Are you a health coach who is struggling with creating social media content that actually gives you tangible results in your business? What if I told you that when you show up authentically, consistently, and with valuable content for your audience, you already have a proven recipe that increases engagement and program enrollment? You just have to learn how to implement this recipe into your content strategy. Today’s guest can help you do that!
In today’s episode, I talk to Christie Miller, best-selling author, motivational speaker, and The Health Coaches’ Coach. She helps health and wellness coaches get more online clients so they can have a bigger impact, make more money, and truly enjoy entrepreneurial freedom. During our conversation, we talk all about the content including how to create it, how to stay consistent, different ways to repurpose it (with examples), and how to show up authentically so that your audience wants to engage with you and enroll in your offers.
Download the Content Roadmap, created by the amazing Christie here.
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Join Christie’s Facebook Group here.
Rachel: Hey guys, I am beyond excited. I just sat here and talked to Christie for 20 minutes talking about how excited we are for this episode. We are talking about content and engagement that leads to enrollment. And for any coach, if you don’t know Christie, and you guys know if you’ve listened before, I do not go her bios, but I’m going to put on my glasses if you’re watching this, and I’m actually going to read this bio because you’re going to be blown away by this woman.
Christie Miller is a best-selling author, motivational speaker and health coaches coach, she helps health and wellness coaches get more online clients, which I know you guys want, make a bigger impact, and have that money that you truly deserve. So you have that entrepreneurial freedom.
Now, this is where it gets really good. Christie is unlike any other business coach you have ever met, because she had had successful careers as a financial analyst, corporate attorney, interior designer, and if you ever see her reels, you will see that our house looks perfect, and LA County Sheriff. So we really have crossed over a bunch of different professions.
But then she decided that she was going to focus on her true passion, which is coaching and helping coaches like you get that engagement, make money and do what you love doing. So now I’m going to take a deep breath and introduce my guest. Christie, thank you so much for being here.
Rachel: I love it. Because every time and I’ve seen Christie show up on social media where you say, Man, this girl is everywhere. When I started consistently watching her, I said this woman has to be on the Healthy Hustle Podcast, because you show up constantly, showing coaches how simple it can be giving great ideas, talking about content, a lot of engagement, a lot of making money and all the things we want to hear about. So talk to me about for the coaches in there saying Christie, there’s no way. I know you’re talking about consistent content. But let’s talk about how to do it in a way that we don’t go into adrenal burnout.
How To Create Consistent Content In A Way That Doesn’t Result In Adrenal Burnout
Christie: So I have to give a little bit of background with this because, for two straight years, I had an amazing woman, Sophia Parra, creating all my social media content for me. She would say, this is the Reel that I need you to do, you’re going to do X, Y, and Z. So I, of course, would have to film the Reel, or I need this photo of you, or here’s the carousel I created. And here’s the caption.
I had that for two years. And it was so glorious. One day just a couple months ago, she said, I’m cutting out that part of my business. I was like, nooo, what? I have to create all my own social media content? So I’m telling your listeners and your viewers this because I want you to know, I get it.
As of I think the middle of October, I forget the exact date, I took back over all my social media content. And I was freaked out at first. And now I’m really having fun with it. So whatever you’re feeling, I get you, I hear you. I’m here to help. The thing to remember is engagement leads to enrollment. So when you serve hard with your free content, all over social media, and in your Facebook group, if you have a Facebook group, it makes selling so much easier. I never really feel like I’m selling when I’m launching my courses, ever.
I think that’s the place that every coach wants to get to. Because ultimately, we’re showing up and especially at the beginning or any growth time, we’re showing up a lot. We’re really trying to build that engagement and for people to get to know us because we know people buy people and then they buy the products. But we all want to get to that place where we don’t feel like selling.
Rachel: So I love the backstory of that. I went the opposite way. I did my social media forever. Then I said, Okay, I’m in a little burnout, which had been talking about a lot went through just this last year of burnout and said, You know what? I need a little support. So I’m actually in the opposite place. But I know what that means to be showing up constantly and still showing up in all the ways that we have to.
