00:00
Andrea Nordling
What if I told you that after seeing behind the scenes of thousands of nutrition practices, by this point just two numbers separate the winners from the worriers. Just two numbers. Would you believe that’s true? Because it absolutely is. Most health and wellness practitioners are either super overwhelmed with spreadsheets and QuickBooks columns and all of the tracking or they’re in a totally other camp where they are tracking nothing at all. Their head is in the sand, they don’t want to look at the numbers and then they stay stuck and plateau each. Either way, it’s kind of a problem. So in this video I’m going to give you the two simple metrics to track every single week and every month is just two numbers so you can grow your business faster and with less stress.
00:37
Andrea Nordling
Now, if you are not tracking these numbers yet, you are flying blind and it is costing you. So we are going to fix that right now. I’m Andrea Nordling. I’m the founder of the Profitable Nutritionist. This is where I get the pleasure of coaching holistic nutritionists and health coaches to make way more money and help way more people without burning themselves out. That’s what we’re all in business to do. So by the way, if you have not started our free course, it’s called the Profitable Practice Philosophies, it’s a free mini course kind of primer into our main program. You can do that in the link in the description below. I go into way more detail on all of these foundational concepts that will set you up for success. Link below. Did you know that this episode is also available in video form on YouTube?
01:14
Andrea Nordling
Sometimes the information can hit different parts of the brain when you see it visually and can land a little bit differently. So we will go ahead and pop a link to the YouTube version in the description of this episode for you. Just in the description case. If you are a business owner that’s spending hours a day writing content and building back end systems and learning how to make the best Instagram reels and you’re tweaking PDFs in Canva and you’re messing around on your website, but you’re still not hitting your income goals every month and you still don’t have the amount of clients that you want. It is not that you are not working hard. I see you. I get it. I was you. I have coached you.
01:47
Andrea Nordling
If you’re not hitting your goals and you feel really overwhelmed with what you should be spending your time on, our tendency is to do more. That’s probably what you’re doing. And it’s also probably compounded by the fact that you’re not measuring the right things, which is why these two numbers are so important. So let’s get into it. The first number that you need to know is. Drumroll. Are you ready? Your revenue. You have to know your revenue, cash collected, how much money is coming in. This is so basic, but it is so underutilized, under reported, under actionized, whatever. Our word is there. People don’t do this. They don’t track this number a lot of times because they don’t want to see when it’s low. They don’t want to see when it’s zero. They’re afraid of feeling disappointed.
02:31
Andrea Nordling
They’re afraid of being really hard on themselves if they’re not reaching the goals that they have set. So they don’t measure the numbers at all. I see this all the time, but nothing improves if we don’t measure it. So you have to track your revenue, even if it’s a big zero right now. You have to track it, and you have to track it every single month, without question, without fail. You have to have a system for this, and you have to have a recurring task on your calendar to go in and pull the numbers every single month. Now, I said there’s two types of people here, some that are really in the numbers. They have the spreadsheets, they have the QuickBooks set up.
03:03
Andrea Nordling
They have all of the systems, and you’re diligently tracking every single expense in your business and every single dollar that comes in. And that’s one camp, which can be problematic if you are spending way too much time away, too much energy on it. We do want to track your profitability. We do want to track your expenses. But. But there’s a fine line here on obsessing over it and spending a ton of time on it versus getting out and just creating more money. So we do want to know that. But also, the second camp that is really important here is just not even having a system for tracking the numbers. So I’m talking to you here. If you’re not tracking your revenue, you have to be tracking your revenue. People really get in the weeds on this, and they’re like, what do I track?
03:38
Andrea Nordling
What, what numbers? Okay, well, there are three of them. Are you ready? You want to first know your total revenue from the last month. Okay, so last month, you got to know what you made last month. Was it zero? Was it $1? Was it $10,000? Was it $20,000? Well, I don’t know, but you’re going to know because you’re going to have a recurring task in your calendar. A recurring calendar item that comes up on the 1st of the month and reminds you to go pull this number, and you’re going to put it in a spreadsheet. You’re going to put it in a note in your iPhone. I don’t care where you put it, but you’re going to have a system, and you’re going to track it.
04:14
Andrea Nordling
Total revenue from last month, and then you’re going to do your total revenue for the year to date. Year to date. Okay, that’s a y year to date. Why is that important? Because we typically think of our business in a calendar year, January to December. All right, so to ease your mind and to be clear on where you are at for the year, you’re going to track your year to date. And this is not hard to do when you’re tracking every single month, because you can just look back and at how many months have there been since the beginning of the year? And you have a running tally there. So every month, you know what you made the month before, you know what you’re at for the year to date. But then the big one.
