Introduction
Well, hello my friends. Welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka, Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on why health coaches struggle sometimes.
Well, man, what a crazy previous month we just had in June. I know this is coming out a little bit later than the end of June, obviously. But man, it was amazing. We had our Summer Open House event. It was our biggest month ever in terms of new enrollees into the course. And it just goes to show you this space is as hot as ever. People are moving towards this; people are excited about doing this as a career.
What I learned over the month, was how interested people are in the business side of things. This wasn’t really some huge revelation. I mean, I had kind of known this before, that’s why we created the FDN Business School and all these additional resources to help people on that side.
But it was amazing to me that in a month where we posted more business content and more success stories than ever before, it was also a month where we had the most enrollees ever in a single month since this course began over 14 years ago. That’s kind of crazy, right?
The other thing that the past month really helped me with was understanding why people are attracted to our program when there’s so many others out there. I always say this, I think this is really worth reiterating always and mentioning every single time I bring up our program versus other programs, there’s a lot of great programs out there, okay? Like a lot. They do really cool things.
Health Coaches Struggle: Know What You Want
Everyone kind of has their unique place in the market. It could be as simple as someone’s teaching style resonates more with you than someone else’s. So, we’re not really like course bashers, that’s not what we want to do. But there are legitimate comparisons to other things, right?
And what you need to really do when you’re figuring out whether or not any course is for you is knowing what you want. That will help you decipher whether or not a course is for you or not for you. But it starts actually with knowing what you want.
It’s a side topic, but I kind of make a joke with that, and I’m laughing a little bit. Because it’s amazing how many people will hop on calls with us to talk about the course, but they don’t know what they want. I can’t properly serve you as a course enrollment advisor, and none of our course enrollment advisors can properly serve you if you don’t already have an idea of what you want.
Because now, unfortunately, even if we’re not intending to do this, our own biases are coming up and we’re probably labeling you with something that we want, which is for you to sign up with the course, right? So, make sure you know what you want before you decide what course is for you. Okay, that’s a separate note though.
The main thing I wanted to focus on today, and another thing that I learned during this last month is why some health coaches are having so much trouble out there.
Health Coaches Struggle: Fancy Marketing
I don’t know that this is like the biggest discovery I’ve ever made; I mean, I feel like I’ve kind of known this for a while. But it’s just weird, again, looking at why people are and were attracted to our course over time. So, here’s the biggest thing I see with health coaches.
We kind of (and I say we because I actually was a health coach first), we kind of get brought into the space by, I’m guessing, fancy marketing. What happens is maybe we’re on our own health journey, we’ve dealt with some symptoms, we’re looking up stuff, and then a very cleverly placed Facebook ad or a Google advertisement or a YouTube ad, whatever it might be, comes up on our feed. It sells us this promise of being able to do work in the holistic health space as a career.
We’re probably going to be able to get our own health under control with that program. And we’ll be able to quit our job that we’re doing now that maybe we don’t like and do something we’re truly passionate about. Well, that sounds great. I mean, all of that sounds awesome, actually. That’s kind of the dream.
You get to be healthy; you get to help other people make money in an actual ethical and useful way, and you get to make your own hours, have your own business, create your own schedule. That sounds pretty cool for most people. But then there’s this issue with the dream that’s being sold.
Health Coaches Struggle: Losing Confidence
The marketing’s great. It’s really good at convincing those of us who sign up for a lot of these health coaching courses that this is going to happen. But then we end up on the other side of that program, we graduate. We are left there thinking, oh, this didn’t really work. I don’t have a business and I don’t feel confident enough to start one. Again, this isn’t me bashing on programs. I think I have an understanding of why this is happening.
One of the reasons that I believe it’s happening, and in fact I know it’s happening for some people, cause they’ll tell you this directly, is the program that they went through didn’t help them get their own health under control. So, they don’t have the confidence to go help others.
One thing that should be mentioned here is, you don’t need to be at a hundred percent health to go help others. In fact, that’s a huge limiting belief. If you dealt with really severe chronic disease and you’re even 50% better, the idea that you couldn’t help others in a meaningful way is ridiculous. You obviously could. You’ve gotten yourself 50% better, so you are certainly qualified to help at least some portion of the population that’s dealing with these chronic diseases.
With that said, though, I think we lose a lot of confidence when we become stagnant. I think this is true with anything in life. If our relationship becomes stagnant, if our finances become stagnant, if our fitness becomes stagnant, I think we start to lose confidence in it. This is especially true on the health side.
Health Coaches Struggle: A Predictable, Duplicatable System
What I’ve experienced myself is I went through a health coaching program, and I did get better. It did help my health. But then I got stuck; I got stagnant. And I didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I didn’t see how I was going to continuously improve and get better, and it took away my confidence.
