Hi there, wellness entrepreneur. Welcome to the Ignite Your Wellness Business podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Allison McLean—physical therapist, yoga teacher, coach, massage therapist, and owner of Ignite Your Wellness Business. This is the podcast to help you as a wellness entrepreneur create an online extension of your in-person wellness practice so you can help more people without overextending yourself or relying 100% on your body.
So grow your dream business to 100K and beyond using my proven systems.
Hey there, wellness entrepreneur. Before we get into today’s episode, I want to let you know about two new offers I’m bringing in so you can sign more clients, help more people, create your dream revenue months, and manifest your dream wellness business this summer—and so you go into the fall feeling motivated and excited and end this year as your best year yet.
And both of these offers are below $30. The first is an on-demand workshop, meaning you can just watch it at your own pace. It’s prerecorded with some live touchpoints with me. It’s an Instagram workshop. You’ll get the exact Instagram content framework that turns followers into paying wellness clients without having to be on social media all day.
You’ll get the Client Attraction Roadmap, the Authority Positioning Formula—how to transform all your certification and expertise into messaging that instantly differentiates you from other wellness practitioners—the bio template, the Content Conversion Framework, and so much more. So head to the link in the podcast episode show notes to get that.
And then also, I want to let you know—I’m very, very excited about this as well—especially if you’re feeling scattered, low energy, or disconnected from your intuition. On Monday, June 2nd at 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time (so noon Eastern Standard Time), I’m hosting a live yoga manifestation, somatics, breathwork, meditation class.
I’m calling it the Embodied CEO Prosperity Practice. So it’s manifest and move yoga. Be gentle, slow, mostly on the mat—more somatic, closing the eyes, feelings. You can even bring your journal and pen because I hope you’ll get a lot of intuitions and downloads on how to manifest your dream wellness business.
It’s all designed to help you reset your nervous system, set a powerful intention for the month, for the week. That’s why I am doing it on the first Monday of the month—to step into the energetic frequency of leadership and prosperity. It’s just $20 to join. You’ll get the recording for a week. This is not your average yoga class.
It is specific for you—for entrepreneurs, for CEOs. This will be your CEO reset. It’s also for practitioners that are tired, working with a lot of people, to reenergize. So again, you can go to the link in the show notes to join in. I’m very excited because I’ve been feeling the nudge to teach a version of yoga.
I’ve been having it for a while, but teaching back in the studios hasn’t felt right, and I just am so happy to land upon what I’m really excited to bring out into the world and do this live. So you can join me, just drop in $20 and leave feeling replenished, creative, confident, and empowered. CEO—I can’t wait to see you there.
Important Link – Join The Embodied CEO Prosperity Practice
Hey there, wellness entrepreneur. Welcome back. Today I’m doing something a little bit different. I have an episode from over a hundred episodes ago. It’s called How to Sell Without Selling as a Yoga Teacher or Practitioner. That’s teaching out in the community—whether you’re doing workshops or leading keynote presentations.
Essentially, it’s how to get clients without selling if you’re having an opportunity to be out in the public. Because as you’ll learn in this episode—whether it’s when I was in my practitioner phase with my brick-and-mortar, or now as a business coach—it is one of the main ways I continuously grow my audience. As well as for those people already listening and watching, they reach out and book consults with me from a lot of these events.
And this is the key way that I do continuously sign clients and have been growing in my business year in and year after year, despite what’s happening in the community or even going through some challenging life circumstances. Because I’m always, again, reaching new people and planting seeds about my services without feeling icky and slimy.
Because you’ll hear in this episode the energetic mindset shift that I make, where I feel like the work I’m doing—showing up, what I’m teaching, and planting the seeds to my services—the next step is actually in service to my audience. And I feel it’s so important to share this episode again because since then I’ve worked with a lot more wellness practitioners as clients, and it is the one tactic.
I have a lesson—a whole lesson—on this in the Awaken Portal that I share with my clients. And of course, we individualize it and customize it in my one-to-one for them specifically, no matter where they’re teaching or what type of flow, so the process feels very authentic to them. So they show up in alignment when they do teach, but once they implement it, they can immediately sign clients.
