05. How to Grow Your Business Without Customizing Your Program For Every Client

Love giving your clients personalized plans but feel stuck trading time for money?

In this episode of Science of a Profitable Practice, we talk about why fully custom programs can quietly limit growth for nutritionists, health coaches, and wellness practitioners. What looks high-touch and premium on the surface often leads to time ceilings, inconsistent pricing, and mental overload behind the scenes.

You’ll learn why constant customization makes it harder to scale your practice and what to do instead.

This episode explores how to turn your one-on-one client work into a simple, repeatable framework. Instead of reinventing the plan for every person, you’ll hear how to build a clear path that most clients follow, while still leaving room for smart personalization where it actually matters.

We also cover:

• The hidden costs of fully custom coaching or nutrition plans
• How a staged framework makes your services easier to sell and deliver
• Why structure improves both client results and business consistency
• How to add flexibility without starting from scratch every time

If you’re a health or wellness professional who feels capped by your hours, this episode will help you rethink how your services are structured, so you can protect your time and create more predictable results.

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Transcript

The Hidden Cost Of Custom Plans

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you're a nutritionist or a health coach who creates a brand new plan for every single client and you're starting to realize that your income feels capped by how many hours you work, this episode is for you. Because today we're going to talk about why customizing your services may seem like a great idea at first when you're starting out, but it's actually keeping your business from growing. Stick with me because by the end of this episode, you're going to understand why custom offers don't scale and what to do instead. You build a program, you know it helps people, but you're not chasing the right place. You're chasing bagging and just running. And from a value standpoint, that does make sense. You know, if you think about it, bodies are different, lifestyles are different, and their histories are different. So you customize everything in your offer to fit the client. Now, stay with me for a second. Every intake that you do leads to a brand new plan. Every client gets a unique protocol, and then every recommendation is built from scratch. And on the surface, this looks like really high quality work because why wouldn't you want to customize every single service that you have towards your client? But here's the problem that no one really prepares you for. Customization doesn't just affect your clients, it actually affects your business model much more. So let's start with the most obvious issue: time. So when every client requires a new custom plan, your delivery time is going to increase. So when you have a service that is 100% customized, eventually what's going to happen is you're going to hit a ceiling on your capacity to take on more clients. And then after you've reached your capacity, you're going to start to realize that you don't have many hours left in your day to work on your business. And you either are going to eventually burn out or have to raise your prices even more, which we don't, that's not always a good thing. Now I want to layer in a psychology perspective here. So when your business relies on constant customization, so you have a service, you named it whatever it is, but then you customize it to the person, their meal plans, their workouts, everything is very custom and there's not much left for any kind of structure. Your brain is always going to be in decision mode. So you're making dozens, sometimes hundreds, of these micro decisions every week. And what this means is that when you're making those micro decisions, you're thinking about what to include, what to adjust, what to prioritize, what to change based on how they're progressing in your program. And so it doesn't decision fatigue of what you're feeling when you're making all of these micro decisions, it doesn't just affect clients, but it affects you as well. And when your mental energy is constantly spent building from scratch, there's very little left for strategy, growth, and long-term planning. You're always going to be in this in-the-work mode and never working on the business. Now, I also want to mention that there's also a consistency problem that customization creates. There is a time and place where practitioners need to be customizing their programs. If it's for a specific illness or a condition that they're trying to treat or they're trying to diagnose, or they're trying to create some type of treatment plan, that's when I agree with customizing your program to fit what exactly they need. If your program or what you're offering is very specific. But if it is just a program that anyone really could do if they want to improve their habits or they want to, you know, create consistency in their life, or they want to be, you know, creating meal plans and, you know, they want to, you know, feel better, feel more like themselves, or, you know, so those types of programs, customization can create more of a headache than not. And the whole problem with customization is that the client experience for that program is going to be different. And it becomes very difficult for you to predict the outcome for your program or service. So you create the program. Um, and then let's say if it's a nutrition program, you want to help people build better habits, you want people to eat healthier and to feel good about themselves, to work out. Let's just say those are your outcomes. Um, but if every client experience is different, then when you're trying to sell the program, you're not able to really tell them what the outcome is because it's different for every single client that you created a custom plan for. Now, the other problem is when you create these custom plans for every single client, you don't know what results led to which outcome. So you want to have a predictable path in your program. So it's a structured path where it's not just you create something so customized that the results are different for every client, but that you can easily identify what results match to what outcome. And because nothing is standardized with a custom plan, there's no baseline. So it makes it harder to improve your programs, it makes it harder to, you know, train support staff, create group offers, um, or even transition to memberships and courses because everybody is a little bit different. You have different results. And so when you're creating your sales page, for example, um, everybody has different types of results. So you're not really able to pinpoint what makes your program get the same results repeatedly every single time that is reliable. Now, I also want to mention as well is that the issue I have with customization is it creates this thing called client dependency. So when results depend heavily on personal adjustments or interpretations, for example, clients learn, and this is like often it's very unintentional, but it they learn that progress comes from you and not the system that you create. So it makes it harder for them to feel confident on their own and harder for you to step back because they're relying on you to give them exactly what they need. So they're gonna actually be blaming you and not this, and not this system, which uh and unintentionally is pretty bad. Um now, from a business perspective, that that's super risky. You don't want to be that. You don't want them to be blaming