Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka, Detective Ev. I won’t really be your host for today’s show on our business workshop, but I will be prefacing what we’re going to be doing today.
We are finally getting back to some normally scheduled podcasts. I probably have one more in the Intro series. And I don’t want it to be disconnected from the rest of the series, but we had to get this out first because this is a super, super cool thing that we’re doing. We are doing our first ever business workshop for FDN.
Whether you are a trainee, a recent graduate, or someone that has never taken the FDN course, this is something that works for you. It is for pretty much anyone that needs help in their business or wants to have a business one day in the world of FDN.
I’ll also say this, and I hinted this on the Live itself, which we are replaying for this podcast. If you are someone who’s looking into the course, yes, we’re doing a business workshop, but I will also say that there might be a certain incentive offered if you are to join us on the workshop and listen till the end.
And then, better than that is, what if FDN was going to start doing something where we would basically guarantee that you got your initial investment back for the course? Otherwise, we would coach you until you did. For many people, I think that would be a no brainer.
Business Workshop: By Someone Who’s Done It
There are so many people that want to do the course, but they’re just nervous because they’re like, I don’t know if I can get my money back. Well, what if we guaranteed that because we were so sure that it would work for you, that we were willing to put our money and our time on the line? If you believe that that would change something for you, then I would definitely be getting on this workshop. What you want to do is go to fdntraining.com/biz.
Today I am talking with the person who created FDN Business School and who is going to be hosting the FDN Business Workshop with me; her name is Jennifer Woodward. You guys might have heard her on this podcast before. We’re normally talking about the health stuff with her.
What’s really cool about Jennifer is she went from being in the pharmaceutical industry for many years, then she joined us on the functional side. But she was in an employee role before that, came into this world as an entrepreneur, had to put on that hat, and had to learn a whole bunch of new stuff.
Over the last four years has had a six-figure income in her FDN business and now has achieved multiple six figures a year in her FDN business. So, this is something that can be done. It’s not theory. This is something being taught by an individual who has actually done it. Without further ado, let’s get to today’s episode.
Business Workshop: Enthusiastically Awaiting
Hello everyone and welcome. We’re going to be talking about our business workshop today. I’m very excited for this one. If you ever watch any of the stuff that we do, you know it’s not hard to excite me. I do admit that. But this is next level stuff here.
Let’s see if we can get her in here. She is advanced with technology, so I’m sure we’ll be good to go. Look at that – beautiful. Best and easiest Instagram Live already. Hello. How are you?
Jennifer Woodward: Hey Evan, how’s it going?
Detective Ev: Good, good. I promise I’m not living in a dark cave here. I’m at my parents watching the dog and I got an interesting lighting set up. So, I try to do that cool thing where the podcast people have the light in the back and it’s not working very well.
I’m curious if anyone that’s watching today watched the Stress and Hormones workshop. I had this circle for this thing, and I realized no one has touched this board since the last time I was here.
Jennifer Woodward: What’s going on with that circle?
Detective Ev: Yeah. If anyone remembers the stress and hormones workshop, let us know.
But today we’re talking about a business workshop. I was telling them right before we got to Live, Jennifer, that I’m extremely excited for this one. I’m not a liar. I am obviously very easy to get excited. That’s not anything new, these people already know that. But this is like next level for me.
Business Workshop: Plenty of Business Information
One, I get to work with you; and you and I always just have a super fun time together. Everyone has always given very nice feedback to the podcasts that we’ve done, you and me. I think we just have good energy. We’re excited to be here, and we love FDN. But then on top of this, we get to discuss one of my favorite things and one of your favorite things, which is the business side of all of this.
One thing I want to say right off the bat, because it was interesting feedback that we got from our Summer Open House event in June. Some people that were just getting exposed to us were almost surprised by how much business stuff we had and we’re talking as much about the health stuff.
So, one thing we need to say right off the bat, business does not work unless you deliver a great product or great service. That should be assumed, but I shouldn’t have assumed that myself. This is always with the premise that FDN is a kick butt program that gets results for people. We have 260 plus FDN podcast interviews proving that, thousands of testimonials out there in the ether between people that we’ve worked with directly or that our practitioners have worked with. So, that’s a said and done.
There are a lot of people out there that are actually great at delivering products and services, but they don’t understand how to do it consistently. They’re missing the business side. Just know that you can’t make money, you can’t have a good business unless you nail down the products and services, or you’re a complete liar.
Business Workshop: FDN Business School’s Evolution
And I think you guys trust us by now. I mean, I’m just saying every now and then there’s some bad people.
[00:05:09] Jennifer Woodward: Evan is way too honest to be a bad person.
[00:05:10] Detective Ev: Yeah, I was about to say.
Cool. So, I don’t want to talk the whole time. Obviously, this is, in my opinion, kind of your show. I know that we’re doing it together, but we want to talk about the business workshop, obviously, and Business School is kind of a huge reason we’re talking about the workshop.