I can’t tell you the number of clients that I’ve had where we’ve implemented this and they’ve gone out the next day or in their next class or workshop and have implemented—and then immediately have gotten consults and signed clients. So it can be a very quick process to implement once you figure out what to do and make it work for you and your class or workshop setting.
Because I know the whole reason why you became a practitioner is to help more people. And so this can help you fulfill your purpose and, you know, create that ripple effect in the community of helping people to feel better with their health and their wellness.
So whether you’re a longtime listener or just new to the podcast episode, this episode offers timeless strategies to authentically connect with your audience and grow your business without the icky sales tactics.
In this episode, we dive into building genuine relationships that naturally lead to signing clients—whether it’s group or one-to-one, in person or online, it doesn’t matter. It can happen in any of these containers. Communicating your value in a way that resonates and differentiates you from all the other practitioners doing similar type work and inspires them to take that next step, so you don’t get a lot of people saying things like, “I love that, that information was great. I feel so inspired,” getting all this positive feedback—and then have it be crickets afterward.
Also, you’ll learn how to shift from traditional sales pitches to heartfelt conversations.
The wellness industry has evolved, and so have the ways we connect with potential clients. This episode provides foundational principles that, when adapted into today’s landscape, can elevate your approach to client engagement.
So let’s get into this episode, and share this, of course, with a practitioner friend that maybe feels stuck with signing more clients and filling their schedule, or filling their group programs, or growing their audience.
Because again, when you do these in-person or online tactics—if you’re teaching classes and workshops online or in person—it doesn’t matter. But when you pair this strategy with consistently showing up on social media, Instagram for example, and having an email list, it can be such a great marketing system.
It’s why I teach my clients this in the 100K Marketing System, where it’s very repeatable. You know exactly what to refine, to optimize, and make it better—to help more people and sign more clients. And it is how my clients go into hitting bigger revenue jumps. So I hope you love this. Again, send it to a friend who needs to hear this so they can grow and be inspired as well.
And of course, if you love it, send me a message on Instagram. I always love to hear that as well, and I’ll feature you.
Alright, I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy this episode.
Hi there, entrepreneur. Welcome to the Ignite Your Wellness Business podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Allison McLean—physical therapist, massage therapist, yoga teacher and coach, and the owner of Ignite Your Wellness Business. On this podcast, we talk about all things body, brain, and bank account to achieve your version of success while caring for your own health and enjoying life in the process.
It’s all about reducing stress, living a fulfilled life, making more money, helping more people—all while having fun in the process.
Alright, let’s get to it.
Be there, friend. Welcome back. Today we’re gonna be talking about a topic that you might not wanna talk about because it makes you feel kind of icky, or maybe you dread it—yet it’s vital for the health of your business.
Because at some point, you need paying clients. It’s just the reality. As your business grows, expenses will grow. And if you want to be profitable—so your family has more freedom of choices, you take home more for your family—you have to be able to sell. And that’s the topic we’re gonna talk about.
But the selling that I’m talking about—or that we will go through in today’s podcast—it’s not manipulation. It’s not convincing. It’s not forcing someone to work with you or having to twist their arm or get them on a high-pressure sales call. It’s not about baiting and switching, offering them one thing and then delivering—and doing again—another high-pressure sales call. It’s none of that.
What I really love about the 200K Mastermind that I’m part of, that Stacey Boehman leads, is that she always says selling is coaching, and coaching is selling. And I find that to be true as well.
For me, selling is part of putting value into the world. From that value—helping people—people are getting value through ideas, insights, awakenings, lessons learned, actions to take. And from that, some of the people that take me up on free value through content and social media, or from this podcast, or even paying value I put out in the world—such as paid workshops or other events that I do—there is a percentage, out of all the people that take part in my free and paid value, that will reach out and take the next step to work with me more.
So today we’re going to talk about how to sell without selling. So when you show up to give free content in the world—on social media through posts or Facebook Lives, or on LinkedIn, or you make videos on YouTube or blog posts—there are so many ways that I know you show up. Some of you do workshops and retreats or keynote presentations and speaking events.