So, I figured, how am I supposed to help someone else if, yes, I mean, I’ve made progress, but I don’t even know the next steps? I feel so lost with this. However, I think a lot of confidence comes from this idea that, okay, maybe I’m only 70% better right now, but dang man, I’m getting 1%, 2% better every single month. And I know eventually that’s going to lead me to where I want to go, where I originally set out to be. So, that gives you that confidence to go help other people.
And I think this is one of the reasons FDN brings in a lot of folks. They start to realize that the health side of what we do is really different because it’s a system. It’s a predictable, duplicatable system. And it’s weird because if you find people that are in the functional health space for a while, they’ll actually challenge it sometimes. That’s the irony. They’ll be like, well, wait a second. Why do you try to teach this set amount of labs, why do you use these same labs on every person?
Health Coaches Struggle: Looking at H.I.D.D.E.N. Stressors
Grant you, we have access to over 60 labs after graduating. So, it’s not that we don’t see a time and place for additional lab testing. But it’s fascinating because they’ll almost challenge this idea of working with a set amount of labs. Well, the problem is, if you don’t do that, you don’t have a system. You have an, hopefully, educated guessing game. At worst, you just have a guessing game.
Because if I come to your office or I meet with you online, let’s say I’m your client or prospect client. And you just say, well, it sounds like this, sounds like that. I’m going to run tests to validate my hypothesis. All the tests can do is validate or invalidate the hypothesis. If it’s invalidated now, you’re kind of stuck; if it’s validated, well, why’d you run the test to begin with? You should have just put them through the protocol since you were so smart and knew what it was already, right? Kind of a waste of money.
We go into this saying, hey, you know what? We think we can probably figure it out because over time you do start to learn of patterns on the labs. But I have been so humbled and shocked so many times that I don’t act like that. I say, this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to look at this set of systems in your body: hormonal, immune, digestion, detoxification, energy production, nervous system – H.I.D.D.E.N. stressors. That’s what we call it in FDN. It’s an acronym.
Health Coaches Struggle: FDN’s Resources and Tools
We’re going to look at that and what we can guarantee is this. I don’t know precisely what’s going to show up on all of those labs. But I do know that anyone that has been under a good amount of chronic stress for a long period of time is always going to show things on these labs.
Now, when those things show up, I certainly know what to do with it. I just don’t know what those exact things are going to be for you because all of us are unique individuals. I’d be arrogant to say, I know exactly what’s going to be happening on your lab tests. You know, I don’t know that a hundred percent. So, we run the labs and we have this system here where you’re always going to find something that’s going on with the person that can be improved in the person.
Then we’re teaching them how to focus on the lifestyle habits that are necessary for having better health in general while we’re doing this. That’s, I think, one of the things that helps people in FDN and gives them a huge amount of confidence is not only do we have this set system that can help you get pretty much the trickiest health challenges under control, but we also have the additional help.
We have the clinical advisors; we have the mentorship. So, even if the main system only got you to that 70% and now you feel stagnant, we have the other 30% lying out there. We will get you to where you want to go. That’s what happened to me; that’s what happened to my mom. We’ll get you to where you want to go cause we have those resources and tools.
Health Coaches Struggle: Learn About Business
I think a lot of people feel an additional level of confidence with that. So, that was one thing that I learned. And I think it’s one reason, again, that health coaches are not successful sometimes and so many are struggling. It is because they don’t have confidence.
They have health challenges, they feel stuck in them, and they certainly don’t feel like they can have consistent results with other people. Maybe some clients, it works great, other clients, it moves the needle 0%. That’s not what we want; that’s not going to help us build a business. And that leads me to my next point, which is the actual business side.
I have met people that do have a decent system, maybe even a great system. They have a powerful health story, and they are so dang knowledgeable that they’re going to be able to support everyone that they work with, at least to some degree. And yet no one knows they exist. This might be because of a lack of confidence, but usually it’s a lack of skill in the business side.
I don’t mean that in a mean way. It’s kinda like the health thing. We wouldn’t go out and try to help someone with health when we just learned about it for a day. Well, the same is true about business. You have to learn about business so that you can actually run one properly, attract clients properly, and do what needs to be done. That’s where FDN really shines.
Health Coaches Struggle: FDN Teaches Health & Business
I always emphasize this; I think this is a huge place that we stand out is the business side. You know, I don’t know of any school that has so many successful entrepreneurs, especially when it comes to the fact that people in our world that are entrepreneurs, a lot of them came from 9-to-5 jobs.