Let’s just discuss what is Business School for FDN? Why did you end up being the person to create that? Because it’s been one of the coolest things ever.
I’m not sure if you can hear the little puppy barking in the background, but I’m going to close the door just to be doubly safe. So, I’m here with you. Just gimme a second. But what’s Business School?
[00:05:42] Jennifer Woodward: On my end, it’s usually a kid. On your end, it’s usually a dog. No worries at all.
Hello everyone. So happy to see you. I see a lot of my friends on here. Welcome, welcome. I am Jennifer Woodward. And as Evan said, I am executive director of FDN Business School, former executive director of our graduate association.
So, Ev, you asked how did this even evolve? Honestly, going through our professional association, I was getting these questions all the time from our grads who’d gone through the FDN course. They’re so confident in the labs, they know exactly what they’re doing, they’re an expert on the clinical side. So many of them were just like, well, what do I do now on the business side?
Business Workshop: FDN Business School’s Objectives
I have all this expertise. I’m ready to start helping people. I have no idea how to set up my business. Heck, some people didn’t even know, do I need an LLC or an S-Corp. Or do I need a sole proprietorship? What documents do I need to file with my local business entity, my state business entity? There are just these kinds of foundational things that need to happen in order to start a business before you can even do the more fun and creative things.
So, I took every single question that had ever been asked, put it into a spreadsheet, this is just what I do. And we started creating business school. I went through systematically and answered all those questions, wrote modules, wrote lessons, put together slides, and really put together a lot of actionable steps, PDFs, documents, and spreadsheets so that at the end of Business School our FDN practitioners are fully competent and fully confident in starting their FDN business.
Because they went through this course, number one, to help themselves or their family members, they’re passionate for some reason about health. But a lot of our FDNs are also going into this as a career, a second career, a hobby career. Whatever it is we want to make back the money we spent on the course, and then we want to bring in that income that we know so many health professionals are bringing in.
That’s the other objective for FDN Business School is to really equip our practitioners to make the income that they really deserve as this next level functional health coach.
Business Workshop: Sucked into this Space
[00:07:36] Detective Ev: Just so everyone knows, I have it minimized right now, but I see some comments coming in. As always, any Live that we do, ask questions, we encourage it. We will get to those as we move along here. It’s not like we’re going to take up a whole hour. We’ll just take up some time to introduce it and then we’re happy to get to any questions as we further the discussion.
This is something that, like the business school, business idea has been something that when I graduated over six years ago now, I already saw the need for. I never thought it was going to be this. But there were people like me when I was just a consumer and a practitioner of the FDN program already talking about this. They wanted to know like, how can I get that experience? How can I do this?
Because what happens for most of us, not everyone, but for most of us that get into this space, you get into this because it chose you. You have health issues, or you saw someone in your family or a loved one deal with these things, and so you might be on another career path, then kind of get sucked into this.
The first logical step is, I want to learn about it. And that’s why you take a program like FDN or maybe you’ve learned some other things in different health coaching programs, totally fine. But then you kind of have this thing where a lot of us, not all of us, but a lot of us then realize, what if I did this as work instead of this nine to five that I don’t really like, to be dead honest?
Business Workshop: Everything’s Risky
So, now we have to figure out not only the health side, but for many of us, the business side is a brand-new thing. Every now and then you get someone who is entrepreneurial from day one and they’re selling 10 different lemonade stands at once as a kid.
But that’s not really the normal person who comes through FDN. Most of the people have never really worked in their own business. They might be high level employees, or we have stay at home moms sometimes that aren’t working at all, at least in a traditional sense, getting a paycheck. They’re certainly working; they’re just not getting the paycheck for it, unfortunately. And so, this transition can be scary.
I think business is something that’s perceived by people as not having a guarantee. Although the irony is, if you guys don’t realize this, the companies that you work for are owned by businesspeople. So, if there’s no guarantee for you as a businessperson, there was never a guarantee for anything that you did. But that’s just a mindset thing we can work on in the workshop and you know I’m going to bring that stuff there. But there’s no guarantees to any of this stuff. So, you might as well take a shot at doing something that you actually want to do.
And many of us have the passion. If you can bring the passion, that’s really something that can’t be taught. We can teach you just about everything else.
So, these people are not necessarily going to go all the way through business school right now. Some of them might not even be FDN practitioners, although FDN practitioners can watch this business workshop and get valuable advice from it.
Business Workshop: Successful Survey Results
Let’s talk about now, business school’s been out for just about a year. Is that correct?
Jennifer Woodward: Since last June, yeah.
Detective Ev: Okay, so it’s been out for a little over a year. And we’re seeing great success with it. Jennifer actually recently ran a survey and the numbers that came back were phenomenal.
