Hi there! Today we’re going to talk about more about how to brand yourself as a health coach, yoga teacher and wellness entrepreneur to attract more clients.
This is especially important if you have multiple certifications and you find yourself getting stuck on what to focus on or what to talk about because you have so many specialties. Maybe you’re a yoga teacher, and a Thai massage specialist, or you’re a myofascial release therapist, as well as a personal trainer, or physical therapist and yoga teacher, and maybe nutritionist on top of that.
How Do You Know What To Focus On And Communicate As A Brand?
The perspective of branding for the health coach, yoga teacher, wellness entrepreneur that we’re going to talk about today is not from the corporate branding model where you develop a logo, and you have a color scheme, and you put that into your Canva. Or even a health coaching website. That’s not what I’m talking about here. That is something nice to have down the road, but here’s the thing: a color scheme, or a specific logo, and having it on a t-shirt is not what’s going to bring you clients, it’s not what’s going to make you money. You can do all of that, as you’re bringing in clients down the road.
The wellness entrepreneur branding I’m talking about is the experience that you will create for your current clients and potential clients who are currently watching and following you, or people that stumble upon you maybe from landing on your social media channel or just meeting you at a networking event or party and something piqued their interest. Something about you caused
them to feel compelled to learn more about you. That’s the branding I’m talking about – the branding that allows someone to realize that you’re the person that they want to work with – your style, your vibe resonates with them.
How Do You Create This Experience?
The other thing that your brand does not need or have to have is a niche. Sometimes I see a lot of wellpreneurs wasting time and getting stuck because their nervous systems are so constricted and unregulated – meaning you’re stressed out, anxious, and overwhelmed – trying to figure out your perfect person, your ideal and very specific and detailed niche.
You waste so much time and energy trying to figure this out that you don’t do any marketing. You allow it to hold you back thinking that, “Oh, I’ll go talk to people about what I do. I’ll post on social media more or maybe I’ll even start an email list after I nail down this niche. After I get really clear and specific on this niche, then I’ll go do that other stuff.”
The problem is, is if you’re not talking to anyone, if you’re not posting on social media, or going to events in person, or just telling people what you do and how you can help them, you aren’t going to bring in new clients. Your business will stall, you won’t get off the ground, you’ll stop yourself before you even start it.
So a yoga brand does not have to have a specific niche. If you have that in your mind, just let it go NOW. Down the road, the more people you work with over time, a niche might emerge.
In fact, many of the clients that I work with one to one in the waking container start very broad in their niche and then the more clients they work with, naturally, a type of client will just continue to reach out to them. And this is usually based upon their branding – which we’ll get to in a moment – or a client that they just developed – this ideal client that they love to work with and they can get results easily with. Help that client get the results that they pay them for easily without a lot of struggle. Then the niche will naturally emerge. You don’t have to force it.
So if you’re feeling like you have to force a logo, a color scheme, a specific niche, and that’s causing you to freeze, feel anxious, and overwhelmed, this blog will help you. It will open up your creativity, you can relax, you can open your mind and take a more organic and natural route to creating more clients and revenue.
If A Brand Isn’t A Niche, Or A Specific Logo Or Color Scheme, What Makes Up A health coaching Brand?
Well, that’s very individualized to you and your business.
I have some questions for you to begin to answer. Grab a pen and paper and write the answers down. This is the key. Write your answers down. Do the work. Maybe put it in a Google Drive or document where you can come back to, and continue to add to it and refine. Implementing this work will help you get more clients and revenue quicker. Whereas if you’re just reading it and
hoarding the information, but not really taking action on it, then you won’t fast track your success. You won’t end up doing anything more than just listening.
So, grab a piece of paper, you’re going to write that down, because following this blog, you’ll be able to utilize it immediately to help attract more clients.
First Question: Write Down All Your Expertise, All the Certifications You Have, All The Trainings You’ve Done – Everything Over The Years, Write It All Down
Maybe it’s continuing education trainings, maybe it’s specific new trainings like a yoga therapy certification, or yoga teacher training 300, or John Barnes’s myofascial release course you took once, or a somatic experience training you did, a trauma training you did. Even if they don’t seem to relate to each other at all, you don’t see a connection how one certification maybe you took a few years ago relates to the certification that you just took a few months ago that’s really lighting you up right now, still write it down. Because there are ways to connect them all. I promise you that.
