How to Start a Health and Wellness Business

Welcome back, everybody. This is the second episode of Fix Your Business with me, your host, Robin Waite. Don't forget, by the way, if you're watching this, whether it be live or in the recording, to hit the little thumbs up button to like the video. It just helps other people to find it. And if you really enjoyed this, obviously this is going to be part of an ongoing series which we're going to be doing, so do make sure that you hit the subscribe button as well and switch on the notifications. It just means that if you want ongoing advice about how to fix your business and achieve your goals and the success which you've which you dream about for the future of your business, it will mean that you'll keep on getting those notifications. So I am super excited to introduce my guest today, Fiona. How do we pronounce your surname? I should have asked this before the recording. McDonough?

McDonough, yeah.

McDonough, there we go. So Fiona McDonough, welcome to. Thank you very much, Robin.

Delighted to be here.

Awesome. So just give everybody a very quick 60-second intro about your business.

So I'd be a wellness coach. I'm the owner therapist of my clinic here in Galway in the west of Ireland. I work one-to-one with clients with acupuncture and craniosacral therapy, and I run group workshops with yoga classes, Luxury sound bath meditations and combined workshops of either our and other wellness ideas.

Cool. And talk to us about kind of— you've been going about 2 and a half years now, so where, where have you got the business up to so far?

Well, it's my full-time occupation, so I probably some, some weeks would work 7 days a week, but I don't work 10, 12-hour shifts, so I quite— and I enjoy my work, so that's not too tedious. Where have I got to? I'm pretty self-sufficient, doing nicely, tipping along. There are weeks where I go, oh my good God, and then there are weeks where I go, yes, I've nailed it. So it's a mix.

And turnover-wise, where are you at at the moment?

I'm probably just shy of about €28,000, give or take.

Excellent. And that's euros, isn't it?

Not pounds? Yes, sorry. We don't have the sterling.

Sensible, probably, given everything that's been going on economically recently. But okay, and then in terms of What are your goals for the business? Where would you like to get it to?

I'd love to be up to about £52,000.

Okay, and do you mind me asking sort of why is that number important to you?

Because I like the round figure of a grand a week.

Lovely, excellent. And in terms of like what difference is that going to make to your life, you know, when you achieve that?

I would feel that I had abundance, as in, for that to be stage 1. Yeah, that I would be more than self-sufficient. I wouldn't have any worries about paying for XYZ out of my work.

Cool, okay. And in terms of like achieving that, is there anything which you feel at the moment which is stopping you from achieving it?

Well, the coronavirus has put a wee little bit dampener on it, but yeah, I suppose my challenges would be the more work hours versus family life because I'm also a lone parent. So that kind of balance, it's, you know, it's all fine and well throwing yourself into it, but I think it's really important to obviously have a relationship with family and kids. I'm trying to veer, and I was beginning to do it, is running more these combined workshops, as I mentioned. So it's figuring out different variations of that I could do. Going online as well, offerings that I can make online that basically could earn me money while I'm asleep, figuring that out for myself. I'm not the most tech-savvy person. I'm trying, but there's been a lot of frustration with that. And I suppose just getting a bit more creative, figuring what I can offer with sincerity, do well from the right place, and still make money without feeling that I'm just rushing into it.

Because I guess, you know, there's always 3 outcomes when you're growing a business, as I see it. So, and they're all kind of similar in a way, but they're all based around sort of capacity, and it helps The reason why I'm going to talk about this is because it helps— it will help people to show them around why maybe their current business model isn't going to get them to their goals. So the 3 options basically are, well, could we double our turnover with the same number of clients we've currently got? The second option is, and that could just be as simple as doubling your prices. Now, it's not as simple as that. Probably we'll go into pricing maybe a little bit later on when we dig into which product or offer you might want to focus on. So we've got the more clients for this— sorry, the same number of clients but double the turnover. We've got, could we get the same number of— same amount of turnover but with half the number of clients? So we eke out an extra amount of capacity. So we buy ourselves more time, but we earn the same amount of money. Or the ultimate one, and this is in an ideal world, could we get you to a point whereby we've doubled your income, which is what that goal, you know, the goal that you've laid out, But with half the clients and/or half the time. So it might be you end up, you know, with— you could end up with more clients but actually working half the time, which would be sort of the perfect combination there because that gives you added security. Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah.

