00:00
Andrea Nordling
My friend. Welcome back to the profitable nutritionist podcast. Let’s talk about choosing profitable discomfort. I want you to do this for you and for your clients as well. Over the last four years, I have completely changed the type of client that I work with, and this change has made my company literally millions of dollars during that time. So I want to share with you because it’s kind of important. I want to share with you the three big lessons on client quality that I’ve learned so that you can do the same thing. Now, first of all, if your clients don’t want it to be hard, quote unquote hard, I’m doing big air quotes here.
00:34
Andrea Nordling
If they don’t want it to be hard to get the results that they desperately want when they hire you, it’s because you are letting them off the hook because you don’t want it to be hard either. So I’m going to say that again. If your clients don’t want it to be hard to get the results that they want, it’s because you’re letting them off the hook and you don’t want it to be hard either. So we’re going to reframe that right now with your marketing, your sales, and your client processes. So you actually attract people who do want to do the hard work instead of people who don’t want it to be hard. And this is kind of at odds with a concept that I’ve talked about many times, which is simplifying and making it easier for your clients.
01:08
Andrea Nordling
Two things can be true at the same time. Okay, we’re talking about two different things, and I’m going to explain more about that in a second. But just know that we are going to reframe this. Not wanting it to be hard work to get the results, we’re going to reframe that for your clients. In all of the prospects minds, people listening to you, everybody who is tuned in to what you say, your entire audience, people that are prospective clients of yours, people who are prospective referring of clients, just all of the people that are tuning into what you’re saying. We want them to get the message that some things are going to be hard, and that’s a good thing. All right? And some things are going to be way easier than they think it’s going to be. And that’s a great thing.
01:45
Andrea Nordling
So bear with me. It’s all going to make perfect sense by the end of this episode, I promise. But ultimately, I want you to know that in your marketing and in your sales process, you can really filter for people who want to do the hard work, those are your dream clients. And when you work with clients that actually embrace the hard work. And again, I’m putting hard in big air quotes here. When you embrace clients that want to do the hard work, everything changes for you and for them, it is so magical. So first, let’s kind of define what I’m calling hard work or uncomfortable work or discomfort, all that. We’re going to use that all interchangeably. Okay? It comes down really to short term versus long term gratification. Getting the results that are worth getting.
02:26
Andrea Nordling
Be that for you with your business and the results that you want your business to be generating or for your clients with their health goals. Either way, same brains, same goals, same results. It takes a willingness to put in work for a length of time without seeing any results. That’s delayed gratification. So you know this to be true with your clients and their health goals. They are going to do things day after day without an immediate payoff. And sometimes you do get an immediate payoff, and that’s amazing. And that builds momentum, and we want to celebrate that. But also, not everything is like that. You do things for a length of time without seeing the results. And the reason you are willing to delay gratification is because you get the bigger results that you really want later. All right, we know this.
03:09
Andrea Nordling
We know that this is true. Same is true for your business, by the way. But let’s stick with the health example for now, and let’s think about your clients. It is easy to eat the cookie today and then just start over tomorrow. What is hard? Big air quotes again, hard is to pass on the cookie today so that you can feel less achy and you can lose 20 pounds, and you can clear up your eczema, and you can sleep through the night three months from now. Okay, that is delayed gratification. Those are big things. Less inflammation, feeling less achy in your body, losing weight, clearing up your skin, sleeping through the night. Huge, huge results that are really worthwhile. You ask most people and they’re like, yes, that’s what I really want.
03:49
Andrea Nordling
But are you willing to pass on the cookie today so that you can have that three months from now? I mean, conceptually, most people would say yes, but our brains make it really hard to do that because we want the instant gratification and we tell ourselves a lie that, okay, today doesn’t matter. Start over tomorrow. This one thing doesn’t matter. And really it does. Okay, you know this. For your clients health goals, what you eat today, what you don’t eat today. The way that you manage your stress today, the way that you sleep today, all of the things for today really do matter tomorrow and the next tomorrow. Same is true in your business. Okay, so it’s that quote unquote hard stuff right now that you’re going to do that. You’re not going to see results from right away.