I know we don’t want to sit here and list off a bunch of stats. But off the top of your head, I’d hate to put you on the spot with the numbers, is there any stat that came back that was particularly impressive to you where you’re just like, wow, this is really cool that people responded this way?
[00:10:34] Jennifer Woodward: Yeah, for sure.
My favorite stat is my hundred percent stat, and that is definitely something that’s important. So, 100% of our survey respondents booked a paying client, at least one paying client, as a direct result of going through business school. That means that almost all of our students are making back their investment in the course within three to six months.
And that’s what we’re looking for. We want to equip our practitioners to go out and do the work that they’ve been trained to do. There are so many people that need help, who are just ill, and suffering, and they don’t feel well. If the impediment to you helping other people feel well is a lack of business expertise, that’s where we want to come in and equip you and help you.
So, a hundred percent of people booking a paid client, I am all about that. That really gave me the shivers when I saw it.
Business Workshop: Intimidation of Beginnings
[00:11:19] Detective Ev: Right. Because that’s the hardest part is always the beginning stuff, man, when you’re on your first sales call and you feel weird about it, or you’re saying a certain amount of money that you charge for the first time. It’s more natural for us to conform to someone else’s business and sell someone else’s product and just be kind of told what to do. It is a little weird for the first time when we come up with stuff.
We also have to have the common sense, and this is something that’s actually talked about not only in the business school, but I believe the business workshop as well, we have to have the common sense of like, how do we structure pricing? It can feel weird when we’re the ones that have to dictate the price.
We’ll never think twice about Ford telling us that the car is $40,000, $50,000, and how they came up with that. But the second we say that we’re worth a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars, then we, all of a sudden, get weird and nervous about it. We’ll touch on all that stuff in the workshop.
But how did this go from business school a year ago now being released and you working on it for over a year to, hey, let’s do a workshop. I can obviously touch on what I believe the purpose is of that, but I’d love to hear from you as well.
Business Workshop: Questioning Confidence
I really just see this as a way to not only get FDN trainees excited about the business side, but really to get people that aren’t into FDN solely because they are scared that they can’t do this as a job, under the impression that not only is this pretty straightforward, but this is also a duplicatable thing. This is something that many FDNs have done. We can guide you through this just as readily as we can guide you through a health journey. So, I see this as a great way to expose people to the opportunities here.
I can’t tell you how many calls I get, Jennifer, where the people are locked in on the health side. They love this. But they’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want to make a $9,000 investment. They never say that the course isn’t worth it, they just don’t think that they can get that back.
If I told them that they could get a million dollars back and it was $90,000, they wouldn’t care. But in their head yet, they can’t get to that next level. That’s what I see being the main part of this business workshop in addition to the practical tips.
What’s your opinion on this? How did this come to be from the business school to this?
[00:13:16] Jennifer Woodward: Yeah, a hundred percent. The word that comes up a lot when I’m talking to new practitioners is this word confidence. People just are not confident in starting their business. And I know this from personal experience. It takes a lot of, like, at the beginning, kind of cultivated or forced confidence in order to go out there and promote your business.
Business Workshop: Foundational Confidence
You’re like, who the heck am I? I’m just one person; I’m not a doctor. I don’t know if anyone’s going to trust what I’m saying.
But I will tell you, this is where the confidence starts to happen. When you are doing FDN as Reed teaches in the course, FDN works, and we’ve seen this so many times. We have thousands of practitioners across the globe, and we have, what you said, a repeatable process. The FDN DRESS protocol, the labs, these are things that get people results.
So, I tell my new students, man, you can’t go out there and get results for people unless you’ve got a business under your belt, right? You have to have those actionable steps in place. So, you need a place to send clients who want to book a call with you, some sort of terms and conditions, know what you’re going to do in a session when you get there with the client. It was really, again, those foundational tactics, those building steps of really giving people just that confidence to start.
And here’s where we differ, and what this workshop is going to do for a lot of people. We are not trying to make you a million dollars, all right? I’m not trying to get you a million clients or a thousand clients. What we are trying to do is get you that foundational confidence to go out there and be like, heck yeah, I got a business. I can do this; I’m ready to rock. Like I know I’ve checked all of my boxes, crossed my T’s, dotted my i’s. I know I’m good with my legal ramifications, my signature program. I’ve got a landing page, can work Canva. Like I am jamming with my business.
Business Workshop: Lots of Content
These are the things that we’re teaching you and really that’s what’s transpiring with this workshop, you guys. We are taking the best stuff in business school that, I think, we undercharge for business school, honestly. But we’re charging an investment for you because it’s a very, very robust course and continuing to get more robust.
We took some of those things that really impacted our students the most and kind of distilled it down. They told me to do 60 minutes. There’s no way I’m getting through this in 60 minutes, all right? There’s so much content in this business workshop, you are going to leave it and be very confident in having the foundation built for your health coaching business, be it FDN, or others.
