243. Planning For Profit

You can be working full days, booking clients, and staying busy in your nutrition business...but still have no idea if you're actually profitable or just breaking even. 

In this episode, Andrea breaks down the three beliefs quietly making pricing and spending decisions for many, and why "playing to win" instead of "playing not to lose" is the real difference between a nutrition business that generates real income and one that just keeps you busy. 

By the end, you'll have the exact formula to calculate your monthly profit number so you can stop guessing at your prices and start planning for real profit.

NEXT STEPS: 

 👉 Join QuickStart By July 19: https://theprofitablenutritionist.com/start

 👉 After July 19? Book a TPN/QuickStart Info Call: https://theprofitablenutritionist.com/book-call

------------

Hi, I’m Andrea Nordling – Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, business coach, entrepreneur, and host of The Profitable Nutritionist Podcast.

Since age 22, I’ve built 3 highly successful businesses from scratch, including my own online holistic nutrition practice. After deleting all of my social media accounts in early 2021, my business grew faster than ever — and now I teach other health professionals how to do the same.

On this pod, you’ll learn how to:

 ✅ Build a thriving online practice without relying on social media
 ✅ Consistently attract and convert clients
 ✅ Create simple systems that scale without overwhelm

💡 Subscribe or Follow so you never miss a new episode packed with practical strategies that actually work.

© 2021 - 2026 Andrea Nordling

DISCLAIMER: The podcasts available on this website have been produced for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only and do not make any representations as to the future income, sales, or potential profitability or loss of any kind that may be derived as a result of use of the content, including paid programs and all free resources. Listeners should take care to avoid program content which may not be suited to them. The contents of this podcast do not constitute medical or professional advice, No person listening to and/or viewing any podcast from this website should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the c...

Transcript

[00:00:00] My friend, you can be working really hard in your business, showing up every day, doing all the things, and still have no idea if you're actually making money or if you're doing things that move the needle towards you making money. And that is what we are talking about today. Welcome back to the Profitable Nutritionist podcast, by the way.

I am so glad that you're here. Today we're talking about something that I have every single student that comes through working with me, either in the Profitable Nutritionist program or a one-on-one private client or in the TPN Quick Start, regardless of your entry point to working with me, before we ever talk about pricing, before we ever look at your offer and dig into the components of your offer or your client delivery process or your marketing strategy or your sales process, before any of that, we have to do something else.

And it's called planning for profit, my [00:01:00] friend. We have to plan for profit. Most health and wellness business owners have never actually been taught how to think about this and how to strategize for profits in their business. So we are talking about it. We are digging in right now and I want you to have, at the end of this episode, an understanding of how to plan for profit in your business.

And hopefully Changing the way that you feel about planning for profit in your business. Because here's the thing, your business has to actually be profitable. If you are listening to this podcast right now, I'm going to make the assumption that you are not running a nonprofit, you are not trying to not run a nonprofit.

You are in fact growing a profit- for-profit, profitable business, okay? You don't need to just be busy and not make any money. You don't need to have a full schedule and not make any money. You don't need to be doing pretty good, I think, but I have no idea what the numbers are, because I'm scared of looking at the numbers.

No. We wanna be profitable, and you actually need to know what you're looking for to make that happen, okay? A lot of what gets in the [00:02:00] way of health and wellness business owners that aren't operating profitably, by the way, isn't that they have the wrong strategy. It's not that they don't know enough. It isn't that they don't have the right tactics, or they can't help clients, or they don't understand how this works.

It's honestly the psychology behind it. It's the beliefs that we bring into our business with us about money, and charging, and profitability, and planning, and, um, how we spend our time, which we're gonna talk about in a second. A lot of thoughts about debt, time debt, money debt, what we're allowed to do, what we're not allowed to do.

We have thoughts about these things. There's a whole psychology of money and spending and saving and investing, and we bring all of that with us, like a big suitcase full of beliefs into our business, and it can really influence if we're profitable or not. So that's what we're getting into today, all right?

So here's where we're headed. We are gonna talk about this idea that I have here that's a, uh, the big thread that I'm gonna pull on, which is playing to win versus playing not to lose. We'll get into that in a second, but they're [00:03:00] two totally different instincts. Again, if you think about the beliefs that you come into business with as like a suitcase filled up with them, a lot of us don't even know what's in the suitcase and how we're making decisions and which of our packages we pull out of the suitcase.