04:31
Andrea Nordling
That is going to give you the big results later. And that’s what I mean by profitable discomfort. It’s doing things that are uncomfortable right now so that you can have a really profitable business later. All right, so that’s the short term versus long term hard. Short term versus long term discomfort. And really, what’s important to realize here is that you’re going to be uncomfortable either way, and so are your clients. And everything we’re talking about in this episode applies to all humans. I think you’re getting the gist on that, but I want to make it really clear. This applies to you and your business goals, and it applies to your clients and their health goals. And so you figuring this out for yourself, it’s going to help you in facilitating it for your clients.
05:11
Andrea Nordling
You’re going to get way better client results when you realize that the same thing is true for you in your business goals. Choose your hard, choose your type of discomfort. Are you going to be uncomfortable now doing things that you would rather put off until tomorrow so that you can see results later? Longer term, delayed gratification on the big things, the big results that you want, and you can avoid the long term discomfort that will come from not doing those things? I hope the answer is yes. Cause I want you to make a lot of money. I want you to have an amazing business that impacts a ton of people and that you just jump out of bed every Monday morning, so excited to get to work on that is what I want for you.
05:51
Andrea Nordling
And to do that, you’re gonna have to do some hard things. Again, big air quotes. Hard. How hard is our life, really? You know, we type words on a computer. We talk to people on the Internet. We talk to humans in conversations. In real life, when we’re at our kids sports games or we’re at family get togethers, this isn’t actually hard. Our brains want to make it hard. But, like, really, if we zoom out and we look at all of humanity and human history, our lives are not hard right now. So let’s also keep that perspective. We are incredibly blessed. And if you’re listening to this podcast, I’m willing to bet that, you know, comparatively speaking, your life probably isn’t that hard, but our brains want to make things into a big deal. So, you know, perspective is everything.
06:34
Andrea Nordling
But also, there is discomfort in growing your business. For example, right now, it is hard for me to record this podcast. It’s not really hard, but kind of. I mean, would I rather be doing just about anything else than sitting down and recording this podcast? Yes, but the discomfort of doing it right now because I’m honoring my calendar and I’m doing what I said I was going to do today right now, that’s maybe a little uncomfortable. My brain is like, no, let’s do something else instead. Let’s just not melantry sounding really good right about now. Let’s do that instead. Why? I don’t know. Because there just is naturally resistance there because I’m a human with a human brain. My brain’s like, ugh, we got to kind of think to do that podcast. I don’t want to think. Thinking is just so much.
07:22
Andrea Nordling
Let’s not do that. Let’s do anything else. And it argues with me. And your brain does the same thing, and your client’s brains does the same thing to them. So let’s just acknowledge that’s a certain kind of quote unquote hard, right? It’s uncomfortable right now. There’s a little bit of discomfort in my brain to do this thing, to record this podcast right now. But in the long term, there’s a lot of hard, and there’s a lot of discomfort if I don’t do it, which is probably regret, anxiety, like, oh, I got to catch up on that podcast, or, oh, my gosh, I missed a podcast. I would have disappointment in myself. I would have a low level feeling, maybe even a medium grade feeling of, like, shame and disappointment and irritation in myself. Okay, that I wouldn’t. I mean, that’s. That’s uncomfortable.
08:06
Andrea Nordling
Those are all uncomfortable emotions. I don’t really want to feel. Maybe there would be less clients that would purchase the profitable nutritionist program because they would have less awareness of the program and how I can help them because I didn’t do this podcast. And then maybe next week, I wouldn’t do the next week’s podcast because that would be hard, you know, and it could just be a whole thing. There would definitely be a different kind of hard in the future. I’d have less money in my business, less consistency in clients coming in. My lifestyle personally may suffer. My personal finances is a big domino effect of long term, hard, long term discomfort if I don’t do the thing that has the short term discomfort. You totally see this example, right?
