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Planning Your Wellness Business for 2024: Streamlining Offers, Retaining Clients, and Leveraging Podcasts for Growth

• Nicole Harlow: Entrepreneur, Designer, Yoga Teacher, Lifehacker + Author

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Do you ever wonder how your unique personality can fuel your business strategies? Well, I'm Nicole Harlow, and I'm excited to share my process of planning for 2024 on this episode of Wealthy Wellness Biz podcast. An intriguing twist is that this time, I'll be broadcasting live on Instagram from my new office, a great chance for you to jump in on the conversation!

We'll be taking a deep look at the evolution of my business focusing on the streamlining of offers, and the critical importance of recurring offers and maintaining long-term clients. We'll traverse the front end value of offers, my approach to social media, as well as the value ladder. By the end of this, I promise, you'll be equipped to make more strategic and intentional decisions for your business.

But that's not all, we'll also explore how podcasts can be a game-changer for your business growth. Particularly, if you operate in the health industry, you'll be fascinated by how podcasts can significantly contribute to your revenue. I'll be sharing benefits of our free masterclasses, "Wellness Clients on Demand: Podcasting for Your Health-Based Business" and "Confidence to Be Seen as the Face of Your Wellness Business." Stay tuned to get all these insights and make sure you follow @brandbetterco on Instagram for updates on future topics and live sessions.

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I run three award-winning marketing / automations, branding & podcast production agencies for wellness brands, health-based businesses, health clinics and clinician entrepreneurs

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Speaker 1:

Hi there, thanks for joining me on the Wealthy Wellness Biz podcast. My name is Nicole Harlow and I'm your host, and today I'm doing something a little bit different that I've never done before and hopefully it's successful and it's something that I can do a lot more in the future. So what I'm actually doing right now is I'm recording the podcast live. So if you're live with me, hello and welcome and excited to have you join. But if you're listening after the fact, and you listen to this as the podcast, I'd love for you to follow me on Instagram at brand better Co. This is where you're going to get notified of what the topics are going to be every single week. Today we're talking about strategizing for 2024. And so what I love about like I said, this is the first time I've ever done this and what I love about it is I can see people are already joining. This is a place where you can. I'm going to go through, just like I'm recording my podcast episodes, so I have my notes here. I'm excited because I'm in my new office, so we get to kind of show that off too at the new house. So I'm excited to kind of blend these two things together. And if you're already familiar or if you're not familiar with brand better two things that we offer our podcast production and social media management. And so what I'm hoping in doing a live recording of the podcast every Tuesday, is to just show you not only my setup and how easy it is to just get started with podcasting, but how you can combine the two. So I know this is a little bit off topic for planning for 2024, but I also think it's an interesting way to you know.

Speaker 1:

For me, I'm all about doubling up on strategizing and simplifying my work, and so I thought about this last week. I thought, well, I need to sit down and I want to start doing some more Instagram lives, and I also thought, well, I need to record some podcast episodes too. And what if I put the two together? You know it's a place that's interactive, it's live. If you want to come on a Tuesday and you want to ask questions and you're following us at brand better Co, you can ask those questions ahead of time. I'll let you know what the topic is and, if not, you can follow up on the podcast at early. Sure, right, you're at the gym, put your ear pods in, your pods in and just go.

Speaker 1:

So what I wanted to do, kind of short and sweet, today, is you know we're already at oh man, december 5th and you know the end of the year is just screaming its way towards us and I've been thinking a lot about 2024 and how I want to show up as a business owner, as a CEO, how I want to show up really in every aspect of my life, and a couple of the words that came up for me. And I want to invite you at the beginning, before really any strategic planning and this goes back away many, many years ago, to Daniel Laporte, who I love with, who was really the first person I mean I can't believe how old I was when I finally got to this point but was the first person that really, you know, taught me and others to. You know, how do you want to feel while you're doing this? I know it's kind of like it seems like old hat at this point. You know to ask yourself those questions, but you know, at the time I had never really asked myself those questions before. I never really like. You know, I was thinking about this.