Which of the outfits we pull out of our suitcase and put on as we are, you know, parading around in our business. W- If that metaphor lands, take it. Otherwise, just disregard. So we're gonna talk about that. We are going to talk about why copying what everyone else is doing in their business and what they're charging and what their offers are is not going to save you here.

I have a lot to say about that. We'll get into it. We're also going to discuss this trap of kind of feeling responsible by cutting expenses in your business and trimming the budget in your business, and why that actually doesn't help a lot of people make more profit. Again, something that's a little bold, a little controversial.

Dave Ramsey would not like what I have to say about this, but we are going to talk about it, okay? And then we're finally going to land the plane here on how to not be [00:04:00] emotionally charged by the numbers in your business, okay? Numbers are neutral data points. They give us information. They shouldn't make us feel shame or panic or too much excitement.

Things are never as good or as bad as they seem. The numbers are neutral. How do you actually neutralize them and use them as data points and get the information from the numbers? What are we actually looking at? We're going to talk about it, all right? By the end of this episode, I want you to walk away with one thing, knowing what you need to bring in in your business on a monthly basis and how to plan for that, okay?

What is the profit number that you need to be making, and how much do you need to bring in in total to get to that profit number? All right, so let's get into it. And before I get any f- further and actually get into it, I guess I'll digress for a second, this is literally the first thing that I do. Like I said, with every client or every student that comes into the Profitable Nutritionist program or inside the TPN Quick Start, this is stage one, okay?

Before we decide on the pricing of your offer, before we even decide what your offer is, we have to know what [00:05:00] numbers we're operating within. What are your goals? What do you want to be b- bringing home to your personal finances on a monthly basis? And then we work backwards, and we strategize your offer around that, okay?

Because if we don't have this in place, nothing else works right. You can have the best offer in the world and still not be profitable In your definition of what profitable is for you, for your lifestyle, for your goals. Okay? So if this is landing for you right now and you know, "Oh my gosh, this is exactly what I need to be doing right now.

I need to actually be profitable and planning for that," and you want my help in doing it, that's exactly where we start together. So in the description of this episode is a link to the TPN Quick Start and the full TPN program, which is a 12-month program. In either of those, you will get my help in doing this.

So follow the links in the description. Right now, if you're listening in real time, the TPN Quick Start is enrolling, starting on our next cohort, which is July 20th. So that would be the next best step. Again, link in the description or go to theprofitablenutritionist.com/start. Okay, so back to it. The [00:06:00] big mistake that a lot of people make when they are figuring out the numbers in their business, what they should charge, what this should even look like, is copying other practitioners, other colleagues, other peers, other people they see online, and this is a problem.

Okay? This is what I call the going rate problem. Why is it a problem? Because crowdsourcing ideas on what to charge, what you should be charging, what is the going rate, I'm doing big, huge air quotes here as I say going rate, which you can't see, but you're just gonna have to trust me, is a... It's a, it's a myth.

It's an urban legend. The going rate is not a real thing, okay? But a lot of people think that it is. They think, "Well, other people have offers. Other people are working with clients. Other people have this figured out, so I'm going to just do what they're doing, and that's a great idea. They must know something I don't know.

They must have it figured out already. I'm just going to copy-paste somebody else's offer strategy and what they're charging and I'm gonna do that." Seems like it's a sane decision, doesn't it? [00:07:00] It really does. And for other industries, it probably is, but not for ours. Okay? If you are selling commodities, if you are selling a product, and you have a productized business where somebody else could go down the street and get the exact same thing from somebody else, then there probably is a going rate.

But for health and wellness services, and that is what you sell to your clients, there isn't a cookie cutter here. There isn't a product associated with this. There isn't a going rate either. Okay? Offers vary widely. The value of the offers vary widely , and so do the delivery of those offers. So there is no going rate.

That's just not even a thing. And even if there was, can I just let you in on a little secret that shouldn't be a secret? It shouldn't be the elephant in the room, but it most definitely is. Most health and wellness businesses are not profitable. Most practitioners are not making the money that they want to be making, and that is a very sad truth, and I am trying to change this.

