was one of the things was bringing in more things of value, which were the embodies and those other things.
04:38
Yeah, he was pivotable for our business, Pete. You know, he always just seeing as many people as I could without really any sense of knowing the numbers and you know, coaches in general was probably something I never considered but you coming from a business background had had really thought to invest in coaches and joining business blueprint,
04:58
business blueprint as well. I'll, that's something that really helped us both personally and professionally, professionally, to grow, and mindsets
05:07
to now with the online courses that we do, and everything has been amazing. I've
05:11
always invested in coaches or mentors. Yes, yeah,
05:15
it's expensive. And that's it's a hard one for me being the the simulator accumulator in the relationship, who's worried about what's going out where Stacey is really happy to invest, and then get a return on that investment, which is what we've really done with coaches. So yes,
05:31
so there was productizing, our service, investing in coaches. So what was our third one? Chris,
05:38
I think it was really understanding the importance of value for the client. So we needed to make sure that the clients felt valued walking away from your appointment. And we saw a lot of bulk bill. Clients that would be referred to us for for anyone that doesn't know what bulk billing is, it's basically the current client doesn't pay, it's a government funded program, and we get paid from the government, not a lot of money. Little bit controversial a lot, a lot of health professionals can't do it anymore. But for us, even those guys, we wanted them to make sure they felt value that they paid us with their time and we wanted them to feel value, then they would come on as private. And that's where it was profitable for us as a nutrition business. So yeah, coaches productizing understanding the importance of value. What about learning? Yeah,
06:29
so one was probably we didn't nurture our list well enough, while we were collecting emails, from our website, and also through the clinic, but we didn't nurture them, like we should have been set, sending them emails about what to expect before their appointments, and then what was going to happen after their appointment. So what other services that we had? So that's something we could have done better, that we weren't doing that, as most effective as we could have been given the list size we ended up having, we had
06:57
some great tools to build a list. So we actually had quite a large list. Here. We didn't know too that enough? Yes. Okay, what else?
07:08
Their culture or employee culture, we could have done that a bit better. Initially, we were really great at this. But I think we sort of knew we were going to sell the business. So we sort of changed our, our tact with that, and probably didn't invest enough in training and regular contact, we always have regular meetings. But what we used to do regular training sessions and fun things for the staff were we sort of didn't invest in that towards the end. And we grew quite big quite quickly. So
07:40
I remember we were at a conference and they said zero to 12 employees is the perfect number. Soon as you go above 12 to 50. It's painful. Yeah. And we were at 12, but had a job area.
07:52
Yeah. And we went to 17. Quite quickly, then 1718. So yeah, we probably needed a HR manager at that point. It was too big a role for me. So as well as doing everything else. So yeah, that was the point we needed another level with management burnout
08:11
to I think, yeah, so we're great culture. And then we got burnout with a few things. And in the end, we were just wanting to get out Well, essentially, and we let our culture slip. And that was a big, big problem. And the third would be our numbers. We were pretty blind to our numbers. Not we're good with our client numbers. I taught myself power behind that was a great thing. But financially, we were illiterate. I think early on, it was probably a good thing. I think if we knew our numbers, who would shut the doors much earlier. But certainly later on, we could attract their expenses a lot better.
08:48
And made some just inmate we made decisions not knowing our numbers. So made our decisions. Yeah, not based on the right. Yeah, measurements.
08:57
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So okay, so to summarize, we good things, were getting coaches productizing a service and understanding the importance of value. Yes, key learnings were nurturing our list, letting our culture slip, and being financially blind. So for the three, we do have more and more go into depth in other episodes. But as a brief intro, these are the key things that we learned and would do again. So that that is the very first episode. So hopefully, you got something out of that. The next episode will be a deeper dive into all the good things that we did that allowed us to grow to 1.4 million in a fairly short period of time. All right. Thanks. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Do you find this podcast valuable? There may be other nutrition professionals out there we'll also do like share and subscribe is going to help other nutrition professionals make an impact on the world just like you Thanks