Speaker 1:

Other day just around, one of our clients did a podcast with Sachin Patel. This is Dr Randy on Restore the Real. Shout out to Dr Randy on Restore the Real Love his podcast and love producing it. He had Sachin Patel come on and talk about breathwork and I was saying to Eric, who's my life partner and business partner, how old I was before I actually learned about breathing. Right, it was like 25, 27, before I really thought about like breathing. And so the words and how we want to feel, was also that something that came to me a bit later on in life? Right, I didn't. I wasn't, you know, in my teens thinking about how do we want to feel, you know, how do I want to feel when I buy this thing, how do I want to feel when I go out with this person, how do I want to feel if I, you know, eat this, eat that, do this, all the things right in life. And so I start my strategic planning for every year, thinking about how do I want to feel, you know, and how do I want the business to feel, and that's a really great entry point for developing the rest of the strategy. So I work as a brand strategist with a lot of different wellness business owners, solopreneurs and small teams especially, and there is no one size fits all strategy. I will say that you know, very confidently, there is no one size fits all business strategy, and that's why I ask a lot of questions around.

Speaker 1:

You know personality, personality typing, human design, astrology, I mean, you name it it's all about a recipe, right, and so that's one part of the puzzle. So I know my recipe. I know that I'm a manifesting generator in human design. I know that I'm a terrian, so I'm not going to want to work that hard. I am. I am like, I'm confident enough to admit that now that I am about working smarter and not harder. I'm about deep relaxation and pleasure and having a really good life, you know, and so there's a lot of my own personality that goes into the strategic planning. So it's a combination, at first, of who am I, who, what kind of role do I want to step into, what if things I'm excited about developing and putting out there in the world, and the words. You know, and so I will share with you that my words for 2024 are purposeful, simple and aligned.

Speaker 1:

Purposeful, simple and aligned Kind of similar vibe, you know, and I would say in my personal life, maybe in business as well, I would throw in playful because I want to make sure that I'm always bringing playfulness into the space and it's actually not something that comes supernatural to me. So it's playful as a word that I do have to remind myself of. For some people they kind of never lose that like child, like you know, bouncing around and stuff and for myself I have to kind of remind myself. You know I almost have to write it down and have it so I can see it. So I'm going to add playful in there, both in life and in business, you know. And business, the playfulness can really come from content creation, which I love. You know, I'm really enjoying social digging more into social media, both for our clients and for our own business. I'm excited about playful creation, right Showing behind the scenes of the day and not taking things so seriously. So purposeful, simple, aligned and playful is what I'm working with for 2024.

Speaker 1:

And that could change because I am a changeable being and I want to talk you through just a list of some of the things that I am either phasing out, adding for next year and a little bit of the rationale between why. So I've got four on my list here. So number one for strategizing. I said that this is marketing, but I'm going to give you kind of a holistic picture of the business just in general. So one of the things that I'm doing for 2024 is really going through and streamlining our offers. That's kind of like the top header is streamlining the offer. So I invite you, depending on where you're at your stage of your business you may be at a stage where you are just creating offers now, but I have been doing this for 15 years and so there's a lot of offers and packages and lead magnets and everything like that. So step number one for me for 2024 is a deep assessment of everything that we have, which includes, as a side note, going through everything I've created and creating it into themes so that we can repurpose it.

Speaker 1:

Because it's easy as a creator and a business owner to just, like you know, do a webinar and then just kind of keep moving. Right, we're always moving, we're always creating. It's a little bit more difficult it's got to be more intentional to go back and be like, oh, I did that really great webinar and besides doing it one time, especially if not a lot of people show up. You know, we've all been in that situation where it's like, oh, only two people, like that was a really great webinar. Only two people showed up and so you kind of like kill your darlings, right. You just like put all this effort into creating something and then you just kind of throw it to the wayside and never do anything with it again.

Speaker 1:

So it's one of my goals, kind of as streamlining our offers. Part of that is also going through and seeing what content is still really good that can be repurposed. Now it can be repurposed as a program, it can be repurposed, as my intention is to repurpose it as reels, as Instagram and TikTok content. I know there's a lot of content out there that I've already created that I probably don't want to see again, but there's probably because that's just my personality. Once I created, I'm kind of just like I'm ready to move on. But I'm calling in help, just with the team, to help me go through some of the backlogs and then create that into new content. So it's streamlining our offers, also aligning with content repurposing, kind of going back through the archives. Get really clear around. You know, what do we want to be offering in 2024?

