August 26, 2025 • 31 mins
If you’re a new or aspiring health coach, you’ve likely wondered where to begin and what to focus on first. Your host, Erin Power, is here to share insights from her coaching practice to help you think differently about the foundations of building a successful health coaching business.
With her trademark honesty and practical perspective, Erin unpacks the early steps every coach should consider, helping you move from feeling overwhelmed to taking clear, confident action. Whether you’re just starting out or refining your approach, this episode will help you understand what it truly takes to thrive as a health coach.
Episode Overview:
0:00 Intro
0:57 - Erin’s Expertise & The Core Message
3:39 - Factor 1: Intrinsic Motivation
9:15 - Factor 2: Psychosocial Programming
11:11 - The Case for Baby Steps in Coaching
13:44 - Factor 3: Considering Client Feelings
15:43 - Factor 4: Skill Development
17:55 - Factor 5: The Client's Identity Shift
20:14 - Factor 6: Frameworks That Feel Easy
24:23 - Factor 7: Support So Clients Don't Quit
29:55 - Recap of All Seven Factors
Connect with Erin on:
Submit your questions to help@primalhealthcoach.com
Website: primalhealthcoach.com
Instagram: @primalhealthcoach
Ready to turn your passion for health into lasting impact?
Health Coach Radio is your backstage pass into the world of health and fitness coaching, hosted by Primal Health Coach Institute Coaching Director, Erin Power, and powered by the legacy of founder Mark Sisson. Each episode is packed with real stories, expert strategies, and practical inspiration to help you grow as a coach and make a difference.
Curious about what’s possible for your own health coaching journey?
Visit primalhealthcoach.com to learn how Primal Health Coach Institute can help you transform lives—including your own—through the power of coaching and ancestral health.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello, my friends.
Hello, health coaches.
It's Aaron Power here.
And I was thinking about you today.
I wanted to jump in and record this solo episode, which I'm giving the sort of rough working title of seven factors to consider when working with.
Clients in close personal coaching relationships that go beyond diet, exercise, and lifestyle.
That's a long title, but we're going to go with it.
(00:20):
It's a working title.
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator, and mentor, and your host of Health Coach Radio.
This podcast delves into the art, science, and business of health coaching.
Whether you're aspiring to land a coaching dream job or to embark on your own entrepreneurial adventure, we cover it all.
(00:41):
Our mission is to help you grow your career, elevate your income, change the lives of the clients who need your help.
And leave a lasting mark in this rapidly growing field.
It's time for health coaches to make an impact.
It's time for Health Coach Radio.
Now you may know or you may not know, but just by way of review, I'm a health coach.
(01:03):
I'm a proud health coach.
I have been for
Coming up on 15 years working with clients in close personal working relationships.
I love it.
I'm never going to stop doing it.
I'm always going to be a health coach in the trenches with clients.
I find it so rewarding.
And, you know, in 15 years, I've learned a lot.
I've learned a lot through training.
(01:23):
I've also learned a lot through exposure and experience with humans, because you're working with humans.
And I think that combination of all that experience is where I can lend some sort of different kind of thinking to the practices and the principles of health coaching to you.
So we're already pretty knowledgeable, all of us, about things like diet, things about exercise, things about lifestyle.
(01:47):
That could be sleep, that could be stress.
You could be in the supplementation realm.
Maybe you're a performance coach and you really understand how to get people to their next level.
in physical performance.
Maybe you're like a women's health coach and you know lots about hormones and stuff.
We have our expertise, and our expertise generally is around some kind of health topic, health.
(02:08):
Right?
Like for mine, it's sort of metabolism stuff.
And when metabolism becomes dysregulated through mismanagement or the aging process, I can help my clients with that.
So I really geek out on that stuff.
For a long time,
I would spend the bulk of my coaching conversations with clients teaching and talking at them about stuff.
Like,
(02:28):
Food stuff, lifestyle stuff, right?
Exercise, movement, sleeping, stressing.
Here's what you need to know about your metabolic hormones.
Here's how to better, you know, facilitate eating so that you can get these things harmonized again.
And I was really, really in the teaching role.
And by the way,
I do believe a health coach must have an expertise that you can impart through some kind of programming to your ideal client for whom you have the expert solution.
(02:54):
Does that make sense?
You have to be an expert in something.
100% you do.
You need to have that.
We're not downplaying that.
Your expertise in health topics is one of the reasons the client came to you.
Probably the big reason.
They're searching for an expert with a solution for the problem they have, and that's you.
(03:14):
So please do have that expertise, and please, please, anchor to it.
But these seven factors I want to talk about today, I really want you to start thinking about this because in my experience working with people, these factors are as important, in some cases more important.
Than the knowledge that we all have about health and wellness.
(03:36):
Are you ready?
Here we go.
Number one.
Intrinsic motivation.
I call this motivation that matters.
We want to understand why someone wants to make this change.
This might seem very basic to you because, and I and by the way, I hope it does.
Because if you've been trained as a health coach, then your training program should have taught you this.
(04:02):
Okay, if you got trained as a health coach, maybe you didn't.
Maybe you're just a natural.
The thing about health coaching is it's unregulated.
You don't have to carry a certificate to do it.
But the benefit to getting certified is that you learn stuff like this.
You learn about intrinsic motivation.
Here's how I implement this in my coaching practice.
Maybe you can use this.
(04:22):
It's really simple.
In my intake form, when my client signs up with me, they have to complete intake forms.
Of course, they do.
We need to understand a little bit about their health history.
The way they eat, the way they move, what they're kind of doing now.
But we also have to get very clear on their goals.
So, actually, the first thing I ask my clients to complete in my intake process is a goal setting exercise.
(04:45):
Why are we doing this?
I worked with my clients for six months.
Now I'm a weight loss nutritionist, weight loss health coach.
I work with women on weight loss.
It's a long, guided, six-month weight loss approach.
That would be my expertise.
but I need to know what they want to get out of this relationship besides simply weight loss.
So I asked them these questions on the intake form.
(05:08):
One second, Brock, because now I have to pull this up.