This length of expertise, all these trainings, they’re what make you you, and you’ll utilize them to stand out in the market. I guarantee, no one has the same exact trainings that you do it for the same length of time or in that specific order.
So for example, 20 years ago, I got my first personal training and massage therapy certification. And that was because at the time of my life, I was going through my undergraduate degree in Health and Exercise Science, and I wasn’t quite sure truthfully, what I was going to do with that degree. I didn’t want to go to graduate school. I thought I was going to flunk out but there was no real clear next step on what to do with that specific degree since it was pretty broad. So I had a couple of friends that were getting personal training certifications and eventually I got a massage certification because a friend was doing that as well.
I stumbled upon those just by pure luck, and I’m very grateful for that now. And soon after I got those, I was still struggling in life. Truthfully, I went through a really dark time and was very confused, lost, I didn’t know my identity, I wasn’t truthfully connected to my sole purpose and me and my desires. And so, I stumbled upon hypnotherapy training and NLP training and I attended that one round more for my own personal knowledge and growth. The certification was a bonus by-product of that training and I grew so much from that two-week experience that I signed up and attended quickly after that – the master level hypnotherapy and NLP training.
All those together opened my mind and perspective of how the mind and the body and my sole purpose because it totally transformed my life – how I viewed my body, how I showed up in the world.
I am an introvert, and I talk now and I public speak, and I love working with people. I even love going to parties and hanging out with people, but I still need my alone time. Back then, 20 years ago, I was an introvert. On top of that, I had a layer of shyness and a lot of that was just based upon my own personal critiques, self-judgment, shame, fear of getting it wrong, criticism, all those things.
The point being is that all these certifications based upon that experience of time in my life allowed me to see the holistic connection of mind, body, purpose and soul and how working with all of these together can help someone to heal both physically, emotionally, energetically, and show up as a completely different person in the world and really have the ability to follow one’s dream.
Those certifications and those experiences catapulted my desire of wanting to seek and learn everything I could about all of that which eventually led to my physical therapy doctorate degree, my many, many yoga teacher-trainings and yoga therapy trainings. And so it just kept furthering me down the path. But if I view it, it’s all under the umbrella of wellness and healing, and eventually led to where I am now, at this point of time – the ability for me to stand up and speak up for the wellness industry, including health care providers, that you are worthy enough to make a significant income, have the ability to enjoy life, and still fulfil your purpose and your own dream.
You doing this is a beacon of light for your own patients and clients that you help because the more that you embody your dream, your purpose, you feel better, you have more energy, you release the anxiety, the struggle, then you’re better able to help your people.
So this experience, what started with many certifications down the road, like massage therapy, NLP certification, that might not seem so relevant to business coaching 20 years later, they’re actually all very intertwined. And this long history of mine – of certifications, of experiences, and now even combined with my Lynch syndrome mutation, going through cancer as an entrepreneur – they are all part of my brand. Because no one, no other business coach out there has the same certifications as me, has the same experiences and struggles as me. So I’m going to speak to that person that resonates with this and wants to release those same struggles for themselves.
So for you, maybe you’re coming into health coaching or yoga teaching, or even physical therapy – I went to school with some people that were coming into physical therapy school as a second career – and you might think, “Oh, well, my first career in IT tack has nothing to do with health coaching.” Hold on, wait a minute, it might. Some skills are transferable. You just have to think big picture.
So as you’re writing down all your certifications, all your trainings, even if your mind wants to tell you, “Oh, that is a completely unrelated field. SEO has nothing to do with health coaching.” It might. For example, with SEO, you know what people are searching for, what they’re looking for. You know how to speak to them in a very specific way.
So take a moment, think about how can the skills that you’ve developed over the years or even if you’re just starting out, even if you’re only in your early 20s, write out your experiences, especially how have you transformed? What struggles have you gone through and overcome? Write all that out.
As you’re thinking about all your experiences, struggles you’ve overcome, certifications and trainings you’ve went through, knowledge you’ve learned and gained, think about how that’s affected your philosophies, your values, your stances in the current industry that you want to serve.
For example, my journey through being a physical therapist, which started as a massage therapist, practicing Yogi, healing through my own injuries, going through the NLP and hypnotherapy trainings, healing my mind, body, and soul through that Mind, Body, Soul emotional connection, I brought that into my physical therapy training.