So one of the things I wanted to work through, and I'm just going to share my screen a second, was looking at— I just want to kind of walk people through the potential, like potentially why it would be hard to, using your current business model, to get from £27K or £28K up to £52K. Makes sense? So let's say for example, I mean, how many clients do you currently sort of work with and how many hours do you work with them for, would you say?

I average somewhere about 15 to 20 clients a week.

So 15 to 20 clients a week. How long do you spend with each one of them?

Usually give everybody about an hour and 15 minutes, but that's including meet and greet and turnover and out the door.

Okay, so there is some kind of spare capacity in your business at the moment, potentially. However, I'm guessing you're also spending whatever time you've got left on doing things like sales and marketing. You mentioned some products that you were selling and networking and doing stuff like this as well. So you've got a lot of, a lot of things going on in your business still.

Yes, yes, absolutely.

So actually, would it be fair to say that you don't have any more capacity at the moment?

Maybe I could use my time better.

Not necessarily. I mean, your kind of fee-earning work comes from, you know, delivering those sessions at the moment primarily. Okay, so we're in this situation. Imagine where we've got these sort of— these are 10 blocks of capacity that we've got here. And you've effectively got to create, you know, to double your revenue with your current model, you've kind of got to double your capacity somehow. So you'll end up working rather than 15 to 20 clients per week, you're going to end up having to push through, you know, potentially 30 to 40 clients a week. You mentioned as well about having work-life balance and those sorts of things, you know, looking after your child. Is it a boy or a girl you've got? A girl.

Oh, I've got 3, mate.

3? Oh crikey. A mixture?

Yes, yes, yes.

How old are they?

My eldest has turned 16 last week and my twins are 14 at the end of the month.

Okay, so they're kind of self-sufficient, but probably you're like mum taxi, you know?

They need a little prod.

Okay, so, so, okay, it's not the same as kind of, you know, I've got a 6 and a 3-year-old.

Oh no, I've been there, I've been there.

full-on crazy town, especially at a time like this. So what we can't do is— it looks like or sounds like, you know, we can't just go and find double the number of clients and hit that amount of money because we're just going to be— you're going to be exhausted, like working full-time. You're going to have to then fit all of your other business stuff around it and your family. It's just not going to work. So like your current kind of business model is flawed in a way. So what we can start to do is explore what the opportunities are moving forward. And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. You've got to where you are now with what you know. And obviously that's why we're talking and you're on Fix Your Business. So now what we've got to do is kind of look at— oops, come on, load up the next page, please. Is it gonna do it? Ah, it's not doing it. Come on. Just add another page in. There we go. Right. So now we've got to look at what opportunities there are. I shouldn't have done this in thick red because really opportunities should be green. But let's look at opportunities. So you talked about, for example, creating an online— not online, but you've got an online program potentially.

Hmm.

Explain a little bit more about that because you had sort of various recordings, didn't you? Videos, audios that you could potentially sell.

Yes, so I have recorded audio meditations, and I'm part of this other group where I have recorded some yoga videos, but I'm just mindful that you need an awful lot of equipment for doing videos properly. But the audio side of it, yeah, I'm just— I'm working out the technical sides of that. And other workshops I would have done are in relation to wellness but not directly into what I do, but I've run those physically in person, and there's elements of that I could do By video, no problem.

And in terms of the audios, you mentioned you sold some. How much did you sell them for?

I asked for like, it was a 17-minute audio and I asked for €10. That's euros.