So, if you are one of those people who’s like, shoot, I’m not sure if I am confident, I’ll say it again, confident enough to get out there and show my face on camera and talk to my community members, even tell my aunt and uncle what it is I’m doing without faltering, we are going to give you that confidence. And I’ve got four PDFs, a workbook, digital documents, so many practical resources for you in this workshop that you are just going to leave and be like, let’s rock. I’m ready, let’s go.
[00:15:53] Detective Ev: Yeah. Confidence is an interesting word to keep using because I do think this happens to people; it’s unfortunate. But we’re way moving in the realm of online learning. I think that’s not going anywhere, right? And it’s much more accepted now.
Business Workshop: Resulting Confidence
But it is always a tough thing when you get these certifications online as great as FDN might be. You know, you go to the Thanksgiving dinner or whatever it might be with family and then you’re discussing with them.
They’re like, oh, what do you do? You’re like, I’m an FDN practitioner, I’m a health coach, whatever it might fall under, depending on your certification or certifications. And if your business isn’t going the way that you wanted it to go, there can almost be a lack of confidence with that and some embarrassment. You shouldn’t have to feel that way.
We have people like Jennifer and tons of other FDN practitioners out there that, I think, it’s a different way of saying it. They’ll be like, all right, well, what do you do? Hey, I’m an FDN practitioner. I help women do this, that, and the next thing. Or I help men do this, that, and the next thing. And you have confidence with that because of what you’re able to do. You know that you’re doing this as an actual career.
I experienced that myself because I told everyone I was going to be a public speaker at 18 years old. And yet I was too scared to public speak even at my community college. So, you are almost ashamed to say that at first. But then after you’re like 400 or 500 speeches in, you’re like, yeah, I’m a public speaker. I talk to kids. Like that’s what I’m do.
And so, we want to get you to that next level of feeling confident in what you’re saying through actual results, not theory, actual results.
Business Workshop: Never Pigeonholed
And the business school, we have a podcast that you and I did on that. All you guys have to do is search for FDN Business School, the Health Detective Podcast. It’ll come right up. You said in there, Jennifer, that business school is A-to-Z. It is for someone that, like you said, doesn’t even understand the taxes, but also for someone to learn the email marketing basics. You can take these topics so high, it’s not even even funny.
We’re not saying it’s everything you’ll ever need, but certainly to get a good business it is. The email marketing, the sales calls, the landing pages, the automation, some softwares to use, it really is everything. We can’t do that all in the business workshop because the business schools like a multi, multi-month program.
So, what are the main topics specifically that we’ll learn in the workshop? I know finding your niche is one of them, I believe.
[00:17:59] Jennifer Woodward: Yep. We’re definitely going to teach you, if that’s something you desire, how to find your niche, and how to really work down.
And here’s the other thing about the business workshop, this is what I teach my students, this is what I’ve learned in my own business, you are never pigeonholed into any part of your business. In fact, you’re encouraged as an entrepreneur to continue to grow and learn and expand. And we want that to be very natural for you. So, while we’re giving you all these techniques and tips in the workshop, you just need to know you are not stuck in any of those things.
Business Workshop: Teaching Points
We are teaching you how to define a profitable niche, not just any niche. I’m teaching you how do you find a niche that will, if you should so desire, earn you an income. This is your business, so we want to teach you how to do that. We are walking through a marketing strategy, teaching you how to get online.
Now, this is something I hear a lot too. You guys, I’m talking to you on Instagram, so obviously you’re on Instagram. But not everyone wants to use social media for their business. So, we are teaching you how to utilize social media in your business if you should so desire. But we’re also teaching you how to expand into your community and become an expert in your community in this little niche that you’ve cultivated or maybe a grander niche that you cultivated. We’re giving you these actionable tools.
We’re also teaching you how to put together a business plan – dialing in what are you doing on the daily. People ask me that all the time too. What do you do as an FDN, as an entrepreneur? How does that look different from someone who sits at someone else’s desk all day instead of your desk all day? So, we’re going to walk through what that looks like, a sample schedule of what you could or should be doing as an entrepreneur, health coach, FDN practitioner.
We’re going through some of the cool new stuff happening right now out there on the interweb. We are giving you resources on how to use AI, artificial intelligence. It’s something that I’ve been using in my own business. It’s been really galvanizing for me, actually more creative, I think, than less creative by using some of these new technologies.
Business Workshop: The Day After
So, we’re going to walk through how to use ChatGPT for your health coaching business. We are going to talk about with Ev, how do you get on a podcast? How do you get published in the media, not social media, but print media? You know, we are really going to teach you how to get your name out there.