I wasn't prepared.
Hang on.
Now, you can borrow these intake questions if you want.
I'm not mad.
Go ahead, put them on your intake form too because they're great.
The first question I have is (05:29):
What is your main health objective or goal?
And it says, In this free form text box, talk about why you've embarked on this coaching relationship.
What is present in your life or health right now that you'd like to change?
Share as much detail as you can.
These will be the objectives that we'll be working toward together.
In the next section, you'll be asked to break these objectives down into specific goals.
(05:53):
Okay, so this first question, the main health goal, the main, we call this the outcome goal.
I want them to kind of free write it in paragraph form.
Then we move on.
Now break that objective statement down into a few goals.
Goal number one.
So I want them to take that bigger statement and say, well, goal number one is
(06:14):
I want to like the way I look in photographs.
Cool, that's really cool.
Because, like, all of my clients want to lose weight so they look and feel better.
That's
That's what they want.
They want to look, feel better, and you know what else?
They want to age better because they're kind of seeing their parents aging now.
This is just my clientele.
Yours will be different, right?
So the first goal might be, I want to like the way I look in photographs.
So then I have these two questions underneath that first question.
(06:37):
So question number one is, what is goal number one?
Goal number one is this.
And then the second question is (06:41):
why is this goal important to you?
So, why is it important to like the way you look in photographs?
And the person might say,
Well, right now I'm skipping the photographs.
Like, if my friends or my family take a photo together, I shy away from it or I hide in the back, and I don't want to do that anymore.
I don't want to hide away from the photos anymore.
So then I ask another question, why is that important to you?
(07:04):
And then they'll say, because time is passing me by.
I'm losing the memories of my life that I'm living right now, and I don't want to miss any more memories.
Bam.
Bam.
Oh, we're on a weight loss journey.
Why?
Because life is passing me by and I don't want to lose any more of my memories.
That's very deep, meaningful motivation.
(07:25):
That's an example.
Okay.
So long story short, I do that.
I ask my clients to come up with three goals.
So they write their main health objective, their big outcome goal.
And then I ask them to break that down into three sort of smaller focus goals, and they have to go at least two layers deep into why that's important to them.
I do this in the intake form.
Now I have this information captured.
(07:47):
So when the client is going through the weight loss journey, which is inherently difficult and frustrating, I can bring them back and say, remember when you said?
Why you're doing this?
Do you remember when you said that you feel like you're missing out on life's memories?
So, if my client's starting to feel discouraged or they're checking out, that can pull them back.
The intrinsic motivator is what keeps people moving.
(08:08):
Now, extrinsic motivators like, well, my doctor told Manny to lose weight, or I really want to look hot at the high school reunion and show Becky what's up, or whatever.
Those are extrinsic.
They're not as meaningful, generally speaking, right?
They're just not as deeply meaningful.
Now, they can be if you go a couple layers deep.
(08:28):
If you say, why do you want to show Becky up at the high school reunion?
Well, because she bullied me in high school and I always felt like I was whatever.
And why is that important to you?
And it might be because I'm
amazing and confident and successful.
And I love that about myself.
And I want to proudly and confidently walk in and stride into every room feeling that confidence.
(08:49):
That's an amazing intrinsic motivator.
It has nothing to do with Becky or the dress or the high school reunion.
It's confidence.
Do you know what I mean?
So it really behooves us to get into these deeper, meaningful motivations, aka intrinsic motivations.
Literally crucial.
If your health coaching school didn't teach you how to do this, I just did, you got to do it.
You got to do it.
(09:10):
Intrinsic motivation is the only thing that motivates people to keep going.
Number two, thing we have to consider that goes beyond diet and lifestyle and exercise when we're health coaching is the psychosocial aspect
Of your client's health programming.
What?
What?
(09:30):
I'm just saying, you don't have to become a psychotherapist, psychologist.
You don't have to know anything about psychology.
You simply have to consider that.
Humans come pre-programmed to believe certain things about their bodies, their worthiness, their genetics.
Dieting, exercise.
And this is psychosocial programming, which, to my idea, the way I define this is the psychology of how we've been socialized.
(09:58):
So culturally
A lot of the narrative has been kind of put upon us, and that kind of worms its way into our brain.
And now we operate from this place of programming.
It's programming.
So.
For example, maybe your clients really think carbs are bad.
Carbs are bad, bad, bad, always bad.
Carbs are the devil.
Sugar is a dirty fuel, blah, blah, blah.
(10:18):
Maybe they heard that through the keto narrative, but maybe you're not a keto coach.
Maybe you're not.
Maybe you're trying to get people to eat more carbohydrate.
I don't know.
Maybe you're a macro coach and you want people to hit a certain carbohydrate amount, but they're like very anti-carb.
That's programming that you have to contemplate.
You can't just tell somebody to stop fearing carbs.
You have to accept that they fear carbs.
(10:40):
I'm just using this as an example.
I have no personal purview on carbs.
I'm super agnostic about them, just so we're clear.
Okay.
So, what could you do to
Carefully considering this person's psychosocial program and get them just eat a little bit more carbohydrate.
Or you know what?
Let's go the other way.
Maybe you are a keto coach and you want people to eat fewer carbohydrates.
(11:01):
Well, instead of just saying, I need you to hit 25 grams of net carbs a day, which is a
Big leap for a lot of people.
Step them down.
This really makes the case for baby steps.
And I've been teaching this to health coaches for years and years and years in the health coaching school that I'm on the faculty for, Primal Health Coach Institute.
There's kind of like two approaches to taking on health change, I would say.
(11:25):
There's probably more, but let's just break this down into simple terms.
There's the band-aid-ripping approach, like rip, we're going for it, like all in.
Or there's the baby step approach.
If your clients were good at band-aid ripping, they would have done it.
They wouldn't even be in your care, they would have ripped the band-aid.
And done it 10 years ago.
But they didn't, which tells me automatically these people aren't great Band-Aid rippers.
(11:48):
They need a baby step approach.
I really believe in the power of tiny goals, tiny, attainable, specific, values-based goal setting.
