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The Wellness Creator Podcast is your go-to source for expert insights and actionable tips in the evolving world of health, wellness, and spiritual-based business. Join us as we explore proven online growth strategies, chat about current trends, and interview fellow wellness creators who’ve managed to turn passion into profit by helping people live better, healthier lives.
Jeni Barcelos (00:00)
Hello and welcome to the Wellness Creator Podcast. In this episode, we are going to talk about the power of private sessions as a wellness creator.
Sandy Connery (00:10)
Yeah, I think I love the topic of this podcast, by the way. And I think it's something we've been preaching for years to our clients that really almost everyone should have a one-on-one session unless you are making the money that you want to make from other offers, memberships, courses, whatever. think in wellness that virtually everybody needs to have a one-on-one offer in their back pocket.
Jeni Barcelos (00:33)
Yeah.
Yeah. I think it dovetails really nicely with within a product suite and within other offers. And we talk about the importance of having kind of one signature offer, but a private session is a really great opportunity to sell people into that signature offering. Like you do one private session or coaching call with them or private lesson, and then they realize you're a great fit teacher or coach for them. And then it's much easier to make the sale.
Sandy Connery (00:40)
Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (01:00)
up into that signature offering. It's also really nice to have as an offer for your existing clients who want an opportunity to pay a little bit more and have kind of a deeper or VIP experience with you away from the crowd. there, and then there's a million other ways you can use private sessions too, but just that's, those are kind of like the two cases that really make sense for everybody.
Sandy Connery (01:23)
Yeah. And there's another reason and that is that on our wellness marketplace called Well, Well, Well, we've just added the ability for our marvelous teachers to add their one-on-one sessions, their private sessions as an offering on this marketplace. So you like to describe it as a directory, right? So that somebody can search and find a practitioner that they can work with privately on whatever wellness niche possible.
Jeni Barcelos (01:53)
Yeah, when we were originally thinking about Well Well Well, this was always part of it. And the idea for Well Well Well is that it's really an experience as marketplace. And with our first feature that we released, it was this ability to add group classes or events onto the marketplace. But we knew shortly thereafter we would be adding the ability to have private sessions. And the reason that I love this feature ad is because it's not a disappearing asset.
Like these classes get listed, then, so you can go and you can add your yoga class or you can add your sound bath or whatever you're doing onto the calendar into the marketplace, but then time passes and unless you're adding more classes, those events disappear. So it's kind of like this disappearing act, which is also really neat. But with the sessions, the one-on-one private sessions, you put up your listing for your session and then,
your clients or prospective clients, select the date that works for them. So that session is always there. Presumably, like you have listings out into the future, it's always gonna be there. So you can just go set this up one time and now you're part of this like very SEO optimized home on the internet where people can find you indefinitely. It's like free marketing.
Sandy Connery (03:13)
Right. Yeah, it's amazing. And it's all, and
this may be getting into the weeds too much, but it's all like your calendar, as long as you've got your Google calendar integrated, which you have to, and set up for the days that you, it will just, it will always offer these strangers dates that they can book right into your calendar. So it's kind of amazing that way.
Jeni Barcelos (03:20)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no reason not to do this. Like every single one of you that's listening to this should go add at least one listing. I mean, you can add more than one too, right? Cause if you do a 60 minute private session and a two hour private session or whatever, whatever, like I would, I would add them all. but at least one, like take the five minutes and go add your listing because it's just another place for potential clients to find you online. So, and there's no downside to adding it at all.
Sandy Connery (03:46)
Yeah, different topic.
Right. The other thing I think is amazing about this feature is the ability to add a form. you, so usually off this like, marketplace or listing, it's like, these are strangers to you, right? So it's always awkward to get on the phone and be like, hi, so how can I help you? So there's a form that like you can ask as many questions as you want, get the information so that when you, know, you know exactly who you're dealing with, you can do the background, you can think about what you're going to be teaching coaching on whatever.
and you're ready to go. So the ability to add this form and they also pay upfront, you know, so you'll get the money. It's in your calendar and you get a form with all the information. So you're ready to help them. It's amazing. It's great.