And then one of the things that we’re doing together, kind of a cornerstone, is building out your signature program. We’re going to walk you through your niche; we’re going to go through building out like a full document of signature programs. So, when you, my friend, leave the workshop, you are going to know exactly who you’re talking to and what your program’s going to look like if you want to implement that.
Come to our workshop. The day after you’ll be ready to go with your business. That’s not everything. I’m leaving something secret. But you can definitely find it on our webpage. We’re at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/sp/businessworkshop. We are going to drop that in the chat, so you guys have a really easy way to access that.
But, like I said, that’s just kind of scratching the tip of the surface. I would love to have five hours with you guys. I’m trying to put five hours of material into an hour. However, you will definitely feel like you are getting your money’s worth by going through this workshop with us.
Business Workshop: A Couple Incentives
[00:20:52] Detective Ev: Yeah. I mean, the workshop’s like $6, so you should be getting your money’s worth, for sure. It’d be pretty hard for us not to deliver on that. And what’s cool about our workshops, I would just block off a little extra time in your calendar because they kind of go over. It’s always fun, and people hang out and ask questions.
We should probably tell them it is on August 29th. Drop the words “Biz Workshop” below and we’ll get you the details so you can figure out where it is in your specific time zone.
I’ll also say this, there’s two cool things that are going to be happening that day. One is a bit of common sense. If we’re going to do a workshop about FDN, we’re going to teach you a bunch of stuff. But if we’re an intelligent business and we know that you’re on there because you want to learn about FDN and possibly do FDN, perhaps we would want to incentivize you with some type of flash discount. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge.
The other thing is, I don’t want to say it fully because I’m so excited about it. I can’t believe it got approved. So, I will word it this way. What if FDN became a place where we were so confident in what we did that we guarantee you make enough money to get your tuition back? If we could guarantee that you’d make enough money to get your tuition back, how would that look for you? Would that help you be able to start something like this a lot sooner than you otherwise would have? And if so, I would just say it would be very wise to be on that workshop.
Business Workshop: Course Business Content
Alright, going to go to some comments here. This is from before. “Just jumped on and wanted to wish Evan congrats.” Thank you so much. That’s very nice.
“I’m from Afghanistan. I want to start a business from Afghanistan, dry fruit with best quality.” Awesome. Good luck with that. That’s great.
Okay. What else we got? Someone asked, “how does the business school partner with the FDN course? Are there any business teachings in the FDN course?” I’ll start with this just so I’m not throwing everything at you.
The FDN Business School is technically separate from the course. The reason we do that, still to this day, is because we do have a smaller percentage of practitioners that come in that already have some type of health coaching business or a personal training business, or even they’re a doctor. They already have the clients.
To me, if you’ve already done enough that you have a consistent stream of clients and then you add in FDN, you’d have to really try to screw that up. That’s pretty hard. Like, you’re going to be okay. However, if you have no clients though so far, and you’re just ready to invest, want to do all of this, really want to go do this as a job, that’s how the business school kind of goes in.
The business teaching in the course is fairly simple. We have something that we’re working on called, I think, it’s Health Entrepreneur 101. The name might change. It’s not important. We’re going to give you some basic tips on how to get started. We’re also showing you; how do you onboard the client. We’ve always taught that in the main course, but there’s so much more to business.
Business Workshop: By An FDN For FDN
That’s always why I’ve seen that there’s a difference and we don’t just add it on altogether. Because there are some people that come into FDN that have an established business. I’m not sure if you have any different reasons for that or want to emphasize the big differences between the FDN course and Business School.
[00:23:53] Jennifer Woodward: Yeah, those are great reasons. One other thing is a lot of our FDNs actually go through the course because they’re dealing with personal or family health issues too. So, some of our FDNs will go through and they know they’re not going to practice as a business. They just want the information. That’s one of the other reasons that we are keeping FDN Business School separate from the course itself.
Plus, we want people to be very intentional about the course. We want you to be an expert in the labs. And we want that process that we teach you in FDN – the certification course – to be powerful and repeatable like we know it is. So, we don’t want to divert your attention in an important time that you’re learning the course.
Now, on the business school side, when you do receive access to that, I actually have students in business school right now who have gone through INN, IIN, ITN. They’ve gone through other business trainings, some really expensive business trainings. And we are, my friends, a fraction of the cost of some of these expensive business trainings at FDN Business School. They said they learned so much more in FDN Business School because, and this is what’s important, it is created by an FDN for FDN.
Business Workshop: Directly Applicable Information
There’s a lot of theoretical business training out there. To be perfectly frank and honest, we are doing more theoretical business training here in our business workshop because we know not everyone’s an FDN.
But by the time you go through the FDN certification course, you are ready for FDN Business School because you’re a freaking FDN. We want to make sure that you are doing everything you need to do on the business side and on the professional side to be able to launch that FDN practice. And that’s one of the differences with Business School, and again, one of the reasons why they’re separate.