So let’s talk about content to make this easy or for the coach and for them to be able to get those in enrollment. Break it down on what you think would be the best place to start.
The Best Place To Start With Your Content: ACV
Christie: Okay, so the best place to start is to adopt this philosophy, ACV. This is not that icky apple cider vinegar. I think, Rachel, you probably drink that stuff. I cannot. But I think you do probably when you’re in your sauna. But ACV stands for you must show up Authentically, Consistently, and with Valuable content. It has to be in your own voice.
That’s where we’re going back to the authentic. I see way too many health coaches buy those packages of 1000 graphics and 1000 captions. And then they just keep slapping them up on their social media. Number one, they look like 6,322,000 other coaches that are posting the exact same thing. But it’s also not their voice. It’s not them coming through. And like you just said, Rachel, people by from people. So you got to show up authentically.
You have to show up consistently. And with consistency is consistent. I always get asked, How many times do I need to post? How many reels? How many stories? How many carousels? How many, whatever X, Y, Z is going to come out new. I give the advice that most people don’t accept. I say set the bar low. If you’re not posting regularly now, how about if you agree to post twice a week? When that feels easy, let’s go to three. When that feels easy, let’s go to four.
Same with your email list. How many times are you emailing your list? Each month when you’re not in a promo period? Once you’re at once a week, you’re getting engagement, then maybe you go to twice a week. You get to decide what you want to do with yours. But build up the consistency the same way that you as a health coach would build up your stamina for running.
I signed up for a marathon in May. Crazy little idea of mine that popped into my head, and I haven’t been running. So I’m certainly not going to go say tomorrow, I’m going to go run 10 miles. I’m going to get injured, possibly even die. Or if I don’t die, I’m then going to be on the couch for three weeks.
It’s the same with your social media. Build up the consistency by setting the bar low. And when you cross over that, you’re good.
Rachel: So we got A for Authentic C for Consistency, and V is Valuable. James Wedmore, one of my mentors, says your free content should be better than your competitors paid content. I so believe that.
Creating Or Repurposing Content That Increases Engagement
I mean, you and I were even talking about the freebie that you have just right on your Instagram, which is all about Facebook groups and engagement. Love that right off the button. When somebody goes to follow you, they’re going to get this amazing freebie. What I love about that freebie, is even if you don’t have a Facebook group, it’s still talking about engagement. And that’s what we want at the end of the day.
Christie: Yeah, absolutely. Can I just talk a little bit about repurposing since we’re talking about content? So that freebie, it’s my 10 best strategies for Mind-Blowing engagement in your Facebook group. These are all the strategies I use as a health coach. There are examples of what I did as a health coach. I use those same strategies today.
For the repurposing, I took each one of those 10 strategies, and I did a Facebook Live talking about it and then inviting people to come and download the freebie. Because that freebie is about two years old and still really valuable, I could now repurpose that, again, into a carousel, into a Reel, into stories.
I think one of the things that we always believe is that I’m going to create this one piece of content. So let’s say you spend an hour creating a carousel. It does get faster after you create your own templates. And you’re good to go. But you create an hour and then you’re like, Oh, I spent an hour and there were three likes or one comment or only my best friend. Notice that you’re going to reuse that content in many, many, many different ways. You get to the point where you will repurpose like a boss.
How To Expand & Repurpose Content From One Carousel
Rachel: So tell me, let’s take that example of a carousel because I know when you’re first coaching, or when you’re trying to keep up with everything as you are leveraging, trying to keep up with your social media, keep up with your email nurturing, keep up with your paid offers. Tell me from that one carousel. How can you really expand out to repurpose that in a few different ways?
Christie: Let’s take Facebook group magic. For example. There are 10 different strategies. One of them is to have an activity calendar in your Facebook group. So I could do a carousel that lists out the 10 strategies, then I could do a Facebook Live about this activity calendar, and really go deeper into how to use it or deeper into how to pick activities or deeper into how would I give prizes, how to really set it up? There’s some of that in the free PDF. None of that would obviously be in the carousel, because we only have so much space. Did that answer your question?