€10. Okay. So let's assume that you weren't doing anything else except for selling audios. It's just for argument's sake. So to hit your €52K turnover, you've got to sell 5,200 widgets. Let's just call them widgets, audio recordings. So we've got to sell 5,200 of those. That feels like quite a lot. Doesn't sound beyond the realms of possibility. So if all you did was sell those meditations, you know, you could potentially get to your target turnover. Okay? And the reason why I tend to pick extreme ends of the bandwidth is to show you what the possibilities might be, and then you get to choose where you kind of sit between, like, you know, do we sell 5,200 of these things, or do we just, you know, just stick with kind of making it a bit passive and just sell them as a sideline so that we've got multiple streams of revenue coming in? For argument's sake, imagine if actually people really love these, and I bet— have you had some good— I bet you've had some good feedback from them.

Yes, I have. Yeah.

So imagine if For £10 a month, you could get maybe a new meditation once a month, once a week, once a fortnight, or whatever it might look like. You've got to record it once and that just gets delivered out to multiple clients. But now all of a sudden what you've done is you've created what we call customer lifetime value. So rather than them just buying, you know, one recording at a tenner, €10. Actually, now what we've got is £10 a month coming in. So the customer lifetime value, provided they stick with you over the course of a year, is actually more like— I keep on drawing pound signs, sorry— €120 per year. So now we can knock that on the head, and now we only need 520 clients paying you €10 a month. Sound good?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

There's a couple of other ways that we can potentially look at this as well. I'm gonna try and keep this on one page. So this could be almost like your— I mean, this is just focusing on one specific product, and this kind of model which I'm showing you here, you can apply to any— in fact, I'm gonna start on a different page actually. You can apply this to any of either your products in your business, or any different business model. So anybody watching this can use this model which I'm about to show you. It's called a product architecture model effectively. They can use this to design their products and work out how they're gonna sell them and economically how it's gonna stack up within their business. So if we start with those sort of, I call them core products, which are gonna sit in the middle. And over here, we've got your €10 a month, you know, and this could be, I don't know, one recording, one audio a month. Now, it could be, you also mentioned you do things around a lot of, it's not just about kind of doing meditations, but you've got a whole suite of expertise and skills and things like that. What if actually you had another program that was maybe, I don't know, let's say €38 a month, That you got maybe 4 audios plus maybe like a one-to-one wellness chat with you for 15 minutes. Actually, I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll make this— we're gonna get rid of the one-to-one side of things just for the moment. Let's call this group Q&A, just for example's sake.

Excuse me.

So they get extra, extra value in terms of more meditations. And it doesn't necessarily have to just be, you know, it could be other things which you talk about. It doesn't have to just be a meditation. It could be, here's what you get: a wellness episode, a meditation, nutrition episode, and a yoga episode, or something like that. So they're just getting regular content every month. But then what they also get is a, like, a Zoom call, a bit like this, blockbuster Q&A. So maybe they're struggling with something in their life and Bring it to the group chat. You give them a bit of coaching therapy work online if they're happy to do that. But what you're doing is you're building this community of people now spending €38 a month. Price is irrelevant at this point. It might be, you know, you might just pluck a price out of the air and I'll give that a go. You get loads of people on board and then you're like, actually, I think there's bandwidth here. My conversion rate's high so I can increase the price for new clients, new prospects. What we could then do, so we're gonna have the, let's call this the I don't like basic. Let's call this the— maybe this is the, the welcome pack. Uh, this one could be the, um, what could this one be? This could be— just call it group. And then we've got our platinum product at this top end. Now the platinum product could be— we'll come back to price in a second. It's going to be a monthly fee. Uh, this could be all of group plus they get a monthly 1-to-1 with you. Okay, now I think that should be worth quite a lot, so I'm gonna go be a bit brave here, a bit fearless, and let's go for say €129. That 1-to-1 could be half an hour. What we don't want to do is tie in the, the time, the money which they're spending, to the time for that session. It's got to be— you've got to think about the outcomes and results. that you're gonna be delivering for them, which is, it could just be simply taking their wellness, their wellbeing score from, I don't know, over the course of 12 months from a 4 out of 10 to an 8, 9, or 10 out of 10. That could be as simple as what your value proposition needs to be. But now all of a sudden, if you look at this one here, your customer lifetime value, is now going to be somewhere in the region of €1,500. Okay, now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that if you got just 30 of those throughout the year, you're pretty much on target to hit €52K. Okay, so that's 3 simple products, 3 to, you know, 3 core products. You could have— I normally recommend 3 to 5 core products, but 3 core products here All delivered online, all automated. Tech-wise, don't worry about overproducing video. It's taken me a number of years, and I'm a bit of a geek anyway, to get to a point where I can knock out video quality like I'm using at the moment with decent quality audio streaming live on YouTube. It's taken a long time to get there. So piecemeal, each recording you do, you just make it slightly better. You just gradually over a period of time make it better and better. How's this kind of resonating with you so far?

