You're probably reading this because you're either really interested in essential oils as a healing modality and want to start using them with your health coaching clients, but have no idea how the business side might work OR you're already sold on the business side but you have no idea how to bring essential oils into your client work without looking like you're jumping on a trend. That or you see all the health coaches around you starting to use them and you're like "what is up with these essential oils? They're like the green smoothie of 15 years ago!". Amiright?! No worries, because I'm here to help with 4 easy ways to naturally incorporate essential oils into your health business without looking like a sell out.

If you're reading this, chances are good that you're either in school to become a nutritionist of some sort (dietician, holistic nutritionist, holistic health coach, etc) OR you've already graduated and are ready to start working with clients ... but you have no idea how to start a nutrition business!

Our schools teach us how to be amazing stewards of health for our potential clients, they just don't teach us how to actually organize our appointments, programs, websites, marketing, and everything else that goes into running a successful nutrition business.

Learning how to start a nutrition business that's successful is well beyond the scope of a single blog post, but we can definitely cover the easiest and quickest way for you to start making money as a nutritionist: one-on-one clients.

Let me just start off this post by sharing something that most people don't know about me until you become real life, in-person friends with me: I'm an introvert. A *huge* introvert. That usually comes as a surprise to most people. You all see me doing Facebook Live videos, essential oil classes, or keynote presentations. Public speaking usually doesn't phase me. While I have no problem acting like an extrovert, I'm far from it.

For the longest time I never saw myself as an introvert. I thought introverts were just overly shy, and most people think the same thing. That's why no one thinks I'm an introvert when they meet me. When I'm out in public, I know how to be "on". I'm high energy, talking a ton, bopping from person to person.

And then I get home and crash. Sometimes I crash hard, like now. I'm writing this after spending the last 3 weeks pretty much feeling like I had a cold off and on, until an actual cold hit me on Thursday and has yet to release me from it's viral-filled tentacles 4 days later.

You see, I've spent the last 2 months talking and being around a lot of people. There are seasons in my business that call for it, and it's the end of that season. There's been flying to a convention and being surrounded by 30,000 people for 4 straight days (and let me tell you, flying triggers panic in me all by itself), followed by launching a new website, going on trips with my extroverted husband for his birthday (which means running around a new city from morning until late at night), going to an all-day TEDx talk, meeting new people at business summits, teaching more frequent than average oils classes, and mentoring my ever-growing essential oils team.

All of this while my husband travelled to 4 different cities over 4 different weeks on multi-day trips for his business in the last 2 months, leaving me to solo parent our 4-year-old son whom I adore but he's super high energy and needs attention, which can be exhausting.

It's all a bit too much for this introvert.

I've been asked over and over again about how I launch my online programs, so today I'm spilling the beans behind the $10,036.80 launch of my Brand, Build, Blog course (BBB: A branding & blogging course for holistic biz owners) to an email list of just 400 people. This course has since sold another $4,049.59, since it's an evergreen course and is available year round (numbers up to date as of Oct 11, 2016), bringing it's 8-month total to $14,086.39.

I'm going to break down the timeline of the course creation, launch timeline and sales, plus my secret weapon to creating this profitable online course.

I've often been asked how I come up with my ideas for online courses, and to tell you the truth, the idea for them usually comes to me fully formed in my head ... but only after years of developing my own personal skills and knowledge in the area that I'm going to teach and being able to break large concepts down into easy to understand steps.

For example, in 2014 I launched Mama Mojo, an 8-week online course for busy moms who want more energy, balanced hormones, and to calm their digestive systems. While the idea of the course hit me like a lightning bolt, it was based on my 6-month program that I took one-on-one nutrition clients through for 5 years before that. I guess you can say it was 5 years in the making. I knew the 6-month program worked, so I just translated it into an online version. That course went onto sell $11,114.90 with 2 launches spaced 6 months apart.

For BBB, I had been doing one-on-one Biz Strategy Sessions where people kept asking me about their websites. They didn't know how to design them, they needed help with the copy, and just generally wanted to know how to use SquareSpace better. This is where I started feeling that there was a need for this sort of information so I wouldn't have to waste my time repeating myself over and over again.

So, back in 2014 before I launched Mama Mojo (at least an entire year before BBB landed in my brain), I invested in a branding course that was the base of my $20,000 re-brand. A year after that, I invested in a different course that taught me branding AND website development. 4 months before the course idea came to me in late 2015, I had invested in a copywriting course. All of these courses taught valuable and needed lessons in a general sense, but nothing that was geared just towards holistic health practitioners.

There were no copy templates just for us, and unless a fellow holistic practitioner was really interested in design and web development like I was, it would be hard for most nutritionists or essential oil advocates to take the same courses and translate them into a finished profitable website. I knew there was a need, and so I took the best, most actionable concepts that I had learned from those 3 courses, added my own personal spin and experience with them after developing my own website on SquareSpace, and voila, Brand, Build, Blog was born in my head.