It is my mission, it's my purpose, and my calling, I feel, to help change this, [00:08:00] but that is the state of affairs right now. So copying another health and wellness business owner is a p- usually a pretty bad idea because they're not making money either, and that's just the reality of the situation. So we're not crowdsourcing your pricing, we're not crowdsourcing your goals, we're not crowdsourcing your offer, and we're not going to just assume that if you did, it would be profitable anyway.

That's just not the case, right? So we have to do this differently. And this is where this, um, concept of playing to win versus playing not to lose is really important, okay? So playing not to lose means looking for safety in other people's decisions, not wanting to make the wrong decision, not wanting to go out on a limb for yourself, not wanting to do it differently.

So there's a desire for outside validation before you trust your own decision-making when you're playing not to lose, okay? Now just think about the psychology of that. It's like, I don't want to waste time. I don't want to waste money. I don't want to waste credibility. I don't want to waste my reputation.

There's some [00:09:00] social status here that is a currency that we're all always operating in with others. Like, I don't want to lose any of that, so I have to make safe decisions that are already proven by somebody else who knows more than I do to do that. Well, that's not the same as playing to win . Okay?

Playing to win, which is what we do as a business owner, means I am making a profit. I am putting my time and effort and energy and expertise and my genius and my brain power and all of my skills into playing to win. Win in this scenario is profit. That is the difference between what you bring in- And the expenses that you have in your business.

The extra, that's the profit, and that's what you actually pay yourself. That is what you actually apply towards taking new certifications and more education in your business. And all of the reasons that you wanna be in business for yourself right now in the first place, for more freedom, for more financial freedom, more time freedom, all of that has a monetary equivalent, which is coming from your profitability.

So we have to [00:10:00] actually be profitable. That means we're playing to win. We're playing to make a profit, not just squeak by a tiny little extra from what it costs to keep the business afloat and keep the softwares going and keep these minimal investments that we've made in the business. We have to make just a little bit more than that so that we can justify bringing this tiny little morsel home.

No. No, you're in business right now to be profitable, okay? So we have to structure the business to support the profit goals. And to do that, we have to know what the heck is the profit goal. So when I say you gotta know your number, I mean, you need to know what you need to be taking home or what is your goal to be taking home from your business to your personal finances, to your personal bank account.

And that means that we have to kinda understand how that works, okay? So you need to get clear, and this is where I really support my clients. Stage one, first thing we do is we gotta get clear on how much money do you need to be setting aside for taxes. Where you live in the state or country that you live in, what [00:11:00] are the percentages of taxes that you're gonna need to allocate?

What are the expenses that you're going to have in your business realistically to over-deliver to your clients and to keep up with delivering amazing services to your clients? What does that actually look like? What does it cost? And a lot of people would have you, which is the second point we're gonna get into, Dave Ramsey would want us to really pare down those expenses in your business.

And that's again, an example of playing not to lose. Do I think that that's a bad idea? No. But do I think that a lot of people spend a lot of time and effort and energy trying to spend as little as possible on their business? Yes, I do Do I think that if they were playing to win, that they would take that time and effort and energy and bandwidth and try to figure out how to make more money and more profit?

Yes, I do. So again, the concept of playing to win versus playing not to lose. And we have these ideas in, you know, these outfits in our suitcase, [00:12:00] our money mindset, money psychology suitcase. We have all of these beliefs packed up in there like little outfits that we put on, and we try them on, and we wear it around for a little bit.

Does it feel good? Is it comfy? For a lot of us, we have the comfies that we go back to over and over and over again, and then we disguise it as strategy in our business, okay? A lot of times it's fear. It's a lot of times not wanting to make the wrong decision. It's not understanding some basic business strategy and not knowing where to get that information, so we default to these passive actions, to the comfortable setting up shop, um, not t- not making big decisions, basically.

Not planning for profit, not playing to win because we don't know what we don't know and it's unfamiliar territory. So that could be an outfit where it could be a situation where we default to the comfy sweatpants and the Vuori sweatsuit over and over and over again instead of dressing up in the profitable business owner blazer.

A little aside as I say this, my my teenage daughter made a proposal to my [00:13:00] husband and I to get Snapchat. This is years ago And to make this proposal, she had an 11-page written proposal with citations on why this is something that we should consider. And to make the proposal, she went into my closet, and she dressed up in a blazer and a very specific outfit.