Rachel: Yeah. I think even with a Reel you can actually show that activity calendar. And you’re holding up the free Bay?
Making Content Fun & Organized
Christie: Totally. It’s all about having fun, let your personality shine. When you start creating your own content, your default may be, Oh, my God, this is such a drag. I don’t know what the right thing is. Oh, well, I’m nobody likes me. But if you can just shift that. That was the attitude I had when I had to take over my own content creation again.
That was my first thought because I’m already running courses. I have 158 students in my course, at the same time that I now have to create my own content. Ah, but then it took me about two weeks. I’m like, okay, Christie, how are you going to make this easier? I was like, oh, attitude adjustment? Yeah, let’s make this fun.
So my whole goal is fun. And how can I get this super organized? Right before we got on this podcast I was with my assistant, my client engineer. We were working out this whole content mapping system in Asana.
Rachel: So for that person who may be showing up consistently already, what do you think in today’s market, where things change constantly. People always say, should I be on Instagram on Facebook? Which one? I guess we have Tik Tok. I think to make it really easy between these two big ones. What do you say to that person that doesn’t know where to where to plant their energy first?
Which Platform To Plant Your Energy Into First
Christie: Okay, there are two different ways you could go about it, you could first ask yourself, which platform I’m more comfortable with. So for me, I started out on Facebook, and Instagram was this thing way over there where people are getting pictures. So this is back in 2014. In fact, if I scroll to my Instagram page, to the very bottom, I think I have a picture of my dog. Then nothing for I don’t know, three months, four months, and then you can see I started getting into it, but I was horrible.
I love that all my old stuff is still up there because you can see the transition. So to me, Instagram was just this thing that I wasn’t even doing. Then I started doing it. I didn’t really embrace it until I hired the social media team to do it for me, because I didn’t really understand or know Instagram. So I would say start with the one that feels the easiest to you. Then you can expand.
The other approach is to ask yourself, Where is your ideal client? Now, for me, I’ve always found that my ideal clients are equally spread between Instagram and Facebook. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true for all health coaches. But it was for me as a health coach. Once I got to where I was actually doing Instagram, I was getting clients from both or so from Facebook, because Facebook has groups and that’s the bigger benefit of Facebook is being able to support your clients in a tight knit community when you’re running a course or if you have a small group coaching program.
Because I think that tight-knit community is such an important factor when you’re when you don’t want to be selling all the time. I know that I built on Facebook, I did challenges, I did giveaways, I did summits. Anything that somebody could get involved with to be able to grow that visibility. If it wasn’t Facebook, where I did all those different giveaways and fun things and challenges, I wouldn’t have had the list because I built it to 7000 organically when I was a coach.
Community is one of my top values. That’s the piece that Instagram is lacking. They don’t have Instagram groups. So for me, if I could only be in one place right now, it would be Facebook. But I gotta say I’m really having fun doing Reels. I know Facebook has Reels but they’re as easy to use over there. But I would miss Instagram but if I could only pick one for me it would be Facebook because of the community.
How To Make DIY Templates Your Own
Rachel: You and I were talking before about getting to know each other a little better before we started filming. We were talking about done for you content, how there’s a lot of coaches who will get it and they won’t make it their own. Can you kind of speak to that? Because I know that there are a lot of coaches who may be doing what I call templates, but really struggling to figure out how to make it their own and bring that authentic factor so they can be consistent.
Christie: It’s so hard to say but yeah. Coaches, you got to do the work. Yes, you can buy a course, you can buy a program. In fact, like you, Rachel, I sell all of my original health coaching courses. But they’re not done for you.
It’s funny, it’s called the take it and make it your own content ball. Because I do believe that done for you is bad for you. If you are going to buy courses and programs that you’ve been given the authority to essentially copy and make them your own, don’t.
