How did vegetables, mountains and jungles lead to online planning success
Who would have thought that vegetables would have led to an online business helping health coaches plan their online content?
I love helping people. Always have. Though maybe not in the traditional way.
My life has not been what you would call a traditional one. I chose travel over pretty much everything in my world and chose a partner who wanted the same!
In my travels and working, I would often end up chatting to people who were struggling with their life choices. They were struggling because they listened to friends and family, who loved them dearly and wanted them to have the safe and secure life they had.
But it didn’t feel right to them, they knew in their hearts that they wanted something different. I would listen, ask them what they wanted to do and then tell them my story.
My story of not fitting the traditional model;
of travelling when I should have been working,
of working in a job that wasn’t my university degree,
of moving again when I should have been settling down.
It often gave them the seed to realise they could live life the way they wanted.
My non-traditional life choices led me to explore ways to live without being reliant on a single location.
These choices less to me creating Your Virtual Fit, becoming a content strategist. Who would have known it was possible?
It was never a deliberate intention it evolved as I took many steps in this new world.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
A friend and vegetables.
Getting into this online world started as a random conversation with a friend. I was looking for something to do at home and she had been thinking about starting a business online, so we got together for a chat in my dining room
We both are into health and wellness. Me a Crossfit lover and her a yoga guru. We had met at work and developed an affinity due to our love of healthy living, eating and working out. We also were both keen to give online business a go.
Our dreams were huge and fun to discuss. It was time to take some action. Together we started a blog called The Vege Stylists We wrote about vegetables!
Our blog started with me doing the research and write up on the vege of the month. I would write two blogs: one on how to grow, harvest, use and store it. The second was about the nutritional value. She would do recipes with the vege of the month front and centre of the dish.
We are not vegetarians so sometimes they would be in a meat dish They were always delicious. We ended up with four blogs each month, about one a week.
The choice of what to write about was easy! Early on we had sat down together, decided on what we wanted to write about. How to grow, harvest and store veges, the nutrient values and then the recipes! So very niched!
We had a list of the veges we loved and wanted to write about. Most of them we both grew in our own gardens or could easily get locally at our Farmers Market. This was especially important for creating the recipes.
It was great fun, we grew an email list on the back of our Vege Stylist Ebook. We made our first-ever online sale! I think it was $4.90! We celebrated each win, our first blog published, our first sale! Bubbles thank you very much!
It was exciting! I also managed our Facebook page, she ran our Instagram account.
Then life happened, she got a full-time job, I started working at the local Crossfit gym. It became more difficult to get the work done. So we said adieu to the Vege Stylists.
But it had turned on a switch in me. This online biz was fun, it had potential to meet my non-traditional approach to life and I wanted to keep going.
Medical Conferences for Adventurous Doctors
Next step my husband and I started a medical conference business.
Great idea! We both have medical backgrounds, had been to numerous conferences that were ok. But in our humble opinion could be much better.
The crux came when we attended a conference at a ski resort in Japan, with another couple, and partners were basically excluded from the event unless they paid almost as much as it cost to attend the conference.
Also in our opinion, there was next to, no support on arrival. On basic logistics like how to get the most out of our visit to the amazing area. There was no information like where to buy lift tickets, how did we get to the slopes and where were the best places to ski. It was frustrating.
As we "complained" to some friends of ours back home, saying we could run conferences so much better and we were thinking about starting our own ... they said that sounds great. So many doctors need continuing medical education and lots of them like to ski so how hard could it be!
Nek minut our friend has contacted a friend of his in Canada who owns a conference venue. He's expecting you to call him!!!
So began our next online journey.
Marketing Conferences Online
We had to attract people to our conferences. We had to start Marketing online!
I had NO IDEA where to start. The Vege Stylists was really just a bit of fun, and it didn't matter hugely if people bought from us or not. This, however, was a different ball game.
Ok, we only had to find 10-20 doctors who wanted to come skiing and get some continuing medical education. It’s what we loved to do!
Easy right? Wrong!
We had no plan.
No idea of who to write to
No idea of what to write to them?
Yes, we were aiming at Doctors, but who did we want to attract? What kind of Doctors? What did we say to convince them to spend their time and dollars with us? We lived on the edge of New Zealand, how did we even find out where these doctors were looking for conferences. Why would they come to us?
Talk about feeling overwhelmed
Where the heck did I even start?
I remembered. what we did with the Vege Stylists. So I created a Facebook page and my husband an Instagram account. We started posting up stuff we were interested in. Still with no plan to follow we wandered through the online wilderness with a hope and a prayer.
