In 2017, I was struggling in my functional nutrition practice for five out of the past six years. My Master’s program didn’t teach us a thing about marketing or running a practice. I joined a small clinic and hoped for the best. I read all the business websites, blogs, books, etc., I could get my hands on, but it felt like I was drinking from the firehose of entrepreneurial knowledge, and it was super overwhelming. I’d start down one path after another, only to abandon it before I’d gotten anywhere. One year I got lucky and I found one star client who did all the services I had to offer. If I had just two of them, I would have reached six figures!
At the end of 2017, I was tired of the ups and (mostly) downs and I was all fired up to start all over again and strike out completely on my own instead of as a contractor in someone else’s clinic. I spent November and December visioning my business, my life, and my best self. I was inspired! I was ready!
Then in January 2018, my dear Dad took a turn for the worse in his 10-year battle with cancer. After a valiant effort to stay with his beloved family, on February 3, he passed away.
My 100-year-old Grandma, who was like my second mom, took the news of her son’s death hard. A few days later, my sister and I became her full-time caretakers after she had the first of a few strokes.
The next day, my Mom left town to be at her own mother’s bedside. Nine days later, my other Grandma “crossed the rainbow bridge.” My two grandmothers had been friends for 75 years! My husband stayed in town to support us even though his father went into the hospital with a brain hemorrhage (he pulled through and is still with us). All this and February wasn’t even over yet.
Over the first three months of being Grandma’s nurse at home, I lost the few steady clients I had. She was finally admitted into a nursing home, and I went there a few times a week to supervise her care. So we could sleep again at night, but my mind was so not in business mode.
It wasn’t until then (in April) that I could even think about doing my parents’ taxes and making all the final financial arrangements after Dad’s departure. Then there was attending and planning all the funerals.
During all of this, my husband’s mother was struggling with dementia. In August, just 5 days shy of her 101st birthday, my paternal Grandma joined her son in the afterlife. Two weeks later, my husband’s mother joined the growing family party in the Infinite.
Just one more funeral to plan and one more to attend. I felt like maybe the rip tides that kept pulling me under every time I caught my breath were finally over. This all would have been tough enough even without the specter of poverty looming over our heads since I only made four figures in 2018 and my husband had a lean year, too.
I was determined but also desperate and almost completely broke. Somehow, Marisa’s EPM program appeared in my inbox from a JV partner and I was drawn to watch the entire promo video series. I was convinced this is what I needed, but I hesitated. Was this the way I should spend my last $2000 of credit? At the last minute, I went for it.
I dove into the lessons and stayed up late every night that first week. Bad idea. I made one sale for $297 in November, before the flu knocked me down for a week. Just when I thought I was fine, some other weird bug took residence in my body and for 3 weeks I struggled through the EPM lessons. Finally in the last week I had to give in and stay in bed and focus 100% on healing. For someone who normally doesn’t get sick, this was not only frustrating, it was alarming. I started to wonder if my subconscious was doing this to me, as if I really were so afraid of success that I decided to make myself ill.
In the home stretch at the end of January, I made one 1:1 sale for $1794 and I’m claiming this toward Mission Accomplished because this is someone who wanted to work with me on an even deeper level after learning what I had to offer during our discovery call. I wasn’t expecting a Hail Mary play in the end, but it happened!
I wouldn’t be here without Marisa and her wonderful team. I’m still planning to market some more during February and to begin the course in mid-March so I’ll have more than two students. I’m more than happy with the results and I would recommend EPM to anyone who’s struggling with their business! Thank you so much!