I knew that when I graduated from physical therapy school, even though it wasn’t taught back then, I knew I was going to be working with people more than just on a physical level, which is what attracted me to yoga so much in the first place and why I practice now for over 20 years is because it is a very holistic approach. It’s a lifestyle to live. It’s not just an exercise to perform and then let go of when you’re better. It’s an evolution of you as a human being.
And so those are some of my values as a practitioner. Whether I’m working with someone healing so they can feel better, reduce pain, get more energy, or I’m working with someone in the business arena and I’m helping them to get more clients, get more revenue, streamline their schedule, so they have more time with family, can have more fun in life, more downtime, more time to rest and care for themselves.
When it comes down to it, my views, my philosophy, my value, is that healing, a lot of it, whether what you’re doing comes down to emotions, energetics, patterns, thoughts, beliefs, and some of that unconsciously, what triggers your nervous system and can hold you back in both healing physically or as an entrepreneur.
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So For You, What Are Some Of Your Philosophies?
What are the stances you take in your industry?
Another one I take – what I see a lot in the industry is how yoga teachers or healthcare providers, and massage therapists too, are racing all around from session to session, sometimes not even enough time to go to the bathroom.
I work with massage therapists that are booked on the hour and they’re physically using their body. I had one massage therapist come to see me and I was working with them and I noticed that their fascia was so sticky. And I asked them, “It seems like you’re very dehydrated. Have you been drinking a lot of water?” And they’re like, “No, I’m so booked in the spa that I don’t have time to drink water.” That is outrageous and not acceptable.
How many of you coach back to back to back and don’t leave yourself enough time to go to the bathroom and drink water. Or maybe, you’re racing around, driving around from studio to studio and you’re teaching all these crazy classes 7:30am, 8:30pm, weekends, holidays, you don’t have time off, you never know when you’re going to rest, you never know when someone’s going to ask you for a subbing and you have a hard time saying no, even though you blocked off that time just to rest for yourself. All of this is leading to unsustainability in the wellness industry.
Why You Need To Rest And Have Time For Yourself
It’s a problem. Because as a wellness entrepreneur, as a wellness practitioner, if you’re burnt out, if you’re exhausted, you’re not going to be able to serve your people as well as you could if you’re feeling energized if you gave yourself the rest time, if you refined your schedule more so it’s streamlined and you’re not working these crazy hours, if you knew you could trust that reliable and consistent clients and revenue are coming so you don’t have to beat yourself up, punish yourself, overwork, hustle. Read more on how to prevent burnout here.
That is a stance I take in the industry. I want to help wellpreneurs. Yes, be successful, help their communities, I want to see you make an impact in the world, but not at the cost, not at the sacrifice for your own health, for your own well-being, for the dream that you want outside of your business. You can have both, you don’t have to choose one or the other. As you can see, I’m very passionate about it. I’ll go on and talk about it on and on and on.
So, what are some values, some philosophies, some beliefs that you have about your industry, where you can take a stance, you can make a change, you can get on the soapbox? That’s how you know you’ve got it right – if you can go on and on and on, and talk someone’s ear off about it, that’s it. Write it down, that’s part of your brand. That’s part of your vibe, and people need that. That’s what they love about you. That’s what they seek you out for – that knowledge, that passion, that expertise.
That leads us to the next question. Based upon these philosophies, your values that you hold dear to your heart, like for example, you never treat everyone cookie cutter, you always listen to your clients and have your clients best interest at heart – those are some of my personal values in my own business.
Second Question: How Does All This Or Working With Someone Holistically, For Example, Allow You To Stand Out Your Industry?
It doesn’t matter how saturated it is. It doesn’t matter how competitive it is. And this is different than thinking that your competition is out there and you’re different and you’re going to put your competition down because they’re doing it wrong and you’re doing it right.
This is not about trying to best someone. It’s about allowing yourself to shine and stand out from all the noise, just highlighting your differences and why those are important and meaningful, not just to you, but more specifically to your clients and your clients’ dreams and your clients’ goals.
It’s speaking about how your values, how your philosophies, how your viewpoints and stances, help your clients get the results that they want faster because truthfully, that’s what they care about. They don’t really care too much about your viewpoints or opinions or stances, what they care about is if you can help them. Can you help them the easiest and fastest way? And will you care for them? Will you keep them safe and look out for their best interests? Meaning you’re not going to scam them, you’re not going to take advantage of them.
If you can speak to those points, you never have to address your competition at all. You never have to put down any of your competition at all.