Jeni Barcelos (04:38)
Yes.
Yeah,
yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, so let's kind of talk about some of the reasons we've touched on them initially already, but some of the reasons that you should run, not walk to go set up your well, well, well private session listings. So one is to deepen client relationships. And these are all fitting within this idea of like people in 2025 are looking for personalized wellness.
Like, we've had periods of time where people were getting their advice from mostly from books or from like TikToks or whatever, but I think we're at the place now where because technology is going this way and because changes are happening in society, people are looking for that connection, that kind of deeper connection to their healers. And this is a really clear, simple, straightforward way for you to provide that to people within a limited scope.
Sandy Connery (05:16)
Great.
Jeni Barcelos (05:46)
And I know that that's really important. And deepening relationships with like prospective clients or new clients is one of the very best reasons to offer a one-on-one session as like the first touch point for people when they work with you.
Sandy Connery (05:58)
I think that people always think that they're an exception or that their personal situation is different than the average person and that they think that they need one-on-one, right? Which I think we all think we're special snowflakes and I'm a little bit different than everyone else. This belief comes from working in retail for so many years. People are like, well, my feet are very wide.
Jeni Barcelos (06:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, that's true. Yeah, yeah,
Sandy Connery (06:23)
I'm like, yeah,
Jeni Barcelos (06:23)
yes.
Sandy Connery (06:24)
they're not that wide, okay. You know, like they, so I think like you can play off that. Plus it is, I think a better experience for that client because it is, like you said, that deeper client relationship that you feel more confident in that practitioner because they get to know you, they get to listen to you. You're not just a face among 20 in a class or whatever it may be.
Jeni Barcelos (06:26)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah. And it's just like a one, especially these well, well, well sessions. This is not a package you're selling on. Well, well, well, this is a single session. So it's low commitment for everyone involved. So it goes two ways. Your, your prospective clients want to know that you're the right fit teacher or coach for them or healer. And you also want to know that they're the right fit client for you. So like it gives both of you again, that like limited container to test. this a good fit before we talk about?
Sandy Connery (06:53)
Right.
Jeni Barcelos (07:16)
a relationship and that's, that's like a really helpful thing. right now, well, well, well is not designed to offer free consults or discovery calls. part of that is, well, all of that is by design. And so for those of you that are wondering and listening to this right now, cause I know that our coaches are here listening. can I use well, well, well to kind of list discovery calls so that I can basically use this as a sales call opportunity.
You can, would still, I you're gonna still have to make them paid. And what I would do if I were selling people into a larger program is I would take a fee to have the call and then I would refund the people for whom it isn't a good fit. I would say like it's $25 to do the consult. We'll see if it's good fit. If you want to move forward, I will apply that to the package, to the coaching package or program or whatever. And if it's not a good fit, I'll refund you after this, after the session. So.
Sandy Connery (08:13)
Yeah.
It's a, it's, that's a very common coaching strategy. Plus I think what it does is you're only going to get your, it'll decrease the no shows, right? The bookings and then like if there's a commitment, only the people who pay the $25 or whatever are, those are the serious ones who are going to show up and talk to you because they've laid down, laid down some, some money and you have the ability to like describe that in your description of the event. Okay.
Jeni Barcelos (08:22)
Yes, yes.
Yeah.
Yeah. And as someone
who has done a lot of one-on-one demos over the years, and I know you've done your share too, Sandy, the no show rate for things like this is terrible. And it's just a bad feeling as the business owner to be showing up, know, setting this time aside and then for people not to show. So at least if you're charging a little bit of money, there's some skin in the game for the other person. Yeah.
Sandy Connery (08:45)
Mm-hmm. There's nothing worse.
Yeah, exactly. Okay,
let's talk about the next one. Offering these obviously is going to drive your business growth. This gives you another opportunity, another avenue for revenue diversification. I also think it is an opportunity, especially for those of you with memberships out there, like this is an opportunity to
charge something significant for the hour of your time or 45 minutes of your time, whatever it is, right. Versus like trying to build a membership, which is a great business model, but they're typically low monthly fees, you know, under a hundred dollars, usually around 50. and it's like, you'll get there, but in the meantime, why not offer, you know, a hundred dollar sessions, $150 sessions, $200 an hour sessions and make some money along the way and then convert those into the membership.