Yeah, no, it's definitely given me good food for thought. Yeah. Um, it's not sounding like, um, if you'll forgive me, like some of those people that come across, I can give you 6 figures, and I'm like, you're so far away from where I am right now. Whereas this is like, ah, small chunks.

Yeah, no, it's exactly that. I mean, the whole 6-figure thing is people taking a value proposition and, and just spinning it up in a really bad way. It's just, um, For most people, they don't need to have a massive 6-figure income. You know, your goals are really realistic, which is what I like. And it's like when you hit $52K, and you will, you could achieve that within the next 12 months easily. Then, you know, it's like, well, how can we keep on pushing this? The beauty of doing these kind of online programs in this sort of structure means that every time you enroll a new client, I guess unless it's a platinum one, eventually, your capacity is going to get filled up with those one-to-one calls. But what you could do at that point is, like I've done with Fearless Business, we now have— there's 4 coaches in the group, including myself. And each of the other coaches— I do my regular weekly call with clients. I do a lot of the sales marketing side of things. But I have a client who works on mindset. I have a client who does the offer calls with new prospects. So they each have different roles.

Right.

There's no way I could do all of that if I was just on my own. But because I've got a team, basically, I've got bandwidth. I leveraged my programs that had a good solid income to start off with, and then gradually I could pull in extra resources. So over a period of time, you could train up your own coaches to deliver those one-to-one things so you don't have to do them. And then it's Fiona's brand, which kind of sits at the top of this, which kind of is what attracts people into your practice. Um, the, the other thing as well is like when you, um, I wonder whether it's worthwhile just looking at a couple of other aspects. So to complete the product architecture model, there's, um, a couple of other strategic bits which are, um, worth looking at. So one of the biggest mistakes people make when they're selling group programs like this is they, they're too afraid of big numbers. So how could— so this is— answer this as honestly as you're comfortable doing. How comfortable would you be going out and selling a €1,500 program right now?

I'd be scared shitless, but I'd still give it a go.

Yeah, okay, good. Well, one, when you attend the live, you know, with us next week on Friday, you're gonna get quite a big insight about how to articulate that value. The reason why it's bad to— again, excuse me— the reason why it's bad to attach a price to a monthly figure is because what happens is then people attach the results they're getting to that particular month. And imagine, I mean, like now is the worst time to be having monthly packages because people will be canceling them left, right, and center. So, but what if somebody's bought a 12-month wellbeing program from you that is €1,500, but you're open and willing to take a deposit and then give them monthly installment plans.

Mm-hmm.

But they're buying a 12-month product from you. You can see that what they're attaching the value to is very different. They might still be paying monthly, but when they buy it, they're buying a product. They're buying a 12-month product that is going to get them from A to B. So, um, oops, didn't mean to rub that out. So what you've got to look at is how you currently consult, um, with your clients would be quite different to how you're going to consult with them if you adopt this model. So, um, it's going to be probably a bit more of a sales process. And a lot of people are a bit like, ugh. I mean, how do you feel about sales generally?

I wouldn't class myself too salesy, but a training that I had done with another lady who would have— she's in my field but would come from a business background— I like the way that she categorized it, which was, don't see it as sales, see it as sharing. Because if you're sharing with somebody something that can help them to feel better, you're not selling anything. So it's a different way of looking at the same thing, and I like that aspect.

I call it the bleeding neck. You know, imagine if you're— I'm just going to come back a second whilst I talk about this. It's quite interesting. So imagine you're in an A&E department, you're a doctor in charge of an A&E department, and somebody runs into your A&E with a bleeding neck, right? And they kind of look around and they're going, you know, and they're kind of looking you up and down as a doctor. And then they go, oh, actually, I'm not sure this hospital is for me. It's actually irresponsible to let that person walk out of your A&E department with a bleeding neck.