08:42
Andrea Nordling
I’m thinking right now about a new marketing funnel, mini mind, I’m calling it a mini mind that I am selling to my clients. And this is for people that are working on a cold leads marketing funnel for my students in the TPN program that are at this stage of their business where they are creating a front to back marketing funnel that is going to convert cold leads that have never heard of them before into paying clients. All right, so that’s a big deal, right? This is super fun. This is really a, well, I think it’s fun. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. Maybe some people don’t think it’s fun. I think it’s fun. It is a worthwhile endeavor whether you think it’s fun or not.
09:21
Andrea Nordling
Because at the end of creating this funnel, you have a mechanism to convert complete strangers into paying clients on autopilot as an asset in your business for years and years. It’s going to produce consistent money in your business for years. And that is a worthwhile endeavor. But it’s hard, quote unquote, hard to do, focusing on what needs to be done, doing the copywriting, doing the web page creation, doing the follow up emails, figuring out what data needs to be collected and analyzed to know what to tweak and how to make the funnel better. All of those things are tasks that need to happen in the creation of a funnel. Now in this particular mini mind, we are using AI to do a lot of that. So this is an easier lift than most of the time.
10:05
Andrea Nordling
But the bottom line is there’s things that need to happen. There’s a to do list. It is not a short to do list. And you got to do those things so that you get the result of having this business asset that produces clients on repeat for years and years. Right? So the short term hard is the focusing and doing the things. Your brain will argue with you about it. My brain argues with me about it. My clients brains will argue with them about it. They will pay me to do this mini mind for eight weeks. We will build out these funnels together and their brain will argue every step of the way, but they’ll do it anyway. And at the end they will have an asset that is so valuable.
10:39
Andrea Nordling
And the reason they will have done the things each week is to have that asset that is so valuable. Okay, so we do the short term hard thing. We have the short term discomfort of sucking it up and doing it so that we can avoid the long term discomfort of not having consistent leads coming in, of having inconsistent income, of having half finished projects, half finished funnels that aren’t converting, we don’t know what to fix. All of those things are long term discomfort that we want to avoid. So we do the short term discomfort now, suck it up. We do it so that we can avoid that discomfort later.
11:13
Andrea Nordling
Short term hard is saying the words, I can help you in the beginning of your business when you have not done this before and it feels like a really big deal to tell people, I can help you every single day to potential clients, to tell your friends and family that you have a business, to tell them what types of referrals they should send your way, talking about your business when it doesn’t feel like a real business to you yet, but it really is, and you need to talk about it that way. That is short term hard. That is short term discomfort. It feels uncomfortable. Your brain is like, no, let’s not do that. Let’s go on canva instead. Let’s go and create some PDF’s or mess around with our logo on canva instead.
11:57
Andrea Nordling
That would be a way better idea than telling people that we can help them because we’re not ready yet, right? Yeah. Short term discomfort is just doing it. Taking the massive action. We call this the massive action is the thing that your brain argues against. It’s the thing that really is going to move the needle in your business. It’s the thing that is really going to get the results, and it’s the thing that your brain will protest about every single time. But the payoffs of doing the massive actions over and over again, they compound over time, huge payoffs.
12:28
Andrea Nordling
And it’s also a huge payoff to avoid the long term discomfort of not having a profitable business, for example, of stressing about your finances every month, of staying in a job that you hate, of not helping people, of seeing all of the people around you that you could help and you aren’t helping them, or you’re helping them for free, not getting paid for it. If you’re not being an example of going all in to your kids like you want to be, that’s discomfort. That’s long term discomfort. So not having the financial freedom in an uncertain economy, feeling like you’re not living up to your potential, giving up on your dreams, all of those things are hard. They’re uncomfortable, super uncomfortable.
13:04
Andrea Nordling
And if you don’t do the things that are uncomfortable today in the short term, taking the massive actions that your brain protests against you’re probably going to be living with those longer term discomforts. Do you see what I’m saying? It’s like doing the short term thing now and being uncomfortable for a little bit, so that in the long term, you don’t have those discomforts, you don’t have those regrets, you don’t have that anxiety, the financial anxiety, the time anxiety, all of those things. Bottom line is this. The massive action that you take now is going to be hard sometimes, and it’s probably going to be uncomfortable. That’s how you know it’s worth it. Nothing has gone wrong here, okay? Your brain wants to do passive actions instead of those massive actions. Your brain wants to avoid the short term discomfort.