Speaker 1:

And part of that conversation for me is phasing out overly complex offers. That's a big one for me because we have existed. The bread and butter of brand better for the last few years has been around complex offering. So, like our brand cohesion package, which is a high ticket, you know, five figures, $16,000 offer, but it has a lot of complexity to it, right, because it's strategy and web design and brand design and copywriting and lead magnet and marketing, and so that required me to have like a constant project manager in our business who was just managing. You know, sometimes we'd have 10 to 20 clients that are going through complex projects and it's not that I don't love that work, but my dedication for next year is to start phasing out any projects that have, or packages that have, a lot of complexity to them. So that would include some of our like branding and copywriting offers or maybe only just taking on like one client at a time. Anything that I need a project manager for moving forward is probably going to hit the cutting room floor because it's another you know it's another person contractors, all of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

So I want to try to streamline what we're doing that's really easy to execute, that I'm excited to execute. That would include our podcasting services, which are definitely going to stay because that is streamlined like a mofo. I love that work. It's really easy for us to do in house, it doesn't require a project manager, and I, you know, in social media, would be the same too. We also have an offer that's a hybrid of the two right now, which is, you know, podcasting and social media, a little more heavy on the social media side of it. So that's around streamlining the offers to go. You know, podcasting, social media, things that we can, things that don't require a lot of complexity, and I would invite you to to assess that in your own business too. What are the least complex offers that are easy for you to execute, easy for you to sell? You know like much more difficult it is to sell a multi-part, complex a package and saying, hey, do you want to launch a podcast? We can do that for you. This is what it looks like, this is all the deliverables that you get from it.

Speaker 1:

Then I would just add to this number one here is I am really focusing on recurring offers for 2024, because something that I spent a lot of time on over the last few years is complex projects that were one and done. I got really fascinated with the fact that they were high ticket, it's easy to be like, wow, we just made X amount of money on this project. What I didn't really see and I wasn't strategizing properly, I feel like is how to retain those clients and move them into something more recurring, because I would do the front end work of selling than the work of client satisfaction during the high ticket project. Then it would be like bye. I would be like, oh man, I don't have something else to sell to that person and I don't have a way for us to continuously work together. So 2024, with podcasting, social media and something else that I'll just tell you about in a second, is number two are recurring offers. So I'm really high prioritizing selling a client, building that relationship and retaining that client. It's going to do wonders for our bottom line and it's also given me the ability, which I've never had before, to somewhat predict our revenue, and that's a big thing as a high ticket service provider. I think that really translates over to the wellness world as well. I think I want to make sure that, even though I think a lot of my avatar is wellness business owners, there's a lot of crossover in how we run bread better and how you would run a functional medicine, one-to-one practice. So we're just talking services and programs, services and programs packages and how you execute them. Number two of what I'm strategizing for 2024 is I'm adding in coaching packages and more kind of one-off consultations.

Speaker 1:

Now going back to number one, when my projects were complex, I didn't have a lot of capacity to have conversations. I was actually pretty with helping out with project management and doing strategy calls for our clients and web design calls and branding calls and so many calls. 2023 was filled with sales calls. There was a lot of talking and I'm on the more introverted side of the scale, so I'd always rather just be kind of like creating, sitting there, creating the headphones on and things like that, and so I didn't feel like I had the capacity to really open up any coaching slots or do any one-off strategy kind of work, because I just felt like every week I was full at capacity. So now that we've streamlined and we're working to phasing out the complex offers, social media and podcasting doesn't really require a lot of calls with our clients. We're kind of more like email check-ins and we'll DM each other and send voice messages, but we don't have to do a lot of like we're not getting all calls every week because I think is what I'm saying, and so there's a lot more a growing capacity to be like.

Speaker 1:

I do like talking to people. I do like sharing some advice and strategizing and connecting in that way. I like it. I feel like I'm good at it. I feel like there's more capacity here and more space in the week. Also, on a side note, and if you're watching live or watching one of the videos, I like my space better. When I was living at the farmhouse before, it was kind of dark and a little bit like old and dreary. It was like a 300-year-old house and so I feel much cozier and I feel like this is a space where I'd really like to open up to more like coaching clients and maybe one-off strategy calls around podcasting or social media or branding any of that stuff.

Speaker 1:

So I'm adding that and I think that the teachable thing that I wanted to share around my number two is that coaching has been difficult for me to offer up until now because I've had a difficult time in the mindset realm to when you come from a background of like web design or branding or anything like that, and it's probably similar to the type of business that you have as well. It feels like there's a deliverable that always has to come with it so I can get paid. I can get paid a lot of money, but we have to deliver this thing, whether it's a logo or a website or a copy or anything like that right. Even podcasting and social media have this like here's all your content, here's the editing. So I'm stepping into an offer that doesn't require a deliverable, that the offer is my expertise, the offer is the coaching, the offer is the strategy that feels like an empowered step for 2024 and one that I want to step more into and that I invite you to step into as well.

