This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey there, welcome. Thank you for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau, your host. Today's episode is part of a new feature we've been doing, I guess, ever since the first week of the year. The feature of the segment is called your first $1,000.
And as you might guess, it's all about how someone made their first $1,000. Today's version has a bit of a modification, which I will explain in a moment. And this feature today comes to us from Brooke Thomas in New Haven, Connecticut. We have featured Brooke's work a couple of times over the years, at least. She is a leader in the wellness world.
She's operated several different businesses over the years, including her own bodywork practice for most of that time, also a podcast, and also what you're gonna hear about today, a business incubator, a wellness business incubator specifically. Now here's a fun fact and also the modification of today's segment. Brooke's first $1,000 with this particular business was actually $18,000. Now, just to be clear, we have not upgraded the segment. It's not first $18,000 that you're gonna hear every week.
It's just that in this case, her first income for the new project came in the form of course registration. And she had people sign up to the tune of about $18,000. I also believe she's well underway with her second cohort now. In this story, she mentions the first one. So let's hear it from her.
I'll come back at the end with a very quick wrap-up. [Music]
Hi, I'm Brooke Thomas, founder of the Healing Arts Business Incubator, where I help professionals who are trained to provide holistic healthcare services with a hybrid of an online course and individualized business and financial mentoring. I myself have been in the holistic healthcare fields as a manual therapist in something called Rolfing for over 20 years. And I'm also trained as an embodied coach and a financial counselor. I learned a lesson this year about listening to what people were telling me they actually needed and wanted.
So I've run a podcast for a number of years whose main listeners or people who do work within what can broadly be called the Healing Arts. People like body workers, acupuncturists, naturopathic doctors, therapists, et cetera. But it's really not a business oriented podcast. However, it is precisely these businesses. And typically we are in self-employed private practice models, which have been hit really hard by the pandemic.
As we have been able to resume working in fits and starts over the last 18 months or so, many of us are grappling with wanting to make changes either to the way we offer our private practice or figuring out what else is available as a means of delivering our services in a new format. Things like online courses, online studios, or subscription models, just to name a few. Because I've had Healing Arts businesses both online and in person over the last 20 plus years, the people who listened to my podcast began reaching out to ask me if they could talk about their business model and do some brainstorming with me. Now, years ago, I ran something called Practice Abundance, which taught people in these fields how to grow their private practice specifically, but I had retired that offering long ago. The inquiries kept coming, however, so I decided I could offer a version of that older offering, which attended to this very unique moment in time now, when many of us are rethinking how we offer our work.
This meant I could broaden out from teaching simply how to grow a private practice to teaching in a more robust way, what the main building blocks are of putting together businesses like this. It also allowed me to support the kinds of well-trained service providers in the Healing Arts that I wanted to see thriving, to let them know that to make a good living and pivot in their business did not mean they had to become what I call a magical being on Instagram and follow the wellness influencer model, which is just a personal pet cause of mine, keeping well-trained providers in business over those who are maybe just charismatic and good at social media, which we happen to see a lot of, particularly in the wellness world. With that, I decided to launch the Healing Arts Business Incubator, which is a 12-week learning and coaching program. To work through the more unique issues that any business might face in this transitional time, I knew a one-size-fits-all class wasn't really gonna work, but I also knew there had to be a class component, that there are these basic building blocks that we do need to learn and also need the support to implement. The hybrid class and coaching model suited me well, and it really met the needs of the participants well.
Having not worked explicitly as a business coach in many years, I didn't have any promotional materials, letting people know that I had done that work in the past or how to connect with that. So to get the word out, I just decided, if this many people who listened to my podcast were emailing me privately about their business questions, if I messaged my whole mailing list, there were probably a few others who would be happy to hear about the offering. I put together a landing page first, and I just did that using lead pages, which took me a few hours. I wrote one article about some of the myths that we're told about what we should be doing to branch out in our businesses, and I taught one free webinar looking at how a variety of healing arts businesses have fit their offering, their services, into many different kinds of business models. I also sent out maybe three emails about it.
So all in all, there was a landing page, article, a free webinar, and three emails. And I sent that out to the people who had subscribed to my newsletter in the past who were particularly interested in hearing updates about the podcast. And I enrolled 10 people for the first cohort, which made me $18,000 as my first income for the healing arts business incubator. And I was really happy with the way that I had put the offering together. Right now, we are just concluding that first 12-week cohort.
It has been a joy to work with these people and to see their ideas take shape and get launched out into the world. I am right now also working to open the next cohort in January, that kicks off first week of February. And I look forward to seeing who I get to meet and support in that next go round. - Thanks so much to Brooke for telling us about her first $1,000, or in this case, her first $18,000 with a new project. As you heard, she's done a bunch of different stuff, always iterating, always trying new things, which I really, really respect.
And I hope you found this update encouraging, especially if you are in the wellness world. You might wanna check out her website, brookthomas.me, Brooke Thomas with an E, B-R-O-O-K-E, thomas.me/incubator. It's also a very well-designed site. If you're curious to see examples of how someone might sell something like this, even in a different field, check it out. We will link it up in the notes page as well.
You've got a question or an update for us about your hustle, sidehustleschool.com/questions. Let me know what you're up to. And those notes are at sidehustleschool.com/19131913. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you'll subscribe or follow and come back tomorrow.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