Yeah.

You've got to do everything within your powers to get them in there because you've got all the tools, equipment, expertise to be able to, you know, stitch up their bleeding neck so that they don't die. And it's really interesting when it comes to— because obviously I work solely with sort of coaches, consultants, therapists, freelancers. Sometimes it's very difficult for people to articulate what that bleeding neck looks like for their clients.

Yes.

So what happens is there's a load of people kind of shopping around for well-being and things like that, and there's a load of well-being experts. And what they're doing is they're running into A&E departments for well-being experts, and they're just running in and out, and they've got bleeding necks. They've got all these health problems, not sleeping well, overweight, you know, etc., etc., you know, mental health, everything. Okay. But they're trying to make up their mind themselves rather than actually listening to the experts. And so I would say if it's within the client's best interest, you close them no matter what. If you go through the consultation process, and actually it's not a good fit, if the answer is, you know, no, then fair enough, send them on their way, but send them on their way with a referral like a GP does.

Mm-hmm.

GPs can't fix everything, but they'll say, actually, you need to go and see this neuropsychologist. You know, or you need to go and see this pediatrician, or you need to go and see this foot doctor.

Mm-hmm.

So there's a way to do it. So we have a process. I'm just going to share my screen again. So we have this process here, consultation process. I don't have time to talk through all of that, but that's a process of qualifying those bleeding necks effectively. And it's supported by some kind of an assessment. Or quiz or something like that. So you probably get a lot of people who are like, oh, Fiona, I think I need your help. You know, how much does it cost to have a session with you?

Hmm.

Right? Well, actually, you don't know at this point whether it's a good fit or not. And what the biggest mistake a lot of people make is they'll give them the price per session and the person goes, oh, that's expensive. I might go and find a cheaper one, irrespective of whether it's the best or whatever. And actually, price or the sales part of this consultation process doesn't happen until here. That's where sales happens. So we don't ask questions about price, you know, when somebody's kind of initially coming into our funnel, our sequence into our business. We wait until we've assessed them thoroughly. We get them through the consultation so we can diagnose their issues and work out whether we can actually help them or not. And then if we can help them, we tell them how much it's going to cost. So Fiona, it might be worthwhile writing this statement down because this is super important, especially if you adopt this model.

Okay.

So imagine you've gone through an assessment process. So they filled out a form which kind of, you know, takes them through what they're— like a self-assessment, what their symptoms are, mark them out of 10. They've given you a bit of background information, you're starting to get an idea. You've been through Excuse me, the consultation process where you've actually seen firsthand what the issues are, what their goals are, where they want to get to by the end of, you know, 6, 12 months, whatever it is. And this is a statement I want you to write down. So, Fiona, based on what you put in the assessment and what we've just discussed during the consultation, the program that I would recommend for you is... And that could be the welcome package, the group package, or the platinum package. The mistake a lot of people make is that they will show a potential prospect all 3 and then allow them to opt in. And it's, um, I don't know what it's like in Ireland, but in Britain it's a very British thing for us to migrate towards the cheapest. I would say that's probably a common thread around a lot of different countries. Um, now, do you think if somebody's got really big issues and they would benefit from one-to-one and group meeting monthly and the 4 audios, so i.e., the Platinum package, are they going to get the same benefits if they self-select the Welcome Pack for €10 a month?

No.

No, they're not going to get the same result. So this is where we have to fight aggressively and say, no, no, when you came in here with your bleeding neck and you were like a 2 out of 10 on your well-being and health, Which I can fix all of that, by the way, but you're not going to get the fix through the Welcome or Group package. You need to be a Platinum client. Make sense?

Yeah, yeah. I'm so sorry, I'm writing as you're talking. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And so you might want to think about this with your existing business as well. So when you're selling your therapy sessions, you mentioned they were an hour and a quarter. Where was it? So how much do you charge per session?