So, values go back to the first thing I just said.
Why is this important to you?
But the goal needs to be very small, the smallest gettable goal, the thing that they can do.
If you say to your client, I need you to go from 150 carbs a day down to 25 carbs a day, that's too big.
(12:14):
That's just going to feel unattainable for them.
And this is only because of their programming.
It's not biologically unattainable.
You know, a person can go do the human body is resilient, AF.
It can do a lot of amazing things, but the programming, you got to factor that in, my friends.
Right.
And I'll go back to my practice.
My practice with women who are my age, so you know, we're Gen X women, our programming, we were brought up in the skinny era.
(12:40):
Skinny was the only appropriate body shape we were allowed to have.
There was no curvy, there was no butts, there was no muscles, there was no muscle mommies.
It's just skinny.
It was the only thing we know.
And to this day, Gen X women hold that programming in their brains, right?
I have to know that, and I do know that because I am that, right?
Generally, this makes the case for why your health coaching client is probably some version of you because you can understand the programming.
(13:06):
But we can't overlook it.
This is where we, it's just really important for you to understand and take these baby steps with your clients because of the way they're they've been psychosocially programmed to think, feel, believe about their bodies, about health, about diet, etc.
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(13:30):
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Number three on my list, feelings.
We have to take folks' feelings into account
(13:52):
And you know, you might learn this in your health coach training.
The power of asking somebody, how do you feel about that?
That's a really amazing, open-ended question, really basic.
You can ask that question anywhere inside the coaching conversation, right?
Hey, Sally, great to see you this week.
What would you like to get out of today's session?
What would we work on this week?
(14:12):
What feels important to you to tackle this week?
So this is called the session intention prompt.
Sally might say, Well, I really think I need to get better sleep.
My sleep has been real bad.
So let's focus on sleep this week.
And then you'll follow up and say,
Great.
You want to focus on sleep quality this week.
Why is that important to you?
This is called the value prompt.
Now we're getting back to meaningful motivation.
(14:33):
Why do you want to do this?
She'll say, Because I'm just.
I just don't feel like myself.
I'm so checked out.
My brain is sluggish, and it's like I'm battling my brain and my body the whole day and the next day after I've had a bednight sleep, and I'm tired of it.
There's feelings there.
Tell me more about how you feel about that, Sally.
Sally will say, Well, I feel dumb.
(14:56):
I feel slow.
I feel sad.
It makes me feel lazy.
It makes me feel incapable.
There's a lot of feelings wrapped up in this goal of wanting to just sleep better.
And we have to get people feeling.
Because they'll only make moves if they feel something.
They want to feel what they feel.
Now they want to feel a change.
They want to feel good.
(15:16):
It all comes down to feelings.
So I think sometimes, not always, but sometimes health coaches and fitness coaches, we can get a little bit into the weeds on tactics.
Tactics are great.
You have to have a methodology that somebody will execute.
But we have to anchor to feelings as well.
Don't sleep on feelings.
Hey, just brought that back to Sally's sleep goal.
(15:38):
See what I did there?
Pretty slick.
Number four on my list is skill development.
I believe that the steps the client needs to take to achieve the outcome is simply a question of skill development.
I do.
(15:58):
So let me use my own practice as an example.
It's just easier for me to use my own practice, but I'm going to try to come up with a few other examples too.
I do weight loss.
Now, weight loss is simply a matter of energy in, energy out.
That's how some might describe it.
I think it goes a little deeper than that.
I definitely do.
I think we have to contemplate meaningful motivations and feelings and psychosocial programming, all this stuff, right?
(16:19):
But from a like a really, really basic, obtuse biochemical thermodynamics level, maybe it's just an energy balance thing, maybe.
Well, they have to develop the skill of doing that.
You can't just say, eat less and move more.
Obviously, we can't just say that because it's not working.
That's why people need health coaches, because if it was just easy to eat less and move more, they would have done it by now.
But it's not working.
(16:40):
There's a skill development that's lacking there.
So let's develop the skill of eating less.
Let's develop the skill of moving more, or whatever the case may be.
Develop the skill of going to bed.
Develop the skill of lifting weights.
Develop the skill of taking walks.
Develop the skill of saying nice things about yourself.
Develop the skill of grocery shopping, of meal prepping, whatever.
It's skill development.
(17:00):
And this simply takes reps.
It's like learning to play any instrument.
Your body is an instrument.
The human body is an instrument.
Your client's body is an instrument.
They're learning to play the instrument toward some kind of healthy outcome.
So, to play any instrument, you have to practice, you have to screw up, figure out how to.
Unscrew up, you know, that's making mistakes is really how we learn.
(17:23):
That's how we develop skills.
So, I really believe in this.
Approaching health improvement, whatever your niche is as skill development is a
Crucially overlooked factor here.
And it kind of reiterates something I said earlier, which is (17:34):
if you were going to learn a skill, you'd probably break it down into small, gettable chunks.
Gettable goals.
Gettable goals that are tied to some kind of meaningful intrinsic motivation.
Number five on my list, identity shift.
(17:56):
Yeah, your clients have to have a shift in their whole identity.
I know.
This is something I teach in my advanced coaching course.
Somewhere down the line on the continuum of the coaching conversation, coaching relationship.
Maybe mid to late relationships.
(18:17):
So let's say you have a 12-week program.
Like we're talking around week eight or nine.
I have a six-month program.
This happens around month four or so.
They have to start identifying as the kind of person who.
This is now so deeply entrenched and enmeshed in who they are.
That they can't extricate themselves from the behaviors anymore.
(18:38):
They've developed the skills, and now the skills are so deeply patterned that they have become the kind of person who executes this.
For example,
Let's say you are the kind of health coach who really likes your clients to eat a nice, substantial, robust breakfast.
Now maybe you're not.
Maybe you're a fasting coach and you like to tell your clients to skip breakfast.
(18:59):
It's all good.
We're just using this as an example.
Let's say you try to teach your clients the skill.
They're trying to develop a skill of eating a robust, nourishing, protein forward breakfast.
That's going to take practice because it's skill development.
