Noob School - Episode 59: INHALE-EXHALE: Growing A Small Breath Work Business With Sales Noob Perrin White

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

BREATHE IN, BREATHE OUTBreathing is one of the basics of living. If we have some trouble with our health, one of the best treatments is going back to the basics, breathing. Now how does someone with no business background grow her small business? Just like breathing, go to the basics, make an offer people can’t refuse, and start small in your area. These are the things Perrin White has done to grow her small business, and you will learn more about her basic yet successful strategies in this latest episode of Noob School. WISDOM FOR THE NOOBSJOHN: The secret to making big money“I'm always willing to give away a free online session just to help show people what I'm doing because it's going to come back to me if I can at least build up some awareness through offering something for free, and then get people excited about it.”DUSTIN: Be successful in sales by finding the right mentor“I work with startups, a lot of tech startups in town on how to get those first 10 customers. A mistake they typically make is they think about the whole world they think about, I've got a million potential customers, and I want to touch them all, and I'm always like, no, no, no, no, no stick within right around here. You only need 10.” Connect with Perrin and learn more about his work:LinkedIn | Instagram Connect with Noob School and John by visiting the following links:LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | TikTok | Website

Well, something that I did actually, I launched 1111. So I was kind of going to people's homes and some was online and then sometimes they come to me and it just wasn't working. And mostly because I started getting busier and I was like, this isn't going to work. So I launched a full online platform where they schedule online, they find their own session, they go ahead and pay. So basically it's taking a lot of like my busy work out of it. And so I've been running a promotion, like if you shared a reel that I posted the new launch

at this online platform. If you share it with the link to the platform and you tag somebody, you'll be in or to win a free online session. And I'm always willing to give away a free online session just to help show people what I'm doing because it's going to come back to me.

If I can at least build up some awareness through offering something for free and then get people excited about it. And then what I can do is like take a picture from the actual session and then I can use that, I don't know, for some promotion later. Welcome back to Noob School.

This is where we interview successful business owners, and we dial it back to the beginning and figure out what they did to make their revenue grow. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to Noob School. Today I've got Perrin White with me, and Perrin has a company called Breathe Well, Be Well. I'm a customer. I've used the product. You can probably tell I'm more well than ever from all this breathing.

But I work with Parent a little bit on building her customer base because she didn't come from a sales background per se. She had to kind of figure out how to get customers and how to sell. So we thought we'd come in a day and talk about that process, kind of see how you're doing. And maybe for some of the folks listening, it might be interesting to hear how someone is figuring out how to do sales with this new business of yours. So welcome aboard. and love for you to start by telling us about the business. Thank you, John. Thanks for having me.

Sure. Thanks for inviting me and being a customer. Breathe well, be well is essentially functional breath work and meditation. So I am standing on these three pillars, which is I want to inform, empower, and support every client and customer that I have. That comes with understanding what the breath is, what it isn't, how they can find it in their body, and then how do I support them? because the majority of America is over-breathing, dysfunctional breathing, sleep apnea, anxiety, stress.

Over-breathing? Over-breathing? What does that mean? Over-breathing means you're breathing too quickly. Oh. So if you breathe very quickly, that also is hyperventilation. Okay. And I don't know how deep into the science you want to get, but essentially when you slush off all that CO2, you're losing your ability to oxygenate your blood cells.

And the thing is these are really complex and also simple concepts at the same time. I want to be able to help each client understand some breathing exercises that they can do right now, as well as help them find some form of meditation. So combining bottom up, which is the breathwork, top down, which is the meditation, and finding something for difficult emotions, difficulty breathing. And then if they need an E&T or if they need to go to see a dentist, if they need a therapeutic massage to work on some of the muscles. I can help them through that.