Just, I don't- I didn't even intend to talk about this, but as I say, we're, we're putting on outfits. Like, what is our profitable business owner serious, serious person outfit? Apparently, I must have one because she put it on to make this presentation with us. It was a hilarious blazer getup. Anyway, think about that, okay?

So think about your suitcase of all of your beliefs and what are the outfits that we put on. So the, a, a big, huge problem that I see for health and wellness business owners, they're trying to put on someone else's outfit. Okay, they're looking around. What's the going rate? What is everybody else charging?

Okay, they must know something I don't know. I'll do that. I'll start there. And there isn't a consideration for is that going to get you to your goals? Are you going to be able to work with the number of [00:14:00] clients that you wanna work with at that rate that somebody else pulled out of thin air because of their money beliefs and what they feel worthy charging and what they feel is acceptable?

And all of their money stories, they, they decided on a number. Do you wanna just adopt that same number, and is it going to meet your goals? Or do we wanna do this a little bit differently and think about how am I playing to win versus playing not to lose, okay? It's not that there isn't wisdom to be gained in a lot of areas from looking at someone else's successes and just doing what successful people do.

Success leaves clues. This is a contradictory statement to the point that I'm making right now. And I just wanna call out that that is true. And also for a lot of people in their pricing and in their profit strategy or lack of, that doesn't suit. So ask yourself, "How did I make these decisions on my pricing, or do I need to do this differently?

And am I actually going to be making a profit at the end of the month? At these numbers, with the number of clients that I wanna serve-" Is there enough left over after I pay the expenses in my business? I'm not cutting costs everywhere [00:15:00] trying to run this on a shoestring budget. I'm actually serving my clients.

I'm actually investing in softwares and coaching and any certifications. Whatever it is that you feel that you need to do and invest in to have the best experience for your clients and your business, are you able to do that at what you're charging with the number of clients that you wanna work with after all those expenses, the taxes, everything else?

Is there enough for you to make your income goals? For a lot of people, that is not the case, which means that we need to look at some profit planning, hence this entire episode, okay? So like I said a little bit earlier, this shows up, um, I feel like for a lot of people in operating their business the way that they look at their personal finances.

So once again, bold, controversial, but true statement, Dave Ramsey wouldn't want you to take on debt for your business, okay? Of course, personal debt, consumer debt, credit card debt, buying all of the things type of debt, I think most people would agree, not a great idea for [00:16:00] building wealth and for financial freedom, not a great idea.

So for that reason, a lot of us, me included, have some beliefs in our money suitcase, there are outfits in there, about not accruing debt and cutting expenses and, uh, the way that we run our personal finances. I'll just leave it at that, okay? Dave Ramsey would like this outfit. He, he would really like those.

And when we bring those same thoughts and those... that same psychology into business, it can really, um, hinder the planning for profit because, especially in the beginning of your business, you're going to be investing time and money in your business. There is no guarantee that you're gonna make it back.

It's going to feel like you are accruing time debt and perhaps monetary debt in the beginning. But what is different here From personal finances and from a Dave Ramsey lens, which is very useful by the way, and if you don't know who Dave Ramsey is, he is... Uh, well, you should. You could go look it up. I won't even go there.

[00:17:00] You, you would look it up. He's, he's a, a money guy that has a lot to say about being debt-free, and I love that conversation. But Dave Ramsey's world is for people that don't have a business. They don't have an opportunity to just go make more money. So on a fixed income, on a salary, on knowing how much money you have to make every month, it is very important to make sure that that is allocated appropriately, but we have this thing called a business where we can turn on the faucet and go make more money.

And people really get, um... They forget that, right? They get into this very fixed mindset on, "I shouldn't spend money on my business. I should only spend time," and they rack up a lot of time debt for months and years where they're not making money. They're not playing to win because they're so afraid to lose any money.

Now, you will know if this is landing for you. If you know, you know. But ultimately, this is again where this theme of are you playing to win or playing not to lose, which isn't a yes or no. It's not really binary. It's, it's more of a [00:18:00] spectrum. It's to what degree am I playing to win versus playing not to lose.

