If I Was Starting My Nutrition Business From Scratch, I'd Do This First

What should you do first when you start a nutrition business?

If I were starting my nutrition business from scratch, the first thing I'd build is an email list, right alongside my social media from day one. An email list is the one audience you actually own, so nobody else decides whether the people on it hear from you. If you're working out how to start a nutrition business, set it up before you chase followers, not after.

I learnt this the slow way. In nearly a decade of building my previous business, The Children's Nutritionist, online (I closed it in April 2026), I spent years building audiences in places I didn't control. I wish I could go back and tell 2017 Sarah this!

Is a Facebook group worth it for a nutrition business?

A Facebook group can be a lovely place to find people and start conversations, but it isn't an audience you own. Facebook decides how many of your members actually see what you post, and that number can be tiny.

My Facebook group grew to around 6,000 people. For a while it was brilliant: people were asking questions, sharing tips and recipes, and chatting to each other. So in my head, I had a massive audience I could reach whenever I wanted to.

Then the engagement started to drop, the group got quieter and quieter, and I decided to close it. I put up a post telling everyone, and when I looked at how many people had seen it, I thought, "Well, surely that can't be right." 73 people. 73 people out of around 6,000.

That was a huge lightbulb moment. I hadn't built a 6,000-person audience at all. I'd built an audience on Facebook, and Facebook decided who saw me. So here's the question I'd ask about your own group or page: if you had something genuinely important to say tomorrow, how many of those people could you actually reach?

Do social media followers turn into paying clients?

Social media followers don't automatically turn into paying clients. People often follow you because they enjoy your content, which isn't the same as wanting to buy from you. And even the followers you have can stop seeing you when the platforms change.

At one point I had around 45,000 followers across different platforms. My posts were being saved and shared, my DMs were busy and my follower count kept going up. It was very easy to look at those numbers and think, "This is working. Wahey!"

And in some ways it was. But then the platforms changed, the way people consumed content changed, and the reach my content was getting massively dropped. Despite the audience I'd spent years building, I didn't have anywhere near the visibility I once had.

I've had clients in exactly this position. They can have thousands of followers, loads of views and content people really enjoy, and still not have consistent clients. People following you doesn't mean people buying from you.

Is blogging still worth it for health professionals now AI overviews are here?

Blogging can still be worth it for health professionals, but owning your website isn't the same as owning your traffic. If most of your readers find you through Google, Google decides whether they find you, and changes in how people search can cut that traffic sharply.

For years my blog worked brilliantly for The Children's Nutritionist. At its peak, it was getting around 130,000 readers a month, and I was incredibly proud of that. The website was mine, so I assumed this was the one thing I did own.

Then the way people searched online started changing, and AI overviews have recently had a big part to play in that. The same content that had once brought huge numbers of people to my website wasn't bringing in anywhere near the same traffic. The numbers plummeted.

By then I'd watched the exact same pattern three times: with my Facebook group, with social media and with my blog. Every one of those audiences was built on land I didn't own.

Can you build a business without social media marketing?

You can build a business that doesn't depend on social media marketing, but I wouldn't build one without it. Instagram, Facebook groups and blogs are all brilliant places to find people and get their attention. The problem is stopping there.

The better question to ask is, "What am I building that I actually control?" I spent years getting really good at building audiences, but nowhere near enough time building one I owned, could rely on and could reach whenever I wanted to.

So I'm definitely not saying don't build a following on Instagram, don't start a Facebook group or don't write blogs. I'm saying think about how you'll turn that attention into an audience you can take with you, one where your relationship with people isn't down to an algorithm deciding whether they see you today.

Why is an email list the most valuable asset in a nutrition business?

An email list is the most valuable asset in a nutrition business because nothing sits between you and the people on it. There's no platform deciding who sees your emails, no algorithm limiting your reach and no search engine deciding whether you're found.

At its biggest, my email list had around 20,000 people on it, and for years I don't think I fully appreciated how valuable that was. It became obvious when I closed The Children's Nutritionist. The Facebook group was gone, my social media had changed in many ways and the blog traffic had dropped.

But the email list? The email list was all still there. In fact, I had to actively delete it, because it was an asset that just wasn't going to disappear on its own. (Wonderful, wonderful email.)

How do you use social media to grow your email list?

The simplest way to use social media to grow your email list is to give people who find you there a reason to leave the platform and join your list. Treat every platform you show up on as a way to feed the one audience you own.

So when someone discovers me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or wherever else I'm showing up, I'm not just trying to get them to follow me. I'm inviting them off the platform and onto my email list.

The lesson here is not to wait until you've built a big following before you start your email list. Build it alongside your social media from the very beginning.

And if you're feeling frustrated because you're putting in the effort but not getting consistent clients, don't jump straight to working harder or posting more. Take a step back first and check you're doing the right things in the right order. Doing them in the wrong order can cost you a lot of time, and it can cost you clients too.