Speaker 1:

Number three is focusing on the front end value of our offers. So that means a lot of kind of like deep dives into the pipeline of you know like our offers are tested. At this point, I'm happy. I don't think a lot of work needs to go into the offers themselves, but I do think that some real intention and focus and strategy around, like how are you acquiring clients, leads, subscribers, followers, what does that pipeline look like? What are our top? You know, what is that? What is a really? What does a relationship look like? How are people coming into our environment, how are we nurturing them? Are we giving them the right steps to want to work with us, either through like a DIY capacity?

Speaker 1:

One thing that's missing right now in the suite of offers is a social media program, and so that's kind of on the docket for 2024 to create something like that. We do have a DIY podcasting course, and so I like this idea of just kind of the value ladder and that's. I invite you to kind of look around at everything that you have and just do you have everything kind of in that value ladder? So for social media, we jump from like hey, you know, here's like we're brand better to just like hire us for social media, and I'd like there to be like one or two more steps through there, whether it's a quiz, probably some kind of DIY program that like that scales up to our one-on-one services for social media. So yeah, so we're focusing, as number three, on the front end value of our offers.

Speaker 1:

And you know, looking at our programs, looking at our lead magnets, looking at anything top of funnel, thinking about, does all of our social media content, does it edify and build up the foundation of the offers that we have? So no fluff, no fluff, no unnecessary, no unnecessary content going out there. Everything needs to be streamlined for 2024. Everything needs to serve a purpose and I need to be able to explain that. So if I can say, you know, here's why even this like here's why, why would I be recording the podcast live? I could just sit there. It would be probably easier for me to just like turn this off, just have my headphones on and just go right, not like thinking about like who's joining or who's here, anything like that. So you know what is the purpose of actually going live and recording the podcast is to show prospective clients how to do it right, and so I want to make sure that, going through in 2024, that I'm really focusing on, you know, not only teaching, but just kind of showing how we do it, showing how we, you know, show up on social media, how we show up for our podcast and how we can do that for clients as well. So number four, going through the list, is social media. So I want to tell just a little bit about, you know, the last couple of years.

Speaker 1:

How things have been different for us at Brand Better is we really focused for the last three years, four years, on strategic partnerships. So we focused on building relationships with strategic partners that had aligned audiences. So whether that was like me speaking at conferences, sponsoring different conferences in the wellness world functional medicine, health coaching space, naturopathic doctors, all that good stuff so what that meant for us as a company is we would have like four to five events throughout the year. That would be like not only big money makers for us, but it would be like where we would grow our list. We would have an influx of new people into our funnel, new people into our space, new relationships, and in the branding side we would bring on 10 to 15 clients at a time and then we would spend six months out of the year just facilitating those packages. And so that has been a great model to build relationships over the last and really build kind of expertise. I'm glad that we did it. But there's an evolution in the business that's happening right now which is not so much of a reliance on other people's audiences, other people's, you know, these strategic relationships, sponsorships, speaking on other people's stages, etc. Etc. So there's been like that has been.

Speaker 1:

The last couple years of a deep focus has been one of my only big focuses is the strategic partnerships, whereas I'm pivoting for 2024 in a more kind of grassroots root C kind of foundational way, which says, you know, show up every day on social media, building the relationships, I would get these big boom influxes. If you're a client and you're here and you're listening, you may have met me and worked with us through one of those events, right through a big webinar or an online, an online conference or an in person conference or something like that. So it's been successful. But it what it didn't do for us as a team is give us really the impetus to like show up every day for ourselves.

Speaker 1:

You know, and this is what I'm teaching now with the podcast and the social media and the, the new clients that are coming in for us, for one of those recurring services is, you know, I want to make sure that I'm practicing what I preach, that I'm showing up here live, that I'm showing up for the podcast and I'm showing up on social media to show the behind the scenes of not only brand better, but a bit about my life. So how did you show the authenticity is? How do you, how do you show up as the face of your brand? And so I would do that historically a few times a year and as more of an introvert that served my personality. I was like, oh cool, you know, just get like wheeled out a couple times a year, speak on stage, you know, sponsor a conference, do some sales calls, get a handful of clients and then cool, like we're good for the year, right until those run out and you go. Okay. Next, you know what's the next thing that we're going to do.

