Hey there, wellness entrepreneur! Welcome back.
Today, we’re talking about How To Transition Your In-Person Skills To Online so you can confidently get clients’ results online.
Because I’m sure you’ve heard of all the benefits of starting an online wellness program, like you can move from one-to-one to group, you can work from anywhere in the world, you can have more flexibility in your schedule, you can take pressure off your body from always having to perform to bring in revenue, you can get out of a mill-type situation, whether it be working for someone else as an employee, like a massage clinic where you’re just seeing back-to-back clients all day or you’re in a physical therapy office, forced to see many patients all at one time, or maybe you’re in a mill situation of having to teach a whole bunch of yoga classes back-to-back-to-back.
Whatever the mill-type situation is, you can get out of that scenario and comfortably bring in revenue and help people with their wellness from the comfort of your own home and you get to set your own hours.
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The Hiccups I Hear Surrounding Transferring Skills Online
But a lot of hiccups I hear is, it sounds really nice, but then, when you go to create that program or start working with people one-to-one, it’s like, “Okay, well, it seems nice, but how do I really get people results, especially if I’m a manual therapist or I work with energy or I’m hands-on or I’m exercise-based? How do I get people results?”
Because I know you care about that, because you don’t want to just have people buy a program that’s not going to work for them. So just know that it’s 100% possible to transfer your skills online.
And if all of them don’t carry over, so for example, there are ways to transfer your hands-on skills and educate your clients on how to get movement in their fascia and their muscles without you having to put their hands on them, but maybe it’s also determining the gaps in your education and your knowledge and, okay, it’s going to be controversial, but maybe you need another certification.
Okay, all for the certifications. I have a ton of certifications and sometimes I say, don’t get another certification or you hear all the time in the world, don’t get another certification, but that is because sometimes you’re getting certifications for the wrong reasons, thinking that it’s the certification that will bring clients in the door when the certification is used to get the client results, right?
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And if you have a gap in knowledge that’s going to help get a client results, that’s when a certification is actually really beneficial. Or you’re getting a certification just to get another certification, boosting your confidence, or if you’re getting a certification, but you stop marketing and selling or in relation to the development of your online program while you wait until the certification is completely done and you feel like you’re an expert in that certification, that’s when certifications can be used against yourself or really slow you down.
But if you’re going to get a certification and develop your program and market your program and you’re using it to get clients results at the end of that program, two thumbs up, do it, go for it.
The Framework On What’s Needed To Help Clients Get The Results They Need In The Online World
#1. Know The Tangible Result At The End Of That Online Program
So number one is knowing the tangible results at the end of that online program. So that can be if you’re working one-to-one for three months or have a 12-week package, that can be. If you have a six-month group program or if you have an ongoing membership or an on-demand program, it doesn’t matter. Any of those situations, we’re a hybrid. You want to have a tangible result at the end of it.
So for example, for my business coaching program, I help wellness entrepreneurs develop a six-figure online business. Now, some of my clients do that within their first round of working with me. Some of them do it after multiple rounds, but we’re always working towards that.
#2. Have Protocols in Place to Track Client Progress and Success
And with that, how do I know that we’re working towards that and they’re not, “failing?” It’s because I have measurements in place to track their progress. So I have protocols, that’s the word I was looking for, in place where each session, I know what’s going on with the client and their business to ensure, “Okay, they’re moving forward, they’re on the right track, they’re hitting key metrics, they’re hitting the milestones that I’m looking for.”
That’s also going to be a precursor to bigger measurements like revenue and number of clients and such. So I have many metrics that I track within them that I do in multiple ways.
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So I’m tracking it session to session. I’m also tracking it month to month where I send out a form that takes less than 10 minutes to fill out where clients respond back to me certain metrics of not only just revenue, but what’s going on with their mindset, what’s going on with their schedule, what’s going on with their energy, so I can all ensure that they’re continuing to mark forward. And if they’re getting stuck, I’m seeing, “Okay, they’re a little stuck here.” I can figure out exactly what’s going on. I know 100% because I have the certifications, I have the knowledge, I have the resources to move them forward.
So that’s going to happen in any industry, especially the wellness industry. You know that people are going to be on the weight loss flow, and then they’re going to go on vacation and have a backslide, or maybe they just get stuck. Keto or intermittent fasting was working, and now it’s not. The introduction of strength training was working, and now it’s not. People are going to be healing their low back pain, and then they’re going to have a flare that seems to come out of the blue, right?
