Imagine you’re about to launch your business. It’s something you’ve put your blood, sweat, and tears into. Everything is in place when suddenly, through no fault of your own, you have to shut down.
All of your planning goes right out the window and you’re faced with two options: close your doors, say ‘this is beyond my control’ and put your dreams on the backburner…or change course by reimagining your business and how you’re going to reach your goals.
What would you do?
That’s the challenge Holistic Nutritionist, Health Coach, and founder of Full Bloom Acres Lindsay Little was up against. Lindsay had tried her best with the tools she’s acquired up to that point to make it work.
But it wouldn’t be until she found Andrea Nordling and The Profitable Nutritionist® Program that she’d be able to right-the-course, reimagining her business strategy and implementing what she’d ultimately need in order to successfully grow her health and wellness practice.
A Dream is Born
Before Lindsay was helping busy women resolve embarrassing and painful digestive issues, she was working 60 grueling hours a week, sometimes nights and holidays, for a private contractor in Wisconsin. The stress from her job, she would later discover, was making her sick, killing her digestive system and leaving her so fatigued she’d have to pull over on the highway on her way to meetings and take a nap.
So she decided to get out. After DIY’ing herself back to health, Lindsay added grad school on top of her already overflowing plate, getting her Master’s degree in holistic nutrition. She began to build her brick and mortar coaching business so she could teach others what she had learned while addressing her own health issues, only to be met head on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Not knowing exactly what she was doing, yet determined to use her perfectionism to figure it out like she always had, Lindsay took her business online where she struggled to find the right formula for getting clients without yet again burning herself out.
Lindsay soon realized that her standard approach for taking on something new, the very things that had made her successful in the past (that ‘keep at it and figure it out’ perfectionism that had worked so well for her up to this point) weren’t cutting it anymore.
Lindsay’s dream was turning into a nightmare. She had fallen out of love with the idea of running a business by the time she found Andrea Nordling. But enrolling in The Profitable Nutritionist® Program turned that all around, reinvigorating Lindasy’s drive to help others and reigniting the passion she had for her work.
From Overworked to Underpaid
When Lindsay left her corporate job to go all-in on her health coaching business, Full Bloom Acres, in May of 2020, her physical office was already set up. She was able to see only a few one-off clients in-person before the world shut down.
When the Covid-19 pandemic forced her to close her doors, Lindsay was faced with a situation she wasn’t prepared for. In order to keep her dream alive, Lindays would have to rethink everything and go virtual.
“So that all kind of changed,” she says of her plans and what she’d imagined her business would look like as she went through grad school. “And then it was just, figure out all the things that they don’t teach you in school,” Lindsay says.
Initially, Lindsay had created multiple offers. She had a 3-month program where she’d give clients a choice to meet, in a rather complicated fashion, either weekly or biweekly, in-person or virtually, and also offered one-off sessions.
But when she did the math, Lindsay realized that with the way her current offers were set up, she would still be working burn-out hours; that in order to be profitable, she’d have to show up for over 1,000 one-off appointments a year.
Lindsay lacked the framework she needed to come up with an offer that not only helped her clients, but that felt right for her and the goals she was working towards, both personally and professionally. She tried basing her rate off of what she saw others in the industry asking for. She was low balling everything – offering free sessions and discounts any chance she got trying to drum up interest in her offers. But nothing was working.
Her drive to work harder in the hopes of achieving success was waning. It was clear to Lindsay that she needed some direction in order to grow her business in a way that allowed her to live the life she wanted, in the way she’d dreamed of in grad school.
Lindsay found that direction when she enrolled in The Profitable Nutritionist® Program in December 2022.
Looking back, Lindsay recounts, “one of the biggest struggles when I first started, no one teaches you how to do that. So I literally did all the things that you [Andrea] teach not to do.”
Once she started The Profitable Nutritionist® Program, everything changed.
“I struggled for so long until last December when I found your program”, Lindsay tells Andrea. “I knew this was it, I knew this was what I needed.”
In January, Lindsay took the $3k in 30 Days Challenge that focuses on mindset. Each morning, you set a timer for 5 – 10 minutes and complete journaling-type exercises. It’s simple, yet profound, and ended up being a game-changer for Lindsay.
The concept of an inner dialogue impacting her business was new to her, and it turned out to be the realization she needed to help her get clear on what she wanted to offer and how she was going to help people.
Even though she was initially uncomfortable with her new offer, by trusting the process and using the mindset tools she was learning, Lindsay made the change to one straightforward offer: a 6-month coaching program.
Lindsay hit her $3k in 30 Days Challenge goal in February when she signed her first client into her 6-month program. She saw incredible interest and engagement in the months that followed. Lindsay’s people were finding her.
Since then, it’s been quite a busy year for Lindsay. In June, she took the $3k in 30 Days Challenge again and all the momentum Lindsay experienced earlier in the year came rushing back. She got the most traction she’d seen in her business up until that point, signing 4 new clients.
And it’s not just Lindsay who’s finding success. Lindsay’s clients are seeing big changes in themselves as well.
What has made Lindsay and her clients so successful?
Lindsay took the mindset tools she learned in The Profitable Nutritionist® Program and taught them to her clients, resulting in higher client adherence to her program. Clients are now more invested for the long- term, getting them better results and getting Lindsay more referrals.
“The results they’re getting are amazing, and they can’t even compare to the results that people were getting in the 12 week program I had,” Lindsay says.
Mindset Matters
Lindsay says what really shifted for her was when she moved away from being attached to her goals and was instead committed to her goals. She was able to separate herself from her business.
Working with that idea, Lindsay began to understand that whether or not she was successful in business was not a reflection on her as a person, as a human being. This got the wheels turning for Lindsay, ultimately helping her gain back some of the confidence she lost through the ups and downs of getting her business off the ground.
And most importantly for Lindsay, she realized that her perfectionistic tendencies, the very attributes that had made her successful up to that point, were now holding her back.
“Being a perfectionist has been one of the traits that made me successful so far in life and it’s been the constraint in my business.”
Lindsay describes herself as a high-achiever who works hard to learn what doesn’t come naturally. Accepting that you can’t be perfect when you’re running a business has been an uncomfortable truth, but one that she’s had to adopt in order to be able to continually put herself out there and tell people who she is and how she can help them.
Even now, amidst a move from Wisconsin to Bemidji, Minnesota, and the stress that comes with that, Lindsay stands confident, keeping up with what she needs to stay healthy herself and to promote the coaching business that helps others get and stay healthy, too.
Recovering Perfectionist
Holistic Nutrition and Health Coach Lindsay Little’s journey from burned out perfectionist to successful entrepreneur highlights the transformative power of mindset tools and the profound changes that take place when we embrace our imperfection.
Her story is an inspiration to those struggling to find success along their own business journey and a testament to how The Profitable Nutritionist® Program unlocks the potential we all have to make our dreams come true.
If you’re looking to grow a sustainable, impactful and consistently profitable health and wellness practice, find out what The Profitable Nutritionist® Program can do for you and your business.
Want to hear Lindsay’s story in her own words, with even more juicy details? Listen to The Profitable Nutritionist® Podcast Episode #105 now.
There are also 105 (and counting) other episodes filled with profitable practice philosophies—and we do not mean spending hours making awkward Reels.
CLICK HERE to listen or find The Profitable Nutrition® podcast wherever you podcast. The Podcast is all about simple, evergreen marketing and sales strategies and tools…that work over and over again.