The ability to sell without selling maximizes and leverages your time so more people will follow you, come into your world, become a loyal subscriber. You’ll help more people. And from that larger audience that you cultivate—that tribe (your vibe attracts your tribe, right?)—that tribe that you create, you’ll have a higher number of people that will also want to take the next step to work with you more, to become a paying client.
Also Read: How to Manage a Fully Booked Schedule Without Overwhelm
Okay, let’s take an example. Since many of you teach classes—wellness classes—whether that be fitness classes, boot camps, yoga classes, yoga therapy classes, there’s all kinds of classes. So you can show up and teach your class and go home, and yes, you would get paid, you get a paycheck, but the way to maximize your time is to show up, give more value in a way that really opens your students’ minds, causes them to think or reanalyze, or get a different perception on maybe their body, their health, their mindset.
So for example, I used to teach a lot of yoga classes out in the public. I used to teach a lot of workshops out in the public. And some of the yoga classes I taught were in a corporate setting or a corporate yoga studio.
So it wasn’t appropriate to, quote-unquote, “sell” or go in and promote myself at the end of each class, promote my online workshops, my online programs, or my one-to-one sessions in the class. In fact, doing this would lower my number of students that attended my classes, which would be the downfall of both my own teaching career but also it doesn’t serve the studio because the students that showed up to my yoga classes—they didn’t show up because they wanted to be sold to. They showed up because they wanted to learn more about their bodies. They wanted to release stress, get their sweat on, get stronger, more flexible. So it’s not the place to directly promote myself or my business.
Yet, my yoga classes were a great lead source for a lot of my clients and patients that I served in my physical therapy, brick-and-mortar physical therapy yoga business. So how did this happen? I planted seeds.
So for me, in this situation, quote-unquote, “selling” was me showing up, teaching a class, doing all the things that you would normally do to plan a class. I would create the theme, I would create the sequence, I would create the emotional and energetic messages I wanted to share with the class. I would go through the sequence of postures that correlate to the energetic message—the theme of the class. I would take them on a journey. I would plan all that.
Also Read: Grow Your Wellness Business From Home While Raising a Family
But then I would take it a step further.
This is not necessarily the most comfortable work, because when you get to a certain phase in your yoga teaching career, you’ll get comfortable. You can create sequences on the fly. You can create themes on the fly. You can put it together quickly, and you can show up and teach a very thorough and well-sequenced class that your students love in the moment.
However, if you are desiring to create more revenue in your bank account, if you are desiring to help more clients, you’re desiring even to book out your classes more—fill them out, sell out the room—then you have to take it to the next level. And that’s planting the seeds of the value of your work, giving insights into how your students can create their own awakening, giving them awareness on how they’re living their life day-to-day.
So what does this mean? We’ll give a tangible situation.
For example, I used to teach a hot sequence where there are many asanas throughout the class. And sometimes the first few asanas of class, I would cue normally. So I would give the foundational cues to help keep their body safe—what they should feel in the stretch, the cues on how to be active through their quadriceps, lengthen through the spine, where they should feel it, quote-unquote, what they might want to avoid. I would cue benefits for the mind and body.
Then, as the asanas progressed throughout class, I would give reminders of those foundational cues—but usually just one or two—and I would sprinkle in stories that correlated to the theme of the class, the message I wanted to share.
So, for example, if I wanted to share how you can become stronger by overcoming challenges in your life, I might give a story of one of my patients and overcoming sciatica—and how when they were showing up to the yoga class, they thought that they were stretching their hamstrings. But really, one reason why their sciatic nerve continued to flare and stay angry—and so then they couldn’t sit at their desk, they were worried if they got down on the ground to play with their children that they wouldn’t get back up—was because every time they went to yoga, instead of stretching their hamstring muscles, they were actually pulling and yanking on their nerves.
So I would sprinkle that story throughout the class and the awakenings of what this patient learned by learning how to actually stretch a hamstring muscle instead of their nerve. And I would give cues on the distinctions—how to discern between the muscle and the nerve.