€50, which is kind of average here. Could be a little bit more.

Way too cheap. If you're better at sales and marketing than everybody else and you have a ton of like Google reviews and things like that and you are better than your competition, there is no reason why— I mean, imagine this scenario for Fiona, right? So you went out and had a look at the competition, see how much they're charging. Well, Derek's looking at John, John's looking at Samantha, Samantha's looking at Fiona, and Fiona's looking back at Dave. In terms of their pricing. Now, who set the pricing? Dave. Is Dave an expert on pricing?

Not necessarily.

Has Dave studied business management and understands the economics of how to run a therapy business?

Well, also, Dave isn't me, and he doesn't know what I do.

There you go. But, but everybody's looking at one another, like, hoping that somebody's got the right answer for pricing. But 95% of people might all be charging the same amount. They might all be wrong. Okay, so if you can market and sell, or you get in front of people and articulate your value, and you know that you have a really solid product, you know, for example, so I would, again, I'd never sell somebody a £50 session because that, what's happening there is they're thinking they're going to come in for a session and walk away better.

That's also very true.

Yeah, and we know that that's, you can't do that as a therapist. It's not It's not the done thing.

No, it's not a one-fix wonder.

So going back to this model, we assess them, take them through a consultation process. And now what we say to them is, well, actually, you know, based on what I can see in front of me, I think you're going to need probably a dozen sessions. That's going to be about €900. And they'll go, international sign of distress. Don't worry, we're going to see you weekly. But what we're going to do, or how I prefer to work, is when we go through your 12-week program and get you back to, you know, get you to an 8, 9, or a 10 out of 10 in terms of your well-being through those weekly sessions, if you need to, we can just set up a monthly direct debit so that it's more affordable for you. But we're looking at €300 a month. Now, I've just done a tiny— I've given you like a 60-second sales training there. There's a lot more to it obviously than that, but already can you see how you might sort of tweak things?

Yeah, yeah, and it's about having that confidence to say it, isn't it?

Yeah, so the difference here is now what we're selling is, you know, 12 sessions. That's what it's going to take, and it might be you have like somebody comes in with mild symptoms that, you know, they're fairly well So they have a lot of self-direction. They can, they can take on a lot of responsibility for themselves. They may just need pointing in the right direction. So you may end up having like a 4-pack, 4-session pack, an 8-session pack, and a 12-session pack. But 12 sessions is now €900, and that's paid out at €300 a month via direct debit. Now you mentioned it would be nice to get to, so €52,000 a week, so that's €4,000 a month. So if you had, get this, just 12 clients at €300 a month, you're again, you're pretty much there. In fact, it's a little bit more than that, it's 13 and a third clients. But so, you know, again, you've got the right number of clients there, it's just you're not packaging it up. You know, 100% how you could be. So a quick win might be— now, little tip, because I think, Fiona, you're pretty much a go-getter. I think you'll go out and try some of this stuff out. Excellent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

So what I want you to do is— you'll have to go, by all means, go away, design your packages, come back to me, and I'll happily review them. But what I want you to do is the next 10 or 20 prospects that come into your clinic, practice— do you call it clinic or practice?

I'm not going to argue with you. I call it clinic.

So the next 10 to 20 prospects, you are going to pitch them a package. Like I said, a 4-pack, 8-pack, 12-pack, whatever it looks like pack. Now, don't forget as well, Probably 1 in 3, 1 in 4 people, once they've been through one of your 12-week programs, will probably just say, Fiona, this is amazing. Can we just leave my direct debit on? Can I just continue seeing you? So it's not like you're having to constantly go out and sell, deliver, sell, deliver, sell, deliver. You'll get some residual, a residual client base of trusted clients building up till you get to a point where you've got your 13, 14 clients. And You don't need any more. Now you've got a waiting list. It's even better. Or you could choose to take them on, get other therapists in, you know, show them how this works, that sort of thing. Now, word of caution. I said pitch to 10 or 20. I can guarantee the first 8 are gonna say no.

Say no, no.

