How to Make Money with Meal Planning in 2023 with Stephanie Long & Jenni Shaw
*Click the above image to watch the replay.*
““Habits are not a finish line to be crossed but a lifestyle to be lived. “”
How to Make Money with Meal Planning in 2023 with Stephanie Long & Jenni Shaw
Toward the end of 2022, Jenni and Stephanie put together a workshop about how Health and Wellness experts can use Meal Plans to make money.
With more than one-hundred attendees, the feedback from the audience was very positive, and everyone walked away with valuable insights and several easy-to-implement ways to use Meal Plans or Meal Planning services to make more money.
““The value of a meal plan is much greater than a week’s worth of meals. For many people, it’s a pathway to a better living, the solution to a serious condition, or a way to simplify a busy life. When framed in this light, the value is extraordinary. “”
I’ve included an edited version of the whole webinar at the top of this post and have gone through the presentation several times to tease out some of the best tips and parts of the presentation that seemed to create the most interest.
If you’re in a rush, breeze through the comments below and add the video to your playlist.
This workshop was created and led by:
Stephanie Long & Jenni Shaw
Both Stephanie and Jenni graduated from CSNN
Stephanie built a successful practice that included one-on-one coaching, pantry remakes, grocery shopping, meal prep, and planning. She also taught business and marketing @ CSNN for several years and then launched her own business to help others build and scale their health and wellness businesses. On top of all that, she runs The Next Level Nutrition Biz Podcast.
On the other hand, Jenni never wanted to do one-on-one services; after graduating, she teamed up with a friend and fellow graduate and built a blogging business focused on encouraging people to lead healthy lives without all the sacrifices. Part of their services was creating and selling meal plans. They effectively scaled the business and sold it in 2019!
Jenni now owns and operates a business focused on helping health & wellness companies and entrepreneurs navigate the ins and outs of digital, social, and brand marketing.
And we at Meal Garden are lucky to have Jenni leading our community development and digital marketing efforts.
Before we jump into the key takeaways from the workshop, I’ve used the term ‘customer’ throughout this post; I understand there are various ways that different practitioners define a customer (patient, client, etc.), but for this post, the term customer will be used to avoid any confusion.
Okay, let’s dive into the key takeaways:
A different way to think about selling Meal Plans
The first takeaway is to transform how you think about meal planning and how it fits into your business.
““You’re not in the business of telling people how to eat, but you are in the business of supporting life style changes through education and habit formation””
With that lens, you need to think about what you ARE in the business of:
Inspiring action
Educating on how to make good decisions
Coaching toward better habits
Support positive changes in the way peoples live their lives
The more a person feels connected with you (seen, heard, and understood), the more intrinsic motivation they’ll have to trust you and, ultimately, succeed with their transformation.
And the more success your clients have, the better for your business :)
Incorporating meal planning into your business
The next thing is to understand how to incorporate Meal Planning into your coaching (and get paid for it)
Most successful people take a collaborative approach, balancing teaching and telling and easing people into new habits.
Depending on where they are in their journey, you’ll use one of the following meal-planning strategies:
Prescriptive Meal Planning
Generally the starting point for anyone looking to make changes.
In this scenario, you provide a precision plan based on the customer’s specific/unique needs.
They must follow the plan daily, meal-by-meal, and may have a predetermined amount of time to follow it.
Tips & Tricks for Success
Take a collaborative approach to prescriptive meal planning, and collect as much information from the customer as possible regarding their environment (family size/make-up, daily commitments, shopping style, and food sensitivities). Once you have this information, start building plans cooperating with the customer.
ProTips:
Be sure to collect the right information upfront.
Schedule a review of the plan with the customer when you deliver; this way, you can answer any questions and tweak the plan as required.
Try and share the plan via an interactive system; this way, you can tweak and ‘teach’ your customer how to do it themselves. If they want to PDF the plan after, your system should support that. This approach reduces a lot of back-and-forths.
Walk, run, fly: you can always start with a few meals and build more meals into the plan as your customers become more accustomed to the new habits.
How much should I charge?
The age-old question.
There are many ways to price services and products (cost based, value-based, competitive, etc.), and a meal plan is both.
Some questions to ask yourself when determining the price:
How much effort do I need to invest in creating the plan (think about your desired hourly rate)
How many times can do you think you can resell the same plan?
What value does this plan provide? (arguably, your customer could use the plan forever once you’ve provided it to them)
“A better question might be to ask yourself ‘How much do you want to sell it for and how will you explain that value to your customer””
Do-It-Yourself Planning
Not all customers will need a precision meal plan, and in many cases, once they’ve built the habits (with your coaching and encouragement), their needs will change from teaching and coaching to support and encouragement.
With a do-it-yourself approach, you provide the environment or safe place for them to find and schedule their meals and a convenient way to connect with you 'just in time.’
This approach is generally achieved through pre-made plans and a set of ‘safe or approved’ meals based on protocols and food sensitivities.
Tips & Tricks for Success
In this scenario, you want to think about scaling your services, and that often means finding a system that makes it easy for you to create these types of ‘membership’ environments.
A good system makes it easy to get clients set up, monitor their progress (or lack thereof), and easily share new ideas and content (aka recipes).
Here, you’re going to build an engagement strategy very similar to your content strategy, where you set aside time to share new recipes, plans* and motivational content.
“Instead of a plan, maybe share a schedule for a single day (Valentine’s) or for a long weekend; just getting people started is the first step.”
How to price it
This approach lends itself well to an ongoing membership or group, and you should ask yourself the same questions as you did when creating a prescriptive meal plan.
“With the DIY approach, you’ll want to include a community and group development strategy.”