Must Read: Overcoming Energy and Money Block: An Interview with Energy Healer Gina Giro
And I would have students come up to me after class asking me, “How do I learn more about this? I think that’s my problem. I think that’s what’s going on with my body. I think that’s why my low back is hurting, or my hip is hurting and it’s not getting better. What more can I do?”
In that moment—since it wasn’t appropriate to do an official evaluation to really determine where the source of their pain was coming from, what the true root was—I would tell them, “Listen, I would love to work with you more, really figure this out. I offer free consultations. We can sign you up for one now, or I can take your email, send you a line, and you can follow up with me when you’re ready to do this work.”
And I got so many clients from this simple process of planting seeds—creating awareness of what they might be doing in yoga classes or in their day-to-day life.
People would approach me after class, and some people would decide to sign up for the consult. From that consult, some people would decide to take the next step to work with me more—not all the people. And that’s okay, because I never have heard of a coach or a practitioner that has a 100% close rate.
The difference is, I was planting these seeds of value, of perception, of awakening—without attachment—knowing that the people that wanted to learn more, that were ready to work with me right now, would take the next step. And the others would get benefit and value to their lives.
And that brought me fulfillment and joy, because that is why I am in the industry of helping others in the first place—to help others, no matter if they’re paying me or not.
Yes, of course—like I hinted to in the beginning—I always want to bring revenue into my business. That’s how my business grows. That’s how I, myself, grow. That’s how I can help my family more and actually contribute to society more by bringing in more revenue. So, I do want more revenue.
But I don’t place the expectation on myself to close all the students that approach me in every class. And I never want to be convincing or manipulative or force someone to work with me if it’s not a right fit.
So I figured out this value planting—this seed planting—and it works really well. And it’s something that you can replicate in your own classes as well to really maximize the time that you are showing up to get that paycheck of $35 for that class that you’re teaching.
Why not make it more?
Can you imagine? You show up, you teach a class for $35—it’s like getting paid to market. That’s how I used to describe it all the time: “I’m getting paid to market,” because I would plant the seeds. From there, I would generate patients, and if I taught a class for $35 and I had a student come up to me, approach me—maybe I would give a free hour consult—and from there, if one student converted to one of my patients, that would be a few thousand dollars.
It’s totally worth it in my book. The trick is adding that additional layer of the value—the message that you’re going to share with your students in the moment. Reminding them the benefit of working more with you. And a lot of that can be done through storytelling—stories of your past clients, stories of results of clients and students, benefits they received from working with you.
You can thread these stories in so many ways for all different types of scenarios.
So, for example, the app Insight Timer is a wonderful place where students are actively searching for teachers on how to help them get healthier. It’s a wellness and health app where there are thousands—I forget how many people use it now, maybe even millions—of people looking to take yoga classes, meditation classes.
And from the teacher perspective, you’re not allowed to promote and sell. It’s understandable, because people are coming there to learn more about their body. The way the app has it set up is for people to take classes.
Yet there are ways to still sell yourself without directly promoting. And some of that is through storytelling and weaving that into your themes and messages—without attachment.
So it’s delivering these stories, ensuring that they’re valuable, ensuring that you’re going to leave a lasting imprint by maybe giving them even an action step that they can do right after the class or meditation to bring the work into their lives right away.
That itself sometimes is one of the most valuable tips—helping someone implement the knowledge that they learned on the mat and bringing it into their lives.
How impactful.
So to summarize here: selling is a shift in your mindset. Instead of thinking of it as forcing someone or manipulating someone or even convincing someone to work with you—which just feels awful—think about it as delivering value in a compelling way where the right person, the appropriate person who is actively looking for the services that you offer, who is actively seeking out someone exactly like you for help in a problem that they need—you are the solution.
You’re actually making it easier for them to get their problem solved because you’re there, and you can thread the awareness that you are the person to help through storytelling.
So I will give five tips on how to bring more selling without actually selling. You can do it in all sorts of scenarios. I do it in keynote presentations when I’m delivering free or paid events.
Here are five ways to sell without selling:
Number one: Talk about the work you do with clients. Take it the next layer deeper by telling the results that your clients get, or an awakening that a specific client or student had by working one-to-one with you. For example, how they were your student in a group class, but then they were courageous and sought you out and decided to invest in your one-to-one program. What was the benefit that they received? What happened?