But at some point, they'll have developed the skills so well that now they are the kind of person who eats breakfast.
And I've had clients literally say this to me (19:18):
they'll say,
I just can't not eat breakfast now, because this, by the way, is something I get my clients to do.
They've become the kind of person who can't not eat breakfast.
That's what we need, that shift in identity.
That shift in identity is what we really need.
And I just think this comes over time.
This really does make the case for a deep, meaningful and somewhat prolonged personalized coaching relationship so that you can get to this point where the client can say back to you, you know what?
(19:48):
I've changed.
I've actually changed.
I'm a different person now.
And so this actually just reiterates the idea that we can't just tell people what to do.
I mean, they'll listen to us.
We're their coach.
They'll do what we tell them to do to a certain point.
At some point, if it doesn't feel like it's part of them, they'll just quit.
(20:09):
Number six on my list is
Frameworks that feel easy.
Now, I would this is probably a bit of a more esoteric list item, and probably my own bias is coming in here.
I'm chuckling because the very last solo episode I recorded was about challenging your biases as a health coach.
So it's kind of funny that I just addressed my own bias, but my bias
(20:32):
And I'd love to know what you think.
So do please reach out at hello at primalhealthcoach.
com if you have any thoughts on this for or against.
But I do believe that we have to make
The process feels as easy as possible.
And this is, I say, this is my bias because I work with women on weight loss, and women
(20:55):
In my peer group, I have tried 100 weight loss attempts and none of them have stuck because they felt too hard.
They weren't maintainable.
They weren't sustainable.
People will say, I did this, but it wasn't sustainable.
We don't want that anymore.
That's where I think the health coach has the chance to really disrupt the wellness industry.
We're going to help you sustain.
(21:17):
I'm going to help you.
I'm going to hold your hand in partnership with you so that you can sustain what we do together.
Because you're not just following a plan that you downloaded off the internet, you're intrinsically motivated by this plan.
I'm going to help you goal set in a way that feels good and acknowledges your psychosocial programming.
(21:37):
And the framework that they follow, okay, has to feel pretty gettable.
Now, what's the framework?
What am I talking about?
I'm basically talking about the methodology.
The program that you take your clients through.
So every health coach needs to have some kind of program or method that they guide their clients through.
(21:58):
Okay, so yours might be a macro tracking thing, or it might be a keto thing.
You might be a fitness trainer.
So you have like, you have a sort of a progressive overload workout plan, right?
In my case, it's fat loss.
So I have sort of an eating strategy I want my clients to do, but I have it all
Packaged up in a methodology that has actions and frameworks and parameters.
I'm using these vague words.
It's not rules that they have to follow, but it's like (22:19):
here's the steps that you need to take.
Now, I need those steps to feel easy.
So they just fit into the client's life.
Because as a health coach, our
Our life revolves around health in some senses, right?
We are pretty zealous about it.
(22:41):
We're pretty crazy about it.
Like, we love it.
And we will rearrange our life to be healthy.
But your clients might not be at that level.
Again, if they were at that level, would they be working with you?
No, they'd have figured it out themselves.
They'd be a health coach.
But they're a health coaching client.
They're a little different than you are.
And for these folks, they're trying to fit this into their life.
(23:02):
It's not their whole life.
I hate to break it to you.
For the average health consumer, health behaviors are not their whole life.
I think that's actually something we really need to reconcile as health coaches.
It's important to them because we already connected with that, their intrinsic motivations.
It's important to them, but it's not everything.
So, if we make the thing feel too hard, where they kind of have to now rearrange their whole life to fit into the program, you're just increasing the odds that they're not going to stay with it.
(23:31):
And then this is going to become another
thing on the pile of unsustainable health attempts.
And you don't want that.
You want to be the one program that they finally stuck with, that finally worked.
So you've got to make the frameworks feel as easy as possible.
Now, this is one of my favorite things to talk about, actually, is programming.
How we develop a programmer methodology that you can take your clients through.
(23:53):
You need to think about this, right?
You definitely, as part of going to business as a health coach, you can't skip this part.
You have to understand, like, what's the journey?
My client is going to go on.
What's the first thing they need to do?
What's the second thing they need to do?
How are they going to do this?
And they really break this down into gettable steps.
Okay, so we need to create frameworks that feel easy.
(24:15):
The final item on my list, number seven, is support so they don't quit.
Once again, this is a list of factors that health coaches must consider that go beyond diet, exercise, and lifestyle change.
When working with clients in personalized coaching relationships, the long-winded working title of this episode.
(24:39):
Number seven is Support So They Don't Quit.
Just this kind of just
Expands on what I just said.
The support of a health coach is the game changer.
I'm using the word support intentionally.
Because I'm trying not to use the word accountability.
And here's why.
Here's the slight semantic difference that I think of when I think about those two words.
(25:00):
Your clients might come to you and say, the reason I want to work with you is because I need someone to hold me accountable.
And they probably do need that.
That's probably how they think about what you do.
But
In reality, accountability must be fostered from within the client.
They must be accountable to themselves.
So, how do we make a client feel accountable to themselves?
Go back to point number one (25:21):
get those intrinsic motivators dialed in.
Think about their feelings.
What do you feel about this?
How will it feel when it's different?
So they must be accountable to their own motivations and feelings and what they want.
What do you want?
That's what you're accountable for.
Accountable too as the health coaching client.
(25:43):
So we're not really the accountability buddy.
I don't know if that's an unpopular opinion, but like I'm not my client's accountability buddy.
I'm a stranger.
They started following on Instagram.
Now we're in a working relationship.
We have a desired outcome that we're working on together.
I want them to be accountable to that outcome to themselves because I want them to graduate out of my program and be very successful forever.
(26:05):
I want them to never have to jump into a program ever again.
That's my goal.
So, for that reason, they have to be self-accountable and they have to learn that.
That's part of the skill development (26:11):
developing the skill of being accountable to oneself.
But they need support so they don't quit.
So I feel like my job and your job, our job is the support piece.
Lean in for support from me.
When you have a struggle, let's
Problem solve it.