And it is healthy, by the way, I just really do want to normalize this, it is healthy for us to be mindful of expenses in our business and our personal life. Of course. Okay? Of course. But what I see with the clients that I work with, and I know that I have experienced this so much in my 20-plus years of being an entrepreneur, is that when, when revenue slows down, when there's a slow month, when there's a slow period of time, that instinct to trim all the expenses, to cut costs, to cancel things, to migrate softwares, to, "Oh my gosh, I could save a few bucks here.

I could save a few bucks there," that is so strong because it feels like we're doing something to solve the problem. It feels like, okay, I c- I'm in control of these expenses. I can cut the expenses. It feels prudent. It feels responsible. I understand. But that is a playing not to lose situation. And again, this is a spectrum.

Sometimes that is prudent, and sometimes we need to lean into that. But [00:19:00] I would offer that it's probably a better use of time and bandwidth and energy and just grit and honestly, like, attention to think of, "How do I go make more money? How do I play to win? How do I solve the problem?" Because h- if you bring in more profits in your business, that really does solve the problem.

We have this saying around here that sales solve a lot of problems. They really do. But It's not the default outfit that a lot of us put on, especially as entrepreneurs, okay? So if you're coming into this and thinking, and I say this, like coming into the, the concept of owning your business and this identity of being a business owner for the first time, you've never done this before, it may not feel like it is a shared experience that there are ups and downs in business.

Sometimes things will be going great, then there will be a lull. It will go up, it will go down. Are there things that we can do to stabilize that as much as possible? Yes, of course. But it's not realistic to think that business is completely [00:20:00] linear and that it will always only trend up, and that expectation, I, I like, I feel like this is a contribution I can really make to this conversation.

Just hear me when I say this. There will be ups and there will be downs. There really will, and that's just the nature of entrepreneurship. That's the nature of being a business owner, and I don't think that that's talked about as much. So for that reason, I think that people f- experience those down times or where things are declining, or they're getting less interest, or they're getting less discovery calls, or they're closing less discovery calls, less sales, less money coming in for whatever reason, and they panic, and they think, "I'm doing something wrong.

This only is happening to me. Oh my gosh, everybody else has this figured out." And that isn't the case. But when that happens Our default for most people is to try not to lose. Okay? We're playing not to lose, and so we want to take our time and attention and we wanna, you know, purge all the softwares, all the extra things.

Oh my gosh, it's gonna take me a month to migrate my website and my practice better for my client, uh, management system and [00:21:00] everything that I have set up right now, my email service provider, all of those things are costing me money on a monthly basis. Maybe it's a couple hundred bucks a month, and that feels very stressful.

I have coached a lot of clients on this exact example. Oh my gosh, it feels so stressful to be paying out every month when I'm not consistently bringing money in, so they spend hours, days, weeks, months in trimming down those expenses instead of spending those hours, days, weeks, months in figuring out how to make more profit.

How do I play to win? How do I figure out how to make more sales? Again, I just want to explore for all of us, are we playing not to lose or are we playing to win? Okay? This is where this comes up a lot. Dave Ramsey, I love you. You're great. You're wonderful. Your philosophies are sound and also sometimes we could use them against us as business owners.

Okay? So just know that in this profit planning conversation, of course we need to make profit in the business. But if you aren't making a profit day one, nothing has gone [00:22:00] wrong. We can fix it. If there are months where you make less profit or even aren't making a profit at all, we also can fix that.

Nothing has gone wrong. That's pretty normal. And let's not panic. Okay? Let's not panic. So as I cl- you know, close the loop on this one in particular, I want you to really hear me say this is not permission to just spend recklessly. Of course, smart spending in your business really matters. That's how we protect the profit.

That's how you make a profit and keep it and also save in your business. You wanna have a business savings. You wanna have reserves for those months that are a little bit lower or when you're making a change in your business and you want to have some time and some space to operate, gotta have reserves to do that.

So of course we plan for that profit and we allocate some of it into reserves. Okay? But just know that never investing time or money in your business isn't a growth strategy, okay? You gotta invest time and you have to invest money to a certain degree and that's okay. All right? It is okay. We can do it, especially when we [00:23:00] are planning for profit So getting into how we do that and what that actually looks like.

To do it appropriately, we have to know, like I said, what you need to be bringing in, in your gross. This- we call this your gross revenue. This is the total that you need to bring in in your business so that after taxes, after your operating expenses, and after putting some away for reserves in your business, you have enough profit to bring home what you actually need to be bringing home as your goal, okay?