Because clients are like buses. So you've got to hold your nerve with this. You know, and obviously, You know, we can have a conversation later about, well, next Friday when we go into doing the sales roleplay, this would be a really good example to use. You can guarantee then the last 2 will say yes. So a good conversion rate when you start productizing and selling packages is somewhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3. Okay, so you'll notice I think I've done 10 people here.

Mm-hmm.

So if you're selling more than 1 in 3, if you're converting more than 33 and a third percent, Your prices are probably too cheap. Okay? It's not— that's a rough indication, and that applies to pretty much any business. It might be that you actually get lucky and like, you know, person number 2 says yes. It's gonna— what will validate this is that first one that says yes, and you'll be like, ah, it worked!

Yeah, well, I've had that feeling before with other things. Yeah.

But this is a process of just kind of like just holding your nerve, basically.

developing a slight rhino skin, I find.

Yeah, yeah, it's exactly like that. I liken it to, you know, the scene in Braveheart where Mel Gibson is going, hold! Yeah, it's like that. You just literally got to stand firm until, you know, until you hit that point of validation.

Yeah, and I suppose, and it's having that self-belief, isn't it, that what I'm actually selling you is a complete package of wellness. It's not a flight by night. And I suppose I would use the terms, I've never tried per se to sell a package in that way, but I can see definitely a benefit to it because then like that you don't have to be chasing after people. But I would be saying to people is this is not going to be a one-fix wonder. I would give you 3, 4 sessions, you're definitely going to feel a difference. Yeah, but you know, don't leave it so long the next time you come back. Yeah, and that's always one I would always say, don't come into me at 9 out of 10 because you've tried everything else. If you came at 4, I can bring you back to 0 a lot easier.

Yeah. So one of the things— so I'm going to finish this because the pricing side of things is really important there. So let's focus on— you've used the word, you know, 3 or 4 sessions. Let's focus on a 4-session pack. So currently you would charge €200 for that on a session-by-session basis.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. Now with that 4-session pack, I mean, you could start at €200, but let's say, for example, if you go by my pricing, that's actually going to be €300. So we've just increased your prices by 50%. Would you be comfortable selling a 4-pack of sessions for €300?

I kind of have to think about that one.

Now, they might do the maths and go, oh, €75 a session, that's quite expensive. But that's where you say, it's not just about the time in the room.

Oh God, no, it's not. No, no, no.

What you're also going to get is, if you get stuck with anything, you can message me, email me, text me, whatever. If you— I'll also give you access to my, my group program, my online group program, where you'll get, you know, some recordings for meditations, and you could stack some value. But you've always got to loop them back around to what you're not paying for is sessions. What you're paying for is that outcome.

Yeah.

You're at a 10 at the moment, but I reckon by the end of 4 sessions, by the end, by the end of you doing the 4-pack, The starter kit or whatever you want to call it. By the time you get to the end of this, you'll be a 6, 7, 8 out of 10. And then we can talk about what happens next. Oh, and now they will loop around. Oh, but €75, that's a lot. I've looked at your— Okay, let me just— and you have to go with them on that. You have to stop them. Bleeding neck. Don't let them out the A&E department. No, no, I don't think you understand. This isn't about sessions. You can go to Joe Bloggs down the street and have a, you know, if you want to, You know, have a massage, or you can go and do a yoga class for €10, or you can go and do all of these different things. But how I work is very different. It's a holistic package that will get you from A to B, you know, in 4 weeks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.

What you can then do is if you start selling lots of €300 packs, Next week it's £350. I'm busy. I've got, you know, my capacity's filling up.

Mm.

Okay? Now, again, don't put your prices on your website. Wait till people have gone through your process, and that's where you then pitch in the price. If they— if a lot of people panic around putting their prices up, 'cause they're like, oh, what are my existing clients gonna think? Well, for existing clients, it's a PR exercise. You just say to them, well, look, my prices are gonna be going up on the 1st of June. You know, I'm just giving you fair warning. There are some reasons for that. Obviously, you know, I haven't put my prices up in 2 and a half years. I've found ways to add much more value, blah blah blah. New clients, new prospects haven't been exposed to your prices.

Hmm.