Jeni Barcelos (09:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that makes a ton of sense. even if you're only doing a couple of these a week, like that can really add up to your bottom line quickly. Like you can start to cover the costs of running your business with just a few sessions a month. And like, who doesn't want to do that? So depending on where you are in your business journey, obviously that pricing will, the price will factor in based on that. But no matter what, it doesn't hurt to have a little extra cash.
Sandy Connery (10:07)
Yeah, that's huge.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Jeni Barcelos (10:26)
And then we've talked about this already, but the ability to upsell people into your bigger offers or your more like your primary offering from those one-on-one sessions is like you're never gonna have an easier way to sell people into anything ever. Like that is the most direct, simple, straightforward, effective way to sell people into anything is to be on call with them. Yeah. Yeah.
Sandy Connery (10:36)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and then of course they're on your list so they'll receive any kind of launch
or whatever, know, selling information that you're sending after as well. So yeah, it's definitely a win all the way around.
Jeni Barcelos (10:58)
Yeah, and another thing that we want to talk about too is just we've talked a lot with our coaching clients in the past about the power of testimonials. When you are doing these one-on-one sessions, people are going to be thrilled because they're getting that hour or 45 minutes or two hours of attention directly on them. That is the perfect time as that call is ending to ask for a testimonial or a referral. though like when you're doing these one-on-one sessions, you have a chance to gather potentially a lot of these.
And so I would just encourage you, every single one of you who's listening, who goes on and starts running sessions through well well well, to think about asking for a referral or having even better, think about it and talk about it on the call, but then have an automated thank you email that goes out after your sessions to all of your clients so that that's asking for that, asking for both a testimonial and any referrals.
Sandy Connery (11:42)
Right, that's what I would do.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's right. And the other reason to do this is just you're going to, if you post these one-on-one sessions on well, well, well, our marketplace, you're going to reach an audience that doesn't know who you are, right? We're driving traffic to those pages and people are exploring and looking and presumably signing up, presumably signing up. And so you're
you're reaching a whole new audience. You know, and I know from so many of our current clients or past coaching clients, the frustration is like Instagram posts and no engagement and nobody, you're just like, it's so hard to reach new eyeballs. And this is a great opportunity. this is a great opportunity. And as you said, you just set it up once, just let it sit there. and you know, as time goes on more and more people will be coming and you know, it's just so easy. So I think it's exciting.
Jeni Barcelos (12:45)
Yeah, yeah.
And I just wanna say, like to reiterate, our team has done the work to optimize these pages for SEO and for discoverability. So this is a place for you to have a public listing where people who know what they're doing on the internet are working to have your name and calls be discovered, right? So it's not like inside an app that people have to download and log into to see the listing. I know there's some other.
things like that in the wellness industry and those are great and there's ecosystems built within those. But like this is a public directory that's accessible to anyone on search, whether they're searching through an AI tool, through GPT, through Google, through Bing, whatever, you are now just making yourself findable in a whole other place. So you wanna do that in as many places as possible as a business on the internet.
Sandy Connery (13:34)
And the other thing, I think you look super professional. So we're on the next point, which is like the boost of being visible on well, well, well, but we redid the checkout so that the checkout pages, like the pop, it's so slick and so smooth and it makes you look really, really professional because it's just so like modern, the checkout pages. know that people who don't think about this stuff don't really appreciate that, but like,
man, it's so good. It is a really great checkout process.
Jeni Barcelos (14:07)
Yes, we have the world's best creative director and she's very talented at design. So we'll just leave it at that. Yeah, mean, thinking about visibility, Sandy, one of the other things to talk about is just like when you put yourself on a platform like, well, well, well, you're essentially partnering with us, at least for that small piece of your business. So this is like, you don't have to hire.
an ads agency or a marketing agency in order to like get this all set up. Like if you're a marvelous customer, you go in and it's like a couple minutes of your time and some toggles and adding a different image. You know, it's like a few minutes. You don't need any help to do this. Like you have all of the skills already, the tools, the resources. You don't have to learn a whole new, you know, algorithm or new kind of ads or anything like that. Like it's already built into the thing that you're using. And so we just want to like,
that part of our mission at Marvelous is to make your life easier and being able to toggle your classes and now your one-on-one sessions on is now our job. Like we've made it our job to go out and market that for you.