And I would say a lot of it came from my background in speech pathology. Myo-functional therapy, yoga instructor and a breath coach, as well as my personal journey through upper airway resistance, battling through addiction because I was given the wrong thing for a misdiagnosis, which stem from poor sleep, from poor breathing. And just understanding that we can make sense, small, subtle shifts in our behavioral changes that will make huge shifts in our lifespan and also our overall help. Okay. Yeah. So you said something that's interesting. One of the things we

talk about with the Noob School a lot is people getting into something that they're interested in and sticking with it and kind of chain, you know, chaining one thing to another. So you did speech pathology for 10 years. And you noticed how important all this other stuff was to that? Is that right? I would say the first eight years of speech pathology, I just was kind of peripheral, like I didn't really dig in. And it wasn't until I went to go see at E&T because my tonsils were so large

because I kept getting strep throat, actually the same one that I sent you to. Essentially, he said your septum's deviated, your turbinates are enlarge, and you've got enormous tonsils. I was like, well, let's fix it. And it wasn't until that surgery was completed. And I finally was able to take a true, full, deep breath through my nose that I realized, oh my God, what else have I been wrong about? And that was the first shift.

I would say the huge paradigm shift of like, how do I reevaluate and relook at these things that I'm just doing unconsciously or subconsciously in breathings with that, as well as where my tongue's resting, as well as my thought patterns. And that's, that was the baby seed of breathe well, be well, because essentially I want you to be able to breathe well. to be well and to also have appropriate and functional thought patterns. Yeah. So you're all about the breathing. Yeah.

And it makes perfectly good sense based on your background and yoga also. How about the comparison between, you know, breathing, sleeping, nutrition, water? Yeah. I mean, how would you rank those? So I say a lot. It's kind of like a triangle. So if you're thinking about the hierarchy, breathing and respiration, your airway, that is the ground level. Got to do that.

Oh, my God, if you're not breathing, you're dead. And if you're not breathing well, you better believe everything else that's stacked on top of it is going to be impacted. Now, nutrition, just like breathing, is something you do every single day. The amount of water in your body, that's also something that you should be doing every single day. So these are pretty fundamental, rudimentary things to your overall health. What I will say is the way that you breathe makes contact to your entire body, all of your muscles, all of your tissue,

and also it's your autonomic nervous system which is fully connected to your entire body. So while you can make shifts and all those things, I would say start with the breath. And then as you get your breath, and what I'm talking about breath is I mean, I want you to be able to breathe slowly to recognize when your upper chest breathing

to be able to make changes because even though that's something, that we do autonomically, we also can make voluntary volitional control and changes to our breath. So just by being aware of, am I breathing through my mouth, am I breathing up in my chest, am I breathing really quickly, which we don't want to be doing. If we can recognize that and then we can shift it into tongue up, lips closed through the nose, deep diaphragmatic breathing, you're going to be able to change your physiological response to any scenario. And that's also going to help give you more support of how you tackle really hard things, which as I've learned in life, I'm sure you have too.

All we have is challenge and change. And if you understand that's okay, that's not a bad thing, but you can change the way that you approach each example and each experience and knowing that these are the things we get to prepare for, that we get to make changes for, and that we're going to be okay as long as we have our breath. Okay. So before we get into sales, one more question on the business. You know, when I talk to you, you know, today and other times we've talked about this, it just makes so much sense that breathing is kind of like a foundational thing that we should all be doing, which makes us live longer and kind of be more calm and peaceful and joyous, I suppose, you know, if we breathe right.

I'd say present. Present. Yeah. So why is it not more popular? There's a lot of things that I think. Shall we dive in? I mean, one, it's not profitable. These are free tools.

Like you, your body knows how to breathe. Somewhere along the way is forgotten. Additionally, it's so, I would say, rampant of over-breathing, dysfunctional breathing. So additionally, what I would say is I can remember when people, when I'm, I would be faced with like maybe my tongue prior to fixing my tongue posture, my airway. If anyone ever said something's wrong with you, immediately you get this wall up. I'm on defense mode because what does that mean if something's wrong with us? That means that we're not okay.