So, “failures” are always going to happen with clients. And it’s our responsibility as the wellness practitioner to not take that upon us and take it personally and say, “Oh, something’s wrong with me as a practitioner. Something’s wrong with my program,” because that’s going to shut your nervous system down. That’s going to shut you down. That’s going to make things with the client weird, right?
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Instead, it’s realizing, “Oh, this is just part of the process. I know that if I ask some certain questions, I was actually preparing for this because I knew that they were ramping up their activity again, or they were going out of town again.” Like, there are certain things that you can do that you know and prepare the client like, “Hey, this might slow you down,” or, “Hey, this is going to cause you to backslide but it’s your choice. You do you. You live your life, or you follow your intuition.”
So there are things that you can do to prepare yourself and your client to handle a failure or a slowdown, but it’s also having measures in place, protocols in place to track measurements to ensure that your clients are on the path to success. So that is needed.
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#3. Examine What You’re Doing in the Actual Session
Number three, you need to know how to examine what you’re doing in the actual session to ensure that the clients are going to get results. So what methodologies are you using? What techniques are you using? These are actually the skills to help people to get the results.
So if you think about it, you want to analyze in your in-person clinic. What do you actually do or in your in-person clinics or yoga classes or office or whatever you call it, what do you do to get people results? So you’re like, “Okay, the first thing I do is evaluate them. I take a look at their posture. I do a movement screen. I see how they move. And then from there, I know where some deficits are and what’s going on, what’s dysfunctional, what needs strengthening, what needs more mobility. And then I know how to work with that.”
Or maybe you take a look at their breath and see how they breathe or you have them or they tell you their life stories. So then you know about their patterns of living, right? Where do you start? And then based upon that information that you’re gathering, what do you do next?
So possibly, in future sessions, you might give them some homework. What’s the homework? And don’t give them a lot in that first session. That’s a whole other thing. But then in future sessions, what are you going to do to help overcome the problems that you solve that that client might have?
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So maybe if you’re a yoga teacher, you’re like, “Okay, I have certain yoga postures I can use to help down-regulate their nervous system. And I have tools I can use through breath and mindset to help increase their capacity to handle stress so they’re not so shut down in life’s challenges.”
Maybe as a massage therapist, you’re like, “Okay, if they’re really stuck in these facial areas, I am going to use by John Barnes myofascial technique here. I’m going to do some energetic techniques there. I’m going to do some structural integration. I’m going to do some rolfing. I’m going to do some tweena,” right?
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You have different modalities and techniques. If you’re a physical therapist, you’re like, “Okay, I’m going to do manual therapy here. I’m going to do exercises here.”
If you’re a Reiki practitioner, what type of energetics, right? We all have our systems. We all have our protocols.
For you, you need to really understand what moves the dial for your people and write it down. Clearly write it down, your systems, your protocols, your processes. And then you have to look at that list and be like, “Okay, what can I transfer online easily? Okay, exercises, great.” You can teach exercises through a camera, whether it’s one-to-one or one-to-many in a group setting, through a camera quite easily. It’s just figuring the camera is set up so they see you, making sure you have good audio so that they can hear you, with knowing how to cue maybe in a different way if you’re used to putting your hands on people to help them find their body alignment where they are. It’s learning how to use your words and communicate how you want them to situate their bodies so they’re doing the exercise correctly.
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So the thing with working online with wellness clients is that when you’re working online, it’s a little bit more nuanced, a little bit more nuanced in the words you’re saying because sometimes there’s more words being said because there’s less work being done through your hands. And so it’s a transfer of energy from your hands at times through the words of your mouth. And for you, it’s really noticeable if your words are landing by watching their body mechanics, by watching their body language. Are they understanding? Are they picking it up? So it’s very nuanced. You can still assess posture through a video. I’ve done this for many people with scoliosis.
You could clearly say, “Okay, if the shirt is bunching in a way, like pull down the shirt so I can assess the spine, move in this way, move your camera so I can see your knee.” There are ways that you can situate a camera, have their clothes situated in a way or have them tell you what they’re feeling while they’re moving to assess what’s going on with their movements and their posture.
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So many of your skills can be transferred automatically online and you just have to get in the repetition, get in the numbers of doing it so you get confident. And at first, it’s going to be awkward and weird or a little bit, it’s just going to feel different, especially if you’ve been a practitioner in person for so many years and doing it a certain way, kind of, it’s going to shake things up for a bit. But if you remember back to the time when you first started your in-person skills, you might’ve felt similar. And then the more you did it, the more comfortable you got and you got your rhythm and you created your own processes and hybrids.