Let's navigate the ups and downs inevitable in life.
(26:34):
Don't quit, right?
If you quit, nothing works.
If our clients quit, it's not going to work.
That's why we have to go back to the last point.
Make it feel pretty easy and then give them the opportunity to lean in for support so they don't quit when it gets hard, because it will get hard.
Anything we do, any skill we try to develop has its moments where you're like, F this, I can't learn how to do this, it's too hard.
(26:57):
And you want to quit, that's when they need to lean in for support.
Support so they don't quit.
We don't want our clients to quit.
You can build into your health coaching program different kinds of touch points and systems that help your clients to check in with you.
For example, in my health coaching program, now I will acknowledge that I do group coaching.
(27:19):
My clients get personalized one-on-one support in a group model.
So I'm not doing one-on-one coaching calls anymore.
But it's not much different.
It's just that there's a small group of people in the coaching call.
Every single person gets their one on one support, but they also have a check in form that they can fill in if they'd like to touch base.
All of our conversations are tracked in an ongoing client document, which is basically a narrative, living document of what we talked about, good, bad, or indifferent.
(27:44):
I have a staff member who tracks down clients who have sending signal that they're discouraged.
When a client seems like they're ghosting, my peer mentor, employee
Connects with them, tries to bring them back into the coaching call.
Hey, don't forget, this is exactly when you need to lean in for support.
Your clients need you the most when it's hard in some cases.
(28:08):
But you know what?
That depends on where you're at in the continuum.
In the early stages of your health coaching relationship, they're going to be leaning on you to get the information, the tactics.
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
How do I do it?
It's very, very tactical.
As they move down the path toward autonomy and self-efficacy, which is where we want to ultimately get them to.
Now they're trying to be this, they're trying to have this identity shift.
(28:30):
They're trying to become the kind of person who, but they're still in this no man's land where they haven't quite.
Solidified the skills yet, right?
So to go through skill development to identity shift, there's a lot of little hiccups and rocky moments there.
Where you've kind of got it, but not quite good enough yet.
You know, the quadrant, this quadrant of, I don't know what I don't know, then I know what I don't know, now I know what I know, then
(28:54):
Don't know what I know.
So that we're going to this unconscious competence.
Which would be the autonomy.
I'm speaking of the self-efficacy, is this unconscious competence.
I am the kind of person who does this.
Period, end of story.
I'm not in danger of relapsing.
But before you get there, you're in this sort of no man's land where it's like, do I know what I'm doing?
I think I know what I'm doing.
I don't know if I do.
(29:14):
And that can feel very high friction.
And that friction of, like, I think I'm getting it, but I'm not totally sure, is what can cause people to kind of just pull back.
You got to go back.
You got to bring them back in.
This is not the time for them to quit.
So, in your programming,
Figure out how you're going to handle the inevitability of a client who waffles, stumbles, needs a little support.
(29:41):
To get them out of the dip, the little dip that we all go through as we're changing.
So here's my seven items that go beyond
Basic diet, lifestyle, and exercise stuff that health coaches must factor into their health coaching relationships with clients.
Number one, their intrinsic motivations, meaningful motivations that matter to them.
Number two,
(30:01):
the psychosocial programming, everything they think, feel, believed, and have been programmed to think they know about their bodies and about health.
Number three is their feelings.
Number four, skill development.
Number five
The identity shift that must happen in order for them to embody this change forever.
(30:22):
Number six.
frameworks that feel easy, and number seven, support so they don't quit.
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Or if you're already a successful health coach, practitioner, influencer, or thought leader with a thriving business and an interesting story, we'd love to hear from you.
(30:49):
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Thanks for listening.
Hello, my friends.
Hello, health coaches.
It's Aaron Power here.
And I was thinking about you today.
I wanted to jump in and record this solo episode, which I'm giving the sort of rough working title of seven factors to consider when working with.
Clients in close personal coaching relationships that go beyond diet, exercise, and lifestyle.
That's a long title, but we're going to go with it.
(00:20):
It's a working title.
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator, and mentor, and your host of Health Coach Radio.
This podcast delves into the art, science, and business of health coaching.
Whether you're aspiring to land a coaching dream job or to embark on your own entrepreneurial adventure, we cover it all.
(00:41):
Our mission is to help you grow your career, elevate your income, change the lives of the clients who need your help.
And leave a lasting mark in this rapidly growing field.
It's time for health coaches to make an impact.
It's time for Health Coach Radio.
Now you may know or you may not know, but just by way of review, I'm a health coach.
(01:03):
I'm a proud health coach.
I have been for
Coming up on 15 years working with clients in close personal working relationships.
I love it.
I'm never going to stop doing it.
I'm always going to be a health coach in the trenches with clients.
I find it so rewarding.
And, you know, in 15 years, I've learned a lot.
I've learned a lot through training.
(01:23):
I've also learned a lot through exposure and experience with humans, because you're working with humans.
And I think that combination of all that experience is where I can lend some sort of different kind of thinking to the practices and the principles of health coaching to you.
So we're already pretty knowledgeable, all of us, about things like diet, things about exercise, things about lifestyle.
(01:47):
That could be sleep, that could be stress.
You could be in the supplementation realm.
Maybe you're a performance coach and you really understand how to get people to their next level.
in physical performance.
Maybe you're like a women's health coach and you know lots about hormones and stuff.
We have our expertise, and our expertise generally is around some kind of health topic, health.
(02:08):
Right?
Like for mine, it's sort of metabolism stuff.
And when metabolism becomes dysregulated through mismanagement or the aging process, I can help my clients with that.
So I really geek out on that stuff.
For a long time,
I would spend the bulk of my coaching conversations with clients teaching and talking at them about stuff.
Like,
(02:28):
Food stuff, lifestyle stuff, right?
Exercise, movement, sleeping, stressing.
Here's what you need to know about your metabolic hormones.
Here's how to better, you know, facilitate eating so that you can get these things harmonized again.
And I was really, really in the teaching role.
And by the way,
I do believe a health coach must have an expertise that you can impart through some kind of programming to your ideal client for whom you have the expert solution.