And what I would say is if you can go at it from curiosity versus criticism, you're going to be okay. But additionally, you have to make behavioral changes. And that's not easy because we get stuck in ruts. What if we come up with like a breathing pill we could sell through big pharma to make a fortune? I think that's called the placebo effect. The breathing pill. So what I would say is breathing is an inside job is from the inside out.

Pharmaceuticals is an outside job from the outside end. And we're not going to change anything from the outside in. We're going to change from the inside out. And it's really, that's why I want to blend the meditation with the functional breathing. Because once you get your breathing right, then you're actually able to absorb this information. And the information is, I'm okay, I'm not broken from the inside out. That means it doesn't matter what changes in your work schedule, what changes in your finances, what changes might occur from a pandemic.

You have the interior resilience to be okay. And you also have the tools to know that you can handle what's coming your way. So I think that's remarkable. My little sales pitch is I've been in and out of yoga, you know, for 15 years. And they gave me a little bit of appreciation for breathing. There's some, but they do a lot of other things. But working with you, it's like 60 minutes, you know, twice a month of really drilling down to how I can improve my meditation practice or breathing or whatever. So anyway, I'm a big fan.

So let's talk about getting into the sales part of your business. What was that like? So I love stories. I love metaphors. I like meeting people where they are, and I like networking. I also like making friends. So what I would say, what I started off doing is I realized I was going to have a lot of education to do, a lot of explaining what the heck am I even doing.

So I really started off, I started off first at Core Grow Strong, which is the studio here, teaching there. And as I started to practice and grow and really kind of get my groove, it's like, okay, well, then I can go to different studios. different studios. So I now also teach at Block Haven. But on top of that, I started going to different female-owned, because I'm a female, obviously, but I wanted to collaborate. So I do lots of workshops. So I do one with Sun's Soil, it's called Meditations and Mimosas. I did one with the booty shop, which we got to actually do an explicit breathwork of meditation because there's not just

one form of meditation. Additionally, I've collaborated with a lot of dental offices and chiropractors. I'll go give their clients, or excuse me, I'll give their office a session so that I actually show them what I'm talking about. Because if you can say to your customer or to your patient, this is what I did personally and this is how it impacted me. And what I've realized because I've been on the other side of I can't just show you like, hey, this is the feeling you will have. You have to actually experience it. And what I would say, what I'm offering is an experience. So by allowing the people that can refer other customers or other clients to me, the experience. then they actually know what they're doing because you are the expert of your experience.

No one can take that away from you. And if you can say I was struggling with some anxiety, I was really having a harder time breathing, and parent helped me with XYZ. That I think is pretty powerful and it's been pretty helpful. So your approach from a standing start, starting your business, was to offer your service to different businesses around town. explain what you do. Hopefully some of them sign up or refer somebody.

Yeah. And what I would say is I've had people come to every single offering, and those are the people I reach out to, and those are the ones that have been coming up for individual services. So it's interesting because I work with startups, a lot of tech startups in town, on how to get those first 10 customers. Yeah.

The mistake they typically make is they think about the whole world. They think about, you know, I've got a million potential customers, I want to touch them all. And I'm always like, no, no, no, no, no, stick within right around here. Right. You need 10. If we're talking about our first 10 customers, who are the companies right around here that could use your product? Let's go talk to them.

Let's go, and they'll show them what we do. Let them have a free trial. Give them a free class. It didn't take that long at all, didn't? I honestly, I don't have a business background. So I wanted to say I've had remarkable success. But I've been really, really pleased, and it's extremely encouraging that what I'm doing is landing with other people. And that, in turn, gives me more fuel and more fire to keep going and keep reaching.

Because ultimately, if I can't support or inform or help someone, then I need to alter, change, or pivot what I'm doing. And I think that's also being able to breathe, like understanding I can breathe through anything. So if I need to change my strategy, let's change the strategy. And what's your main social media? Breathe Well, Be Well, and Instagram. On Instagram. Do you do any like tutorials on there? Oh, God.