Don’t use them exactly the way they are. Because number one, you’re not going to feel as connected to it. You’re going to feel a little bit like a fraud like I’m teaching this, but I don’t really know how to teach it. If you take that content, and you break it apart, and you study it, and you throw out the stuff that doesn’t resonate, as my coach says, eat the fish, spit out the bones. Then you fill in some holes with your own expertise, your own knowledge, let that bubble up, let your confidence flow up. It’s going to end up being a better course or a better program or a better challenge or whatever because it has you in it.
Rachel: That’s an interesting part. Because I know that I have somewhat I call really great well, a lot of really great coaches who have been coaching for years. I understand when it’s a new coach, we’re scared. But that mindset shift, just like you were talking about with the social media. There are some coaches who say, I don’t change much, but I make it my own.
Creating Content That Reflects Your Authentic Self
I think that whenever we are doing anything in this business, it can be overwhelming to say, oh, this person, to this one Reel, I love this. I’m going to make a Reel just like that. But it may not, as you were saying, feel so authentic. You have to stay in that lane that says, This is what I believe in. This is how I’m going to show up. It doesn’t mean that you have to do a Reel, it means that you’ve got to show up in a way that feels the best for you.
Christie: I’m so glad you said that because there were a couple of times where Sophia, my social media team, made me dance. Okay, you can dance, you have rhythm. I have 12 left feet. I look like I’m having an epileptic seizure. If I try to dance, I can’t carry rhythm in a bucket. So you will not see me out there dancing. I will watch people’s reels where they’re dancing. I’m so jelly. I’m like, that’s not a skill I have. My most scared piece of getting married was not will the marriage last? It was like, Oh my God, that first dance.
So when I look at, I would say mainly on Tik Tok. There is a lot of dancing though. But when I look at people doing that, what I call organized dancing, I have rhythm. But if you want me to do one of those push-up and kick my legs back and tap my shoulders. All that is if I’m working out and dancing, it’s not going to happen. All the hand signals were going back even the ones where you have to tap. Yeah, doing the tapping the fist and all that.
But that’s why I think from real behind-the-scenes of truth talking this last year, I had to really rethink how I was going to show up because what was trending wasn’t necessarily what I was good at.
Seven Different Ways To Show Up & Give Value
Rachel: I love that you really bring up a lot of different ways to be smart with your content to simplify your content. You had a reel there that broke it down in such an easy way of like, Don’t overthink. Can you just break down seven different ways to show up and give value?
Christie: So that was a Reel that we just did at this time of podcast recording. I did a Reel and a carousel. I think they might have posted on the same day. I was in promo mode and sales mode for our TMI product so I was posting twice a day but one of the Reels, it was just me standing here and it’s one of those lip dub ones that I think are stupid, but people like them. So whatever.
It’s just me lip diving to Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and I have a different baseball hat changing. Below it I’m saying, Monday, Facebook Live or blog, Tuesday, Reel, Wednesday, carousel, Thursday, Reel. So I was just doing it like that. Then I gave a complete breakdown in the caption. I think it was on that one where I said, Okay, let’s say you want to give seven tips, or seven mistakes that people make in meal planning and how to avoid them. I wrote out in the caption exactly how you could do that.
That is so valuable. I’ve had so many people DM me and say, oh my gosh, now I get it because there was an example. That part might have been in a carousel, but it was the same day. Anyone that’s going to my Instagram, you’ll find it and see.
Rachel: That’s what’s powerful about when you give value. When you give examples of here, you want to take this sugar detox and talk about 110 ways to banish sugar cravings, they do a sugar craving rest of a recipe that would be okay. If you want to get off sugar, and then really break deconstructing it and breaking it down and saying, How can I give value on each day that’s leading to this freebie? We’re leading to the pre promo of what I call the story promo before you’re even doing promo of setting that stage. When you get valuable examples like that, it just clicks.
