[00:00 – 01:03] Expertise alone doesn’t guarantee business growth.
[01:03 – 03:10] Building a business takes different skills from practicing your craft.
[03:10 – 04:29] Clear positioning makes your value easier to understand.
[04:29 – 06:00] Fix your message and client pathway before posting more.
[06:00 – 07:21] More marketing won’t fix unclear offers or an unsustainable model.
[07:21 – 08:30] Communicate the transformation, not just your qualifications.
[08:30 – 09:47] Connect your expertise to the outcomes clients want.
[09:47 – 12:06] Shift from practitioner to CEO and shape the business you want.
[12:06 – End] Align your brand, offers, and business model with your future vision.
Hi, and a very warm welcome back to the podcast, the Hayley Osborne Show. I am so glad that you are here. I am Hayley. I am your business strategist. I am founder of a few businesses, and I am a mum of three. And I’m someone who is really passionate about helping health brands to build businesses that they are genuinely proud of, that you are genuinely proud of? And today, I want to talk about something that I see all the time working with health professionals, and I think it’s a conversation we need to be having a lot more because I do know that the most brilliant practitioners running businesses are nowhere near as successful as they could be, and I don’t mean they’re unsuccessful.
No, not that at all. But in terms of the difference that they’re making, and I know that you are incredible at what you do, which is why today we’ve called your business isn’t growing, but you’re brilliant at what you do. Okay, you’re qualified, experienced. You care so much about the people that you help, and you you know have invested years and probably decades because you need to keep learning in developing your expertise. But when you look at the business behind that expertise, there’s often a massive disconnect, and it’s something that I’m seeing more and more, which is why I wanted to talk about it in this episode. So I know that you work really hard, but the revenue doesn’t always reflect that, and you know you’re posting on social media, and I think struggling really to turn that attention into actual clients, and it’s a thing.
Okay, I know that you know. Hopefully, most of you have a website, Instagram, you know, Facebook, but maybe a newsletter. Okay, and that’s where the ground starts to get a bit rocky, and then some referrals coming in as well. So that’s always really good. And yet, growth still feels like a bit of a guessing game. So, you know, here’s what I want you to understand: being brilliant at what you do, and being brilliant at building a business around what you do, are two different, complete things altogether. Very different skill sets, and the second one deserves as much attention as the first. Okay, so you’re brilliant at what you do, amazing. Give the same amount of attention at building a business around what you do as you do being brilliant at what you do, and that means that you need to be a jack of all trades.
Unfortunately, okay, so your qualifications don’t automatically build your brand. All right. So, as an example, let’s imagine two practitioners. All right. Both have similar qualifications. Both are excellent at what they do. And this kind of speaks to any business really, because you know there is no unique message. Okay. No. There’s only unique messengers, and so it’s the people that vibe with you specifically. So I could be saying something, and someone else could be saying exactly the same thing, but you like me better than the way they can explain it, and that’s just the way it is. It’s the messenger that somebody vibes with. Okay, so you know you’ve got similar qualifications to someone else, you’re really excellent at what you do.
You really care about your clients getting the results that they came to you for. One has a website that clearly explains who they help, the problem they solve, the transformation they provide, and the transformation that someone can expect from working with them. You know, the socials then reinforce that message because it should you know your website is a suit and tie version of you your socials should be the social version of you that’s how it kind of works that’s how it should work and both services are positioned beautifully so remember we are imagining two people they both have a clear customer journey when someone comes in and discovers them they understand really fast, like why the practitioner might be the right person for them. And you know, the other practitioner is posting a little bit of everything: some educational stuff, some kind of inspirational quotes from wherever, behind the scenes content, a few posts about their services, their website lists their qualifications, who they are, what they do, treatment options. But you have to work pretty hard to understand what makes them different.
Now, which one do you think is going to be easier to choose? The first one, and here’s the kicker: the second practitioner might have more experience, okay, and they might be better at their job, but the first one has built a business that communicates their value. All right, and that changes everything because there’s so many people out there that do what you do, but you’re the one that needs to communicate the value that you bring to people’s lives, and you can do that through your social media. Okay, through the shorts and t-shirt version of you, and I know you’re probably thinking, Hayley, there’s rules and blah blah blah. Yes, there is, but there is still a way if you have the right strategy, because your future clients can’t make decisions based on expertise that they haven’t yet understood.
All right, they need to see it. They need to feel confident in it. They need to feel confident with you, and the only way that they can do that is if you show them a little bit of you, okay, a little bit into your world, whether that be inspiring, entertaining, education, okay, and they need to understand how that value helps them and applies to them, and that’s that’s where the strategy comes in. So you know the problem beneath the marketing problem, all right, is something that I find quite interesting. And when I’m working with business owners, it is often like how often the problem they think they have is different from the problem we eventually uncover.
It comes up so much. Someone will tell me that they need more social media content, and maybe they do. But I think that when we start looking at the business, we realize their positioning is unclear. Okay, everything is in positioning. Everything is in messaging. You know, or their offers are confusing, or they have three different services that essentially solve the same problem, and nobody knows which ones to choose because it’s very confusing. All right, it’s do you see where I’m going? So they could be attracting a lot of attention, but they haven’t created that clear pathway for someone to become a paying client, and that’s what you want.