you because you're creating a custom plan for them. And so if it's not working, who who do you think they're gonna turn to? They're gonna be angry at you. And so we don't want that. Um and so here's the uncomfortable truth that I've learned from working with hundreds of health coaches and nutritionists here. Okay. Custom plans feel like they're high touch, but they often come from an expense of they don't they don't really have predictable income and they they're they don't have repeatable delivery. So, yes, you could have a custom plan for each client, but then your pricing changes based on what they need, what their outcome is, what's included. And so your income varies based on the custom plan that you create for them, which gets exhausting after a while because you just want something that's repeatable, that they go through the steps, they get the result, it's repeats every single time, and there's not much flexibility. It's they go through the program, they follow the framework, et cetera. Um, and it's a lot more reliable and less of a headache for you. And so the problem is that many practitioners they stay stuck at the same revenue level for years. And it's not because they're not good at what they do, they are, but it's because their model requires them to reinvent the wheel every single time for every client. So their pricing changes, depending on what they sign up for, uh, their delivery times increase, um, they're always adjusting or tweaking based for every single client. It becomes so complicated, and it doesn't have to be that way. So, what is the alternative to this? So, this is the way I want you to think about it. You're gonna have one core framework for each service that you offer. So, when you move away from custom plans, what you're really doing is you're gonna commit to one core framework. That framework becomes the backbone of your work. So it's a structured process that every client moves through, regardless of their starting point. So instead of rebuilding the plan from scratch every single time, you're gonna guide people through the same stages in the same order with the same expectations. So, from a business standpoint, a core framework means that you're no longer making this like different decisions over and over again. You know what comes first, what comes next, and then what the end goal of that service is. So your energy is gonna shift from creating from creating the program to guiding. So you spend less time reinventing, you spend and more time refining what you already have. Because that is what's going to lead to more of a scalable offer where you can reach more people. I also want to mention this also creates consistency in your delivery as well. So when every client moves through the same framework, you're gonna start to see patterns faster. So, what works, what stalls, what where people need more support and where they don't. And so this allows you to improve your service over time instead of constantly just adjusting on the fly because everyone is different, you're creating custom plans, it creates a lot more confusion. And so you don't wanna be guessing what each client needs from scratch. You're gonna respond with a proven structure. And so here it is. Here's the next question you're going to ask me. Well, where do I begin? How do I create this core framework? And so I'm gonna give you tips on how to get started today. You're gonna start by paying attention to what you already do repeatedly for clients. So almost every nutritionist or health coach already has a framework. They just haven't named it yet or put it into a structured place or um a flow chart, for an example. So I want you to think about your last 10 clients. So even if you know their plans look different on paper, it doesn't matter. Um, the process you walk them through was probably very similar to each other. So write down last 10 clients, what does each plan entail? And then look for patterns. Were there any similarities within the last 10 clients? Did you assess the same things, address the same problems? Did you address the same outcome or get the same outcome for three or four of those clients? You want to start to identify the patterns because the sequence is going to be your framework. And so the simplest way to build this is to zoom out, and I want you to identify three to five stages every client moves through when they're working with you. So I'm not talking about tasks, I'm not talking about tools, but stages. Okay. Three to five stages your client moves through when working with you. So for an example, for someone who's a nutritionist, it could be that they want to stabilize symptoms first, then they want to create a routine, then they build consistency, consistency, and then they maintain progress. So those stages become the core elements of your service. And then once you have those stages, you decide what never changes. So what is that non-negotiable focus in stage one? What is the main goal of stage two? This is kind of where structure comes from. So you're no longer asking, what does this client need today? You're going to ask, where are they in the process? And now here's the thing: you can have a core framework with flexible options, but you're not creating 100% custom plans for every single client that walks through your the door of your business. You're going to have the core framework and then decide based on the core framework if they need a little bit more specialized support or maybe additional calls, and they pay for that in addition to what they're paying for with your core framework. And here's the one thing that you can do right now, today, without redesigning your entire business offer. Okay. You're going to open up a blank page, and I want you to write out the names of the last five clients you worked with. Okay. Write them down. And under each name, you're going to write the first three things you helped them with. So that's easy. And you're going to start to see the same patterns appear. You're going to circle what repeats. That's your starting framework. And so if you know that your offers need that kind of clarity, but you're not really sure how to turn what you do into a clear structured framework. This is exactly what I do inside my offer rebuild. So this isn't really about starting over or scrapping your work entirely. None of that. We're going to take what you already do well and redesign it into a clear, scalable offer that supports your clients and your business. So we're going to look at your delivery bottle. We're going to look at your structure, your decision points, and we're going to look at your offer more closely so that we can take the customizing for every client away and put more of a core framework inside of your offer. So if you want to stop feeling capped by your time and start building an offer that can actually grow with you, you can learn more about the offer rebuild at yeslab.ca. And I'll also link it in the show notes as well. If this conversation sparks something for you, stay with me. This show is about helping you build a profitable practice that doesn't rely on constant hustle or burnout. And we're just getting started this season, and I'm so excited for you to get the strategies to make your practice way more profitable. See you there. Thanks for tuning in to Science of a Profitable Practice. If you're ready for more ways to attract the right clients, head to guestlab.ca for more resources to help you get started.

Season Outlook And Closing Notes

SPEAKER_00 14:58

This podcast is produced, mixed, and edited by Cardinal Studio. For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit www.cardinalstudio.co or email Mike at mike at cardinalstudio.co. You can also find the details in the show notes.