13:47
Andrea Nordling
It wants to go mess around on canva and call it work. It wants to pick the perfect music to put on your reels on instagram that no one ever sees, by the way, because they’re not working right now, and it wants to call that work. You know what? My brain wants to do that, too. It wants to watch videos in courses that I’ve invested in, and it wants to learn new things and just passively consume. Of course it does. Of course it does. I’m no different than you, but I just don’t do that first. I have the discipline to know that I have to take the massive action first.
14:14
Andrea Nordling
I got to sit down and record the podcast because recording this podcast is on my calendar to do today, right now, and I’m just not willing to live with the discomfort for the rest of the week or the month or years in the future that comes from not doing what I said I was going to do. So I just don’t do the passive actions first. I don’t do the passive consumption first. And I highly suggest that you don’t either. We have to earn the passive action and the price to pay for consuming and playing on canva and messing around on your web pages and messing with reels, any of that stuff like whatever that is for you. The currency to do that is to take the massive action first. So I suggest you do the same. And it’s uncomfortable, it’s hard.
14:54
Andrea Nordling
Use whatever word you want in the short term, but the result is that you get to avoid the long term hard, the long term uncomfortable that comes from not getting those results that you want. And again, to circle back, the same thing is true for your clients. It’s exactly the same for them. If you aren’t willing to choose the profitable results generating discomfort for your business in the short term, how can you expect your clients to choose the results, generating discomfort that’s required to get the results that they want. In the short term, you can’t. You absolutely can’t and you won’t because that would be really hypocritical. You won’t do that. So what would happen with your clients is you won’t push them, you won’t challenge them, and then their results won’t be as good because you don’t believe that they can be uncomfortable.
15:36
Andrea Nordling
Remember, your clients are always going to be a mirror for your beliefs. If you believe that being uncomfortable is a problem and that we should avoid that, then you’re going to believe that your clients should avoid being uncomfortable as well. And that actually isn’t the truth. The truth is that it’s worth it to do some hard things upfront in the short term so that you get the big results in the long term. That’s actually the truth. To get the results that your people are hiring you to get, they have to take massive action instead of passive action. But you have to tell them that, okay, you have to tell them that early and often. You have to have it baked into your processes, like your marketing, your sales processes, your client delivery processes.
16:17
Andrea Nordling
All of your communication that they’re going to get from you has to be that they get to choose their hard, a little hard now or a lot hard later. I’m going to say that again because it’s true for all of us. We get to choose our hard, a little hard now or a lot hard later. Nothing has gone wrong, by the way. If your clients feel deprived, they might tell you, I feel deprived or I feel restricted. Nothing has gone wrong. Their brains are just braining. They’re being a human. But you as the coach get to reframe that for them, that they are choosing to be disciplined now so that they aren’t suffering later. And you have to remind them about the suffering later.
16:53
Andrea Nordling
This is you being the coach because remember, it’s really easy to eat the cookie or whatever the thing is today and to forget about the reason why we don’t want to do that for two months from now, three months from now, two years from now, you have to be the coach. You have to remind them of this now. I have to. I’m kind of reminded and I have to loop back to something I said a little bit ago, which is the phrase, it’s just not a problem. Okay, I say this all the time. It’s not a problem. My clients in the TPN program or in the mastermind, they’ll say, oh, my gosh. Da da da is going wrong. And I’m like, yes, that is not a problem.
17:27
Andrea Nordling
And I didn’t even realize how much I must say that until some of my clients told me that we should have t shirts. They said, when you join TPN, you should get a t shirt that just says, and it’s not a problem. Which I’m so excited about, like, good. It’s sticking. You’re getting it. It’s not a problem. Whatever the thing is, that feels like a huge problem. Feeling really nervous about talking about your business, feeling like an imposter. Feeling like you don’t know what the heck you’re doing in the beginning. Like, oh, my gosh, I can’t take enough clients. This is unsustainable. I don’t have good processes in place. I’m like, yes, good. It’s not a problem. We’re going to fix it. And it means that you’re doing the things you’re taking. The massive actions, those quote unquote problems that come up.