Speaker 1:

I'm really really committed in 2024 to walking the talk and really showing up as the face of brand better and in a more sustained, a sustainable way. I mean, that's, that's really part of my, you know, conversation with myself is like how to do that sustainably, how to do it in a way that feels fun and playful and exciting. I mean, even this, like even recording this podcast live, I would say already has been so much more enjoyable than just doing it by myself, because I can see who's joined, I can see people who have popped on. I'm top of mind. They're also top of mind for me to, and I love that. I feel like already I feel like I've super charged something. That was a bit of like okay, you know, you got to check it off the list, I got to sit down and I gotta write it right on my podcast. I got to sit down, I get recorded and then it goes up and this is a series of steps right, whereas just by adding this one little piece, aka showing up, showing, showing up live I've added in more personalization, more relationship building, right, and and that's great, you know, I think that it's. I think we can kind of see the parallels of how doing this for your own business could serve.

Speaker 1:

So just a little bit of a recap for 2024. I hope that you find some value and some just in sharing what I've been up to and what I plan on getting up to in 2024. I hope it may be it sparks some ideas. So I'm gonna go through just quickly around what the kind of broad checkmarks were for 2024. And number one was choosing your words. How do you wanna feel I am going with? Purposeful, simple, aligned and playful for 2024.

Speaker 1:

And then the four things that we're really focusing on as the kind of bold headers. You know there's a lot of little details underneath, but of the top headers, number one is going through and streamlining our offers and phasing out overly complex offers. Number two is adding in some coaching packages and some mentorship, one-off strategy, not relying on every single offer needs to be deliverables, because then we hit a ceiling and that's really based that's very personal, based on my own capacity for 2024. Number three is going through and focusing on the front end value of our offers. How are people getting into our funnel? What do they do next? I guess the way we can kind of support the bridge between finding us on social media, finding us through a podcast and then eventually becoming a client with us. And then number four is really dedicated to showing up on social media, also the podcast, which I guess is essentially saying showing up for more regular content creation in a sustainable way, but that's really focused on relationship building. So those are mine. I would love.

Speaker 1:

If, however, you want to get in touch with me, whether it's through email or Instagram at brandbetterco I think those are the two main ways of email and Instagram, although we do have. I had a TikTok. I just started a brand new one because I wanted to just kind of clear the deck. So that's at brandbetter, on TikTok. So if you want to jump over there and watch me actually build a brand new channel sometimes it's kind of cool from a teaching perspective to watch somebody else. It's hard when you get in and you're like, oh, someone's already at 10,000 followers or 5,000 followers, whereas that one is, I think, when I'm recording this, I'm at 18, so it's only a week old. So if you want to kind of see behind the scenes of how I'm doing it and the rationale and just kind of like, get over there. I mean, that would be awesome. I'd love for you to join me over there too.

Speaker 1:

So, however, you want to get in touch, I'd love to know what are you strategizing for 2024? And this I love doing this live podcast. So I think, for at least the time being, I'm going to keep this a regular thing. So feel free to tune in with me on Tuesdays Not exactly sure of the exact time, but we're all kind of hanging out on Instagram in the afternoon anyway, I know. So maybe put on some notifications on my channel to get a notification of when I go live, but definitely Tuesday. Check out the stories where I'll just kind of like, get you ready for what the topic of the week is going to be. If you have any questions, feel free to pop those questions in on stories via a DM or show up live and you can ask them live, but until then, it's been a pleasure spending this time with you. If you're listening to the post broadcast on the podcast, please consider showing up live so you can ask some questions. And yes, thank you so much for joining me on Wealthy Wellness Biz on our very first live podcast recording and I will talk to you soon. Bye, now. Yay, you made it to the end of the episode.

Speaker 1:

Here are some things that you can do to keep this party going. You can hire our team to work with our Branding Agency, social Media Management or podcast production team. You can find all of this information down in the show notes. You can subscribe to the podcast, leave a review, follow us on social media at brandbetterco.

Speaker 1:

Also, if you're interested in digging deeper into how a podcast can help you add six figures of revenue to your business in the next 12 months, I would love to invite you to join our latest free masterclass using the link in the show notes. That's called Wellness Clients on Demand podcasting for your health-based business. We also have another on-demand masterclass that's free, called Confidence, to be Seen as the Face of your Wellness Business. This is great if you know that you need to hop on social media, but you don't want to be like learning any of the dances or anything that feels really inauthentic. This is a great masterclass for you. One other thing that you can do to work with us is to join our profitable Wellness Podcast program, and you'll find the link also down below. Have a great day and I will see you on the next episode. Bye now.