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The right steps, in the right order for building your successful nutrition business. Get your 22 point step-by-step workbook here: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/master-plan

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Episode transcription:

Sarah Almond Bushell: Welcome along. If I had to start my nutrition business again from scratch tomorrow, there are definitely a lot of things that I would do differently. But there's one thing in particular that I'd make sure I started building right from the very beginning. I wish I could go back in time and tell 2017 Sarah this now. And in today's episode, I'm going to tell you what that one thing is, why I think it matters so much and why I wish I'd started so much sooner.

Like most business owners, when you're starting and building a business, I was figuring things out as I went. I was trying lots of different things and working out through trial and error what was actually worth putting my time and energy into. But now after nearly a decade of building an online business, I have learned a lot about what it's actually worth giving your time to and what really isn't.

So in today's episode, I'm gonna give you the one piece of advice that I wish I could go back and give myself when I was in the early stages of growing my children's nutritionist business online. If you're new to business, you're in the perfect place because you can hear this before you've had a chance to make some of the mistakes that I did. And if you've been in business for a while, don't switch off and assume this doesn't apply to you because there's a very good chance that what I'm gonna be talking to you about today is one of the things that you've seriously underestimated and probably aren't giving enough time or attention to. So no matter where you're currently at in your business, this one is definitely worth a listen. By now you're probably itching to know what this one big thing is. So grab a cuppa and let's get into it.

Now, when I first took my nutrition business online, I knew that if I wanted clients and I wanted to make more income, I needed more people to find me. But beyond that, I was pretty much figuring it out as I went.

And like most people starting a business, I assumed that if I could just get more people paying attention to what I was doing, then I was going to be heading in the right direction. And so that's what I focused on. I focused on creating content. I started to build an audience. I experimented with different platforms. I started a Facebook group. I grew my blog traffic. I was basically trying to get as many eyeballs as possible to know who I was and what I could help them with. And actually, over the years, I got pretty good at it. My Facebook group grew to around 6,000 people. My social media following grew to around 45,000 people across the different platforms. And at its peak, my blog was getting around 130,000 readers every single month. So from the outside, you might look at those numbers and think, well, surely that's exactly what you want.

And at the time, it was pretty much what I thought too. I was building an audience. People were finding me. People were reading my stuff and people were following me. Happy days, right? I was creating this thing that in my head was going to keep getting bigger and more valuable over time. But, and you might've guessed this already, that isn't quite what happened. And this is the bit that took me quite a few years to really understand.

Because when you're building a business, it's very easy to assume that anything you spend years building and have some success with must automatically become a valuable business asset. But that isn't necessarily true. You can spend years growing something, put an enormous amount of time and energy into it, get thousands of people following you online, and then discover you don't have as much control over it as you initially thought. And then suddenly, the thing that you've worked so hard to build becomes much less valuable than it was before. Not because you did anything wrong or because you stopped showing up, but because something outside of your control changed. And I know that because it's happened to me more than once. When I look back at the things that I spent all that time building, I can see something now that I definitely didn't see at the time. There was a pattern happening as I was building my audience in different places.

And once I spotted that pattern, it completely changed how I thought about what is actually worth building in a business. So let me give you an example of what I mean, because it's probably the clearest example that I've got for you. And this was my Facebook group. I spent years building this Facebook group. At one point, there was around 6,000 people in it. So in my head, I had this massive audience of people who were interested in what I did, who knew who I was, who I thought I could reach whenever I wanted to. Now at the time, I felt like I'd built something really valuable because surely if you've got 6,000 people sitting inside a group that you built, that's a pretty big win, right? Except I didn't actually own that audience and I didn't really understand the significance of that at the time. So for a while, everything was great. The group was really active. People were posting and asking lots of questions.

There were some really great conversations happening, sharing tips, sharing recipes. People were chatting to each other. But gradually the engagement started to drop and the group became quieter and quieter. And eventually I made the decision to close down that Facebook group.

So I put up a post telling everyone inside that the group was closing. And I remember looking at the number of people who had actually seen that post and thinking, "well, surely that can't be right" Do you know how many people saw the post? 73. 73 people out of a group of around 6,000 people. And that was just a huge light bulb moment for me because despite there being around 6,000 people in that group, when I actually had something I needed to tell them, I could only reach a tiny fraction of them. I spent years thinking I've built this 6,000 person audience, but actually I hadn't. I built an audience on Facebook and Facebook decided how many of those people actually saw what I posted. It's really important you understand this distinction in your own business too, because if you're at the stage where you're building an audience online right now, I really want you to think about this. How much of that audience do you actually have access to? Not how many followers have you got on Instagram or how many people are in your Facebook group, but if you actually had something genuinely important to say tomorrow, how many of these people could you actually reach? And that was a question I don't think I'd ever really considered until I had 6,000 people in a group and realised that I couldn't actually talk to most of them.

Now you might be listening and thinking, okay, but that's Facebook groups. Maybe you're not building a Facebook group for your business. Maybe your thing is Instagram for that instance. Well, if that's the case, let me also tell you about what happened with my social media audience there, because this is where I actually really started to see just how fragile some of the things that I'd spent years building actually were. So at one point I had around 45,000 followers across the different social media platforms. And again, at that time, it felt like a pretty big deal. I'd spent years creating content, growing my audience, getting more and more people to follow me. And there were definitely periods where my content was getting really, really good reach. My posts were being saved and shared. Lots of people were commenting. My DMs were really active. My follower count was going up. So was really easy to look at those numbers and think, this is working. Wahey.