Your income goal for you personally. And to get those numbers fleshed out, for a lot of people that I work with, and I know that this was a huge deal for me, took me years to do it, honestly, we have to look at the numbers as neutral, as neutral data points, okay? They're just numbers. They aren't good. They aren't bad.

They don't mean that you're winning. They don't mean that you're losing. They mean nothing about you personally whatsoever. The numbers are just data points, okay? They're not a reflection [00:24:00] on you personally. They are just data points. This had never been more clear to me, by the way, than the first few times I had meetings with my accountant and my bookkeeper, who just as they were reporting the news to me, were letting me know how much money the business was bringing in, what the expenses were, what the profitability percentage was, and how much I had left at the end of the day.

Like, what was the profit? Here's, here's how much you can invest into this, this, et cetera. Just as if they are telling me the news, it's just these are the numbers. This is what we need to be... Oh, if you wanna make that investment, here's what you need to bring in. Here's what we need to change. Here's where we need to cut some costs.

Very cut and dried, black and white. These are just the numbers telling a story Versus how I would tend to feel about it, which is, "Oh my gosh, we're behind, need to do more." Get... Or, or even sometimes avoiding the numbers altogether, and this is what I tend to coach my clients on the most, is the avoidance of even looking at the numbers.

And so I say [00:25:00] this for you, if you are an established business owner and you are not looking at your numbers on a weekly or monthly basis, at least monthly, but weekly more ideal, if you're avoiding them for any reason, you have to figure out why that is, and be honest with yourself about why it is, and fix it.

You've got to look at the numbers, and to do that, they have to feel like neutral data points in your body. Okay? If there's an emotional charge there that's like shame, it's, um, panic, it's any sort of... Or even, y- um, for some people, they, they feel way too excited about the numbers. Like, it means something really, really good about them, and that's not a bad thing, it just means that when the numbers aren't as good, then they're gonna feel really, really bad about it.

So do you see what I'm saying here? Like, neutral, neutral on the numbers. They're just data points, they're showing us what's working well or what isn't, where a change needs to be made. All right? Um, this is something I coach on a lot, like I said, because avoiding the numbers is a huge problem. Also hyper-fixating on numbers could be a huge problem, so we gotta just [00:26:00] know what is the number that you need to be bringing in on a monthly basis, again, planning for the profit that you're gonna be bringing home to your personal finances, planning for that.

We have a goal, we understand the numbers behind the goal, we get why it all shakes out. There's no surprises. This calms down your subconscious mind so that you know that you're not gonna get surprised at the end of the year with a tax bill. You would be shocked, or maybe not, depending on how you feel about this, but I...

I guess I should say I have been shocked at how many people really stall their business, in launching their business, in getting it off the ground, in getting paying clients, because they are so overwhelmed with the thought of paying taxes and having to figure out how to pay taxes and how much they should be paying in taxes, that they just, they delay, and they drag their feet, and they make one million excuses about not being ready and not getting started.

But at the end of the day, it's really a lot of confusion about the numbers and just the logistics of paying taxes, paying... How we allocate profit in the first place, okay? So we can't do this, we can't make these decisions unless we [00:27:00] understand what that looks like and also feel really neutral about the numbers.

So you get to decide the numbers, my friend, by the way. You get to decide what is your goal, what is your profit goal, and then how much do you need to be bringing in on a monthly basis to make that goal? You get to decide, and it gets to change over time, by the way. How fun is this? You get to just pull out that suitcase and put on a different outfit at any point.

But we have to get dressed for the day and start somewhere, okay? We absolutely have to do that, so we can't avoid the numbers. We have to get clear on what they are, knowing that we could change the outfit, but also know, hey, at this goal per month, charging this to this many clients, X, Y, Z, you put in the variables here.

But when the math maths, you are much more excited to go talk about your business. You are much more excited to put yourself in situations where you can share what you do and why it is so transformative to humans in the world who work with you, and you actually want to work with the clients because you can calm down your brain about all this uncertainty about the numbers, right?[00:28:00] 

So make the numbers neutral. Know what they are. Huge. Huge. If you get nothing else out of this episode, do that. Don't avoid your numbers, and really pay attention to your visceral first reaction to any numbers in your business. Because if it doesn't feel neutral to you, if it feels really emotionally charged, either positive or negative, that is a clue to you on what's going on here and what your beliefs are about the money and about the charging and about the profitability and, um, again, the psychology behind why we make these decisions

And this is again why we just can't copy/paste somebody else's strategy. This is deeply personal for you with your goals, with your money stories, with your exact business type, with the business model that you wanna be running three years from now, and what's sustainable for you. It is so individual. So sometimes people come into the quick start or they come into TPN, and they want me to tell them what to [00:29:00] charge.