In fact, if you look through my blogs and podcasts, or in my Facebook group, or even search my name, Alison McLean, you’ll see I’ve done a ton of interviews, or I have interviewed people that are in similar niches than me. People that do the same exact type of work that I do. Yet, if you take it a layer deeper, we’re different in many ways. Maybe it’s just the structure of our programs are different.
But why? How did the structures emerge? They emerged based upon our viewpoints, our opinions, our philosophies, what we’re choosing to prioritize right now in our business, and some of the philosophies of how we believe we can serve our people best.
So that’s how you can start collaborations with more people. Get referrals from more people because when you take a stance, yes, you might turn off some people, but you’ll attract more. And people will understand clearly what it is you do and how you can help them. That’s how you stand out. That is part of your brand.
Your Personal Essence Makes Up Your Brand
Your brand also contains an essence of you. Now, this is not to be confused with those days that you send out an email, or do a social media post, or make an offer to someone you’ve met at a party for them to work at you and you get NOs. This does not mean that something has gone wrong with you. That you’re not capable of being a CEO, that you don’t have the right or enough practitioner skills. When you bring the essence of you into your brand, it does not mean that you take a bad day or a bad moment personally.
There is a difference of allowing your essence, your soul, your vibe, your energy, whatever you want to call it, to stand out in your brand and shine. That does not mean that you take it personally when your business doesn’t go as planned because it’s normal to fail as an entrepreneur. And the only reason why a lot of entrepreneurs don’t get up or they get stuck and frozen when they fail is because they mean it something wrong with them. They make it mean that they’re not capable of being the CEO that they desire to be. They make it mean that they need to learn more practitioner skills and they’re not good enough. Yeah, it’s not the truth. Often, it just has to come down to subtle refinements and tweaks.
And that’s personally what I work a lot on with my clients in the Awaken program. We problem solve and refine if things don’t go as planned. So then, the entrepreneur can continue taking steps forward in growing your business because the only way you can really fail in entrepreneurship is if you quit, if you stop.
So, you can bring your personal essence of you into your brand That might be your vibe, your energy. Like for example, some people in their Instagram account will have very neutral color schemes and that’s fine, that works well for them. Where my Instagram account, if you go and look at it, is super colorful. I don’t follow any color pattern really. It’s just a lot of color and I don’t have my boxes all lined up so they’re symmetrical and look great. I just would rather post a strong message that I have on my mind at the time or sometimes I go on vacation and I don’t post on Instagram for several days. I disconnect from Instagram, so then my boxes get out of order when I want to promote my next podcast or graphic or something like that. And that’s okay! Someone’s not going to work with me because my boxes don’t line up perfectly, that’s okay! They can find someone else whose organizational scheme works better for them. It’s all right, it doesn’t mean that anything’s gone wrong.
A Question I Get Asked A Lot: Are You Supposed To Not Brand Yourself And Just Brand Your Company?
There is no right answer. If this is causing you to freeze, close your eyes, trust your gut. Does it make more sense for you to brand yourself as a personal brand, especially if you’re a solopreneur? And you don’t have the desire to sell out your company five years down the road? Or do you have the dream to own a bigger company and eventually sell it? Then yes, you might want to be branding your company, versus doing a personal brand.
But again, there’s no one right way. People do it back and forth all the time. There’s big companies that have an essence of a personal flavor. There’s solopreneurs that brand themselves with a larger corporation branding style in mind. It doesn’t matter. You do you. Just choose one now and go for it. You can always change it down the road.
But I do find with the clients that I work with that right now, especially in the wellnesspreneur industry and as a wellness practitioner, I do see personal brands getting more traction faster in the marketplace, especially on social media, because there is a lot going on in social media right now.
Anyone can pick up an Instagram account or a Facebook account, call themselves anything and start marketing. It’s just how it is right now. And one way to really stand out is to talk about how all that you’ve gone through, your values, your philosophies, your expertise, your certifications, your experience, allow you to help your ideal client get the results that they want.
Sometimes people connect with a personal brand quicker, where a corporate brand or a company brand, it seems a little bit more distant. And the way to get traction there is a higher volume of followers. So there’s some knowledge you can take with you but don’t use any of it against yourself. Just decide and go for it!
One more thing to consider: if you have a compelling story. Like for me, I have my Lynch syndrome story of how that awakened my eyes to the hustle and grind nature of the wellness
industry. And that might help people to connect with you and resonate with you, then you might want to go with the personal branding because it’s easier to generate a following that way. You’ll just connect with people easier, and your story will flow from you easier. And don’t make things harder for yourself if you don’t have to.
