How To Bring Your Offline Business Online

Yoga teachers, chiropractors, reiki teachers, osteopaths, personal trainers, and anyone else who runs a business that’s typically hands-on, something you physically have to be IN PERSON to do – this is for you!

You’re craving the online business lifestyle, yeah? But you feel totally stuck because your thing has to be done in person, yeah?

But does it? Really?

I want to open you up to an idea that might just change your life.

What if your thing could be whatever the hell you wanted it to be, and you could do it in whatever hell the way you wanted to?

Uh-huh.

 

Here’s what I think: I think you can bring just about any damn business you want online. I think you can come up with really awesome and unique ways to serve your clients without ever having to meet them in person.

 

And I think the best way to illustrate this will be to give you some really concrete examples. I love helping people come up with out-of-the-cage ways to make money in their businesses, and I think anyone can be creative with how they work with clients.

Here are some examples off the top of my head for how a few different businesses could bring in income online.

1. Yoga teacher

Record yoga classes and upload them weekly. Have people pay a subscription fee to access the classes.

Put together individual classes tailored to your current one-on-one clients. Send them their individualized class each week.

Put together a how-to guide for basic yoga poses, with videos and instructions on how to work through the basic poses and get the most out of your practice. Sell it as a digital product.

Teach other yoga teachers how to bring more connection/fun/whatever your thing is into their yoga teachings. Run individual sessions or group sessions.

 

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2. Chiropractor

Choose a niche (Chiro for yoga teachers maybe? Brilliant!) and teach them how to incorporate really easy DIY chiro techniques into their practice/classes.

Write a book about why your spine health dictates your whole health, and focus on easy ways for people to improve spine health at home.

‘Fill a need that wasn’t met in chiropractic college (Empathy skills? Business building? Go with where your expertise lies) and run a group class for chiropractors teaching them that.

3. Personal Trainer

Take your clients over the phone and put together personalized programs for them, with instructional videos on how to perform certain exercises.

Choose a really specific niche (moms who wan to lose the baby weight/single post-college guys who want to get in the best shape of their lives), and lead a month-long group program with a plan of action and daily challenges/prompts to help get them there.

Create mini workout programs available via digital download that solve really specific problems (losing the baby fat/sculpting Beyonce-esque legs/working your way to your first half-marathon).

Love long distance biking? Climbing? Triathlon? Make that your expertise and hone in on creating programs tailored to helping these people. When you’re the EXPERT in your field, people will pay you big bucks just to get you on the phone.

And obviously, these are just a few of SO many options. Just because you’re running a hands-on business, doesn’t mean you have to do it in the traditional hands-on way. Pick a target market, narrow in, combine what you do with expertise from the rest of your life, and start creating something. You can do this right away too. You don’t have to wait to have a perfect website or a huge mailing list. Create something small now and start telling your clients about it. Word of mouth is the best marketing anyway, right?

 

Your business doesn’t have to go down the way everyone else does it, and this is so important to remember. I have heard of people getting push back within their communities for branching out in new and innovative ways, and I think that’s total bullshit.

 

Often, that pushback is because the rest of the community doesn’t understand what you are trying to do / they are stuck in the system and are too afraid to take matters into their own hands, so they’re jealous of your courage.

You don’t have to be ostracized by your community, and if you are, you might want to question how much of a “community” they really were in the first place.

Get excited about your new path for your business and talk about it in a way that feels inclusive and supportive of your colleagues’ choices, and you never know, you may just end up inspiring them to follow suit, and they will see you as their leader, rather than as that freak that decided to go rogue.

 

What do you think? Have you had a hands-on business and tried to bring it online? Or are you someone who is dying to break out of the system of your profession and do things YOUR way? Tell us in the comments below!
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5 Comments

  1. mirisplace on August 21, 2013 at 10:48 am

    just wanted to illustrate with a link to a service I’d love to try out  – physiotherapy (long distance) online. As a patient I think this idea is awesome.  

    http://www.physios-online.com/www/home/
    Miri



  2. ErinOK on August 21, 2013 at 3:58 pm

    thanks, these are some really practical tips. I’ve got a part-time offline business that I’ve been wanting to build up online (& offline), but always unsure of where to focus. just deciding on a specific niche and offering a really targeted product makes alot of sense!



  3. FitArmadillo on August 21, 2013 at 4:32 pm

    Did you write this for me?! I dream of making my fitness business uncaged one day, but often worry about looking non legitimate.  For some reason reading this was very empowering and just clicked.  The only big thing I need to think about now: how to make videos look OK.  I made a video intro when I started my blog and didn’t love it because of the sound quality but I posted it anyway so people could see the real me. I worry about the quality of videos for fitness.  Any easy tips? As I write I think of maybe doing voice overs.  Either way, thanks for sharing! Can’t wait to put my ideas into action!



  4. Rebecca Tracey on August 22, 2013 at 10:08 am

    FitArmadillo YES I wrote it for you! 😉

    Do what you can with videos now, and when you start making money, hire help/invest in better equipment!



  5. Rebecca Tracey on August 22, 2013 at 10:08 am

    ErinOK Nice one, go for it, and don’t be afraid to get creative!