00:00
Andrea Nordling
Welcome to an Ask Me Anything Podcast edition on the Profitable Nutritionist Podcast. My name is Andrea Nordling. I’m a founder of the Profitable Nutritionist and nutritional therapy practitioner myself. Here to answer all of your burning questions regarding growing, scaling and optimizing your nutrition or holistic wellness business, starting with answering your questions directly. So that’s what you’re going to get in this episode is a mashup of.
00:26
Andrea Nordling
Me doing AMA videos.
00:29
Andrea Nordling
Answer quick fire answers to your questions and if you are not already there, I’m going to direct you to the Profitable Nutritionist email list which is where we send out these AMA videos every single month in response to your questions. So if you’re not already getting the Profitable Nutritionist emails, you have to do that go to the profitablenutritionist.com and sign up somewhere on the website to receive something via email. Which means we will then send you these emails. If you would like to submit a question to be answered on a future Ask Me Anything video or podcast episode, you can head over to theprofitablenutritionist.com ask and submit your question again. That’s theprofitablenutritionist dot com ask all right, here we go.
01:12
Andrea Nordling
Question is what inspired you to start your business? This question has layers because I have started several businesses so I’ll give the short course here. I, right out of college, had every intention up applying to the FBI Academy, but you can’t do that till you’re 23 years old at least at that time and I was graduating college at age 22, so I had a year to kill and someone in my life, who I do not remember who to blame for this, but someone in my life said you should sell real estate. Now I don’t know who tells a 22 year old to sell real estate when they’ve never even bought a house themselves. It seems like a terrible idea, but actually must have been an okay idea because it did pretty well and I never ended up applying to the FBI Academy.
01:50
Andrea Nordling
So 22 years old, fresh out of college, I started selling real estate, which if you’re not familiar with how that works, that’s your own business, it’s commission only and it is your own business. So I did that selling for someone else’s business. Then I opened my own brokerage, got my broker’s license, had 15 agents in my brokerage and was very successful. However, it completely ruined my body and burned me out. So was it that successful? You could be the judge. By the time I was 32, I believe I Was pursuing holistic nutrition for healing my own burnout, fixing my thyroid, and figuring out how to feed my family better. Never had any intention of making it a business.
02:30
Andrea Nordling
I was just trying to unwrap my body and like a lot of people’s stories, as soon as I got into my certification program and really, you know, immersed in the information and was seeing the impact that it had on my family, I realized I don’t want to sell houses anymore. I have to get this information to as many people as possible. It has to be a business. So I opened my Nutrition business in 2015, like, end of 2015 into 2016, and my designation is a nutritional therapy practitioner. That is important here. I don’t know why it would be, but anyway, my nutritional therapy business kicked off at the end of 2015 into 2016, and I had a lot of success very quickly in that business because I already had the skills of sales and marketing.
03:11
Andrea Nordling
I had been doing that for 10 years plus as a business owner in real estate. So I brought to the table a skill set that a lot of practitioners don’t have. It’s a skill set that is easily teachable. You can learn it. That’s what I teach at the Profitable Nutritionist. And by the way, so don’t ever feel like if you don’t have that background that you can’t be successful in your business. It’s just a skill you need to learn. Luckily, I already had that skill, so my business took off really quickly. And then my colleagues were asking, oh, my gosh, how are you getting so many clients? How are you able to actually make money in your business? This is so hard to get clients. I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know what to focus on first.
03:46
Andrea Nordling
And so I started helping them, which felt way too easy to be a business. Like, I just want to say, it felt way too easy. It was like, oh, my gosh. And people are like, I will pay you. I will pay you. I will pay you. Like, oh, my goodness. You would pay me to talk about, like, setting up your marketing. I love to do that. That’s so easy for me. Like, I almost feel bad charging you. Almost feel bad charging you. Does that sound familiar? Because for a lot of my clients, that’s how they feel about charging people for their nutrition help. They’re like, oh, well, I almost feel bad because this is. This is so easy for me. This is what I talk about all the time. I know all of this stuff.
