Today I want to introduce myself by sharing how personalized nutrition made me $1M+ year after year and the behind the scenes secrets to my successes.
I am Ashley Koff RD, a 20+ year personalized nutrition practitioner.
By all accounts – several $1M+ years, lots of awards, repeat and satisfied customers – and most importantly, by my definition each year:
I am one of the most successful nutrition practitioners in the world.
Humble, eh? Well, you came here to read about it so I am here to give it to you!
My success came from 3 things:
- Having a clear definition of how I define success for me, adjusted each year
- HARD work, consistently
- FAILURES
Honest truth → I failed a lot. And these failures are the reason I experienced ongoing success. So in this post, I am going to dive deeper into them. Perhaps it will invite you to audit your failures and turn them into future success too.
3 Reasons Why I’m Sharing My Failures:
- To enjoy a really good laugh! It’s the best medicine.
- To commiserate – it’s so darn hard to be a practitioner, right?!
- To empower you. My mission requires you to succeed at your highest level.
I wholeheartedly subscribe to the belief that failures are part of any winners playbook.
BUT I also believe and know personally that a great mentor can help you avoid their mistakes to make your success a little or a lot easier.
You do this for your patients right?
You share hacks, tests, and healthy habits that you learned the hard way so your patients can more easily get and stay on their path to better health.
So let me do that for you.
Failure #1
Trying to “heal” my digestive system by paying someone from my yoga class to look at my blood (likely under a Fisher-Price microscope), diagnose me with a worm, and recommend a 7 day Goats milk only (40+oz) cleanse.
Would you be surprised if I told you it didn’t heal my decades long IBS resulting from excessive antibiotics as a child, birth control, and my genomics?
It was my rock bottom after loads of “qualified” practitioners told me there was nothing wrong with me or prescribed meds.
Here’s how a failure turned into multiple wins.
Win #1 – Giving up.
As I retold the story of my cleanse, I had a whole bar laughing.
In the crowd was an integrative gastroenterologist who would go on to help me heal my digestive system and discover the power of personalized nutrition!
Win #2 – I developed an early and never forgotten empathy for patients doing crazy things.
They are at their rock bottom too and it led to a thriving 20+ year practice where some of my most proud moments are patients saying they felt safe and heard, and showed up to do the work together.
Win #3 – I quit my job.
Did I mention I was working at an ad agency and my client was a global cereal company so I was selling sugar cereals to Americans as my day job.
From Failure to A Dream Job
I began a career with a mission to help everyone have access to better health powered by personalized nutrition.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg for all the lessons from failures.
Keep reading to learn MY BIGGEST FAILURE and WIN.
But on the other hand, if you the private practice practitioner want to fast track your lessons from someone who’s been there, join my colleague for a live demo session to see how The BNP Toolkit™ helps you build a business that addresses many of the most commonly made and easily avoidable private practice failures. (Plus there’s a bit of a bonus when you attend.)
It’s not easy to expose mistakes and failures, but I wholeheartedly believe that through sharing my experiences, it gets you and your patients better outcomes.
Next, we dive into feeling overwhelmed, stress, and burn out.
I’ve been there and something I do not want you to experience so I’m going to share with you my second biggest failure.
Failure #2: Asking all the questions, all the time.
I constantly ran over my time with patients and my time after patients – which left me feeling overwhelmed, constantly behind, and dramatically reduced my profits (when factoring in my actual hours spent per patient).
Win #1 – Patients loved that I was the first to ask all these questions and put their personal whole picture together.
They would provide word of mouth and testimonials along the lines of “Ashley figured it out – she was the first that asked me about X & Y & Z altogether” and they loved the time I committed to them.
Win #2 – Practitioners loved that I asked all the questions.
They would send me notes back about my notes – oh yeah, you read that correctly they responded to my notes! Noting that they needed and valued the information I gathered and even relied on me to learn.
The ongoing stream of referrals was a huge win!
But, I was so busy. I was making so much money. And I was soooo burnt out.
While I made enough money for traveling and great seats at NBA games – two of my favorites – or to take more mornings off for time with my dog and friends – I wasn’t able to.
While I could have said no to consultant offers for things I was less passionate about, I didn’t because I worried the offers wouldn’t be there one day.
One day, I hit my uber frustrated level.
I pinpointed it as wanting an easier way.
But here’s what this means for you, especially if you are swimming in overwhelm.
I was stuck knowing the value of all the questions I ask patients at different phases of our relationship but hating all the time it took me.
I had purchased all these different tools from different training programs and healthcare organizations that claimed to streamline my data collection but they didn’t get me the answers I needed nor could I imagine being the patient filling out 15 pages!
Fun fact about me: I declined being part of a book club, and instead started a magazine club – yeah I wanted to read less; I also listen to podcasts on 1.25/ 1.5 speed!
I had an epiphany!
My Biggest Failure (aka #3): I was trying to do it all and repeating so much of my work with each patient and referral source.
Epiphany: There was a better way to do it all. I had a system – I just hadn’t systematized it yet!
My Biggest Win: I created my system – tools, emails, videos and marketing messages – and implemented it for time-saving, profit-making wins!
- This system reduced individual patient questions while empowering them to see their better choices more clearly.
- My system helped practitioners refer more patients, and gave me a “no waiting list” waitlist option (a group program they all went through) so I could manage the new load.
- This system enabled me to optimize media segments for my business, not theirs.
- My system empowered me to spend less time and be better prepared with each patient as I personalized their better nutrition.
My wins were epic for me. But that’s not enough for me.
I started my career to make sure no one goes on a goat’s milk cleanse (i.e. hits rock bottom because no one personalized their nutrition for better health results)
And I can’t achieve my mission without your success.
Are you ready to help me succeed? For us to do better together? For your practice to run on a proven system that helps you start, scale and achieve success on your terms?
Take the step I took. I haven’t ever looked back!
The BNP Toolkit™ is designed by me to help you avoid every failure I made and move right into enjoying the wins! You can get it here and own it for the lifetime of your practice. That turns another failure (buying things you have to keep spending on each year) into a BIG WIN.
Got questions? Join my team for a live demo so I can show you how this will work for where you are today, and every day after – because I’ve done it too. Do it now and get access to a bonus financial offer when you attend the session!