And you don’t have to share with the group your client’s names or any details that would reveal who that specific person is. Just share the generalized story and the awakenings. Tell the class. Another part of the value from this is that you’re showing what’s possible.
When I told the sciatica story, for example, of the student that had sciatica for years and was continuously flaring it up by going to yoga classes that they thought would be helpful—and once they were aware of this problem, their sciatica finally healed—so many people came to me and were like, “I’ve had back pain,” or “I’ve had sciatica for years, and I never thought it could get better. I thought I had to live with this in my life. Thank you for providing hope.”
How amazing is that? Like, for me, just opening their eyes to the possibility that they can heal, that they can get better, is huge.
Number two: Another way to sell without selling is to give example results of your program. So in this scenario, you don’t even have to mention an example client or student that you’ve worked with. Just give results that you know are attainable in your program—whether that be an online group program or your one-to-one program, in person or online.
Just talk about the possibilities of results created in your program, like getting more energy or sleeping through the night, and weave that into the theme of your class and other examples and stories that you might talk about in your class.
Number three: Have them leave with a takeaway. This isn’t often thought of for classes. It’s thought about for workshops—where we break down maybe a theme or a topic and they leave with takeaways to implement in their life. The same can be true with classes.
You can think of a class as a mini workshop, and they can still leave with an implementable or actionable step that they can implement in their life later that day, following the class. Give them an awakening or aha—or something that they can do. Just one thing that they can bring into their life and repeat throughout the week.
So when they come back the following week for their class, they’re going to have a new actionable step. And in this way, they’re starting to see growth and evolution. And if they can connect the dots—and you can help them with this—through the storytelling of working with clients specifically, and the benefit of working with you more beyond the class, that they can get results faster, quicker, easier…
It all starts with the knowledge. That realization: “Oh, I’m getting so much benefit from attending her weekly group class, and there’s more room to go. This can actually happen faster.”
Number four: If they ask a specific question in class or approach you in class—or maybe depending on the theme of your class and the cueing that you deliver—you can talk about freebies that you have. So you can say something simple like, “Oh, if you want to learn more about this, I actually have a free YouTube channel where I have a lot of videos on this very topic where I break it down in more detail.”
Or you can say something like, “And if you want to learn more about this, I actually have a free guide on my website. So if you want to get access to this free guide, just approach me after class and I’ll give you the information so you can sign up at your earliest convenience.”
If you’re creating freebies—all that content that we talked about: blogs, YouTube channel, social media posts, reels—let people know it exists out there in the world by just mentioning it. The ones that are, again, actively searching to help a problem, to find a solution for the problem, will approach you after class or just look it up.
That’s all you have to do. It can be quick and easy and simple. Just mention the free content you have out there in the world and then move forward with your class or your presentation.
And the last one—Number five—is always offering for them to approach you after a class or event to get their own specific individual questions answered.
And depending on how many people approach you, depending on the location and the rules—for example, if you’re in a yoga studio that doesn’t want you promoting—then you can say, “Just go to my website.” You can mention that you have a free consult call that they can sign up for to learn more about their specific problem or issue.
Just allow them to be the driver.
Most times, studios in certain scenarios don’t want promotion because people are manipulated. They abuse the selling scenario. They try to convince. They try to force. It makes it awkward for everyone.
Whereas if you just educate on the value that you have—free offers that you have—that people can learn more in a way that you’re not going to bait and switch them, that really they’re going to sign up for the consult call or you have a free guide where the free guide is actually valuable—it’s not just fluff—you’re actually giving valuable content in your free guide…
Or, like for me, if they sign up for a consult, they’ll definitely leave with takeaways and learnings.
You leave it up to the person to sign up for that or not. You leave it up to the student to make that decision for themself to work with you, to take that next step.
Then it isn’t convincing. It isn’t manipulative. And it’s in a place of serving.
It’s a very different energy, and in this type of scenario, everyone wins—because someone with their problem is able to find a solution for their problem. They’re able to get the help that they need. You are happy because you are getting more clients, more revenue into your business. And even the studio can be happy because their students are getting better served.