04:18
Andrea Nordling
And the lesson here is like, that is the business model, what comes really naturally for you or for me is different than somebody else. And they want to pay for those skills and they want to pay for that information and whatever you’re just innately good at. For me, it was talking about business. It took me a while to lean into it and realize that this is a business and it can be easy and it can be fun. And I would rather talk about business strategy than I would rather talk about nutrition. So, you know, to close the loop on that, I did close my nutrition practice in 2019, and that profitable nutritionist was born. And I’ve been full time as a business coach for holistic nutritionists and health coaches ever since that point. Because that is what I am innately good at.
04:58
Andrea Nordling
Like, that’s just what that. That feels like my zone of genius. If you’ve heard the term zone of genius, that is mine. And I, in answering this question, wanted to just say, lean into what feels too easy to you, because what feels so easy to you is not the innate zone of genius of someone else. And for someone else that really needs that information and needs the help implement it, they want to pay you for that. Okay, so lean in and pay attention. Your business doesn’t have to be hard. If it feels to you like it’s too easy, maybe that’s a great sign. Maybe that means your business can be simple and it doesn’t have to feel like such a grind. Okay, let it be simple. Let it be effortless whenever possible.
05:37
Andrea Nordling
I do think there are so many new skills that we learn in being a business owner. And as our business grows, take the wins where you can. There are going to be skills that you have to learn later, and there are going to be things that aren’t as easy. So take the win. Like, when it can be easy, let it be easy. People want to pay you for your help doing something that comes really easily to you, and it isn’t easy for them. Let them do it and just like, little rant there. But I see so many wellness entrepreneurs that make it way more complicated than needed for people to pay them. Or they add way too much to their offer because they feel like they need to justify the price. Their thought is like, this is too easy for me.
06:14
Andrea Nordling
I need to add, add, add so that it’s more valuable for them. And really, people just get overwhelmed and confused and they quit. Because overwhelm is the number one reason that people don’t get results. So don’t do that. Don’t add extra things because you’re trying to justify your price because it comes easy for you. Let it be easy for you, and let it be easy for them. Little, little side note there. So honestly, that’s what inspired me to start this business. Just letting it be easy and leaning into what came naturally to me and the skills that I could bring to the table to teach to others. That seemed at some stage of the game, seemed like, is that too easy? Is that, is that even a business?
06:56
Andrea Nordling
If you are questioning that for yourself, the answer is yes, let it be easy for you. And that’s how I was inspired. So hopefully that gives you a little inspiration. What skills or traits are most important for success in entrepreneurship? All right, I don’t claim to be an expert on this. However, I have been an entrepreneur exclusively since I was 22 years old. So right out of college, I started a real estate business. I didn’t know it was going to be a business for over a decade, but it was. And I ended up opening my own brokerage and feels like several lifetimes ago, but that was my foundation in business in my 20s and into my 30s. And then, long story short, I completely ruined my body and burned out.
07:39
Andrea Nordling
And so I found holistic nutrition as a way to heal myself better, feed my family better. And of about halfway through that program, I realized, oh my gosh, this. I have to have a nutrition business. Why would I like. It’s not, it’s not fulfilling to show houses and sell houses like it is to help people to change their health. So I embarked on my second iteration of entrepreneurship, and then, you know, the rest is history. Then I had a lot more fun talking about the business side of growing my business when my colleagues were like, how are you getting clients? How do you do this?
08:08
Andrea Nordling
Well, I knew how to get clients because I had a real estate business for over a decade, so I already had that skill, brought that into my nutrition practice, had a lot success quickly because I already knew how to do that. And so my colleagues were saying, how do you do it? How do you do it? And I started doing some business coaching on the side. And by 2019, I realized I need to shut down my nutrition practice and go full time into business coaching. So this is now my, I guess, technically third iteration of entrepreneurship, third business model here, as you see, the profitable nutritionist. So I say that to give a little bit of context on why I might be know a thing or two about entrepreneurship.
08:43
Andrea Nordling
And now I have had the joy of coaching and being having a front row seat with over a thousand other wellness professionals and their entrepreneur journey. So I have seen where people get stuck and where they really succeed. So here’s all that to say. Here’s what I have distilled it down into. One trait that’s really important for success in entrepreneurship, in my opinion, is resourcefulness and having a figure it out mentality. In fact, inside the profitable nutritionist program we have an entire module about how to get yourself into a figure it out mentality for you as the business owner and also how to foster that in your clients because you’re. You want your clients to be resourceful and have a figure it out mentality.