So I do just videos where I talk about breathing exercises, what I think about things. I also interview other health professionals anywhere in the breathing space. So that's been, that just kind of started because I had questions, had more questions. So I reached out to another individual on Instagram. That's also a breath worker. that also is in this health space and has said, hey, can I interview you? So I interviewed them and what started kind of rolling from this is like, oh my gosh, I can connect my audience to their audience and their audience to my audience. And then bottom line, I still get to learn.

Yeah. Because I always want to be learning and growing and evolving so then I can provide better care for my clients. And then it just kept going. So I just invented breath to breath. I was like, hey, can I interview you for a breath to breath? And once you have one, then you can get two. And once you get two, you can get three and four and five. I think I'm like up to 15. And I just plug them onto YouTube and then I put them on my blog. So some of the content that I put onto my Instagram are interviews.

Other ones are tutorials on breathing on different ways that we can unblock the nose, that we can help support the overall body of breathing better, whether that's through reducing pain, reducing stress, meditation, breath work, like additional practices, like therapeutic massage or... So what's your thought on? Those sleep masks, they tell people to wear some time. Talking about mouth tape? No.

Oh, seepap machine? Yeah, yeah, seepap machine. Well, it's a Band-Aid. And what I would say is with like every Band-Aid, it might help you get through a really hard time, but it's not the long-term goal. I mean, if it is, then okay, you just understand it's a long-term goal, but you always can ask why.

Why do I need this in the first place? Right. And what I can tell you, the main thing is the tongue. So the tongue needs to be up. Yeah. And the palate, not touching the teeth, kind of like a foot fully fits into a shoe. Yeah. The jaw should be uncunched.

The lips are closed and breathing through your nose. So this is when we're upright. We're awake and we're conscious. So what happens when we fall asleep and we lay down on our back supine, if these muscles are not strong enough, which there's eight muscles of the tongue, if they aren't strong enough, they'll slowly slide back. And what that does, that's where you get the upper airway resistance. And essentially, or you might get full, just complete blockage, which is apnea.

So either your body is going to wake you up because it knows that your air supply is slowly, slowly, slowly reducing. And that's how you get restless sleep. That's how you might get pillows moved all around the place. That's how also your blood pressure might rise and your temperature, your body temperature might rise. So if you wake up hot and sweaty, it's because your body's still working. And what I find so fascinating is like, if you're not breathing well during the night, you definitely are not breathing well during the day. And also you're unconscious at night.

So let's fix what you are conscious of, what you are aware of. And if you want to be able to breathe when you're completely out of it, so basically going on your cruise control, you've got to start with your conscious behaviors. Good point. I like that. So it's a Band-Aid. So your business is going well. Yeah. What other kind of things are you doing to get to your, let's say, fully max number of customers?

What are your new marketing efforts? Well, something that I did actually launched 11-11. So I was kind of going to people's homes and some was online. And then sometimes they come to me and it just wasn't working. And mostly because I started getting busier and I was like, this isn't going to work. So I launched a full online platform where they schedule online. They find their own session. They go ahead and pay.

So basically it's taking a lot of like my busy work out of it. And so I've been running a promotion. Like if you share the reel that I posted the new launch of this online platform, if you share it with the link to the platform and you tag somebody, you'll be in or to win a free online session. And I'm always willing to give away a free online session just to help show people what I'm doing because it's going to come back to me. If I can at least build up some awareness through offering something for,

free and then get people excited about it. And then what I can do is like take a picture from the actual session and then I can use that, I don't know, for some promotion later. Well, I love what you're doing. This is great for other Noob School folks and people who have small businesses is you're getting paid to teach yoga and meditation workshops at different places around town. Yeah. Yeah. They're paying you to be, you know, a voice of expertise in front of the class. And some of the those people, you're going to talk to them about what you do and some of them are going to sign up. There's always one person. There's always at least one that comes up to me. And actually the