Be Authentic By Telling Your Story
Christie: It does. As you were saying that I was also thinking, going back to being truly authentic, with the sugar cravings, tell your story. When I was a health coach, I always used to talk about how I thought sugar was one of the four food groups, we add sugar at every single meal. In order to break that, I had to go back to thinking of sugar as a fun food, not a daily staple.
Because my diet before I decided to get healthy was Diet Coke all day long. Peanut m&ms all day long. It was not unusual for me to go through a pound of peanut m&ms in two days. So I was that person, I was that unhealthy person. What happens as coaches is we think we have to be all buttoned up and perfect. No, nobody’s gonna hire a perfect coach because they’re gonna think you judge them. So talk about your struggles.
Why Our Low Stories Are More Relatable
Rachel: I love that. Because I think so many coaches go on to social media. And even I find myself having to say, don’t think that everyone’s social media life is perfect. Everyone’s got their own struggles. Because I know when I was working with gut health and emotional eating, I would always talk about these Cape Cod potato chips that I was completely addicted to.
Because my father used eat them. I would talk about this estranged relationship that I have with him. Now the moment I got stressed. Here, I was saying shoving my mouth with Cape Cod potato chips. But I talked about that. And from that the engagement and the enrollment was unbelievable. Because like, oh, wow, I thought just because you’re a coach, you don’t have those issues. I’m like, Hey, I’m real. I get my period also. Let’s just talk about that. Maybe a little too much information. But I found that people wanted those relatable posts and they wanted to know, Oh, damn. So what do you do when you’re feeling like you want to eat the whole kitchen and the sink?
Christie: Oh, yeah. The reason why that type of content connects is because immediately when you were saying Cape Cod potato chips, I was thinking about Mrs. Vicks jalapeno chips and where the nearest store is to go get some. But then as you started telling the story about it was a dad thing. I instantly went to root beer floats. That was my dad and I. That was our thing. We went to Pharaoh’s ice cream parlor we got root beer floats. A&W. Fast food drive through.
Rachel: If we could wrap this up and say to coaches, even in this storytelling where you and I went back, we start smiling or big thinking about those stories and identifying. I think that’s where a lot of coaches fail is they don’t inject those stories or the origin story or the low stories that have happened in the past because they’re afraid to just not be perfect.
Christie: Yeah. It’s always the stories that connect. When I tell the stories of how I lost $88,000 in my first two years as a health coach, people are like, why? I tell them all the things that I was doing wrong and how I changed it over a 90 day period and brought in $57,789 cash in the bank. I didn’t have new strategies, I changed my mindset. So those stories that we tell of our struggles of our life, that’s how we connect and people see that we get them.
Rachel: Even if it’s the story of getting through the trouble to the triumph, somebody is like, I want to hang out with you because you’re in this triumph affirmation mindset.
Christie: Mhmm. Which I absolutely do, because I’ve won three cars in my lifetime. I just won a Tesla about a month ago. So yeah, I’m all about affirmations and a winning mindset and going for it.
Rachel: So before we close out, is there anything last thought that you want to share with coaches?
Christie: Just embrace the childlike curiosity when it comes to content,. Really make it fun, because it can be hellacious and it can be a burden that makes you quit. But really look at it with childlike curiosity, like a puzzle of let me just keep testing and trying and seeing what is going to bring in my ideal clients. Because once you crack the code, you are golden. You are good to go.
Rachel: When we talked about doing content, you and your team, were going to work on a free day for coaches, correct?
Christie: Yes, we are. So we have a low-priced item that we’re going to just make free for your viewers. It’s called the Content Creators Roadmap. And it is a five-part video series that’s going to take you through a place if you are struggling with content. You’re going to go through the video series, you’re going to get tips, tricks, strategies, and you’re going to come out the other side, knowing how to confidently and consistently create your content.
Rachel: I love that. So guys, I don’t think there’s anything more for me to say. I’m sure you are blown away by this woman. She has great content and as you can say speak straight from the heart. So please follow her. And you can look in the show notes of course for information on the freebie, guys take it easy and we’ll see you on the next one.