(02:54):
Does that make sense?
You have to be an expert in something.
100% you do.
You need to have that.
We're not downplaying that.
Your expertise in health topics is one of the reasons the client came to you.
Probably the big reason.
They're searching for an expert with a solution for the problem they have, and that's you.
(03:14):
So please do have that expertise, and please, please, anchor to it.
But these seven factors I want to talk about today, I really want you to start thinking about this because in my experience working with people, these factors are as important, in some cases more important.
Than the knowledge that we all have about health and wellness.
(03:36):
Are you ready?
Here we go.
Number one.
Intrinsic motivation.
I call this motivation that matters.
We want to understand why someone wants to make this change.
This might seem very basic to you because, and I and by the way, I hope it does.
Because if you've been trained as a health coach, then your training program should have taught you this.
(04:02):
Okay, if you got trained as a health coach, maybe you didn't.
Maybe you're just a natural.
The thing about health coaching is it's unregulated.
You don't have to carry a certificate to do it.
But the benefit to getting certified is that you learn stuff like this.
You learn about intrinsic motivation.
Here's how I implement this in my coaching practice.
Maybe you can use this.
(04:22):
It's really simple.
In my intake form, when my client signs up with me, they have to complete intake forms.
Of course, they do.
We need to understand a little bit about their health history.
The way they eat, the way they move, what they're kind of doing now.
But we also have to get very clear on their goals.
So, actually, the first thing I ask my clients to complete in my intake process is a goal setting exercise.
(04:45):
Why are we doing this?
I worked with my clients for six months.
Now I'm a weight loss nutritionist, weight loss health coach.
I work with women on weight loss.
It's a long, guided, six-month weight loss approach.
That would be my expertise.
but I need to know what they want to get out of this relationship besides simply weight loss.
So I asked them these questions on the intake form.
(05:08):
One second, Brock, because now I have to pull this up.
I wasn't prepared.
Hang on.
Now, you can borrow these intake questions if you want.
I'm not mad.
Go ahead, put them on your intake form too because they're great.
The first question I have is (05:29):
What is your main health objective or goal?
And it says, In this free form text box, talk about why you've embarked on this coaching relationship.
What is present in your life or health right now that you'd like to change?
Share as much detail as you can.
These will be the objectives that we'll be working toward together.
In the next section, you'll be asked to break these objectives down into specific goals.
(05:53):
Okay, so this first question, the main health goal, the main, we call this the outcome goal.
I want them to kind of free write it in paragraph form.
Then we move on.
Now break that objective statement down into a few goals.
Goal number one.
So I want them to take that bigger statement and say, well, goal number one is
(06:14):
I want to like the way I look in photographs.
Cool, that's really cool.
Because, like, all of my clients want to lose weight so they look and feel better.
That's
That's what they want.
They want to look, feel better, and you know what else?
They want to age better because they're kind of seeing their parents aging now.
This is just my clientele.
Yours will be different, right?
So the first goal might be, I want to like the way I look in photographs.
So then I have these two questions underneath that first question.
(06:37):
So question number one is, what is goal number one?
Goal number one is this.
And then the second question is (06:41):
why is this goal important to you?
So, why is it important to like the way you look in photographs?
And the person might say,
Well, right now I'm skipping the photographs.
Like, if my friends or my family take a photo together, I shy away from it or I hide in the back, and I don't want to do that anymore.
I don't want to hide away from the photos anymore.
So then I ask another question, why is that important to you?
(07:04):
And then they'll say, because time is passing me by.
I'm losing the memories of my life that I'm living right now, and I don't want to miss any more memories.
Bam.
Bam.
Oh, we're on a weight loss journey.
Why?
Because life is passing me by and I don't want to lose any more of my memories.
That's very deep, meaningful motivation.
(07:25):
That's an example.
Okay.
So long story short, I do that.
I ask my clients to come up with three goals.
So they write their main health objective, their big outcome goal.
And then I ask them to break that down into three sort of smaller focus goals, and they have to go at least two layers deep into why that's important to them.
I do this in the intake form.
Now I have this information captured.
(07:47):
So when the client is going through the weight loss journey, which is inherently difficult and frustrating, I can bring them back and say, remember when you said?
Why you're doing this?
Do you remember when you said that you feel like you're missing out on life's memories?
So, if my client's starting to feel discouraged or they're checking out, that can pull them back.
The intrinsic motivator is what keeps people moving.
(08:08):
Now, extrinsic motivators like, well, my doctor told Manny to lose weight, or I really want to look hot at the high school reunion and show Becky what's up, or whatever.
Those are extrinsic.
They're not as meaningful, generally speaking, right?
They're just not as deeply meaningful.
Now, they can be if you go a couple layers deep.
(08:28):
If you say, why do you want to show Becky up at the high school reunion?
Well, because she bullied me in high school and I always felt like I was whatever.
And why is that important to you?
And it might be because I'm
amazing and confident and successful.
And I love that about myself.
And I want to proudly and confidently walk in and stride into every room feeling that confidence.
(08:49):
That's an amazing intrinsic motivator.
It has nothing to do with Becky or the dress or the high school reunion.
It's confidence.
Do you know what I mean?
So it really behooves us to get into these deeper, meaningful motivations, aka intrinsic motivations.
Literally crucial.
If your health coaching school didn't teach you how to do this, I just did, you got to do it.
You got to do it.
(09:10):
Intrinsic motivation is the only thing that motivates people to keep going.
Number two, thing we have to consider that goes beyond diet and lifestyle and exercise when we're health coaching is the psychosocial aspect
Of your client's health programming.
What?
What?
(09:30):
I'm just saying, you don't have to become a psychotherapist, psychologist.
You don't have to know anything about psychology.
You simply have to consider that.
Humans come pre-programmed to believe certain things about their bodies, their worthiness, their genetics.
Dieting, exercise.
And this is psychosocial programming, which, to my idea, the way I define this is the psychology of how we've been socialized.
(09:58):
So culturally
A lot of the narrative has been kind of put upon us, and that kind of worms its way into our brain.