[00:25:16] Detective Ev: That’s something, I think, that’s fair to be pretty blunt about, honestly, when you talk about theoretical. People go to college sometimes for entrepreneurship class and are learning from someone that does $60,000 a year and has never owned a business.
I am not condemning someone if they love doing that. God bless them, right? I’ve done many things that I’ve made almost no money with, but I chose to do it because I loved it. Especially speaking in schools for a nonprofit was not the most lucrative part of my career. Right?
My point in saying that is though, I’m not condemning the money, I’m not making fun of that person, but there’s a certain time and place when we’re, especially when we’re talking business, that’s not for the theoretical, in my opinion. You’ve got to learn from people who have actually done it.
And so yes, if you’re not an FDN, of course it could be theoretical if you’re in this workshop. But if you’re considering FDN or you’re an FDN trainee, this is directly applicable stuff from someone who’s actually done it.
Business Workshop: Paving the Way
Jennifer, I think it’s worth mentioning, because I know you’ve shared this publicly before, and to the degree that you’re comfortable with doing it, that’s always fine. You came from the pharmaceutical industry, then you came over to the good side or a different side, and now you’re with us at FDN, helping heal people in that way. I’m just kidding. Just kidding. Don’t sue me, Pfizer, or whoever.
So, you’re doing this now, you had to learn the entrepreneurial stuff, and you’re the creator of business school. This is something worth mentioning, and you’re the main creator of the business workshop. How much money have you personally spent on mentorship for your own business and that you can now apply to these workshops and Business School? And if you don’t mind, even if it’s just a general thing, how much income is your business doing nowadays?
[00:26:45] Jennifer Woodward: Sure. So, all fair questions.
I do want to be really transparent with you guys. You’ll see this in our workshop and in Business School. I am vulnerable because I want to help you. Like, I went through, just as I graduated the course, there were no resources. I didn’t know what the heck I was doing.
And so, one of my main motivations with the workshop and with Business School is to help people not have to go through those years of agony and the, not wasting honestly, but the extreme spending of money I might not necessarily had to have spent on business training and coaching just because I didn’t have a clear path.
Business Workshop: Working the Business
So, to answer your first question, I think last time I looked it was over $16,000 that I spent. My husband’s a financial advisor, so he always tells me these are post tax dollars. So, $16,000 out of the pocket for business coaching.
And like I said, it’s not a waste. Those were all good years. They were good teachers I had. It helped me in my business, helped me professionally and personally. But it wasn’t specifically formulated to help me grow my FDN practice. Right?
Now that I have been in practice for the better part of a decade, the last four years, my business has generated over six figures of income. That’s by God’s grace. I’m so thankful for that. I work hard, hustle my butt off in my business. This stuff does not come naturally. It doesn’t come easily. I don’t sit back in my chair and wait for it to come to me. Like I am working.
And so those are the things that I’m teaching you also in our business accelerator workshop, in our FDN Business School. How do you appropriately kind of meter out the resources that you have? We’re finite people, I’m one person in my business. I have a VA and I love her. Aside from that, it’s just me. And so, how do I be a wife and a mom of four children? How do I own a business and also work for FDN?
You know, how do I do what I love to do just as a person who values my health, do my workouts, my strength training? It’s important to practice what we preach. And so those are things we teach you too on both sides here, the workshop and then FDN Business School.
Business Workshop: Shiny Social Media Feed
These are the things that kind of keep me healthy enough, and resilient enough to be able to do the things I love and continue to grow my business.
So, I say all of that just because I think, a lot of times, like on Instagram, we look at people with a shiny feed and we’re like, dang. She’s got to be making like $500,000 a year. And look at that. Everything just looks perfect on her feed. That is not true. You guys already know that because you’re thinking people.
But I am here to tell you, you want to start a business, you got to do the work. And we are here to help equip you to do that work and give you the community that you need, the teaching that you need, those valued resources that you need to not give up when it gets hard.
[00:29:05] Detective Ev: Yeah. Well, the only good thing about taxes and having to track all your income and stuff is that there’s statistics backing this stuff up. So, you’re absolutely correct.
If you’re ever feeling bad about yourself, all you guys need to know, ask anyone in America, what does the top 1% make? I guarantee nine out of ten people will be like oh, well, millions of dollars, right? No, no, no. It’s like $423,000 last time I checked; that gets you into the 1% of income in America. So, in America, the United States, one of the most lucrative countries in the world, top 1% is $420,000 a year. And that is a ton of money, I’m not denying that.
Business Workshop: High-Level Key Components
But the point is, yeah, there’s a lot of shiny stuff on Instagram. People aren’t always doing what they might seem to be doing. Now, that’s not to discourage you. It’s actually the exact opposite. Because if you continue to look at the stats, you’ll find that there’s about the top 10% making $270,000 a year.
