Jeffrey: I have with me Lauren Noreen. Lauren is the health and healing guide for the sensitive soul. She helps people find solution to their chronic health and weight problems. She is an eating psychology coach and life coach. She is also a writer and a regular contributor to several online publications. She is located in Boston, Massachusetts but works with clients all around the world through Skype. Lauren, welcome.
Lauren Noreen: Thank you so much, Jeffrey. I’m so happy to be here and having this conversation with you.
Jeffrey: Lauren, I wonder if you could explain a little bit about your practice.
Lauren Noreen: Sure. So I work with clients right now one-on-one, in person and over Skype. My clients typically come to me with one or more chronic health issues like headaches, chronic pain, insomnia, or anxiety. Often they also are struggling with an unhealthy relationship with food and to their body. And in my work with my clients, I use a combination of eating psychology… So considering not only what somewhat eats but their relationship with food because food is suppose to be fun, enjoyable and healing for us. So switching their relationship with food. I use lifestyle changes that are customized to their unique life and what they need, so making their lives easier and adding in simple routines and changes that help them to reduce and/or illuminate their chronic pain issues. And lastly I incorporate a lot of inner work, inner exploration, to uncover any mental, emotional roots to their chronic health issues so that they can really experience complete healing and feel like they can be in control of their bodies and lives again. I’m also a writer so I write almost weekly for a variety of online magazines about health and healing so people can also get tips and stories and inspiration from my writing around how to heal and how to live a healthier and happier lifestyle naturally.
Jeffrey: That sounds like a very well-rounded approach to your clients’ issues. What are some of the techniques that you use to get new clients?
Lauren Noreen: Sure. So ever evolving, a lot of trial and error, but I would say that’s probably three-fold. So first, I have a newsletter that I send out either bi-weekly or monthly depending on what’s going on and what I have to share with people. So through Content and through email marketing, sharing pieces of information as well as writing. So I will write a piece for an online magazine like a MindBody Green or an Elephant Journal, and that will bring people back to my website where they’ll be signing up for my free gift and my newsletter. So that’s how we’ll get to know each other and I encourage people with each newsletter to let me know what they thought about or how it made them feel so that creates the relationship.
Second networking, so getting in touch with other coaches or other practitioners in the health and healing field, other alternative practitioners like an acupuncturist or a functional medicine doctor. And lastly through speaking and tele-seminars, so getting myself in front of a group of people and sharing some useful information that can benefit people in some way so that they can get a feel of my style and of whether or not we’re a good fit. I’m still trying to figure out the magic combination of those three things, but that’s pretty much what I’m doing right now.
Jeffrey: Another related note, how do you market your business?
Lauren Noreen: Sure. That’s a great question. I have a website so people can find my website. And I have a media page and a blog page and an about-me and some other fun stuff on their so if someone finds out about my website they can get a general feel of what I stand for on it. I also use social media so I use something like the HootSuite to jump on on a Sunday night or a Monday morning and really get clear about what content I want to be sharing with people. So I have several subscribers to my Facebook page, I have a Pinterest page, a Twitter page and LinkedIn, but I would say Facebook is my primary source of social media marketing. I also send out my newsletter. And then the networking piece, so getting out there and having joint-venture meetings with other practitioners who are complimentary and figuring out whether they’re going to be referral partners. We will do a talk together, or they will put a piece out about what I do and I will put a piece out about what they do as it connects to our own clientele through a newsletter.
Jeffrey: Great. And one thing with doing all those different activities, you must have a lot of demands on your time. How do you efficiently manage your time?
Lauren Noreen: That’s an evolving question as well, an evolving answer. From the most minor detail the strategy I find the most helpful is to set timers. So based off of how I’m feeling and what my attention span feels like at the moment with what I’m working on, I’ll set a timer for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. Say I have to write a newsletter. I’ll set a timer for an hour and kind of give myself the rule that I can’t check any media, I can’t get out of the chair, and work on that. So with writing and with administrative tasks and email, stuff like that, I’ll set a timer. I stick to somewhat of a schedule. I generally meditate or exercise in the morning and in the meetings for 15 to 30 minutes so I have nice bookends to my day so that I know that at the end of the day I get to release myself from whatever was happening during the day that might have been stressful. So I stick to a pretty solid schedule during the day, which keeps me on track.
And I see clients on specific days of the week, for the most part, and I dedicate those days to just seeing clients so that I can give the amazing people that I’m working with on that day my undivided attention, clear energy. And on the other days I can really dive into something like marketing or writing or networking meetings. And I found that to be helpful because if I was doing everything in one day – I know other people can probably relate to this – you feel super scattered, like you’re running around and you’re going to be late. So I found that setting up separate days for separate things was helpful.
Jeffrey: Yes, those are some great techniques for managing time and the other activities which you’ve got to accomplish during your day. So final question: what’s the one thing you’d change about your practice if you could?
Lauren Noreen: That is such a challenging question for me. The one thing I would change… I would somehow make it easier to share content more consistently. I’m always coming with – I know we talked about this when we first chatted – ideas to share with people, inspiration, stories, revelations for people from my own life and from my practice and from the education I do and maybe setting up some kind of video studio in my office or just finding a way to make sharing content faster and easier. I find it takes a lot of time to edit the videos, put them up, write something about them and so I hesitate to share more often. But I think that it would help a lot of people to put out more content, more free content. So finding a way to just make that much easier, whether it’s through hiring an assistant or learning more about videos or creating a small studio space in the office for that. That could be something that would take less time.
Jeffrey: Lauren, you’ve shared some amazing content with us today and I’m sure that everyone really appreciates your thoughts. And thank you very much.
Lauren Noreen: Thank you, Jeffrey. This was lovely.