Last week I did not get a blog post to you or a video blog post because I was busy holding a retreat for my high level leader business partners on my doTERRA team. I attempted to bring six women together, four got there, but I was asking them to travel from really far away. I brought them to my hometown, put them up at our local boutique hotel, and we had the most amazing day and a half together. I'm here to share my tips from this from organizing my first retreat. 

I've been wanting to do something like this for over two years and I finally just said I'm doing it. I'm doing it in a way that feels really good to me, and so I'm going to share what I learned about this. 

While I'm an introvert and I don't love big, large scale events, I love connecting with people in a more intimate environment. So why would you even want to hold an in person retreat? Again, whether it's for some customers or clients of yours, let's say you're a nutritionist and you want to hold a weight loss retreat or a stress free retreat, or you're just being called to hold an in person retreat for your customers or clients. Or, if you're like me and you have a network marketing team, and there are several people that are helping you build this business, then you might want to bring them together for more of a business retreat. Even if you don't have a network marketing team, let's say you have a team of people who help you, like assistants or copywriters or whatever, wouldn't it be lovely to bring them together to envision the next six months or a year of your business so that everyone is on the same page together.

That is why you might hold an in person retreat, because there is nothing better than true connection.

You know when you come across a new Instagram feed or Facebook page and you're drooling over their pictures? It instantly makes you want to know more, right? Maybe you stalk that person on social media for months before you even click to their website to see if you want what they're selling. I've done this SO many times, and I have businesses like this on secret Pinterest boards so that I can easily go back and find them when I'm ready to redecorate my house or buy gifts for my doTERRA team. And when I love something or think I want it, I'm also sharing it on my social media feeds and spreading the word for them! That's when you know you've hit the holy grail of marketing.

The way that most of us find out about new businesses now is generally through social media, and if those social media accounts are a hot mess, chances are that I'm not clicking through to purchase anything. Granted, I'm a very visually driven person, so if their feed or product isn't pretty, I'm not following them and I'm definitely not buying anything. Maybe you're not exactly like me, but I think we can all agree that beautiful branding pulls you in quickly, but a quality product that you actually need is what will make you purchase after you've already established trust with that company.

Because that's all that those beautiful social media feeds are: effective branding

They know what they want to share, they know how they want it to look, and they're attracting people who feel the same.

That's all that branding is! It's just a feeling that someone gets when they interact with your business, which might be looking through your social media feeds, reading your website, or watching a webinar with slides that you've created.

Ahhh, social media, what a love/hate relationship I have with you! I was talking a few weeks ago with a colleague whose goal in her business is to never have to use social media, and I could totally get on board with that. Can you grow a business without social media? Of course! However, there are so many examples of business owners growing quickly by effectively using social media that you can't ignore their results. But when it starts taking over your life, like it can sometimes do, some boundaries need to be put in place.

Even though Instagram isn't the biggest referrer for me, I do get lots of questions from my followers about how I use it for my business. Questions like: if you're with doTERRA, why do I see you using the #youngliving hashtag? While I'm definitely not an expert in social media marketing (some people specialize in just this!), consider this Instagram 101 for your holistic health business.

Truth be told, I've invested in a course (two, actually) to teach me how to use Instagram in my business. One I implemented about 2 years ago, which pretty much solely focused on growing your following, and the other much more focused on generating business from Instagram, I purchased in a course bundle and haven't started yet. Excuse me while I add this to my calendar for the summer ;).

So even though I don't have it all figured out (spoiler alert: no one does), here are my secrets for how to use Instagram for your holistic health business:

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.