And there’s a significant portion, I believe it’s like 15% or 20% doing like six figures and above. So, it’s much easier for you to tap in to that six-figure thing than it would be a $500,000 a year thing. Okay? It can be done. And believe it or not, there’s actually FDNs who do that. But there’s some exceptional qualities to those people and their work ethic and what they’re willing to do.
But can you make an income out of this that is respectable, that you’re proud to say at the Thanksgiving dinner, even if you don’t say the income, and be like, yeah, dang right, I do FDN and I’m doing okay? Yes, and we can help you with that. We have many people doing it.
Drop the words “Biz Workshop” below, and we’ll get you the information. Someone said, “is the workshop different from the business program that you can sign up for after completing the FDN cert?” This question was from a little bit ago.
Correct me if I’m wrong, I would say the business workshop probably has some high-level key components of the business school. And then the business school just has way more. I mean, again, that’s an A-to-Z program on how to do business as an FDN, more or less.
Business Workshop: Approximately a Three-Month Program
[00:30:45] Jennifer Woodward: Yep. Correct. Yeah, the business school takes some of the wonderful things that are working really, really well for FDNs inside of FDN Business School and distills it down into what we can give you in an hour, an hour and a half, right? But Business School is way more robust.
In fact, I just finished my spreadsheet. There’s another spreadsheet on course completion. And if you work your booty off for three months straight, I have it Monday through Friday, all of the modules to watch, all of the action steps to take, you can complete FDN Business School in about three months, then we give you six months to complete that course. Some of our students have done it a little quicker.
But there’s so many hands-on action items that we want to walk you through as you start your business, you really would consider about three months of time to devote to going through that program. So, a lot more than what we could do in 90 minutes or 60 minutes.
[00:31:29] Detective Ev: Oh, this is terrible. I just scrolled down to the bottom, and I realize no one’s dropped “Biz Workshop” yet and we’re already near the end. All right, so I got a sweeten it for you guys.
I mean, I know $6 is very tough, right? You can get a dozen eggs, basically, maybe like two thirds of a dozen eggs. Or you can do our business workshop.
How about this? How about you DM us and we’ll give you a code so that you can get it a hundred percent for free. So, DM us “Biz Workshop” and we’ll make sure that you can get in for free. We will save your $6.
Business Workshop: Live Q&A
Someone said, “I mean, business school…” I’m in suspense as well. I’m not sure what they’re wanting there.
Okay. So, then we can go through a few more things. If anyone has questions, by the way, this is definitely the time to ask about the business workshop, Business School. You can get some free advice out of us if you really like. That’s fine.
We will also have time on the workshop for Q&A as well. That’s going to be a good time because we’ll talk a bunch, we have a ton of content. But how these workshops at FDN always go is they always go over, everyone’s always excited, and then we end up doing a super long Q&A that we have to cut out. Something tells me that with this type of Q&A, especially a business workshop, that’s going to go pretty long.
That’s on August 29th. DM us “Biz Workshop” to get the link or drop it below. If you want to pay, drop it below; if you want to get it for free, DM us. We’ll make sure that you get it. If you are watching this after it has already been Live, the Instagram Live that is, then of course you can still DM us or drop it below. We do check those. I think it’d be wiser just to DM us so we can see it quicker and get you hooked up.
If no one has questions right now, assuming that no others come through, what would you say your favorite piece of content that you’re excited to share in this business workshop is?
Business Workshop: Signature Program Building
Because again, there’s a lot of stuff. You’re really trying to do five hours in one hour, you said. I got some content that I have in there as well. But what is the thing that you’re most excited for that you believe it’d be awesome if health coaches and FDNs alike kind of knew and understood?
[00:33:09] Jennifer Woodward: Yes. Okay. I’m so excited about helping our health practitioners build out their signature program. And this is why, because people have no idea what to do with their clients once they get them.
They don’t know what a session’s going to look like; they don’t know what their client is going to achieve in 12 weeks. They have high hopes as to what their client might achieve at like the month, three months, six-month mark, but they don’t really have an actionable way to get there with these quantifiable, repeatable results.
We’re not going like super, super deep. But I can guarantee you that if you come to this workshop, we will work through together with me leading you. And this is a Zoom workshop, so you can ask me questions. If you have questions about your niche, if you have questions about your personal program, we get to go over all of those in the Q&A. So, you do have access to me.
And not like I’m the authority, but I’ve done it myself and now have run 200 other students through it. I could say, I think I know what I’m talking about, and I’d love to answer your questions on this. Because it’s one of my favorite things to kind of help people tweak.
Business Workshop: Working Together
I like to get in there and say like, is this really going to work for you? You know, is this a niche that people will pay for? Is this something that’s going to light you up and going to keep you going for a long time? And again, how can we do those very practical things?