The Problem With The Traditional, The “Protocol,” And Evidence-Based Research
So that’s an answer to another thing, I get the question, “Okay, if I’m a reiki practitioner, if I’m a Iyengar teacher, these lineages only tell me that I can’t mix it up, I have to stay within the lineage and do a certain protocol.”
Here is where you have to really trust yourself. I believe that those practitioners who created those lineages and said, do it this way, is because that’s what they knew best at that time. That’s what worked for them. That might’ve been 50, 60, 100 years ago, maybe even just 10 years ago. It doesn’t mean that it applies today in our society right now, or for you in an online situation.
So I 100% believe, and I just had someone attend one of my webinars who said this was so freeing, 100% believe that you can combine the modalities.
If you’re feeling like, I can’t tell you, like when I was first massaging and my first couple of years massaging, I always had the anatomy netter textbook in my brain. So I was like imagining the musculature and what organs were underneath and what like bones were in the area and all the structures of the body as I was massaging something. And I could pick up energetics of things. I didn’t really quite know what I was doing because I was in the big beginning phases, this 20 plus years ago. But I got a massage, I did a trade with someone that was very intuitive. She worked in the energetics realm. She was an energy practitioner. And she told me, she’s like, “Oh my gosh, what you do are intuitive massages. I can tell like you’re following certain muscles to release certain muscles and you know what they start and the end, but I can sense also you’re doing work underneath.”
So because I was a personal trainer, that was my very first certification 20 plus years ago. So even back then I was combining energetics with this very physical personal training world through my massages. And I was using my fingers as my eyes and I was feeling through energetics. And some of that has to do with my life experience as well, going through certain traumas. I had to learn how to feel the environment around me to determine as a child if I was safe or not. So I was also bringing in some of my life experience.
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So for you, I think sometimes this is going to get controversial again, that we can get so hung up in evidence-based research. I 100% believe it’s useful. It’s tools, it’s data, and informs us to ensure. The whole point of additive evidence-based research is to do no harm. So we’re not harming people and to help them get results.
So again, I think the downside of evidence-based research is that it’s behind and it’s not accurate to real life. Like when in real life is the exact lab scenario where some of these people are tested, not to mention that most of them are males, right? White males, because that’s where most of the money in the research goes to. It’s not even to a diverse amount of people is that it’s lacking in data on certain demographics of people, but also it’s not real to life. Like some of the scenarios where they’re testing people, it’s not like out in the wild, how we would be living our lives. So I don’t think it’s true data. And even though the researcher is unbiased, but they still are a human being.
So there’s still human biases that are unconsciously happening and there’s still human error. So I don’t think evidence-based research is the end all be all, where you should shame yourself and be like, “Oh, that’s not in the research, so I can’t do that.” That’ll hold you back.
I remember when I first became teacher physical therapist. So I’d been practicing yoga at that time for over a decade by that point when I finally got certified in yoga and I was a physical therapist. And for me, what helped to heal my body back then, as I had many surgeries, and what helped me to heal was physical therapy, yoga and massage. It was that and the nervous system. It was a combination of those that, because physical therapy only got me so far. Yoga by itself only got me so far. Massage by itself only got me so far. But when I did them all and worked with my nervous system altogether and my mindset, that’s when I healed fully and permanently. So that’s how it became my process to combine those in my clinic with my work.
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At that time, yoga was not in the research. It was not supported by evidence-based research that it could help to heal low back pain, for example, or be used for scoliosis and all these things. It was not done. And people would tell me, other practitioners, “Oh, you’re just going to hurt people with yoga. It’s not supported. It’s too voodoo. It’s too granola,” all this stuff, right? And it held me back from marketing my services. It held me back from truly showing up as a practitioner online, as afraid of being judged, I was afraid of being criticized. And that held my business back. It helped me back as a person because I felt like I was in this yoga closet, right? All by myself trying to do this stuff. Now, guess what? 10 years later, 15 years later, yoga is all over the research. There is so much yoga and the benefits of yoga and how it’s very helpful for people.
So, you know, sometimes the research is just delayed. So you have to take that into an account too. So I truly believe, like if you’re tracking and measuring your clients’ results and you, again, are out there where you’re looking to do no harm, you’re looking to get clients those tangible results, you’re not just going to show up and go through the motions like a lot of salaried practitioners are, I think that you can combine your certifications and your skills and create your own methodology and bring that online and track it.