Sandy Connery (15:16)
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay. the next point is, just some objections that we've heard in the past, to, know, like we may suggest to a client, like, I think you should offer one-on-one sessions. so what do, what do we say to that,
Jeni Barcelos (15:39)
So, well, we were running a coaching program for at least five of the years, six of the years that we've been running our software company. So there was a huge overlap there. as part of that journey, we've worked with several thousand clients who are really just getting started online. So some people who really came from a robust brick and mortar experience and some people who are just brand new to business altogether and brand new to wellness altogether.
And we have, think without fail kind of encouraged every single person in the beginning stage to start with one-on-one. And that's just kind of like, if you need money, like if you need an income in your business right away, it's kind of the universal truth that you should start with one-on-one. And I think, you know, we also have a whole framework that we've taught that's in our Wellness Creator Business School now about how to kind of crowdsource your primary offering and to build the
Scalable offer and business but like still start with this There's no better way and then you get paid to kind of do that research that we teach you how to do so You know one of the objections that we've heard over the years is I don't have time to do this like I have kids to raise and I have my like day job or my side hustle to pay the pay the bills and I like this business I only have limited time and so I don't want to focus on this one-on-one thing because I can't
Like it's trading time for money and I don't have time. But like the truth is you don't really have time not to do this. Like this allows you to get paid to do the research that you turn into the scalable offer that's more passive.
Sandy Connery (17:18)
And you don't have to spend time marketing and telling people about the offer because you've just placed yourself on a public directory.
Jeni Barcelos (17:24)
Well, yeah, that's the new thing that we can offer. We've never been able to offer that to clients in the past, but yeah, like now you have a place to send them. So that's the other thing too. You know, that's a really good point, Sandy. And I didn't even really think about that for beginners, even people who are coming onto marvelous, which is kind of like plug and play and we, can get your site set up in less than an hour, but you still want to have, you know, some, ought to go into Canva or wherever and make some branding. Like if you don't have any of that, there's still some like,
Sandy Connery (17:27)
Great. Right.
Jeni Barcelos (17:53)
There's still some emotional labor that goes into like, what is my business name? Like, who am I? And what is this brand? And what color is it? And with this, you can sign up for Marvelous. Have none of that figured out. Just have the one-on-one class or coaching session that you know how to do and just your own name.
like your own personal identity and you can go in now and create an offering that's compelling because you're doing it under the guise of our brand, our collective brand. And you don't like, which is beautiful. we've put the, you know, many months or year plus into creating the aesthetic, the brand, vibe, the kind of the stuff that you maybe don't have time to do. So like you really can go from nothing from just having the skill to
like selling a product on the internet, you can do that within a few minutes. And that's never been possible before.
Sandy Connery (18:50)
Yeah.
And I also on this, don't have time objection. I just want to emphasize again that you set the schedule, right? Maybe it's like you've got two hours while your kid naps on Tuesday afternoon, you can set the Google calendar so that people can only book in those two hours. It's not like you're going to be working Friday nights. You know, you, you get to control that schedule and when people book. and even as Jenny said, if it's just a couple,
You know, time is a week. That is, I think, significant revenue for many people. yeah, we're not going to accept that excuse. I don't have time. Of course you do.
Jeni Barcelos (19:26)
No, I mean, again,
you don't have time to do. And the thing is, is because it integrates with your existing Google calendar. Like if you end up filling that spot with something else, then it, then that slot's no longer available and somebody can't book. So we're not going to allow you to get overbooked. that like, that's the silliest objection at this point. okay. So another huge objection that we've heard over the years with respect to, well, to everything, but also especially to one-on-one work.
Sandy Connery (19:35)
It won't offer it. Yeah.
Jeni Barcelos (19:56)
is I'm not experienced enough, I'm not qualified, I don't have that certification, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And Sandy, what do we say to those people?