04:50
Andrea Nordling
Actually, I’m going to write this one in green because this is the one that’s going to make you a lot of money. Are you ready? Your last 12 months. So this is what we call your rolling 12. It is a calculation of what you have made in the last year. So instead of waiting until get. Until you get to December 31st to know how much money you made in the last year, you’re always going to be tracking your last 12 months. So, you know, on a rolling basis, what are you making per year? We tend to think of goals for our business in a yearly revenue. Okay, sometimes it’s monthly, sometimes it’s yearly. Oh, look at. We’ve accounted for all of that here by tracking our revenue with these three figures. That’s it.
05:31
Andrea Nordling
Once a month, at least, you’re going to go in and you’re going to pull what you made last month. What is your year to date, and where are you at in your rolling 12? When my clients do this, their brain explodes in the best possible way. Why is that? Because they actually know what they can improve on. They actually know where they’re at. I would say half of the time, people come to me and say, oh, my goodness, I actually made a lot more money than I thought I had. And they’re very pleasantly surprised when they take the time to track it. And Then moving forward, of course, this number goes up because whatever is measured gets improved. But we have to know where we’re at as the baseline, and we have to have the.
06:04
Andrea Nordling
The mechanism in place to track it to be able to improve. So that’s what you’re doing here. Okay? Three things every single month. Gotta get my marker because now we’re going into the least reported number that I see anybody report. But this is going to make such a huge difference in your life. Are you ready for number two? Ready. Ready. Conversations. I want you to track how many conversations you are having on a weekly basis with real humans in the world about your business, whether that’s online or in person or both. Track this every single week. Again, you could have a spreadsheet, you could have a note going in your iPhone. I don’t care. But track the amount of conversations that you’re having about your business.
06:54
Andrea Nordling
These two numbers are going to tell you exactly what you need to do on a daily and weekly and monthly basis to improve the results that you’re getting in your business without throwing all the spaghetti at the wall and doing all of the things. And here’s why that is. If your revenue isn’t where you want it to be and you’re not having very many conversations, and you’ll know that because you’re tracking both of those things, then you know you need to have more conversations so that the revenue goes up. If you’re having a lot of conversations but the revenue is not where you want it to be, then we have a sales and conversion issue. It means that whatever you’re saying in these conversations is not landing and turning into sales and revenue. Okay, great.
07:34
Andrea Nordling
That’s a different problem to solve than having more conversations. This is where we have to be strategic. We have to be solving the right problem. And I see people all the time just going, marketing, marketing. And they’re not addressing a conversion or a sales issue. But when you’re looking at these two numbers together, the money that you’re actually bringing in and the amount of conversations that you’re having about your business, it will tell you a story. This is data, okay? This is actually getting numbers and making decisions about where you’re going to spend your time and where you are going to spend your energy based on actually actual data. Like you’re a scientist putting on your lab coat and getting to work in your lab, figuring out what’s going on.
08:08
Andrea Nordling
The big takeaway here from these numbers is that you have to look at your business as a business and businesses are here to make profit. Yes, you are here to help people, but you are here to make profit and make money. So we have to know if that’s happening and if it isn’t, we have to know what to do to get there. And these two numbers working together is how you’re going to figure that out. But you have to be measuring them again. I’ll say it 1 million times, what gets measured gets improved. It’s gonna be very motivating to actually see these numbers and know what to do next. So you have to measure the results, not the effort that you’re putting in.
08:41
Andrea Nordling
And I see this being a huge problem with a lot of people’s businesses as they’re looking at, look how much I’m doing. Look how much I’m doing. Look how much effort I’m putting in. Look at how much time I’m spending posting. Look at how much time I’m spending on my website. Look at how much time I’m spending in Canva trying to get followers, trying to, you know, whatever that is. Well, if it’s not bringing in money, and if it’s not inspiring conversations that bring in money, then we have to reevaluate where that time is being spent and why. So knowing these numbers is going to help you do that. But I just say for everyone, for all of us. And I say this as much for myself, because I have to recalibrate often. It’s not about the effort.
09:14
Andrea Nordling
It’s about the results that the effort is bringing in, which is exactly the same for your clients, by the way. You want them to be maximizing all of their effort and get the best results without wasting effort. Right? Okay. So you do that in your business first, and then you’re able to teach it to your clients. And that brings me to another point that I want to make, which is, yes, you start doing this even if you haven’t worked with any clients yet, even if all of your numbers are zero, you start doing this and you start tracking it, because you’re not going to like seeing that zero, and you’re going to make the number go up. You’re going to have a bunch of conversations.