Not many of these people were entrepreneurs since nine years old selling things at school or doing whatever, going door to door, and hustling at yard sales. That’s not what most of our practitioners are like. Most of our practitioners did the college thing, did the 9-to-5 thing, had enough, and then had to learn a brand-new set of skills and are crushing it. They’re making more income than they were in their 9-to-5 job, but now they get to do something that they love, and they feel really good about.
So, I think that’s the other big thing. You need to find a place that can help you on the health system side, if we’ll call it that and then the business side as well. And shameless plug, FDN is a place that offers that. This isn’t because we’re so smart or so revolutionary, we just listen to our people. We learn over time; we add things to the course. And that’s why we’re probably ahead of the market in many ways.
We’re a place that you can come in as a health coach, struggling with the health side, struggling with the business side, and we can help you with both of those things. We can help take you from zero to hero in less than a year for some people.
Health Coaches Struggle: Everyone’s Unique in Health & Business
And when I say zero to hero, I mean you’ve gone through the entire FDN course, you’ve gone through the business school, and now you’re taking on clients and making an income with this. That’s amazing. It’s a bold promise in a sense, but if you put in the work here, it works.
And I don’t mean that in the cliche way, but that’s true of any system. If something is a system that’s proven and many people are doing it, well, then the only thing missing is your effort, right? You gotta put in the effort, and maybe your timeframe looks a little different than some people. That’s okay. Again, we’re all unique people. That not only applies to health, that’s going to apply to business too.
Some people are incredibly attractive and charismatic. I would assume that they sell a little better than me, right? And then others might be really gifted with the marketing side. Maybe they find that they have a huge talent for it. I’ve loved studying marketing over the last several years with FDN. It’s something that I was like, okay, wow. I feel pretty good about this side.
I’m not always fantastic with, what’s the word for this? Cause I don’t want to call it administration stuff. It’s more like, the organizational stuff, right? I’m great at executing, but then I can easily get overwhelmed with all the tasks that are there. It really helps me when someone else is supporting me in that way and saying, all right, this is the list, this is what needs to be done. I’m like, bam, I can go do that.
Health Coaches Struggle: You Must Have a System
So, you’re going to have certain things that you’re great at in business, you’re going to have some things that you’re not as good at. Regardless, it’s a skill. And just like you don’t want to be one sided with health, you don’t want to be one sided with the business side. You have to learn this. It’s a skill that can be taught; it can be learned. Combine both of those things and then you have really successful practitioners.
I don’t think a lot of schools right now are doing a good job at supporting with the business side. Unfortunately, I don’t even think some are doing a really great job at consistently getting results health wise, but that’s a whole separate point. But if you don’t have one or both of those things, especially both, why would you be successful as a health coach? You’re going to feel like you’re constantly struggling and quite literally you might be struggling. You need to get those two things under control.
Well, you could create your own system. It might take more time, but I don’t want you to think that this is a podcast today where I’m trying to push you into the FDN course. You could come up with a system, especially if you focus on one specific type of person.
Let’s say you were really good at helping autoimmune clients, for example. Okay. I’m sure it would be easier to come up with a system that would work consistently in terms of getting autoimmune clients results than every single person out there, cancer, mental health, all these different types of things, right? It’s hard to come up with a system like that.
Health Coaches Struggle: Books on Business
Reed Davis, the founder of FDN, had to run 10,000 labs before he was able to come up with this system. It takes some time. You can come up with your own; you don’t need ours.
Then the business side, you could start reading books on business. Go to Amazon, look up the top 10 business books. Also, you could hire a business coach that resonates with you, or you could do something like FDN. Obviously, we do offer these things, but you don’t have to use us to do this stuff.
The bottom line is if you have a passion to go do this health coaching thing, and you’ve been struggling for a while, maybe even years, these are the two components that you’re probably missing. Tell me if you don’t agree with that.
You can go to @fdntraining on Instagram and message us. I’d love to know if you think those are the two main reasons that a lot of health coaches struggle. And if you think there’s additional reasons or if you just think I’m wrong, I’m always welcome to respectful discussion. I would love to shout out your comments in the future if you made them to us. Just go to @fdntraining on Instagram.
But all right. This one’s short, sweet, and to the point today. I just wanted to get this out there because I saw so many amazing, intelligent, hardworking, and passionate people over the last month that aren’t getting it done, and they’re super attracted to FDN. I’m like, what was the thing here? And I’m like, duh. It’s because they have a health system now, and they have the business side. Nail those two things, however you have to and you’re going to be a successful health coach given enough time.
Conclusion
I’m looking forward to talking to you guys again soon. But until then, take care.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com. Our Instagram handle is @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/.
