I graduated from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in November 2018 and my son at the time was 21 months old.
I remember having so many great ideas on what I wanted to do with my Health Coach Training Certification that I couldn’t wait to get started.
I had been self-employed as an independent contractor within the occupational rehabilitation industry and had these grand ideas about how I was going to transform the industry.
I also had an online business where I was really passionate about women’s health and how I wanted to deepen my service offerings to impact more women. I was really divided in where I was going to focus my energies.
So I did both.
In the meantime, I had a goal to night-wean my son off the boobies when he reached 2 years of age and hopefully in due time, he’d wean himself naturally from the day feeds so I could really focus on ALL of my projects (you’re probably already getting a sense of where this is going.)
If you’re wondering why I chose to study with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, you can read all about it here but today I’m going to focus more on what’s happened since I graduated.
I had declared 2019 was going to be my best year yet.
Did that happen?
Well I was right about one thing, it was my best year yet because I fell pregnant with our second and we were so happy that my son was going to have a baby brother as a Christmas present.
In the chaos of motherhood, running a natural parenting mothers group, taking my son to his weekly activities, working in my consulting business, maintaining my online wellness business and JUST being “oh you know” pregnant whilst trying to work on several coaching projects, I felt I was running on a treadmill and not getting anywhere with anything.
I teamed up with one of my besties and we were creating opportunities to work with national brands, having serious conversations with decision makers of companies and penciled in workshops for the year but things started to unravel and fall apart because we were heavily reliant on other people to pull through.
So one of the biggest lessons I learnt from that experience, is to start small.
I don’t mean start with small thinking but if I could do 2019 all over again, it would be to write down all those big ideas and just park them when I have the time and resources to dedicate to them because in hind-sight, I was about to have a baby!
So between coaching calls, I did managed to squeeze in a talk for Blacktown City Council for Women’s Health Week and built relationships to do more workshops in 2020.
Can you have a career as a Health Coach?
Yes.
Full-time? It’s a choice.
For me, right now I choose to work part-time because my life is dedicated to raising a threeanger and a 6 month old baby.
It’s all about having a small happy little practice where I can wake up and love what I do and it resolves around the needs of every changing and growing family.
My practice is online and have clients nationally.
Initially I had expected to grow my practice seeing clients face-to-face like I did in 2019 but then Covid19 happened.
But turns out having an online practice just made more sense since I breastfeed between appointments.
So if you’re a mum or time-poor and have so many competing priorities but have been imaging your life as a health coach, then it’s totally possible.
You don’t necessarily have to have everything worked out, I certainly didn’t after I graduated.
Almost 75% of our students have clients
Institute for Integrative Nutrition
before they graduate.
My health coaching practice has evolved as I do life.
Get a sneak peak into the information and inspiration that IIN’s Health Coach Training Program has to offer and enjoy a free sample class from their online curriculum on me.
The next class starts July 20th. If you have any questions or would love to chat more, you can contact me directly.
As an IIN Ambassador, I know it helped me so much to be able to talk to health coaches who were working in the field, so don’t be shy!
You can call IIN and say I referred you “Merly Hartnett” on a dedicated line (844) 315-8547 (U.S.) or +1 (212) 730-5433 (International) for discounts on tuition and additional bonuses.