Packages, Protocols & Programs
The great thing here is how the first two approaches build momentum towards this third approach.
Depending on where you are in your journey/business-building efforts, you’ll need a niche, knowledge of some areas of interest from your audience, or a solid approach to testing and optimization to generate revenue from these systems.
“You can take your learnings and content from one-on-one efforts and combine them into sellable systems. ”
The pros of this approach are the systemization you can do: take a one-to-many and evergreen approach.
The cons? Your first attempt will rarely be a resounding success, and it’s even rarer that you’ll create a six-figure package early on.
But, if you adopt the try, fail, learn, try, fail, learn, try, succeed, learn mantra, everyone can get there.
Tips & Tricks for Success
The most important thing to remember here is ‘OPTIMIZATION’: build, learn, build more. The second most important thing? Test, test, test.
Finally, collect feedback systematically, be wary of ‘happy ears,’ and focus on input that will help you build more value into your systems.
“Find a platform that works for you but also one that provides interactive capabilities for your customers. ”
How to price
In this situation, you should take the suggestions from the first two options and think about how your program will work and deliver value for your customer.
In many situations, programs and packages can be sold for a few hundred dollars or several thousand, in both a one-time fee and an ongoing/membership approach.
“A great source for understanding the value and benefits your programs create are previous and existing customers. Be sure to have a system to collect and analyze and take action on this feedback.”
Marketing your meal-planning products and services
After exploring the different approaches to creating and pricing meal plans, Steph and Jenni provide actionable ways to market your plans.
This is where things get exciting and, in some ways, more complex. There are many reasons for this, including the following:
Are meal plans foundational to your business (i.e., your key product offering) or an add-on?
What other services or products are you offering?
Which is the most valuable to you or, more importantly, to the customer you are speaking to?
Who are you selling to? (current vs. future clients)
What is your goal (aka lead generation)
Stephanie also emphasizes the idea of ‘show’ vs. ‘tell’; you can do this with videos, screenshots, customer testimonials, or even sample PDFs.
“One thing to keep top-of-mind is the ‘why’; what value does the plan deliver, or what type of transformation can your customer expect to realize from their investment? (aka their future self)”
Below, I’ve listed some of the best examples from this part of the workshop:
Add links in your online bios to your product page or to the plan landing page itself
Email signatures *
Social Platforms (tune in to the Webinar around 47:00 to find out about a high-potential social channel many of us overlook
Meal Plans to incentivize referrals
Collaborations *
Giveaways and contests
This was a significant part of the conversation; both Jenni and Stephanie have extensive, hands-on experience in this area, and it was clear from the instructions and examples they provided.
* Excellent ideas! Everyone should be doing this!
What about Meal Garden?
One of my favorite (and sadly, shortest) parts of the conversation was the introduction to the Meal Garden Platform.
Meal Garden is built to make Meal Planning more efficient and enable the types of marketing and selling approaches described in this workshop.
With hundreds of templates, thousands of recipes, and easy-to-use features to modify and share, it’s a spectacular tool for anyone who incorporates nutrition into their business.
One of the most significant differences between Meal Garden and other systems (although there are many) is that Meal Garden facilitates direct payments. You can connect your stripe account (or create one) and start selling Meal Plans through any of the three approaches described.
If you’re interested in exploring Meal Garden, a special promotion was provided at the end of the workshop that provides a 3-for-1 offer. After your 7-day trial, you can sign-up for three months @ 10 dollars per month. That’s right—ten dollars per month (USD).
“I’ll set up your Meal Garden and help you figure out some strategies for incorporating meal planning into your business.”
Questions and Answers
The audience was buzzing with questions, and I’ve listed those questions and their answers below.
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Meal Garden is not available for consumers. To gain access to Meal Garden, you must be referred by a practitioner. We’ve integrated a payment engine to make it easy for you to monetize your services around personalized nutrition.
It’s ultimately up to you, as the member, if a customer pays.
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Yes! And if you make them public (or contact us), we’ll review and verify them for you.
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Yes! And based on our efforts and understanding of the market, we have the most complete and up-to-date food database.
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Yes!
We’ve included a link below to a Youtube Video on how to do just that with Meal Garden.
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No, it’s all included: both digital and PDF.
We’ll even help you get your branding set up.
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It closed at the end of January on our main website, but if you click on the link above, we’ll honor the discount.
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Many different ways. Any of them will add value to your customers and to you.
Examples of Meal Garden in Action
I’ve included a few links below to episodes from our podcast that focus on using Meal Garden to generate revenue, or if you’d like to speak directly, you can reach me at jeff.lougheed@mealgarden.com.
Using Meal Garden as a Chef & Consultant
It's a time saving thing. It's an organizational thing. It's an inspiration thing, and a mechanical thing. Meal Garden allows you to find the macronutrients and micronutrients and makes recommendations, you can actually see if something's healthy.
How this Nutritionist Uses Meal Garden on Her Retreats
With Meal Garden anyone can access their plans from anywhere.
Using Meal Garden to Build a Cumulative 12-Week Program
A Unique New Income Stream - Shared From the Meal Garden Nutrition Manager
With just a few clicks everything is done for my client and I’m just so grateful it.
10 Ideas For Your Nutrition Business in 2023 (from Stephanie’s Podcast)
Keeping the conversation going
Use the contact information below to connect with Jenni & Stephanie.
Jenni Shaw @ The Social Wellness
Email: hello@socialwellnessco.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialwellnessco/
Website: https://socialwellnessco.com/
Stephanie Long
Email: hello@stephanielong.ca
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephanielong.ca/?hl=en
Website: https://www.stephanielong.ca/
Podcast: The Next Level Nutrition Biz Podcast