And now we operate from this place of programming.
It's programming.
So.
For example, maybe your clients really think carbs are bad.
Carbs are bad, bad, bad, always bad.
Carbs are the devil.
Sugar is a dirty fuel, blah, blah, blah.
(10:18):
Maybe they heard that through the keto narrative, but maybe you're not a keto coach.
Maybe you're not.
Maybe you're trying to get people to eat more carbohydrate.
I don't know.
Maybe you're a macro coach and you want people to hit a certain carbohydrate amount, but they're like very anti-carb.
That's programming that you have to contemplate.
You can't just tell somebody to stop fearing carbs.
You have to accept that they fear carbs.
(10:40):
I'm just using this as an example.
I have no personal purview on carbs.
I'm super agnostic about them, just so we're clear.
Okay.
So, what could you do to
Carefully considering this person's psychosocial program and get them just eat a little bit more carbohydrate.
Or you know what?
Let's go the other way.
Maybe you are a keto coach and you want people to eat fewer carbohydrates.
(11:01):
Well, instead of just saying, I need you to hit 25 grams of net carbs a day, which is a
Big leap for a lot of people.
Step them down.
This really makes the case for baby steps.
And I've been teaching this to health coaches for years and years and years in the health coaching school that I'm on the faculty for, Primal Health Coach Institute.
There's kind of like two approaches to taking on health change, I would say.
(11:25):
There's probably more, but let's just break this down into simple terms.
There's the band-aid-ripping approach, like rip, we're going for it, like all in.
Or there's the baby step approach.
If your clients were good at band-aid ripping, they would have done it.
They wouldn't even be in your care, they would have ripped the band-aid.
And done it 10 years ago.
But they didn't, which tells me automatically these people aren't great Band-Aid rippers.
(11:48):
They need a baby step approach.
I really believe in the power of tiny goals, tiny, attainable, specific, values-based goal setting.
So, values go back to the first thing I just said.
Why is this important to you?
But the goal needs to be very small, the smallest gettable goal, the thing that they can do.
If you say to your client, I need you to go from 150 carbs a day down to 25 carbs a day, that's too big.
(12:14):
That's just going to feel unattainable for them.
And this is only because of their programming.
It's not biologically unattainable.
You know, a person can go do the human body is resilient, AF.
It can do a lot of amazing things, but the programming, you got to factor that in, my friends.
Right.
And I'll go back to my practice.
My practice with women who are my age, so you know, we're Gen X women, our programming, we were brought up in the skinny era.
(12:40):
Skinny was the only appropriate body shape we were allowed to have.
There was no curvy, there was no butts, there was no muscles, there was no muscle mommies.
It's just skinny.
It was the only thing we know.
And to this day, Gen X women hold that programming in their brains, right?
I have to know that, and I do know that because I am that, right?
Generally, this makes the case for why your health coaching client is probably some version of you because you can understand the programming.
(13:06):
But we can't overlook it.
This is where we, it's just really important for you to understand and take these baby steps with your clients because of the way they're they've been psychosocially programmed to think, feel, believe about their bodies, about health, about diet, etc.
Health Coach Radio listeners, have I got a treat for you?
To get 72-hour free trial access to Primal Health Coach Institute and a 50% off coupon code,
(13:30):
To the How to Become a Health Coach Virtual Summit featuring video interviews with over 30 industry experts.
Visit primalhealthcoach.
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Number three on my list, feelings.
We have to take folks' feelings into account
(13:52):
And you know, you might learn this in your health coach training.
The power of asking somebody, how do you feel about that?
That's a really amazing, open-ended question, really basic.
You can ask that question anywhere inside the coaching conversation, right?
Hey, Sally, great to see you this week.
What would you like to get out of today's session?
What would we work on this week?
(14:12):
What feels important to you to tackle this week?
So this is called the session intention prompt.
Sally might say, Well, I really think I need to get better sleep.
My sleep has been real bad.
So let's focus on sleep this week.
And then you'll follow up and say,
Great.
You want to focus on sleep quality this week.
Why is that important to you?
This is called the value prompt.
Now we're getting back to meaningful motivation.
(14:33):
Why do you want to do this?
She'll say, Because I'm just.
I just don't feel like myself.
I'm so checked out.
My brain is sluggish, and it's like I'm battling my brain and my body the whole day and the next day after I've had a bednight sleep, and I'm tired of it.
There's feelings there.
Tell me more about how you feel about that, Sally.
Sally will say, Well, I feel dumb.
(14:56):
I feel slow.
I feel sad.
It makes me feel lazy.
It makes me feel incapable.
There's a lot of feelings wrapped up in this goal of wanting to just sleep better.
And we have to get people feeling.
Because they'll only make moves if they feel something.
They want to feel what they feel.
Now they want to feel a change.
They want to feel good.
(15:16):
It all comes down to feelings.
So I think sometimes, not always, but sometimes health coaches and fitness coaches, we can get a little bit into the weeds on tactics.
Tactics are great.
You have to have a methodology that somebody will execute.
But we have to anchor to feelings as well.
Don't sleep on feelings.
Hey, just brought that back to Sally's sleep goal.
(15:38):
See what I did there?
Pretty slick.
Number four on my list is skill development.
I believe that the steps the client needs to take to achieve the outcome is simply a question of skill development.
I do.
(15:58):
So let me use my own practice as an example.
It's just easier for me to use my own practice, but I'm going to try to come up with a few other examples too.
I do weight loss.
Now, weight loss is simply a matter of energy in, energy out.
That's how some might describe it.
I think it goes a little deeper than that.
I definitely do.
I think we have to contemplate meaningful motivations and feelings and psychosocial programming, all this stuff, right?
(16:19):
But from a like a really, really basic, obtuse biochemical thermodynamics level, maybe it's just an energy balance thing, maybe.
Well, they have to develop the skill of doing that.
You can't just say, eat less and move more.
Obviously, we can't just say that because it's not working.
That's why people need health coaches, because if it was just easy to eat less and move more, they would have done it by now.
But it's not working.
(16:40):
There's a skill development that's lacking there.