Sandy Connery (20:06)
You know enough to get started right now. And again, in the coaching community, this is the model. Like you're brand new, do one-on-ones, right? And no matter what you know, at this point, whether you're brand new or have had one or two or three years experience, you can give someone value for that one hour, like 100 % you can. And I think this is...
Jeni Barcelos (20:16)
Yeah.
Yes, yes, yeah.
Sandy Connery (20:33)
The way that I was taught in my coaching program years ago was like, you start with one and one and you work one and one. So you learn your audience deeply so that when you go to create offers that scale memberships, courses, group programs, et cetera, you've got some content to teach because you know the people that you work with. So while you understand their problems, you understand their, their objections, like we're explaining to you right now. and you can create something.
that can scale, but it's all sort of rooted in this one-on-one work. Again, you will make more money to buy the hour. I think it's a hard road if you start with a membership as your first offer for $20 a month. That is a slow slog to get to any kind of significant revenue. But if you start with one-on-one, you can charge something significant and it will be meaningful. It'll be meaningful money.
Jeni Barcelos (21:26)
Mm-hmm.
and you get the feedback. I don't wanna lessen, I wanna point out how important that piece of it is, because that's critical to building the scalable offering. I think you can go jump into an online membership if you have a ton of real life brick and mortar experience in your business.
but it's really hard to do that as a brand new trained person and whatever your skill or modality is, because you go and you set up a $20 a month membership that has very limited ability for you to get feedback. So you go to all the marketing work and the selling work to get people in there, but you don't have that feedback mechanism to know what's really working and helping them and what's terrible for them. That's gonna be.
Sandy Connery (22:00)
Great.
Jeni Barcelos (22:12)
like a nightmare business within a few months, I would say. So this enables you to like learn those lessons that you need to learn to get really good and successful at business.
Sandy Connery (22:22)
Yeah.
And, you, you'll, I mean, I feel like I have a broken record when I say this, but like, you'll hear the words that your clients use to describe their pro their, their pain points and their, how they're experiencing life. Those are the words you use to market with. And then just a little adjacent point here, I would highly encourage whatever your one-on-one sessions are to make them super specific. So it's not like, come talk to me about yoga or wellness chat or whatever, like
Jeni Barcelos (22:35)
Yeah.
Yes.
Sandy Connery (22:52)
zone in like onto some specific, problem, right? Or age or demographic or psychographic, whatever, make it specific so that when someone reads it on this director, they're like, my God, that's exactly the problem that I'm having. And I also want to remind everyone that if you do that and it doesn't work or you maybe don't, I know we had a client who started with one, solving one problem and she's like, my God, I really don't like working with these clients. And she, she switched.
So whatever you put up as your one-on-one, you're not stuck with forever, right? Like you may do a few sessions ago, yeah, this isn't for me. And you can totally change and pivot and offer a different, you know, topic or niche or whatever. And you're in your one-on-ones.
Jeni Barcelos (23:36)
Yeah, I think that that makes a ton of sense. Yeah, and I mean, you could really use this as a way to test your ideas, right? Like put up a few different kinds of sessions and see what people buy and see what people see what you're getting results with. So like use this almost as a market research opportunity. It's hard being this far into business to put myself back in that spot. But I'm thinking if I were early in my business and I had
Sandy Connery (23:45)
Yep. Yep.
Jeni Barcelos (24:02)
access to something like this, that's for sure what I would do. I mean, that's what people who are really good at marketing do with things like Facebook ads. They pick like a hundred different messages and put them all out in different ads campaigns, and then they see what resonates with people, and then that's what they scale into their funnels. I mean, this is just another way to do that, but to get paid for it. So...
Sandy Connery (24:10)
test.
I would just caution
that if you are going to test two or three that you don't cause confusion in the potential student's mind, like this or this, like I don't understand the difference of these. Just be careful that you're not, like they're too similar. They're like, I don't know which one I should pick, so I'm going to move on to somebody else that has one offer.
Jeni Barcelos (24:29)
Yeah.
