If you're a health and wellness coach, you already know firsthand that your chosen industry is thriving. A June 2021 report revealed that, worldwide, the wellness marketplace has grown by 6.4% over the last four years, expanding from $3.7 trillion to $4.2 trillion — a growth rate that's double that of the global economy.
U.S. practitioners have established the largest market share within the vertical, with a national health and wellness industry valued at $52.5 billion. China holds the distinction of the second largest health and wellness market in the world. However, valued at only $19.9 billion, it's clear that the U.S. holds the lead with a significant margin. Put simply: there's never been a better time for qualified U.S. practitioners to launch their own health and wellness practice.
What a Growing Market Means for New Health and Wellness Coaches
The rise in successful health and wellness practices is both exciting and promising for new U.S. practitioners launching their own holistic health practice. However, it's essential to know that while a robust industry economy is helpful for solopreneurs opening their practices, it is not a guarantee of success.
Many health and wellness business owners assume that mastering their client practices, treatments, and solutions is enough to launch their company and immediately start making an impact. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Health and wellness coaches aren’t just running a practice — they are also running a business.
Know How to Launch Your Health and Wellness Business
Yes, the health and wellness industry is demonstrating significant growth and unparalleled opportunities for practitioners. However, competition can be fierce, particularly with today’s telehealth trend where clients don’t have to stay local when choosing a practitioner. Even the most skilled and credentialed health and wellness coaches will struggle to grow without considering a few critical, core business best practices, including online presence, invoicing, products and services, and e-commerce capabilities.
Going into the process armed with the knowledge of how to build a sustainable wellness business can help practitioners command online attention, land new clients, and develop long-term momentum in their own respective domains.
Some tips for building, launching, and growing your wellness business include:
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Invest in Website Development / Builder Tools
No matter what the specialty, establishing an online presence is a must for holistic health business owners. To compete with other practitioners, health and wellness coaching professionals must invest in website development. Beyond a stand-alone business website, many coaches also list their services and available hours on online directories. At Sofia Health, our centralized platform showcases our practitioner's customized pages, allowing them to quickly gain attention from clients seeking the services they provide. -
Automate Appointment Scheduling
As we’ve already mentioned, the health and wellness industry isn't just thriving — it's also incredibly competitive. Missing a single patient contact can quickly send them into the online waiting arms of another health and wellness practitioner. Many solopreneurs struggles with coordinating patient appointments for a wide range of reasons. Lack of time, organizational skills, and available tools all come into play, making it difficult for them to effectively schedule appointments.
Manually trying to track a client calendar inevitably invites errors and missed appointments. Sofia Health’s online platform with automated appointment scheduling can be a game-changer for practitioners. Every practitioner can easily designate their office hours in our system so clients can identify health and wellness coaches who are available when they need them. Clients can quickly access the centralized calendar to find available practitioner hours, click desired time slots, and schedule their appointments for optimized ease and convenience. -
Create Seamless (and Fast) Client Invoicing and Payment
Whether selling services or products, getting paid is essential when building a wellness business — more specifically, getting paid promptly is vital to any practitioner trying to sustain a startup practice. Unfortunately, some new practitioners aren't sure how to establish online billing and payment functionality as part of their health and wellness coaching offerings. Additionally, some don't have the time to manually develop an online billing process to invoice patients for services rendered. Sofia Health's online platform not only connects clients with practitioners but we also offer our health and wellness coach access to a platform that automates invoicing to accelerate the billing (and payment!) process. Additionally, Sofia Health’s automated payment functionality optimizes customer convenience, encouraging existing clients to sign up for future services and products. -
Establish an e-Commerce Component
Health and wellness coach offering one-on-one services quickly realize how hard it is to tend to clients and scale their business. As a result, health and wellness coaches need to go beyond launching their business — they also need to develop a strategy on how to effectively expand and scale service offerings.
Developing group classes and programs is one effective option to grow beyond one-on-one client sessions. Additionally, incorporating products is another way health and wellness coaches can support clients and scale their operations. While it can be a challenge for wellness business owners to source, label, and sell products, the Sofia Health platform offers an e-commerce component that allows practitioners to easily add and showcase relevant products. Once entered into our system, clients easily see every service and product offered by an individual health and wellness coach.
Most importantly, Sofia Health offers health and wellness coach access to an entire community full of practitioners who can help new business owners start selling products. It’s easy for practitioners to connect and communicate with other practitioners on our platform. Our health and wellness coaches can leverage these professional partnerships to build their network, align with other providers for client referrals, and support each other as business owners.
Are You Growing Your Health and Wellness Coaching Business?
Sofia Health's online digital platform helps holistic health business owners launch their practice, connect with clients, and build their referral network. Schedule a call with our team today to learn more about leveraging our dynamic system to boost your wellness business. Be sure to download our free guide, Start a Successful Online Healthcare Business, for more tips and insight on growing your wellness practice with long-term, sustainable results.
