We recently connected with Maggie Berghoff and have shared our conversation below.

Maggie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

I started my own online functional medicine health consulting business when I was 26 years old, leaving my traditional nurse practitioner job behind. I opened it fully online from the start because I knew I wanted my lifestyle to be at the forefront, and being able to have freedom and flexibility in my days was essential to me. I wanted to wake up and have slow mornings, prioritize my wellness, work from home or wherever in the world I was, and truly design my days. What I did was set up a retainer program for clients to go through, which started off as a private six month healing program where I work 1:1 with clients to regain their health and rebalance their body. The clients pay one set price for the program, versus the one-off visit situations I was used to in traditional medicine. This helped me with income influx and client commitment, and it helped the client with full commitment to their journey and knowing I was fully dedicated to helping them each day. If I were to start over now that I know what I know, I would have gone all-in on creating a loyal following on social media. I would have stayed consistent with posting great content that grows my personal brand and my business. I would also have zoned in on a specific focus area and niche versus trying to help and attract anyone. If you’re starting of going out on your own, I 1000% recommend it if you feel in your gut this path may be for you. It’s really not as challenging as you may think, and changed my entire world for the better! I now am so fulfilled, make way more income than if I had stayed working as a nurse practitioner, get to help my ideal clients, get to work from home, travel the world with my little family, and truly have so many opportunities now that I am a business owner. Entrepreneurship is the ultimate self-growth journey!

Maggie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I first was a traditional nurse practitioner, graduating undergraduate and graduate school from Vanderbilt University. When I was in my young 20s, I experienced a lot of health complications, like fatigue no matter how long I slept, bloating no matter what I ate, dizziness, swelling, and other health problems. I finally healed my body in full after turning to anti-inflammatory eating, swapping all my hygiene and household items to non-toxic and clean versions, and personalized supplementation based off specialty functional medicine laboratory testing. After healing my own body, I knew I wanted to help others in this way. I didn’t want to work for anyone else anymore and wanted to start my own business doing things my way to truly help people in the way I had needed when I was going through my health problems. So I did just that! It was a dramatic change. I actually got married, bought my first house, got pregnant with my first baby, had our baby, and quit my “stable” nurse practitioner job to go out on my own all in one year. I’m most proud that I’ve been able to run my business fully from home while raising my now three children. After one year as a business owner my company had done so well that my husband also left his corporate job to keep raising the kids and growing the business together. I’m so proud of the risks we took to follow our dreams and the little life we’ve created for our family. I’m also so proud of the impact we’re making in the lives of others. We’ve helped people around the world heal their body, I’m a wellness author and speaker now so consistently help others with their health, and we now own a business and marketing education company helping thousands of coaches and consultants of all backgrounds grow their own online business. It’s pretty surreal and I’m so grateful every day. Now, I spend most of my time supporting our business clients in opening and growing their own online businesses, and leading our small yet mighty team. My husband and I have just move from Nashville, TN and built our dream home back in Indiana near our family. Every day we are focused on becoming the best versions of ourselves in all areas of life.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

The most effective strategy for growing your clientele is hands down social media, specifically instagram and/or TikTok. We’ve assessed all of our most successful business clients and social media growth it the biggest factor for their growth. In our own companies, instagram and tiktok have a direct impact on our client growth. Nearly every client and every opportunity comes from instagram and tiktok! It’s amazing and I feel every business owner should just zone in on instagram or tiktok for their business and eliminate all the other distractions.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Oh gosh I have a zillion stories that could illustrate my resilience! I feel this is a skillset essential to entrepreneurship and thankfully it comes very naturally to me so I’m able to bounce back from things that would cripple many others. One example could be when the night prior to our first big online course launch, my new assistant accidentally deleted our entire sales funnel. YEP, gone. It was a huge lesson learned because the website builder we were on did not back up all their sites so we couldn’t go back in time and regain anything. Instead of freaking out, I had a little cry, wiped my tears, and got to work. I rebuilt the entire funnel from scratch by myself after my newborn baby, one year old, and three year old had fallen asleep. I launched the course that next morning still and made it happen. I kept my cool with the assistant who had made the mistake. And after the launch was over I immediately transferred our entire business off that website platform and onto a major well-known platform that backs up all their data and content. I truly feel like I could go on with another 100 stories right now, but will save that for another day. You must be resilient as an entrepreneur.

Contact Info:

• Website: Business site for those wanting to build their own online coaching/consulting business: maggieberghoff.com // Health site for those wanting to rebalance their body and feel their best: eattotreat.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggie_berghoff/
• Other: TikTok: @maggie_berghoff for personal brand and health / @maggie.berghoff for business consulting/coaching