That is the other thing that I’m so excited about this workshop. Like I said, it’s not just theory, like, hey, go out and do this in your business; maybe it’ll work, maybe it won’t. I’m like, here’s your PDF, here’s your resource. Open up your computer; get a pen out. We are doing this together right now so that by the time these 90 minutes are up, you are going to know exactly what you are getting out of this workshop and how to implement it today or tomorrow in your business.
So, that’s what I love doing. That’s like my passion, and that’s what I’m so excited about for this workshop.
[00:34:41] Detective Ev: Nice. Yeah, Jennifer over delivers, I’ll put it that way.
This is the perk of doing the podcast, they want you to talk about stuff. So, she let me have access to the business school and I was going through this. I was like, holy cow.
Like, I know a lot of the business stuff, but I was learning so much as I went through and just the technical things that you have in there. So, it’s really cool. And yeah, if you did that with the business school, it’ll be fun to see what the Biz Workshop is going to be like.
I don’t think we have too much more today; it’s nice and easy for us. We did move the times and stuff.
Business Workshop: August 29th, 2023
Last thing is this. If you’re just tuning in and didn’t hear it in the beginning, the Biz Workshop’s going to be on August 29th. Drop the words “Biz Workshop” below, or DM us “Biz Workshop” so that you can figure out which place it’s in timewise.
I always say the times and then I constantly get feedback for this because there’s like a million different time zones that people come into FDN with. So, if you want to know the time, you have to drop the word “Biz Workshop” or put it in the DM.
If you are someone interested in the course and pursuing an FDN business, I will just say, common sense will tell you something to learn about business is that if we have people that are on the business workshop that we know are interested, we would probably be very wise as a company to incentivize you to purchase it quickly if we gave you some type of discount, hypothetically speaking.
And then, this is probably selfishly the thing I’m most excited for, because I think it’s going to just separate FDN completely from the rest of the industry, not that we weren’t already, but in a way that’s so obvious and objective because no one else is going to do this. If you guys knew that you could go through the FDN program and we would guarantee that you get your tuition back, otherwise we’ll help you, would that allow you to make a quicker decision in terms of going through the FDN course?
So, if you’d be interested in a guarantee like that, we just might be offering that on the workshop and in the future.
Business Workshop: Looking Back
There are so many fun things happening. It’s like a workshop on steroids because there’s all these other things that are going to go on and come from this. So, Jennifer, I’m super excited.
Thank you for hopping on with me today. As always, I’m looking forward to doing our practice sessions with you. And I’m looking forward to going Live. August 29th at 9:00 AM PST for the Business Workshop. So, it’s 9:00 AM PST/12:00 PM EST. You got to hop on.
If you have the time to hop on, on that date, that shows that you need a business, I think. Because it’s like, what are you doing? You just hanging out at 9:00 AM on August 29th? So, we’ll teach you how to make that time profitable.
Any last final words, words of wisdom, positive thoughts?
[00:37:07] Jennifer Woodward: I just saw that some of you have already DMed. Thank you so much for your interest. We cannot wait to get back to you; we cannot wait to see you on this workshop.
Again, at my heart, I’m a mom and I just love teaching people. I want to see you succeed in your business. So, that is my motivation in being here. We are very FDN and health coach focused. Like, we are really wanting to see you succeed.
Because as Ev and I both said, we came from a place of not having the tools and resources that we now have available at FDN. How much more quickly, and how much more exponentially could our businesses have grown if we would’ve had these steps in place to begin with?
Conclusion
So, we really want to set you up with that foundation. We want to start you in this workshop. And of course, we want to have you part of the FDN family. That’s our motivation too.
The more FDNs we can get out there in the world, the better this world is going to be. I see it in my own practice; I see it with the other FDNs that are practicing. And I even see some of my friends and clients here on this thread. You know how powerful getting access to those labs and really implementing your DRESS protocol can be. So, that’s our heart in wanting to share this information with you guys, to really go make the world a better place. It’s not trite, that’s what we want to do.
So, pop them in; DM us. Let us know if you can join. And then we’ve got some really great resources for you on August 29th. I will see you there.
[00:38:19] Detective Ev: Awesome. I can’t wait. And I’ll definitely see you personally before that because we’ve got a ton of work to do, don’t we?
Jennifer Woodward: Yep.
Detective Ev: Thank you guys for tuning in. Again, if you’re catching it afterwards, just DM us “Biz Workshop”. And then, since I opened my big mouth again, you guys will get it for free. I will get the flak from that later. So, congratulations. Alright, we’ll see you guys on the workshop. Take care.
Jennifer Woodward: Bye, guys.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com, on YouTube @FDNtraining, or on Instagram @fdntraining.
For more informational and functional health-oriented podcasts like this one, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/health-detective-podcast/.
To learn more about us, go to functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com/about-fdn-functional-testing/.