09:44
Andrea Nordling
You’re going to start making money and diligently looking at that and tracking it and seeing it trend in upward direction is going to build momentum. And you keep going. All right, so even if you’re at zero, I don’t care. You start right now. The reason people don’t do this is because they are afraid of how they’re going to Treat themselves. If the numbers aren’t what they like, they’re not neutral about the numbers. They’re not a scientist putting on their lab coat. Instead, they’re very emotionally attached to the numbers. And if this revenue goal isn’t being met every single month, they beat the heck out of themselves. So that’s what has to stop.
10:17
Andrea Nordling
If you’re just looking at the numbers, they’re just neutral and you’re just tracking your last month’s revenue, your year to date, the last 12 months, and you’re just making some decisions based on that number in comparison to how many conversations you’re having with real humans about what you do and the amount offers that you’re making to them and the amount of times that you’re saying, I can help you. If you’re just tracking those things, it’s very neutral. This is just numbers. It’s going to tell you a story. This is data to evaluate. But if you’re really attached to these numbers because they mean something about you, then it gets really dicey. This is where people put their head in the sand and they never look at their numbers. But we are not going to do that.
10:52
Andrea Nordling
We approach this very differently because just like I’m sure you work with clients to do, we’re going to be objective about the data and we’re not going to make it mean anything about our success as a human or our worth as a human or any of that. I know that you do a great job of separating that for your clients or your future clients if you haven’t started working with clients yet. I know you do that amazingly well. But you’re going to give yourself the gift of doing it for you two in your business. Look at that. So this is your to do list item for today, should you choose to accept it.
11:19
Andrea Nordling
Pull together these revenue figures if you’re not already tracking them into an easy to use spreadsheet or a Google Doc, whatever it is, that’s actually a system that you will implement and use. Don’t try to make it perfect. Don’t go try to master QuickBooks this week if you’ve never done it before. For goodness sake, just make this easy, make it doable and actually track the numbers. Actually look at them. Okay? The consistency and the diligence with which you pull these numbers and you examine them, that’s where the magic happens. It’s not in having the most color coded, perfectly fillable, automatic calculations in the spreadsheet. That’s really not it. Okay, and then how many conversations are you having this one I want you tracking on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis. Okay. This one can be monthly. This guy has to be weekly.
12:05
Andrea Nordling
Because when you see how many conversations you’re actually having versus how much money you’re bringing in, it’s going to tell you a story. You’re going to know exactly what to do next. This, by the way, is what we do in the profitable nutritionist program. We help you set up these systems and then we ask you questions about them. And when things aren’t working the way that you want them to work, you’re going to get questions on, okay, how many conversations are you having? How much money are you making? It is mind blowing what we do to ourselves as humans with human brains that are very skewed, negative. Where we see what isn’t working, and where we’re not hitting our numbers, where it’s not as good as our expectations. That’s what we see. That’s what your clients see as well.
12:43
Andrea Nordling
But that’s what we see as practitioners, as business owners, as humans. And so getting a little bit of perspective on what are the actual numbers and looking at them with neutrality, which is what we do when we coach in the program, is really helpful. Okay, so you have to have the numbers, we have to know where you are at. Pull these revenue figures, pull your amount of conversations, track them diligently, and just be excited, because when your conversations go up, so does your revenue over time. So get very excited. So to recap on this, after working with nearly a thousand holistic nutrition and health coaching businesses in the TPN program after the last four years, I can tell you with full confidence that the ones that succeed in the long term have one thing in common.
13:23
Andrea Nordling
They know their numbers and they track them consistently instead of putting their head in the sand and avoiding them. That is just one of their super simple habits. If you want help building a business that is simple and profitable and actually sustainable, and you want some of those other habits as well, let’s map that out together in the description of this episode. You can book a free strategy call where we will look at where your business is at right now, even if it is brand new. And we’re going to look at what goals you have for the next 12 months, and then together we create a plan to get you there without you burning out or without you guessing your way through it.
13:53
Andrea Nordling
So if the TPN program would be the right fit to support you in doing that, you will get all the information on that call including a link to join so you can start immediately. Like I said, you will find the link to book your strategy call and learn more about the program in the description of this episode. Or or you can go to theprofitablenutritionist.com join and you can find all the program details page and the book a call link on that page. Again, that is theprofitablenutritionist.com join. I’ll see you inside.