18:08
Andrea Nordling
They come when you’re taking massive action, when you’re putting yourself out there. And when you’re doing the thing today that your brain would really rather that you don’t do, that’s when you get those problems. So really they’re not problems, they’re just things that we solve. I guess that’s the definition of a problem. As I said that a lot, but really, it’s not a bad problem. It’s a good problem. So this happens in your marketing. I want to really make this tactical for you. Okay. You talk about the long term discomfort of what’s going to happen when your people don’t solve their problems. Okay. You have to talk about this and you are going to think and your brain is going to argue that, of course they know. Well, they know what’s going to happen if they don’t address their prediabetes. No, they don’t.
18:48
Andrea Nordling
Maybe they heard it once or twice, but they’re in denial and they don’t actually know what’s going to happen. It’s your job to tell them about the long term discomfort that’s going to come. If they don’t solve their big problems and if they don’t get the results that they actually want, then what is that going to feel like? Because it’s going to be uncomfortable either way. It’s going to be uncomfortable in the short term or it’s going to be really uncomfortable in the long term. But they don’t know that, or they don’t know it enough, or they haven’t been reminded enough. So it is your job as the marketer to talk to people about the long term discomfort that comes if they don’t solve their problems now. Now, I call this future fear. In fact, I did an entire podcast on this concept.
19:26
Andrea Nordling
It’s number 142. Highly recommend. It’s called selling with future fear for exactly how to weave this into your marketing and exactly how to do it in a way that’s not gross and it’s not like, I mean, it sounds. I was gonna say it’s not fear based, but then the podcast is called selling with future fear. Just trust me that it isn’t contrived and it isn’t, I don’t know what the word is that I’m looking for. Like, it isn’t gross. This is just the way the world works. You need to tell people what’s going to happen if they don’t solve their problem. And please don’t assume that they know, because they really don’t know.
19:58
Andrea Nordling
Now, when you are selling with future fear in your marketing and in your actual selling process, and you’re talking to people about the problems that they have, and you’re asking them if you’re on a one one sales call, for example, you’re asking people, what does this look like two or three years from now if you don’t solve this problem? Have them tell you, what does this look like? So that they say it with their mouth of what the future looks like if they don’t solve this problem, they’re telling you, this is how uncomfortable I’m going to be two or three years from now if I don’t solve this problem. And people believe what they say more than what you say.
20:30
Andrea Nordling
So having them say it to you is going to really cement in their mind how uncomfortable it’s going to be not to solve this problem. And you are going to have people that work with you that are constantly reminded about how the long term discomfort is so much greater than the short term discomfort that’s going to be required to make the little choices day to do what they said they were going to do. That pales in comparison to the long term discomfort, but you have to be reminding your people about it in your marketing, in your selling process, like I just gave an example of, and also in your client delivery process, when you’re actually working with your clients. Now, whether this is one one clients or in a group program doesn’t, it doesn’t matter.
21:07
Andrea Nordling
You have to be constantly reminding people about why it’s so important that they keep doing the little things, the little massive actions that compound day after day and being a little bit uncomfortable now, so you’re not a lot uncomfortable later. The best news ever is that when you are selling with your future fear like this, and you’re using this and you’re foreshadowing the hard that’s going to come. If they don’t embrace some hard right now, you will be attracting people that are willing to do that work. It is a natural filter to get more motivated and resourceful clients right off the bat. So when I hear people say, oh my gosh, the people that are working with me, they don’t want to do anything. They just want to take a pill, I’m like, I know what’s happening here.
21:46
Andrea Nordling
I know that you are not doing the job as the coach and the marketer of talking about what’s going to happen in the future if they don’t solve the problem. And what is going to be required now, which is less uncomfortable, much less uncomfortable. And to do this well for your people, you have to go first. You have to choose profitable discomfort in your business now over the long term discomfort and disappointment of not having the business of your dreams, you have to do it first. That probably means way more massive action today and this week and this month consistently. And your brain is going to fight it. Mine does this every single day as well. But you do it anyway. It’s just a game. Again, it’s not a problem. Your brain is going to resist.