09:23
Andrea Nordling
I think that we teach that like that’s our job as the business owner to teach our clients how to approach the work that we are going to bring them through. So I offer to you have a figure it out mentality yourself and be resourceful for your business. But also look at how you are going to create that for your clients as well. It’s going to serve them a lot more long term to choose not to be confused. It’s really easy to be confused. Our default a lot of times is just to be helpless and confused. And we can train our brain not to be that way. We can train our brain to be resourceful and have a figured out mentality which in my opinion is the number one trait of a successful entrepreneur.
09:59
Andrea Nordling
Someone that’s resourceful and figures it out instead of default into like, I don’t know, it’s too hard, I’m confused, I don’t know how. Well, figure it out. All right, so that’s number one. Secondly, I think a sense of humor, mostly about yourself, laughing at yourself. It’s going to be hard and you’re going to be uncomfortable as an entrepreneur. If it was easy, everybody would do it and they don’t. Because it isn’t easy. It isn’t easy to have the warp speed personal development course that is being a business owner. You’re going to have every insecurity you’ve ever had about yourself shown in your face like a mirror at all times. Things won’t work the way that you planned for them to work, there’s no question about it.
10:38
Andrea Nordling
But how you show up for yourself in those times, in my opinion, is what separates a successful business owner from people who dabble and quit. And the dabble and quit is like, I’m going to see if this works versus I’m going to make this work. I’m going to figure out how to make this work. I don’t know how to do it today, but I’M going to figure it out. Okay, that’s. And that gets back to the resourcefulness. But to be able to be resourceful long term and to keep figuring it out, you have to laugh at yourself. And I just think that it is key. You gotta laugh at yourself. You gotta laugh at the situations, but you also have to laugh at yourself and just not take it too seriously.
11:12
Andrea Nordling
Because there’s a real danger of everything being a 911 crisis if you take yourself too seriously or if you take your business too seriously and it’s not gonna be fun for you. And your clients will also feel that. So just have a sense of humor. Totally. Third, I think having an infinite perspective versus a finite perspective is really key. So there’s a famous book, you may have read it’s called the Infinite Game. I think it is. Is that Simon Sinek now is. I know someone needs to fact check me as I say that. I’m like, is that true? Anyway, I’ve read the book. It was a good book. And it’s like how to approach your business as an infinite game. You’re going to keep getting better. You’re going to keep unlocking new levels in your business and in yourself.
11:54
Andrea Nordling
And it’s not like, when I get there, I’m done. When I’m like, there’s a there. Well, there’s just like, really isn’t a there. I think the phrase new level, new devil could be negative depending on your connotation. But I think it really accurately describes what it feels like. It’s like a video game where you pass this level and then you unlock the next one. And it’s even harder the new skills to do this level and then you pass that level and you get to the next one. And just knowing that is what it is to be an entrepreneur and to have a business makes it less scary and makes it less jarring when it happens because you realize like, oh, this is just part of it. It’s an infinite game. All right.
12:32
Andrea Nordling
And then lastly, speaking of games, this is a mental game, I think entrepreneurship mental game. Like, if I had to estimate, I would say it is 80 mental and 20 strategy and skills. Like 80 mental, 20 strategy and skills. Really, truly. This is why in my programs and here at the profitable nutritionist, we go so deep on mindset and specifically the four areas of belief that you need to be kind of taking inventory of for yourself so that you can see what your mindset is. Because your level of belief in each of these four areas that I’m going to explain is really going to be it’s going to show you how your mindset is for your business.
13:10
Andrea Nordling
So the four areas of belief are your belief in yourself, your belief in your people, like the clients that you’re here to serve, your belief in your business as a whole, what’s possible for your business, your belief in that, and then your belief in your offer or your processes. Those are the four areas. Yourself, your people, your offer, your processes, or your business and or your business as a whole. Now, it’s not like you do believe in your business or you don’t. It’s not like you do believe in your offer or you don’t. This is a spectrum. It’s like how much do you believe? And that level is honestly going to be reflected in your business bank account, hands down.
13:44
Andrea Nordling
So thinking about entrepreneurship and thinking about the success in your business as being just a translation of your level of belief of those four things. It’s a really interesting way to think about success, but also, in my opinion, is going to show you where you need to shore up some lack of belief and pour into your business. Like in what area? So that’s my take on the skills or traits that is going to be important for success as an entrepreneur. Question was, what is inside your museum of failures in business? Let’s talk about the fails. This is a fun question to answer because I got to go back through the treasure trove of memories of things that haven’t worked well in my business that were big failures, but that I learned from.