Then I just had to get it into a form for others to learn from and formally launch it. No biggie 😳.

Here's the timeline so you can follow along my course creation journey:

I get the question of "what email platform should I use in my business" at least once a week. When I first started, there was only a handful of email marketing software companies, but now the possibilities seem endless: Mailchimp, AWeber, MadMimi, Constant Contact GetResponse, ConvertKit, InfusionSoft, Ontraport ... and that doesn't even include the multi-tool platforms (that include extra robust shops and even online course hosting) like the New Kajabi and Shopify. How do you even know where to start?

You make an educated decision and move on. Seriously.

Whatever success you want to create, whatever feats you want to achieve, whatever dreams you want to make real, you can, and you don't have to do impossible, extraordinary things to make that happen. But you have to do SOMETHING. ~ Jeff Olson

You could debate until you're blue in the face which one to choose, but as in life and anything biz related, there won't be just one platform that will have everything you need all in one place and is the best at all of them. It doesn't exist.

One company might be better at getting through spam filters while another will give you the ability to create multiple lists and track clicks.

You've got to pick the one that ticks most of your boxes, then make it work for all it's worth.

However, if there's only one thing that you learn from this blog post, it's that you need to be growing an email list for the success of your business.

Whether you choose one of the companies I list below, or go with another completely different one, promise me that you at least HAVE an email list.

This is one of the top 3 mistakes I made in my first year as a Registered Holistic Nutritionist, and I don't want you to make the same one that I did.

It's summer right now, which means that everyone is out on their boat, at the beach, the cottage, out of town, visiting friends and families, having BBQ's, drinking bevvies on a patio, and taking the kids on day trips. All these people are your clients, and they're not interested in working on much right now. There are always seasons in life and in business, and summer is the season of slowing down. Try telling that to your bank account or your credit card company.

It's not just summer either. For us holistic health practitioners, depending on your niche, there's probably at least one other time of year when business is slow.

If you're a massage therapist, chiropractor, or naturopath, the two months before everyone needs to use up their benefits is insanely busy, but the two months after that are probably slower.

If you're an essential oil advocate, the busy times are September to December and March to June. The other months of the year aren't quite as hectic.

If you're a nutritionist, it depends on your niche. If your focus on weight loss, mid-November to the end of December is probably pretty dead, and then picks up in January and February when people realize they have a food hangover. If your focus is something else, you might find that you're busy up until mid-December, and then hit a lull until March when people come out of their winter hibernation.

The point is that there are at least 2 times during the year when you have the space and time to work on your business, not just in it.

You might not be selling a whack load of programs right now, but there are still tons of things you could be doing to build your business.

I have a mainly online based business, so I have a running list of things that I could be working on at any time of the year. Website updates and changes, pics for social media, completing the online course that I just purchased, recording a new webinar, truly the list could go on forever.

You might be just starting a website and realizing that you can use it as your master marketing machine year-round. You might have several social media platforms going that you know you aren't using to their fullest.

You can totally use this down-time to make shit happen in your business and bring in new clients  for the next 6 months, but you can't just try things willy nilly.

When you look on someone's Facebook timeline, Instagram feed, Pinterest boards, or website that draws you in and makes you want to click around, what's the thing that stands out the most? Amazing photos. When you're searching high and low for a website template to use, what usually attracts you to one over the other? The amazing, colourful photos they use in the preview template (nevermind the fact that the photos aren't yours ... they're just so pretty!). You might be building your first website, re-branding an old one, or changing businesses completely, but there's one thing you're going to need: a professional photo shoot.

My first photo shoot was done by a local photographer friend in late 2011. I picked out 3 different outfits, did my hair and makeup myself (it's kind of painful to see that I was growing out a pixie cut, worse time for a photoshoot ever!), and baked some cupcakes that I was going to ice during the shoot.

Wait, what? Why would a holistic nutritionist be icing cupcakes in photos for her website?

Well, they were gluten free, soy free, vegan cupcakes with a homemade buttercream icing, and my new website was called lovewhatyoueat.ca. I was going to focus on people with food allergies (like me!), and teach them that no matter what they could eat, they should be able to love what they eat.

The idea was a good one (or so I thought), but anyone seeing those pictures would have thought I was a home baker or something. See?

So, you've done all the right things in your business. You picked a niche, branded your business, built a kick-ass website, started your email list, are blogging on the regular, and sharing your value-packed content on social media. You know that list building is the top thing you need to be doing to have regular new clients or to get ready to launch your next (maybe even your first!) online course.

You're so proud of yourself for sticking to a plan and doing all. the. things that you see other successful online peeps doing!

But when you log into your email software, your list isn't growing very fast. All you hear is proverbial crickets. What a huge letdown! So what are you doing wrong? Turns out, nothing, it's just that people need a little more incentive nowadays to opt into your email list.