Those students that are actually looking for the help are getting better served, and the ones that don’t need your help—well, they’re just going to show up to classes.
I know when I taught at studios, I would get referrals of clients—of students—that actively were looking for help for their back pain or their neck pain or whatever it is. And the owner of the studio desperately wanted me to help them find a solution to this problem, because they were often a very loyal student to the studio.
If they didn’t get the problem solved, then most likely they weren’t going to continue to come to class. They might even have to have surgery and take time off from the studio.
No studio wants a student to leave, for whatever reason. But for many reasons, studios value their students and want to have them keep coming again and again and again to the classes—because they know it’ll benefit their lives. And of course, it benefits the studio to keep this retention.
So really, it’s a win-win.
As long as you’re doing it from a place of serving, you’re educating on the value that you have, and you deliver on that value—you deliver on your promise—instead of trying to bait and switch or convince.
And that, I think, is where the selling really feels icky. You dread it—for good reason—because intuitively, you know it’s not the path that you want to take.
I know you’re in this industry to help people, not convince people, not bait and switch and give them something unuseful. I know you want to deliver value into the world, and you want to have good trust and rapport with everyone, no matter the situation—whether they’re paying you or not.
People Also Read: How to Show Up Consistently and Attract Clients
So remember: selling can be serving when approached in this way, where you’re giving value. And let go of the thought that you have to convince or manipulate.
If you’re just sharing all the education and the value—helping them implement it into their lives or have takeaways and insights—those that are actively seeking the solution that you provide will reach out to you to want to learn more. I promise.
That’s how I built my six-figure brick-and-mortar business: doing this in a number of ways.
And at first, remember, it can be uncomfortable. It’s easy—especially when I mentioned that you get to that phase of your teaching career where you can deliver a class that people love without having to put much thought into it.
Take that next step. Do the uncomfortable thing of sharing a story, helping your students leave with an actionable step that they can implement in their lives. Take the additional step of weaving in examples and results of your program into the theme of your class or workshop.
It’ll pay off tremendously in the amount of time and energy that you are already putting into your teaching career—by helping you to get additional revenue. It pays off in so many ways.
So take that next step of being uncomfortable to plant the seeds of value.
Alright, there you have it: how to sell without actually selling.
If you want to learn more, just reach out to me. I’ll see you next week.
Bye for now.
Before you go, I want to thank you for being a loyal listener to this podcast. It means the world to me. You and your business mean the world to me as well, because the more successful your business is, the more people you’ll be helping. And together, through helping more people, we will change the world.
To achieve this success, you can implement the work from this very podcast right now to create more ease and flow in your day, prevent burnout, and experience more fulfillment—all while earning more revenue.
The key is to know exactly what to prioritize in your business to bring in more money and allow you to have more free time to rest and enjoy with family.
You can wake up tomorrow morning with a clear plan and confidence to see it through. No more wasted hours fumbling around and wondering if what you’re doing is actually going to work.
No more working crazy long days and schedules to compensate for the doubt and fear that it’s possible for you to be a success.
It is possible for you to succeed. It’s time to release that for good.
Just because your previous mentors worked around the clock doesn’t mean you have to.
Find out how to create your ideal schedule and bring in more revenue by connecting with me one-to-one. Head to igniteyourwellness.com for a free chat with me. That’s igniteyourwellness.com.
Following this call, you’ll leave with a sustainable and profitable plan that’ll allow you to enjoy working in your business for years to come—and allow you to help more and more people.
Bye for now.
Hey, if you’re ready to grow your wellness business, I want to invite you to work with me. You’re going to make your first six figures and then scale beyond.
Your next step is to book a free consultation at wellunbound.com/. That’s wellunbound.com/.
Okay, I’ll see you there. Bye.
Important Links To Visit:
Create Financial Stability in Your Wellness Business During Uncertain Times
How to Turn Attendees into Clients Using Instagram & Email
Maximizing Attendance: How to Fill Your Workshops Quickly
BOOK YOUR FREE CONSULTATION CALL NOW
100k Awaken 1:1 6 Month Business Coaching for the Wellness Entrepreneur