14:31
Andrea Nordling
So I either didn’t make the same mistake again or I knew, okay, that didn’t work. I’m going to do it differently in the future and ultimately those failures stack up into huge successes. So I’m happy to talk about the failures. This is just a very quick list of things that came to mind. I’m sure there are dozens and dozens more and maybe the next time I answer this question, I’ll come back and do it with another round. But here’s what I have in my notes that came up. One thing in my museum of failures is doing an entire webinar that had no video and no sound. That was awful. So embarrassing. Especially because this was a webinar for someone else’s audience. So this other person had promoted me.
15:10
Andrea Nordling
This was when I was running my holistic nutrition business and I was doing a webinar about adrenal fatigue and for this very specific niche of people for someone else’s audience. She had promoted the heck out of this training that I was going to do. And she had hundreds of people that were registered for it. I was super nervous, but I’m like, okay, I’m doing it. It’s like one of the first webinars I ever did. And there was no sound, there was no video, there was no sound, nobody could hear anything. But they were furiously typing in the chat. What is going wrong? It was worst case scenario. It was terrible. So embarrassing. So first of all, I learned that I didn’t die when the tech didn’t work. And I like, nothing worked the way it was supposed to. It was so embarrassing.
15:52
Andrea Nordling
I didn’t die. So that was great. And I committed that I would never have that situation happen again. So I learned a lot about testing your tech in advance, having a backup plan, honestly, and just kind of being kind to myself when things don’t work out. That was really the first big example I have of an epic fail of like, wow, that did not go as planned. I didn’t die. I learned from it. And I also realized that sometimes that’s going to happen and it’s part of it. We don’t not do things because that worst case scenario might happen. When the worst case scenario happens, you realize, okay, we did that. We like, that’s as bad as it’s going to get. Let’s just keep going. Now I’ve done probably hundreds of webinars by this point and luckily have not had that problem again.
16:36
Andrea Nordling
But if I did, I know I could handle it and move on. Okay, so that’s definitely in the museum of failures. Here’s the next thing I have on my list. I revamped a profitable membership into a low priced evergreen offer. So I had this offer that was working and then I revamped it into this low price, no brainer evergreen offer that was 19amonth and it only sold five people. Okay. So it was like this genius plan of I’m going to take what’s working and I’m just going to like make it as a passive thing. I can sell on my website for cheap. It’ll be such a no brainer for people. I’ll do that. Famous last words. So I learned a lot about offer switching and how we confuse our people when we are constantly changing our offer. First of all.
17:19
Andrea Nordling
Second of all, the big red flag of a no brainer offer. There’s no such thing as a no brainer offer. And actually it is so much more. It takes such a higher level of skill to sell cheap things than it does to sell expensive things. So the cheaper it is. The more our brain is like, oh, it’s like the Walmart end cap. People will just grab it as they go by. They won’t even think about it. Well, first of all, are those the clients that we want? Second of all, that does not happen. And third of all, the pursuit of that really is not in alignment for most of us and what we really want, which is people that get massive transformation. Do people get massive transformation in general from Something that costs 19amonth? No. So let’s just be honest with ourselves about that.
17:56
Andrea Nordling
I had to be very honest with myself about that. It completely changed my philosophy about structuring offers in my business. Charging premium pricing, the sales process. Learned a lot about sales psychology from that failed no brainer membership experience. And if you’re in the profitable nutritious program or in the streamline and scale mastermind, you get to benefit. And if you’re watching this video, I guess you get to benefit from everything that I learned from that because it didn’t go well. And I’ve definitely changed my strategy there. So the strategy I now teach is to have a big red flag go off in your brain if you ever think this will be a no brainer for people. Probably not. All right, third museum of failures.
18:37
Andrea Nordling
Let’s talk about big launches that bring in zero new clients and putting months of effort into a huge promotion, what I call launch, and not bringing in any sales from it. Yes, I have been there. I have done it. I do. I’ve had a lot of really successful launches, like really successful six figure launches that lots of that has happened and also sometimes it doesn’t. And there have been more than one occasion where I have had a lot of effort put into a launch. Did not get the results that were anticipated. Wasted a lot of my time wasted. I’ll get back to that. Of my time and my team’s time to not get the results that we thought that we would get. Now was it really wasted? No, because we learn a lot from these experiences.