So yes, your brand can include the essence of you. You can have a playful, fun energy. You can have a serious, deeper, intellectual thought-provoking energy, it’s up to you. Remember, it ties together with your stance and your values. You don’t have to make it complicated, it just kind of should flow through you. Like for me, my brand is just colorful, because I take a lot of pictures of being outdoors. And I just love colors, the outdoors and energy. So my vibe can also be playful, fun, relaxing, calm, grounded, and authoritative because I have my doctorate and I have a ton of certifications.
So I flow through those vibes on a given day or a given moment. And this also includes your voice, your tone, how do you communicate and speak with your ideal clients and your followers, again, that can be more casual, friend-like, it can be more authoritative, there is no wrong or right way. It does depend on you. And you have to make it all work together, not forcefully, but just allowing it all to emerge.
So the only way that that can happen is by you doing this work of taking the time of writing it down and then thinking, thinking on it, allowing it to integrate into your body, feeling what happens in your nervous system when you try to force something for yourself that just doesn’t fit. For example trying to force yourself to be like a corporate brand and a corporate style but it really causes your nervous system to tighten up and guard and freeze and you feel overwhelmed and anxious. It’s probably not the best path for you. So go with what feels right and more open in your body.
And then you can also include the styles of communication that light you up. For example, do you love talking with people like through a podcast? Do you love interviews? Like doing lots of Facebook Lives? Do you have a friend style and you just have very fun conversations with people? Or are you more visual where you like to demonstrate your yoga flows and talk through them and explain their benefits and values? Or are you more auditory or written? Do you love to write the benefits of working with you through emails, and blogs? All of this can be part of your personal brand as well.
So write all this information in a document that you can continue to add in over time. Because as your business grows, as you evolve as a person and as an entrepreneur, your business will also grow and evolve. It’s not that any of this will be wrong but you might have subtle shifts and changes as you get to know your ideal client more, as you get to know what works more in your business with attracting people.
Creating Marketing Pillars With the Information
You can take note of all this and you can also start to create marketing pillars around this information. So talking about your experience, a marketing pillar. About your philosophy, another
marketing pillar. About your values, another pillar. About how you help someone and how it’s different than the traditional model, for example, in your industry, and start telling people about it, that’s all you have to do.
You can post about it on social media, in any way. LinkedIn, at YouTube, any of the places. You can also just start telling people in person. In fact, sometimes that’s best because people get to know, like, and trust you possibly faster because they see you right there in person or have an experienced history with you.
And here’s the thing, when you’re doing this, you’re writing this all from the customer lens. So that’s another layer we’ll talk about later in the future. Or, if you want to start this now, the skill of copywriting, the skill of marketing, the skill of selling, then just reach out to me, I’m happy to help. This is what we work on in the Awaken container.
Why Repetition Is Important And Essential To Your Branding
If you feel like over time of doing this, really focusing on these pillars that you’ve created, continuously circling around to these facets of your brands, and you feel like you’re repeating yourself over and over again, then you’ve got it right, because people will begin to remember and remembering that, new people are always coming into your world.
So even though someone may be following you for a year or two or several years, they will constantly be reminded of how you help people, what you do, the essence of you, the essence of your business and you’ll also be telling the new people coming into your world the very first time. So keep repeating.
This is important because I find a lot of times, entrepreneurs change their brand and they start to confuse their audience because they feel like they’re repetitious, too repetitious, and they start to get bored sometimes. That’s not a reason to change your brand.
The repetition is important because it seals in your brand and introduces your brand to all the new people for the first time coming into your world daily, weekly, and monthly. So stick with it.
Refinements, tweaks, evolutions – that will happen naturally. I’m talking about completely switching your brand completely is what confuses people and causes them to freeze and possibly less likely to take action to work with you now.
Conclusion
So, my wellness friend, that is the work of branding, keep coming back to this blog. Keep refining these questions and keep going. The clearer you get at describing who you help, how you help them, the results they will achieve the struggles they will overcome, the better you’ll get a compelling people to take that next step to work with you on any level. Maybe it’s open the next e-mail, maybe it’s read the next post, maybe it’s signing up for your next workshop, eventually booking that consult call and paying you to work in your program.
Okay, that’s it. Bye for now. Have a great day!
If you want to craft your magnetic wellness brand today hit this link to get access to the workshop to craft your brand.