#4. Identifying Knowledge Gaps and What You Can Do To Transfer Your Skills Online
Now, as you’re going through this process of being like, what can I bring online and what can’t transfer online, let’s say, okay, so for me, I was very hands-on in the in-person world. And when I was moving online, I’m like,
“Okay, how can I bring, this fascia movement, this slide and glide,” because I always saw a big difference with my clients and patients from the start of a session to an end of a session. How can I bring that online?
Yes, I can do that through yoga, but it’s still not the same. So I had to learn some additional skills such as melt rolling, ways to work with the fascia, how to educate, again, cue and communicate with my clients online on how to self-massage. I had to learn how to get really good at communicating and coaching and guiding them through cueing to reduce the nervous system upregulation, the tension in the nervous system. I had to get better as a coach. I got another skill as a new certification and it was very specific. It was nutrition to reduce inflammation. So I had a skillset that I felt comfortable bringing online. And I was marketing and getting people in the door while I was learning that skillset.
So you really want to say, okay, where are the gaps in my knowledge? And what am I confident in bringing online? And how can I just get people and start practicing online?
And that is the framework. Once you get people in, it’s just measuring the results and asking for feedback.
#5. Identifying What Additional Certifications You Need
So here’s the thing I find with a lot of wellness practitioners is that they’ve been doing it a long time. They do have a lot of certifications. They have a small to mid-range or maybe even a large audience at that point. And they’ve been wanting to go online and they think because they have the skills, they’ve been in-person, they’re slightly burnt out from one to one that they’re going to go straight to group without figuring out how to transfer their skills online and without actually doing the work online. So then they try to launch this group or online program.
And because they are not confident in will it work completely, they don’t go all-in with their marketing.
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And then they only get a trickle of students in the door. And then they’re spending a lot of energy in their in-person work and in their online work. And they’re not seeing the revenue that they want. So you really want to take the time if you’re not confident in your skills online to do one to one. And it doesn’t have to be for a long time. It can be a couple of months, three months, six months. And then you’ll get the confidence. So then when you finally do launch a group or a membership or an on-demand course, you are going to be so much more confident.
Or better yet, do a hybrid. Do one to one and start recording modules for that course or group and start giving those videos to your one-to-one people so they can test it out. It’ll be such a great value add. You’ll know what needs to be tweaked. You know what will need to be refined. You’ll know how to get people better results. You’ll get testimonials. It’ll just end up being a better on-demand or group program. And you’ll feel so much more confident doing it.
So even if you are stellar at doing one to one in-person, have all the large audience and ready to go to group, if you don’t feel confident in the skills to deliver online, you might consider doing one to one for a short period to build up that confidence and then go right to group. It can be a short time. Or if you have a small audience and you want to go online, again, I suggest one to one. It’s just the simplest way to bring in revenue. And again, hone your skills, get better, get results, get testimonials, and then just build your audience from there.
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Conclusion
Okay, so we’re going to go over the framework that I just mentioned to help you move from in person to online and get your clients results because that’s the whole reason why they’re paying for you. And that’s why you’re a wellness entrepreneur because you want people to do more wellness, right?
So number one, know the result that they are going to get for the time that they’re working with you. Number two, have a way to track the progress. And remember, if they stall out or fail, nothing’s gone wrong. That’s the whole point of tracking. And then you got to figure out why and then keep going for it. Number three, you got to examine your in person process of what is working in person so you know what to repeat online so you can create that same success.
And in that, number four, examination, looking at your in person protocol, we’ll call it, it’s determining where are the gaps, what won’t transfer online as well, or if you’re based like I was in manual therapy and you have a sense that some of it is transferring but there’s a gap that might need to be filled to help in a certain area, then what certification or skill might you need to supplement when you move online, knowing that you can start working with people while you’re gaining that skill. You don’t have to wait. You can start marketing that program while you’re gaining that skill. So then get the skill if it’s needed.
Number six, get people in the door and just start working with them, getting results, tweaking, refining, and then getting those testimonials.
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So there you have it! The process to move online! And if you want my help, getting these skills, getting the confidence to move online, have me help you specifically like as a practitioner, I help many of my clients figure out their own skills, get confident in their own skills and move it online because I’ve been there 100%, I was that manual-based therapist, I was that yoga teacher who adjusted with my hands and I had to really learn how to cue through my words so I can help you move online, I bring it into the Awaken Program when we work in the 100K Business Coaching Program.
Okay, so I’ll see you on a consult call or next week in the podcast. Bye for now!
Important Links To Visit
https://wellunbound.com/one-to-one-business-coaching/
https://wellunbound.com/ignite-ur-wellness-business-podcast/