19:26
Andrea Nordling
All of the failures, all of the bad stuff we learn from. So what I have learned over the course of having launches not go the way that I plan on them going and what I recommend to all of my students, and I would recommend it obviously to you as well, is not to rely on big launches long term. Okay. There things can break, things cannot work and then you don’t have the results that you want and you’re scrambling until the next time that you have plan to launch. So having a more consistent sales process Honestly, more at bats, especially if your business is in the beginning stages. Don’t ever look at a business that’s further along like mine is, where we do have big quarterly launches and think, well, that’s what works, that’s what we have to do. No, no, sell all the time.
20:09
Andrea Nordling
You need more at bats. You need more practice selling. And just don’t rely on those launches because sometimes the tech breaks. Sometimes things don’t work way that you think that they’re going to. And you don’t want that to be like to be reliant on that feast or famine like this has to go well because it’s the only time we’re selling. Don’t set your business up like that. Learn from my mistake there. So along with that, let’s talk about what happens when the tech breaks or when a big promotion or launch isn’t working. What I have learned is that it can be one of two things. It’s a traffic issue, meaning people aren’t seeing the offer, they’re not seeing the promotion, they’re not seeing the emails they have. You just didn’t get enough interest in the first place. They have no idea it’s going on.
20:47
Andrea Nordling
There aren’t enough eyeballs. People don’t know what’s happening. Or a conversion issue, meaning people do know it’s happening, People are seeing it, people are seeing your promotion, they’re seeing the offer, they’re clicking around and they’re not buying. So those are two different problems to solve. You really need to know in any of these situations, you need to know what is the problem that we’re solving here? Is there not enough people seeing it or are they seeing it and they’re not converting? So yeah, basically, is the tech working or not? Is the messaging working or not? And are my expectations working or not? That might be the better lesson there. Oh, how do I know? Having a lunch. Totally fail. All right.
21:26
Andrea Nordling
My last museum of failures that I had taken in my notes here that I wanted to share was doing an in person nutrition class. In the early days of my nutrition business where I actually was hosting this class was a five week class in the office of a naturopath. So I’m in someone else’s business. This naturopath has been promoting my class to his customer base and client base. I am a guest hosting the class. I was so nervous about this. Okay. I was so nervous as we are, we have a plan. You know, wouldn’t it be great if somebody hosted a class of mine and promoted it to their audience and Filled the class and I just had to show up and get paid. Well, great, right? That, like, that would be amazing. That was the plan. And then it happened.
22:08
Andrea Nordling
And I was still so nervous. It’s like, I know that this is what I wanted to have happen, but on some level I was like, oh, but did it really have to happen? Because now I’m so nervous, in fact, that I knocked over a huge display in his office like an absolute psycho. I was probably shaking. Who even knows? I made a huge mess and then I just couldn’t bounce back. Like, I was so rattled. I. I was just a disaster. The entire in person class. Here’s what I learned. First of all, to chill out. To just chill out. And second of all, kind of going back to my first lesson that I talked about, it’s like, I didn’t die. If I embarrass myself, I won’t die. I will learn from it. And I won’t die. And you won’t either.
22:50
Andrea Nordling
So honestly, that has really gotten me far in business to know I can feel the feelings that I don’t want to feel. I don’t want to be humiliated. I don’t want to be embarrassed. I don’t want to feel like an amateur. And I don’t want to. I don’t want to do any of that, of course. But also, I can, and I won’t die. And if that’s what it takes to, you know, continue achieving my goals and be in pursuit of my dreams. And maybe that’s the discomfort that I just have to feel so that I don’t do it again. So maybe that is something you need to hear too. Discomfort is the currency of our dreams. I don’t know who famously said that, but somebody did, and it’s definitely the truth.
23:26
Andrea Nordling
So you might have to feel embarrassed or rejected or like an amateur or unprepared. Ew, that one is the worst to me. But you might need to feel those things and realize you don’t die. I have done it many times. Borrow from that. So that’s my Museum of failures, part one. I’m sure that I’ll add to that quite a bit over time.