They're like, "Just tell me." Like, I can't do it. But I can walk you through how we can decide what the right starting point is for you. But I can't tell you. I mean, I could use my money stories, and I can tell you what I would do in your situation, but it'll do nothing to help you make that decision because you have an entire suitcase of money beliefs and ideas about profitability or lack thereof that you're bringing into your business.

We gotta unpack that suitcase, and we have to decide what stuff can go to Goodwill there and what are the outfits that we want to keep in the suitcase. Again, a callback here to why there is no such thing as the going rate. It's not a thing, not in this type of business. You get to decide. You get to decide how you help your clients.

You get to decide the value you bring for them, and you get to decide what you charge for that. I would highly recommend that all of those decisions are based on profitability in your business, right? We do not want you to be helping all of the people, and at the end of the year wonder why did you actually have no [00:30:00] profit to bring home for you Why did you actually not get to the financial goals that you had set out?

Well, for planning for profit, that's not gonna happen. Again, why this is such a huge conversation and why it is the very first thing that I do with my clients. This type of planning will bring up all of the insecurities that we have. It'll bring up all of the money stories, and then we get to decide, do we wanna keep telling those stories or do we wanna write a new one?

All right? This is why we can work really hard and still not know if we're making money. This is why you can be doing all of the things, trying to, you know, follow the cookie cutter d- strategy that somebody else has, but you don't believe in it. It's not working for you, it's not working for your goals, and you're not actually making money doing it.

Which isn't a character flaw, by the way. It doesn't mean that you are destined for failure. It just means we can use that as another data point and realize, okay, all right, this is what happens when nobody teaches us business. This is what happens when nobody teaches us that although two practitioners could have an ex- completely the same [00:31:00] business, the same offer, the same everything, they will approach it very differently based on their money beliefs.

Because how we come into business, what we believe to be possible for us and for others, is what we will then manifest. And I don't usually w- use the word manifest, that doesn't usually land for me, but that truly is the word here. That is what happens. Like, something grows or doesn't grow based on our beliefs, and I think...

I, I don't know another way to explain that, so if that lands for you, take it, run with it. But also know that if your pattern is to be cutting expenses, cutting expenses, cutting expenses in your business because it feels prudent and it feels like, "Oh, my gosh, things aren't going great, and I c- I can do something about this.

I could stop spending money," what you're doing is you're going to spend a whole lot of time to do that, that isn't in probably the best interest of profitability in your business, because you're not figuring out how to make more money. You're doing what the default is for so many health and wellness business owners, which is, "I gotta just cut the [00:32:00] expenses.

This I have control over. This I could do." And although that isn't wrong, it's just usually not the fastest way to fix the problem. Gotta think about this differently as a business owner who is profitable and who is planning for profit, instead of a consumer on a fixed salary that is trying to Not rack up debt.

I don't know a better way to say that either, but hopefully you see where I'm going there. Okay? Now to do that, you have to know your numbers, you have to run your numbers, and you have to realize that there's no such thing as good or bad numbers. They're just information. Totally neutral, totally neutral, but you get to decide what you think about them, but also you get to decide what your goals are and nobody else can do that for you, nor should they.

So playing to win means you start with making that decision and knowing your numbers. Again, if this is resonating with you today, I want you to know this is exactly where we start inside the TPN program and inside the TPN Quick Start. We are doing an enrollment right now for the Quick Start, which starts on July 20th.

So if you would like my help to do this together, [00:33:00] go to theprofitablenutritionist.com/start. It is what we are going to do on week one, again starting July 20th. And if you are listening to this episode after enrollment is closed for the Quick Start, know that we also do this step one inside the full TPN program, which is also linked up in the description.

All right, my friend, go run your numbers. Do your numbers. If you want my help doing that, I would love to help you in the Quick Start, and I will see you next week