We are in a commercially driven world where we are in business not for a haircut. Okay, we are here to make money. We haven’t studied decades to just get by. Okay, and suddenly I think that content problem looks very different. Okay, because your message is unclear. Posting more frequently just gets confusing. Okay, and it means that you’re communicating your unclear message more often, which sucks for you because you don’t want that. Okay, I think that if your offer is difficult to understand, and if you find it difficult to talk about, and you’re sending more people to your website, but it doesn’t automatically fix the issue. Okay, so if your business model Retires relies entirely on you, like squeezing in more appointments into an already full calendar, generating more inquiries.
You you might just be making a new problem, okay? And that is the reason why I get so passionate about business strategy because it actually works, we have to understand what we’re building before we can actually decide how to market it. And I see it a lot. And I feel like when you’re so close to something, it’s hard for you to see it anymore. So you have to step away, have a periscope view. You know, usually it takes fresh eyes, and it could just be a real simple thing, but you can’t see it, okay? So, I think it’s important that you remember to actually stop marketing your qualifications because no one gives a shit, okay? They expect that it’s an expectation.
It’s an unspoken expectation that if you say that you are a chiro or a nutritionist, you that you have those qualifications, okay? It is an unspoken expectation. So start communicating the communing, communicating that it’s the end of the day, and I’m getting all tongue tied. But what I wanted to say was start communicating the transformation that you provide, okay? There are ways to do that. So I love health professionals so much, and I work with them for a reason. I work with you for a reason, and I get so many coming into my world. And the one thing that I can say that I see most frequently is that they’re really comfortable talking about what they know.
So comfortable. Okay, the research, the qualifications, the techniques, methods, blah blah blah blah, science, and yes, it’s important. Okay, but your future client is starting from a very different place. Okay, they’re thinking, why am I exhausted? Okay, why does my back keep hurting? Why is my hip sore? Why do I keep ending up in the same cycle? How do I feel better? Like layman terms, they don’t care about the science or the tech or the qualifications. They care about can somebody actually help me? And they’re thinking about their life. We’re all very selfish at heart. Okay, so when we land on somebody’s website or in their world, we are looking at that thinking: How can this person help me with the problem that I have?
Not, oh, they have a marketing degree. No one gives a shit. Okay, they’re thinking about themselves. So your job as a brand is to build that bridge between your clinical expertise. And the result that the person is looking for, okay. Now you have something that people can connect with. Now you have a message. Now we have a reason for the right person to pay attention, okay. And importantly, we have something that can become recognizable over time because that’s the ticker, right? That’s what strong positioning does. So your business needs to be bigger than your expertise. Okay, and here’s another thing that I want you to consider. So when you first started your health business, you are the business.
You often are the one and only. You are the person that is the business. You see clients. You write content. You start, you know, answering inquiries. You manage the bookings, you make the decisions, and in the early days that makes sense. But as your business grows, there comes a point where you have to stop thinking like you are the only practitioner and start thinking like the CEO that leads this business. And you have to start asking different questions, and that’s fine. So, what do I want this business to become? What do I want to be known for? What do I really want to talk about? Who do I really want to work with? Which services are commercially sustainable, and how do people find us?
Okay, what happens when someone finds us and decides to book? What is the pathway? These are business questions. Okay, and I think that some of the most exciting questions you can ask are those questions because suddenly you’re giving yourself permission to crown yourself with something bigger, and that’s really cool. All right, maybe it’s a stronger brand, maybe it’s a signature program, maybe it is workplace services, maybe it’s a group offering. I don’t know. Okay, maybe you want to be the best thing since sliced bread in your particular area. All right, whatever it looks like for you, it starts with being very intentional. Okay, so here’s what I want you to think about.
I want you to imagine that somebody discovers your business for the very first time today. They land on your Instagram profile or your website or wherever, or perhaps somebody recommends you. Perhaps it’s word of mouth, and then within the first 10 seconds, they can understand who you help, what you help them achieve, and why they should trust you. This industry is about trust. So, what are you doing to build that with your audience? And then, I want you to ask yourself another question: Does the business you’ve built today actually support the business that you want to have in three years, okay? Because those two things need to be connected: your brand, your offers, your marketing, everything, your business model.
It all needs to be pulling in the same direction. And if they’re not, it’s worth paying attention to. The beautiful thing is your expertise is already there, so you don’t need to worry about that. You just need to nurture it along the way so that you are still ahead of the game, and you’ve done the hard work at becoming good at what you do. So, all credit to your street cred. Now, I think it’s about building a business, okay, and building a business that allows your expertise to have the impact, the recognition, and the commercial value dollars, not here for a haircut, that it deserves. Because I think you know being excellent and being all of those things with that that cap on okay the cred the credentials that’s just the beginning of the conversation okay but I want to see more brilliant health professionals health and wellness brands to be building brilliant businesses because I know that they’re the pain points that I’ve spoken about above. Okay, so that’s what I want you to think about this week, and that’s it. No more homework, just that, and that is all from me, guys. And I will see you next week for another episode of the Hayley Osborne Show.
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