And in some ways it was working because I was reaching lots of people for a decent amount of time. But then the exact same thing started to happen here too. The platforms changed, the way people consumed content changed. And as a result, the reach that my content was getting massively dropped. And eventually I got to a point where despite the audience that I'd spent years building, I didn't have anywhere near the same kind of visibility that I once had. And there was another problem I hadn't really thought about when I was busy chasing the follower numbers. I'd built an audience of people who followed me because they liked my content, but that didn't necessarily mean that they were people who wanted to buy from me. And you know what? That is a really important distinction that you need to think about in your business as well. Because I've had clients like this. They can have thousands of people following them. They can get loads of views and engagement on their content.

They create content that people genuinely enjoy. But none of that necessarily means cash for your business. People following you doesn't mean buying from you. And that was another big lesson for me. Now, before we get into what all of this means, the one thing I'd be focusing more of my time on, if I was starting my business from scratch, there's one final part of this that I think it's really worth talking about.

And that's blogs. If you're currently spending time writing and uploading blogs for your business, I want you to pay attention to this one too. Maybe you've spent years creating really useful content that brings people to your website through Google searches. I did the exact same thing for years. SEO, it was the thing. And at the time, I thought it was a pretty reliable way of building an audience because after all, the website was mine. That was something I did own.

But the reality is I owned the website, but I didn't own the traffic coming to the website. So as I said earlier, at its peak, my blog was getting around 130,000 readers a month, and I was incredibly proud of that. But as most of those people were finding me through Google, just like with social media, I was relying on another platform to decide whether people found me or not.

For years, my blogs worked brilliantly for my children's nutritionist business. So again, it was very easy to think, well, this is an asset that I've built. But then the way people were searching online started changing and AI overviews have recently had a big part to play here. So suddenly the same content that I'd once brought a huge number of people to my website wasn't bringing in anywhere near the same amount of traffic.

The numbers massively plummeted. So I'd now experienced the exact same pattern that happened with my Facebook group, with my Instagram, and now with my blog. Every one of those audiences was built on land that I didn't own, and every one of them was owned and controlled by somebody else. And that's when I started to realise that there was a bigger question that I should have been asking all along. What am I building that I actually control?

Because I spent years getting really good at building audiences, but I hadn't spent nearly enough time building an audience that I actually owned and could rely on and reach whenever I wanted to. And ultimately that's the lesson that I want you to take away from this episode. So just to be clear, I'm definitely not saying don't build a following on Instagram or don't start a Facebook group or don't write blogs. All of those things can still be incredibly valuable. They're all brilliant places to find people, get their attention and be visible. But I don't want you to stop there. I want you to think about how you're going to turn that attention into an audience that you can actually take with you, an audience that you can contact reliably whenever you need to, build a proper relationship that isn't dependent upon an algorithm deciding whether they see you or not today.

And now this brings us nicely to the one thing I would focus more of my time and energy on if I was starting my nutrition business from scratch. And that one thing is wonderful, wonderful email because the one audience I built that was different was my email list. At its biggest, it had around 20,000 people on it. And for years, I don't really think I fully appreciated just how valuable that asset was because unlike my Facebook group, there wasn't a platform deciding who got to see my emails. And unlike social media, there wasn't an algorithm sitting between me and the people who wanted to hear from me. And unlike my blog, I wasn't relying on Google to decide whether people saw my work. I could actually reach them. And that became even more obvious when I closed my nutrition business in April this year. The Facebook group was gone. My social media had changed in many ways. The blog traffic had dropped.

But the email list? The email list was still all there and I had to actively delete it because it was an asset that just wasn't going to disappear on its own. So there we have it. If I was starting my nutrition business from scratch, one of the first things I would do is set up an asset that I owned from the very beginning. In other words, an email list so that when someone discovers me on Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or wherever else I'm showing up, I'm not just trying to get them to follow me. I'm giving them a reason to come off the platform and join my email list, something I own. So the lesson today for you is don't wait until you've built a big social media following to start building your email list. Build the email list alongside that social media following from the very, very beginning and use your social media platforms to feed it.

What we've talked about today is just one example about how easy it is to do things in the wrong order in your business. And doing things in the wrong order can cost you a lot of time. It can cost you clients and it can leave you constantly frustrated because you're putting in all of the effort, but you're not seeing the results that you want. So the next time you're feeling frustrated because you're not getting consistent clients, don't jump to the conclusion that you need to work harder or post more.

First, just take a step back and work out whether you're doing things in the right order. If I had to start my nutrition business again from scratch, there's actually 22 things that I would do and I'd do them in a very specific order. I've written these down, these 22 steps and put the whole thing into a free guide for you. I've called it the Master Plan. Essentially, it's 22 steps to building your health business in the right order. When I started following these steps in the Master Plan, I was able to make £124,000 in just two years after starting my nutrition business in the online space. So you can go ahead and download the free master plan using the link in the show notes of this episode. Bye for now.