They didn't know. They don't— they haven't done that association. It's only you who knows that last week you were charging €300, whereas this week we're charging €350 because we're starting to get busy. Building a great reputation for ourselves. We're getting the results. It's based on the transformation.

And people often add value to a price per session that is not even necessarily what they deem expensive, but they go, oh, they must be good if they're charging that.

Yeah, absolutely. Which is kind of mad. Also, little, but little, you know, nice-to-haves are, you know, if you get— imagine you get to the end of the 4-pack and the client's not quite there. You know, you've made some progress, but they're not quite over the line yet. You can say to them, well, look, Fiona, I'll tell you what we'll do. We haven't quite hit the goals that we agreed at the start. So what I'm going to do is we're just going to run one more session next week, but it's on me.

Hmm.

Because they've paid for a product and an outcome. Now, how good do you think that's going to look for you? I mean, you don't want to be going out handing sort of free sessions willy-nilly, but if people don't get the results, The other thing as well is like, you know, if somebody's saying, oh gosh, that's expensive, I'm not sure I can do it. So 2 things you can do: split payments. So you say, okay, well, what we can do is we can take, take a deposit now, you know, €150 now and €150 towards the end of the— that gives you time to kind of financially spread it out, although Fiona's then shouldering some of the risk. The other thing you can do, and this is something we were discussing beforehand, but it's useful to bring in now, As we come towards the end of this episode, you obviously, as a therapist, you can't offer guarantees. So you can't guarantee that you're going to get better, but what you can say to people is, well, listen, I know you're worried about investing this much in yourself. It's a lot of money and I totally get it. However, Fiona, what we'll do is if we get through this program— so I do take payment in advance, but if we get through this program and you genuinely feel that you have had value out of what I'm offering, I'll just hit the refund key. Because it's much better for my reputation that I'm doing things like that, you know, acting ethically, morally, and being focused on results. And if you really feel like, you know, I'll just refund it. It's no skin off my nose.

Hmm.

I've, I've been offering refunds on all of my products for 16 years since I've been in business. I've probably worked with Well over 1,000 clients across the 2 businesses I've run. I've had 2 people ask for a refund. Not bad, eh? 0.2% fail rate, 99.8% success rate. I think that's okay.

Yes.

Because most people, you know, if you know what you can deliver, most people get through your 4-pack, 8-pack, 12-pack, get a great result, feel so much better about themselves, and they go, Fiona, it was expensive, but My God, you're good.

Yeah, and usually they do. Sometimes people come in with 1 to 20 things, and maybe the top 5, they go, nah, it's not changing. And I've done it with clients, and I've gone through everything they told me, and like the last 10 have completely disappeared. And I go, yeah, because you're just focusing in, but that's lessened. It's not affecting your life in the same way, but you've completely missed that there's been a huge shift. But yeah, absolutely. And I'm conscious of time for you as well, so I'll stop wittering.

Right, well, listen, Fiona, hopefully that's been helpful for you.

Yes, definitely. Food for thought.

Got some ideas to pull out of that. So it's been a real pleasure. Thank you very much for being a guinea pig on the Fix Your Business series.

Thank you. You did make me cry.

There we go. So even better. Even better. And I hope it's been fun as well. I mean, that's part of this. It's supposed to be a bit of infotainment for everybody so they can get some sound, solid, hopefully business advice, creative ideas for how they might restructure their products. I know that we didn't talk so much about kind of the group online program and marketing, but maybe that's something we can do offline. So thank you, Fiona. I really appreciate your time.

I appreciate yours.

Thank you. Great. So if you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to hit the thumbs up button and give us a little like, and also hit the red subscribe button if you want to see more future Fix Your Business episodes in the playlist. Also, if you want to know more about Fearless Business and what we're getting up to, And whether we might be able to help your business out, please head on over to fearless.biz. We've got a load of free resources on there. If you want a free copy of Take Your Shot, you can apply for one of those on that website as well. So that's fearless.biz. But that's it for now. Take care, everybody, and we will catch up with you soon.

Thank you.

One second, Fiona. I'm gonna come back to you.