3 myths about building a website for your health business

 
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Cliff’s Notes version

Over my last 11 years of business, I’ve heard all the excuses for so many things (clients not drinking enough water, eating at the drive thru for every meal of the day, or even why they don’t have time to pee), but it’s not just limited to our health clients. I hear excuses every single day as to why wellness entrepreneurs and health business owners can’t build their businesses.

Not only that, but a questionnaire I recently sent out showed that although I had a good cross section of email subscribers with varying years of experience (anywhere from just thinking about a business to 5+ years growing one), with a background in everything from professionally trained nurses, chiropractors and naturopaths, all the way to self taught essential oil educators, one thing was the same across most of them:

80% of wellness entrepreneurs who were polled said they weren’t making enough money in their business.

I intimately know that feeling (see my business history here), and so I know that it’s not for lack of trying! I know how heartbreaking it can be to put your all into something that feels like it’s never going to have the level of success (or even a fraction) that you dreamed about.

However, I see a ton of wellness entrepreneurs pouring their heart and soul into things that aren’t productive, the top one being addressed as #1 below. You can work and work and work, but if you aren’t working on the right things, you’re just going fast in the wrong direction.

It’s like what they say about worrying, but let’s take out worrying and replace it with something like “social media”:

Social media is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but gets you nowhere (most of the time).

It’s not that social media is useless, there’s definitely a time and place for it, and you should absolutely be using it. But if it’s your only strategy, and especially if you only use one platform, like Instagram, you’re putting yourself in an incredibly vulnerable position.

And if you've been pouring your time and energy into social media, trying to find new paying customers ... and have nothing much to show for it? Well, you know what Albert Einstein said, right? The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. And he wasn’t smart at all ;)

I fully believe that if you’re serious about your business, you need a website as your marketing home and hub, from which you share your amazing content on all the different social media platforms.

Whenever I share this, that’s when I start hearing all the excuses:

  • I don’t have time to build a website

  • I’m not very tech savvy

  • I paid someone else thousands of dollars for a website before, and it didn’t do anything for my business (been there, my friend, to the tune of $10,000+!)

These are just thoughts, excuses, and fears holding you back, and I’m here to bust them.

Here are the 3 most common myths about building a website, plus the things that are holding you back from making a full time income in your wellness business:

Myth #1: It’s ALL about social media … plus it’s free

Somehow everyone thinks that if you have an Instagram account or Facebook, it’s easy to find new paying clients. I’m here to tell you that:

a) no matter the route you go, it’s never “easy” to find new paying clients; and

b) just having social media to drive new customers only works for a tiny amount of business owners!

Here are some things to think about when you say that social media is “free”:

  • What is it costing you in time? That’s not free, AND it’s not even a renewable resource!

- I spend about 7 to 10 hours a WEEK on Instagram of my work hours. Be honest, how much TIME are you spending on social media???! Check your phone usage reports to see the cold hard truth.

- If your business IS getting paid to be on social media, then great! But for most of you, it isn’t

- If you’ve actually gotten a client successfully from social media, how much time did you spend doing it? If you’re like me spending 7 hours a week on Instagram, and it took me a month to find a new paying customer, and that customer made me $500, then that means you’ve worked 28 hours to make $500. That’s almost 20% of your working hours towards making just $500! Your bills are probably way higher than that.

- If you want to work with 4 paying clients each month, do you have to show up MORE?! Or can you show up DIFFERENTLY on different platforms, ones that don’t require you to actively be on there all day, every day?

- If you have no other way of marketing, you have to either spend more time on social media OR raise your prices. Do you have any more time to spend on it? Can you raise your prices if you haven’t worked with many clients, or you’re already on the high end for your niche?

  • The second thing I want you to ask yourself is: when was the last time you invested hundreds or thousands of dollars into something that would take you weeks or months to see a result, without doing MAJOR research somewhere else, like on a website or in an actual retail store?

This brings us to the next point:


Myth #2: Building a website is a nice to have, but not a need to have

  • I don’t know about you, but before I spend money at a business, I usually go to their website to find out more about them and their products/services

  • If a business doesn’t have a website, I find it hard to take them seriously, especially if I’m spending a lot of money

  • Lower priced services might be an exception

- While I would have preferred a website, it wasn’t a deal breaker for me that my new nail salon only had a Facebook page. However, I was only paying $25 for this service, not $250.

  • Your clients and customers are looking for a LIFESTYLE, and yes, social media is one part of it, but the REAL conversations and transformations are not happening on Instagram, but in your paid course/1-1 services/using your product on a DAILY basis which requires a lot of education

- Chances are that your clients are going to share things with you that they might not even tell their husband or wife. Things like their bowel movements, weird habits, or even their deep dark fears and secrets. That’s not going to happen on social media, no matter how amazing you are. Building this sort of trust can only happen in a safe, intimate environment, the sort of environment that you can build on your website. Think of your website like your virtual living room!

Myth #3: I have to be blogging for hours each week, it’s going to take up all my time!

The first thing I’m going to challenge you to look at is how much time you’re spending on social media. If you’ve been spending 5-10 hours a week on it, and haven’t found any clients yet, I’d recommend shifting some of, or the majority of, that time to blogging, and keeping social media to a minimum.

  • Why even blog in the first place?

- First off, you need to be doing SOMETHING to market your business. Right now, that's most likely blogging, social media, or podcasting.

- When you write a post on social media, it might take you 30 minutes by the time you find the picture, write the caption, and, if you’re on Instagram, share it in a story AND answer all the comments (because then you get more organic reach!).

Your goal with social media will be comments, likes, and follows, all of which you don’t own.

- Not to mention you should look at other people’s content and interact with their stuff. Let’s say you do this for another 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.

- If you do this 5 days a week, you’re looking at a 5 hour investment into something that will more than likely NEVER be seen again.

- Social media requires constant new input, which means it’s a cycle that will never end.

  • ALTERNATE scenario

- Spend 5 hours a week writing a blog post + making a pretty graphic to go with it.

Your NEW goal is to write a blog post with somewhere for the reader to give you their email + build your list.

Then, you’re going to take that blog post and:

- Share it to Pinterest with a search worthy caption.

- Use the blog post as an outline to make a video to share on YouTube.

- Shout it out on Instagram up to once every WEEK.

- Share it on Facebook on a rotating basis using a scheduler.

Click here to learn how you can create 2 weeks of social media content in less than 4 hours.

This includes RECYCLING content, not always making up new content.

This is called a syndication model, and the more you put new things into the recycling process, the bigger your reach goes with less and less input.

What sounds like the smarter scenario to you? The one that requires constant new input (and loads of time), or the one where you can create content once, and recycle it for years to come?


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