one that I did, the explicit breathwork and meditation, which went really well and had a great turnout. That's right when I had launched the new online platforms. I told everyone there had a sign-in sheet. I will give you all $20 off your first session if you book. And just following up with them and letting them know, like if you support me, I'll support you. And it's a lot. And It's really, it's a relationship. So the better that my clients can breathe, the more they're going to tell their other friends, their family, or their friends and family may notice, like,

there's something different with John, and they'll ask you what it is. You know, a question a nobschooler might have is, how do you know? And the way that I know from working with you is you have me breathe and hold my breath or something, and we do a count. And just to see what that number is from week to week. Yeah.

It's called the Bolt Scorchorch, your body, oxygen level. test. Bolt. So bolts the acronym and body oxygen level tests. Really it's what is your CO2 tolerance. So if you have poor CO2 tolerance, that means as soon as you breathe in and breathe out, as soon as you get that feeling of, oh, I need to take it your next breath, you panic and but essentially just like you've got LaCroix in here. So let's say this is completely full. This is all your oxygen. The more you breathe in, you're just pouring more into an already full cup. But if you can actually let your CO2 levels rise, that's when you're actually able to drink the content.

So that is you being able to oxygenate your blood cells. And then additionally, it's less exertion on your heart. So if we can breathe less, so do more with less. We can all agree that's more efficient. Additionally, that's going to help open up your blood vessels, let your blood flow more freely. It's going to help you stay more calm. It's going to allow your body to just take that collective,

pause. And what I think the coolest part is, is time is not elapsing any faster, but it feels slower so that you actually can respond versus react. I digress. The bolt score. Full breath in, full breath out, lips, seal, pinch your nose, and you just hold. If you are below a 10, that's highly dysfunctional breathing, you want to be at least like 30 or 40, and you'll know it's like, this is not a push. You're just holding until you need to take that next natural breath. Now, there are exercises where you are doing some very intentional breath holding and pushing those limits. This is not one. This is just to get your baseline.

And you improved every week. Yeah. I'm star pupil. Yeah. Bravo. What advice do you have? Do you have any other advice for people that are trying to have a business where they're trying to sell a unique service like this? How do they get customers?

I would say I would think about who do you? want to serve? What does that person look like? What are they interested in? What would they want to go to? What would be interesting for them to follow? So if you want to get Instagram followers, give them something they want to watch. Give them something they actually want to do. And I always, again, going back to inform and power support, I want you to know that you can learn something. I want you to know that you have tools within you and I want you to know that you're not alone. And I think those three pillars have served me well as I go through different workshops, through different classes, through different one-to-one clients, as well as getting followership

and more interest online, which has been really cool to see. That's cool. So what's your, we always ask, what's your favorite word? Oh, resilience. Resilience. Resilience. Okay, good. Why is that?

Why is that your favorite word? Am I allowed to cuss on here? Sure. Because it's the best fucking, it's the best fucking word. If you're not resilient, you're going to have a really, hard time. And there's been a lot of times in my life when I wasn't resilient. And what I realized is if you can get through the hard stuff, you can get through anything. And it wasn't really until I started linking my breath with my self-worth, with my ability to heal my body and understanding

you are never stuck. You always can change. There is always an option. And that goes for anything in life, whether it's your business, whether it's your relationship, whether it's your health. I mean, you can change your life. It starts by changing your breath. And when you realize that you can do these things, you are resilient. Yeah, you can do anything. I love it.

That's great. That's great. So let's say the website, best way to get in touch with you. Yeah. So I'd say you can follow me on Instagram. It's breathe well, be well. I like to say it's put a little E on that breath.

Yeah. Breathe well, be well. And my website's breathe well, be well. dot info email Paren P like Paul E r I-N at breathewell be well. info. Well. Less shoulders. Sorry. More diaphragm.

All right. Well, I'll try again later. Thank you for being on today. Thanks for having you, John. Thank you.