Yeah, that's
a good point, Sydney. I would maybe on a platform like Well Well Well even do like, okay, in February, I'm testing this idea and March, I'm testing this idea. You know, like you can, you can phase things in or like you can have two kind of very different things up at the same time and then see what you get more traction for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so you can send people obviously to Well Well Well to sign up for any of your events.
Sandy Connery (24:58)
Yeah, it's literally a toggle, so it's not a lot of work.
Jeni Barcelos (25:08)
But we just want to give you a quick couple of steps of what you need to do to get started So this is what you would need to do in marvelous to get started You need to come up with kind of a good title for what you're doing. Don't say private session with Fill in your name. Okay. Nobody knows what that is. Like I don't know like like Even I mean you can do a lot of things privately with people like is it a cooking class with
Sandy Connery (25:25)
Unless you're super famous. Unless you're super, super famous.
Jeni Barcelos (25:36)
this person or is it like a massage with, you know what I mean? Like you want to, people don't, can't read your mind. And so I think that's one of the lessons of a business and one of the lessons of online business is like, nobody knows what's going on in your head or in all of like your planning materials. So as you said, Sandy, be like very, very specific, hyper specific and what you're, how you're laying out your offer. And I would do that in the title just so that it's clear when people come to that marketplace, they, that.
what you do will stand out if it's a match for what they're looking for. Yeah, and then the next thing is pricing and we can have a whole conversation on that. It's not gonna happen right now, but you know, we believe in value-based pricing. We also believe in pricing appropriately to kind of your skill level and where you are in your business journey. Marketplace pricing is a little tricky and I think we can all have big feelings about it because we're now gonna see how we're compared to
what other people, how other people are pricing themselves. I just encourage you to do that work internally and to not base your pricing decision based on looking around and seeing what other people are doing.
Sandy Connery (26:43)
Right.
And I would highly encourage you not to price low so that you are the lowest price in the marketplace and thinking that, they'll buy this because it's the cheapest. I think it's the opposite. I would never personally buy the cheapest coach on a marketplace. just, you know, don't use that. Like I just, so many women do that. I'll just like price low and then everybody will be able to afford me. And it doesn't work like that. It's the opposite. In fact,
Jeni Barcelos (26:48)
Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes, that's 100 % true. And then, yeah, I just think like, again, the last piece of it is like you go into your marvelous sessions and you like fill out, it's kind of a wizard. Like we tell you step by step kind of what you need to do. You need to like optimize for having like a really good picture or good image. Since this is a private session with you, I would have yourself in the picture. Like I would not use a stock photo here if it were me, because I think it just
makes the whole thing less personal. People don't wanna spend money on like a stock experience. So I would like have a nice photo of yourself, high resolution, high quality, a very specific title, a price you feel good about, and then it's literally a toggle, as you said, Sandy.
Sandy Connery (27:43)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And then you can start telling people that, yeah, what do you do? Check out well, well, well, I'm on that directory or whatever. it's, it's yeah. Yeah. I also, I love, I've done lots of coaching in the past as I know you have, and I love the idea that I could sort of test out a coach with an hour where it's not just a sales call, which feels like, like I know she's going to pitch me at the end, but it's like,
Jeni Barcelos (28:02)
Yeah, come work with me, come test out a class with me, come do a coaching session, see if we're a good fit.
Yeah.
Sandy Connery (28:21)
If I'm paying, I'm expecting value back. So I will actually get a fair exchange and an experience. you know, really know what that experience is like to work with her. So I, I would, I would love it if some of the coaches I'd like to work with gave me 45 minutes or an hour and I would happily pay and just like test it out. So yeah, I'm excited. I'm really happy with this new feature. so if you are interested in putting your, what?
Jeni Barcelos (28:28)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
100%. Yes, yes.
Sandy Connery (28:49)
work on Well Well Well. This is only for Marvelous clients. So you first have to become a Marvelous client. So you can check that out at heymarvelous.com and then you can just create meetings and put them on as we said to toggle onto Well Well Well and away you go.
Jeni Barcelos (29:06)
Yeah. All right, folks, thanks for your time. will see you next time.
Sandy Connery (29:09)
Bye bye.