22:30
Andrea Nordling
When you sit down to do the massive actions, your brain’s going to resist. And it’s not a problem. Your brain is just braining, okay? It’s just. It’s just being a human on planet Earth. It’s just doing what it does. But you got to do the things anyway, consistently. And then the best news ever is that those results compound. Suddenly you sit down to do a podcast episode and you realize, huh, number 159. I still don’t love doing this when it comes time to do it. Not like, you know, big picture. I do like podcasting quite a bit. But I’m saying that when it came time on this Monday morning to sit down and record this podcast, my brain was like, no. Could we do literally anything else besides this right now? 159 episodes in and it’s just the way it is.
23:14
Andrea Nordling
Just argues with it. Okay, well, guess what? No. We’re going to do this quote unquote hard thing, which is not really that hard, but it’s a hard thing. It’s an uncomfortable thing, something I would rather avoid if left to my own devices. I’m going to do it anyway. I’m going to do that 159 weeks in a row because that gets me the results long term that I want. And then I avoid the discomfort of having to work at a job at a company I don’t like. I get to have my own business. I get to have total financial freedom. I get to travel a ton. I just came back from a trip in Italy with my kids for three weeks.
23:46
Andrea Nordling
I get to do a lot of really cool stuff because I’m willing to do some uncomfortable things right now to make sure that happens. Anyway, I know you can see where this is going, but I want you to really think about this for you, and I want you to think about it for your clients. It’s a good concept to be reminded of and to circle back with at a lot of different stages in our business. You probably have heard me talk about this before. If you’ve been following with my emails or with this podcast for any length of time, we talk about choosing profitable discomfort. I have an email that I send a few times a year about choosing profitable discomfort, and every time I send it I get a replies from my easiest, best, most ideal clients. They’re like, man, that really landed.
24:23
Andrea Nordling
I know you’ve sent this before, but holy cow, I really needed to hear that this week. That’s a great reminder. So just keep circling back and reminding yourself it’s not a problem. Expect it, embrace it when things feel hard, then be excited about it. Because this is personal development in a nutshell, really. And if you don’t want that discomfort, you can choose a new flavor of it, which is the long term discomfort of not doing the things today that you said you were going to do or not doing the things this week that you said you were going to do. But it’s going to mean uncomfortable either way. And I think that’s really the message that we need to be giving to our clients and I want to give to you today. It’s going to be uncomfortable either way.
24:59
Andrea Nordling
To not get the results you want long term is uncomfortable to feel like you let yourself down, to feel like you’re not living up to your potential, to not have the freedom that you want from your business. All of those things that’s uncomfortable. So you can choose that flavor of discomfort, or the flavor of discomfort where you take massive action, you get out of your own way, you do things imperfectly. You kind of feel like, what the heck am I doing? I’m not sure how this is all going to work, and you just do it anyway. That’s uncomfortable as well. I guarantee it. I know it. I’ve done it for years and years. I’ve helped thousands of other people do it as well. But it’s not a problem. Okay? It’s supposed to be uncomfortable. Just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean we run away.
25:35
Andrea Nordling
Just because it’s uncomfortable for your clients doesn’t mean they don’t do it. It’s your job to remind them of why it is worth it for them to do it anyway and to let them know that there’s always going to be some discomfort, either the short term discomfort now or the long term discomfort that’s way greater. Okay. Your brain’s going to make sure you’re uncomfortable either way. We are just wired to find problems. That’s how our brains work now. Ideally, we would just be content and we would be at peace. And I do believe it is entirely possible to feel both of those things at times. But I don’t think anything has gone wrong when we don’t feel them either. I think our brains are just braining.
26:11
Andrea Nordling
It’s the human experience, and it is a fallacy, in my opinion, to believe that all of our dreams can come true and we can have the big results that we want without feeling uncomfortable in the attainment of those goals. I just don’t think that’s true. I think that the hard makes it worthwhile. And since it’s going to be uncomfortable either way, I say choose the profitable discomfort of doing the hard things now, today. All right. End rant here. Have a wonderful week, my friend. Go do some massive actions that feel so uncomfortable and then encourage your clients to do the same.
