How to Start Your Own Health Business Online with 10 Simple Steps
You’re ready to make your education or passion a business online, but not sure to where to start?! Don’t worry, this post has you covered! Here are 10 simple steps for how to start your own health business online!
After creating my business almost a year ago and receiving a ton of emails, questions and inquiries on how I did it, I decided to create this post! Whether you’re looking to start your own business or just uncertain how to, these steps will get you on your way!
10 Steps For Starting Your Own Business Online:
Develop Your Brand
Your brand is unique to you and your business. Simply ask yourself a few of the following questions:
What message do you want to convey?
Who is your ideal audience?
What are your 1, 5 & 10 year goals?
Do you plan on selling products online?
Is writing your passion (do you want to have a blog)?
Do you plan of having employees?
I recommend writing out your answers to these questions on paper and creating an inspiration board on Pinterest as a way to bring all your thoughts and ideas together! Save anything that resonates with you— fonts, colors, designs, other websites that catch your eye, really anything that reflects you and your business.
2. Start a Business LLC + Pick Your Website Name
Simply Google ‘How to Start an LLC’; there are a ton of good articles with the easy step by step process! Be thinking about what you want your business name to be as well! Before settling on a name, make sure the name is available! You do not want to fall in love with something that is already taken!
Picking a business name was by far the hardest step for me. At the time I was unsure if I wanted to create a business name that reflected nutrition or a name that reflected myself. I settled on Emily Morrow LLC simply because it keeps my options open for if I ever add ‘Certified Personal Trainer’ or ‘Author’ to my resume. In other words, “Nutriton with Em” may have limited my outreach and audience.
3. Purchase Your Domain Name & Choose a Hosting Platform
After you’ve created your LLC, you’ll want to purchase your domain name (the name of your website), such as www.(insertdomainnamehere).com. I recommend NameCheap. I personally use them because the hosting and domain is less than the cost of most domains from other sites and the integration with Squarespace was fairly easy, unlike Blue Host and GoDaddy.
You can search the availability for your desired domain name here.
NameCheap also offers free Whois privacy protection and SSL certificates for keeping your site secure and safe! You want to see a lock in the web address bar at the top.
4. Pick a Website Platform
After you create your LLC, business name, and domain name, it’s time to showcase yourself and all your amazing services and content!
In other posts online, you’ll read various pros and cons foreach and every website platform, but after a ton of research, I wholeheartedly recommend Squarespace! Not only is it user friendly, it has awesome customer service, built in SEO compatibility, an ability to create online accounts for people, a shop page for ecommerce, built in analytics and more! It far exceeds Wix and other ones in my opinion.
Wordpress is thrown around often, and for good reason. It is the most popular website platform; however, unless you are very comfortable with coding and have the money to pay a designer to make updates or changes for you, I would not recommend it. I use to manage a website for another company using Wordpress and found it more complicated and the widgets always needed updating. You also have to do a ton of extra work to boost your SEO rankings!
5. Design a Website (or Hire Someone) to Create One for You
When creating a website, it is so important to design something that reflects YOU. If you take a look at my website, you’ll find a clean and simple design with tons of white space, a clear-cut call to action button, with a personalized heading, welcoming fonts and professional pictures. All of this was intentional. I wanted a website that told my story without someone even meeting me in person, yours should too!
There are a few important key aspects you will want to pay attention to when creating your website, such as the ones listed below:
A professional logo and custom font you’ll use for everything! You’ll notice my guides, PDFs, business cards, email template, and blog posts all use the same colors, fonts and styles. You want people to recognize you and your brand when they see it!
Choose 4 primary colors— mine are gold, navy blue, light gray and light green.
Choose 2 base colors— a background color (mine is white) and a font color (mine is dark charcoal). As a rule of thumb, never use black anywhere, it is too harsh!
Professional photos. If someone does not know you and all they have to go off of is your site, photos can make all the difference. I have received a ton of business solely from the look and appeal of my website and photos!
Easy to read navigation titles and clear-cut call to action button. People should be able to go to your home page and know exactly what you offer and how to contact you with one simple click.
I am quite the type A perfectionist, which is why I chose to design my own website. I actually went to college with the hopes of becoming a graphic designer after working in the design field throughout high school, but the lab times did not work with my soccer schedule! The Lord ALWAYS has a plan however, and boy am I glad, because I could not imagine myself doing anything else.
6. Purchase Professional Liability Insurance
You want to make sure your business is protected! I used a small company based in Austin, Texas for mine and I love them! But, I’ve also heard great things about HPSO.
7. Open a Business Checking Account & Create a Business Payment Service
When you own your own business, you must be organized for tax purposes. I use my business credit card for ANYTHING business related (I.e website, domain name, camera, computer, mailing samples, business cards, continuing education and more). Having a business account really helps when it comes to filing your taxes at the end of each year! Plus, it keeps your business income and expenses separate from your personal ones. It also allows you to accept payments from affiliate accounts using a business EIN number instead of your social security. More on affiliate accounts in a future post!
For business invoicing and payment services, I looked into Quickbooks, Square and PayPal and settled on the Business PayPal Here Account because of its simple invoicing platform, ability to accept online payments, amazing card readers that people can swipe their credit cards to pay you or use PayPal transfers or Apple Pay; but, most importantly, I love that PayPal had the lowest transaction rate of all of them. When accepting large payments, you’ll care about the transaction rate, I promise! PayPal Business makes keeping track of everything, including unpaid invoices, super easy!
8. Determine Your Services, Prices & What You Want to Offer
When I first started, my services were simple! I simply do not have the time for those anymore since the majority of my time is spent creating guides and doing in person consultations with long-term clients. Regardless of your service offerings, just start and go with it, with a mindset knowing they can and probably will, always change!
In terms of pricing, I reached out to a few people in my field when I started and asked what they charged. Do not be afraid to do the same! You can always change your prices if you need too! My prices have increased since I initially started due to demand.
To accept payments online, I use PayPal and Stripe. Squarespace lets you easily add a PayPal payment button for clients on your site. This is how I accept payments for my online eBooks & guides.
Go ahead and start creating content, even if it is a simple 1 page PDF guide! You might be an expert on a topic that someone else has no clue about!
9. Create a Disclaimer & Intake Form
Luckily, the NTA supplied us with these during our program; however, prior to enrolling, I created my own client intake forms as a way to gather information regarding clients’ previous medical history, eating habits, current health concerns, etc. By having them sign a form, you create an agreement between the two of you and protect yourself in the process.
10. Start a Newsletter
Squarespace allows you to integrate a newsletter through them, but I personally really love Mailchimp! A newsletter is the best and quickest way to update people about what is going on in your world, any new programs you’re offering or the launch of a brand new eBook!
&& One Last Thing to Keep in Mind…
Don’t stress or sweat the small stuff and just be YOU! You’re creating a business; this should be one of the most exciting times of your life! I regret spending so many months trying to make everything perfect! In fact, I spent weeks just writing the small ‘About Me’ section on my front page. I read about 100+ other nutritionists ‘about me’ sections and tried to combine all of them together to create mine. Big mistake. My ‘about me’ section now is entirely different from the one I initially used, that I spent so many hours worrying about.
Now, I love my ‘about me’. At first I was worried about including ‘Jesus’ loving Nutritionist in mine, but I’ve realized, it’s is what makes me, me. It’s also the foundation of how I run my practice!
Since I suggested you start a newsletter, feel free to join mine at the bottom of this page or in the pop up you form you may have already exited out of (don’t worry I won’t hold it against you <3) so you can see how I design and brand my newsletter emails! This might help you create your own and spark some creativity!