Apart from the online content, there were so many other components of running an online business that needed to be learned on the run, but that’s for another blog post!
Now we have these social media accounts, what the heck do we say every day?
I started researching, reading, downloading every content creation template I could find about content ideas for social media. On Facebook, I posted about international Kindness day, Earth day, Donut day, Star Wars day, whatever day was nominated in the social media calendar that had been downloaded.
Our Instagram account had photos of beaches, mountains or where my husband happened to be. Our website had blog posts about random topics.
It was a mishmash of our ideas still with no plan and absolutely no thought about our prospective customers.
It was all so tiring
We were getting really tired. Trying to think of something every day, week, month to share.
Feeling overwhelmed, our blog posts weren't being regularly posted. Two one month, then none for three months. Our social media wasn't consistent. Our email list was non-existent.
We really needed another way to do things instead of swimming around in the dark with my eyes closed trying to figure out what the heck was I going to say online I needed to go back to the beginning.
Why was it so easy as the Vege Stylists but not the medical conference business?
Answer: the Vege Stylists plan was simple! One vege per month, the same format. Easy to follow. We had a plan!
The medical conference business felt very different to the Vege Stylists at the time but actually, it really wasn't! We just had to choose our veges! That is what we would write about!
However, there were a lot more veges to choose from in the medical world and that was our block.
Then a friend sent us Donald Millers. Story Brand book
One weekend we decided to follow the book’s advice. Setting aside a whole afternoon, we sat down together and we worked through the process.
There are so many medical specialties in the world, who were we writing to? When we decided who was the hero of our story (Hint: Always your Customers, Never You!) it became easier to create a content plan that I could use easily, month after month.
We figured out WHO we wanted at our conferences, WHAT they were interested in. Both on the medical side of things and the fun stuff.
We made our conferences about mountain medicine first, then branched out into jungle medicine. It was aimed at Emergency doctors and those with an interest in wilderness and adventure medicine.
We figured out six topics to write about which fitted with both mountain and jungle medicine.
We set dates for blog posts to go out, we created emails around our blog topics and our social media became based around our blogs and we shared relevant articles around our topics. the fun stuff centred around snowsports and jungle trekking!
Online Content Plan Version 1
We ended up with our first online content plan!
A plan that gave us direction. That plan gave me control! We had our own online content strategy! I knew exactly what I was doing every day, week and month (at least with our online content!) It was a great base to start with and had many revisions over time, like a good plan it was adaptable.
OMG game changer, we had a plan and it worked.
No more waking up every morning wondering what to say, our blogs were planned, written and scheduled in advance! we knew what to share in our emails and put on our social media.
We had a focus.
We felt back in control
We even had time to create a really cool lead magnet for our mountain folks!
Doctors paid us to attend. Our conferences were fun, we included family and friends and had a great time. The people who came were our people and we have made some lifelong friends as well. Planning them took 6-12 months in advance and then COVID 19 happened.
All this learning about the online world from starting the Vege Stylists and our medical conference business was incredible! Even before COVID hit hard I had begun thinking about what is the one thing that I truly loved to do in our business? This grew originally out of this idea to start outsourcing the things I didn't enjoy.
I LOVE PLANNING AND ORGANISING
It was then that I realised that my favourite thing to do was to plan and organise our online content!
Why? Because it made my life so much easier. The overwhelm reduced. My anxiety levels dropped. My confidence levels grew.
I used scheduling tools to give me my time back. Time to go to the gym, walk on the beach and come up with new ideas for the conferences.
How good would it have been to have known this at the beginning of my online journey I thought. Surely other people starting online would need this? And yes they did!
Your Virtual Fit was born.
It was the beginning of Your Virtual Fit.
The most common thing I hear people say about their online content is this “I don't know what to say”. Often they are talking about Social Media.
But you soon realise your online content is so much more than just social media. It’s also your email list and your website. They are all part of the big picture of your online presence.
Helping health coaches plan their online content is now making me very happy. As a coach when you understand that having a plan for your online content is like having a program for your fitness clients it makes sense.
You have an overall goal for their program, you set them different workouts and they have certain days where they need to show up to get the results. As their fitness improves you change up the plan to keep getting better results for them.
Like you set up fitness plans for your clients I can help you set up a plan for your online content.
All you need to do to start is to show up!
To start you on your successful online content plan, where you can be confident you will know what to say every day,
you can Book a Call with me here
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