So let's develop the skill of eating less.
Let's develop the skill of moving more, or whatever the case may be.
Develop the skill of going to bed.
Develop the skill of lifting weights.
Develop the skill of taking walks.
Develop the skill of saying nice things about yourself.
Develop the skill of grocery shopping, of meal prepping, whatever.
It's skill development.
(17:00):
And this simply takes reps.
It's like learning to play any instrument.
Your body is an instrument.
The human body is an instrument.
Your client's body is an instrument.
They're learning to play the instrument toward some kind of healthy outcome.
So, to play any instrument, you have to practice, you have to screw up, figure out how to.
Unscrew up, you know, that's making mistakes is really how we learn.
(17:23):
That's how we develop skills.
So, I really believe in this.
Approaching health improvement, whatever your niche is as skill development is a
Crucially overlooked factor here.
And it kind of reiterates something I said earlier, which is (17:34):
if you were going to learn a skill, you'd probably break it down into small, gettable chunks.
Gettable goals.
Gettable goals that are tied to some kind of meaningful intrinsic motivation.
Number five on my list, identity shift.
(17:56):
Yeah, your clients have to have a shift in their whole identity.
I know.
This is something I teach in my advanced coaching course.
Somewhere down the line on the continuum of the coaching conversation, coaching relationship.
Maybe mid to late relationships.
(18:17):
So let's say you have a 12-week program.
Like we're talking around week eight or nine.
I have a six-month program.
This happens around month four or so.
They have to start identifying as the kind of person who.
This is now so deeply entrenched and enmeshed in who they are.
That they can't extricate themselves from the behaviors anymore.
(18:38):
They've developed the skills, and now the skills are so deeply patterned that they have become the kind of person who executes this.
For example,
Let's say you are the kind of health coach who really likes your clients to eat a nice, substantial, robust breakfast.
Now maybe you're not.
Maybe you're a fasting coach and you like to tell your clients to skip breakfast.
(18:59):
It's all good.
We're just using this as an example.
Let's say you try to teach your clients the skill.
They're trying to develop a skill of eating a robust, nourishing, protein forward breakfast.
That's going to take practice because it's skill development.
But at some point, they'll have developed the skills so well that now they are the kind of person who eats breakfast.
And I've had clients literally say this to me (19:18):
they'll say,
I just can't not eat breakfast now, because this, by the way, is something I get my clients to do.
They've become the kind of person who can't not eat breakfast.
That's what we need, that shift in identity.
That shift in identity is what we really need.
And I just think this comes over time.
This really does make the case for a deep, meaningful and somewhat prolonged personalized coaching relationship so that you can get to this point where the client can say back to you, you know what?
(19:48):
I've changed.
I've actually changed.
I'm a different person now.
And so this actually just reiterates the idea that we can't just tell people what to do.
I mean, they'll listen to us.
We're their coach.
They'll do what we tell them to do to a certain point.
At some point, if it doesn't feel like it's part of them, they'll just quit.
(20:09):
Number six on my list is
Frameworks that feel easy.
Now, I would this is probably a bit of a more esoteric list item, and probably my own bias is coming in here.
I'm chuckling because the very last solo episode I recorded was about challenging your biases as a health coach.
So it's kind of funny that I just addressed my own bias, but my bias
(20:32):
And I'd love to know what you think.
So do please reach out at hello at primalhealthcoach.
com if you have any thoughts on this for or against.
But I do believe that we have to make
The process feels as easy as possible.
And this is, I say, this is my bias because I work with women on weight loss, and women
(20:55):
In my peer group, I have tried 100 weight loss attempts and none of them have stuck because they felt too hard.
They weren't maintainable.
They weren't sustainable.
People will say, I did this, but it wasn't sustainable.
We don't want that anymore.
That's where I think the health coach has the chance to really disrupt the wellness industry.
We're going to help you sustain.
(21:17):
I'm going to help you.
I'm going to hold your hand in partnership with you so that you can sustain what we do together.
Because you're not just following a plan that you downloaded off the internet, you're intrinsically motivated by this plan.
I'm going to help you goal set in a way that feels good and acknowledges your psychosocial programming.
(21:37):
And the framework that they follow, okay, has to feel pretty gettable.
Now, what's the framework?
What am I talking about?
I'm basically talking about the methodology.
The program that you take your clients through.
So every health coach needs to have some kind of program or method that they guide their clients through.
(21:58):
Okay, so yours might be a macro tracking thing, or it might be a keto thing.
You might be a fitness trainer.
So you have like, you have a sort of a progressive overload workout plan, right?
In my case, it's fat loss.
So I have sort of an eating strategy I want my clients to do, but I have it all
Packaged up in a methodology that has actions and frameworks and parameters.
I'm using these vague words.
It's not rules that they have to follow, but it's like (22:19):
here's the steps that you need to take.
Now, I need those steps to feel easy.
So they just fit into the client's life.
Because as a health coach, our
Our life revolves around health in some senses, right?
We are pretty zealous about it.
(22:41):
We're pretty crazy about it.
Like, we love it.
And we will rearrange our life to be healthy.
But your clients might not be at that level.
Again, if they were at that level, would they be working with you?
No, they'd have figured it out themselves.
They'd be a health coach.
But they're a health coaching client.
They're a little different than you are.
And for these folks, they're trying to fit this into their life.
(23:02):
It's not their whole life.
I hate to break it to you.
For the average health consumer, health behaviors are not their whole life.
I think that's actually something we really need to reconcile as health coaches.
It's important to them because we already connected with that, their intrinsic motivations.
It's important to them, but it's not everything.
So, if we make the thing feel too hard, where they kind of have to now rearrange their whole life to fit into the program, you're just increasing the odds that they're not going to stay with it.
(23:31):
And then this is going to become another
thing on the pile of unsustainable health attempts.
And you don't want that.
You want to be the one program that they finally stuck with, that finally worked.
So you've got to make the frameworks feel as easy as possible.
Now, this is one of my favorite things to talk about, actually, is programming.
How we develop a programmer methodology that you can take your clients through.
(23:53):
You need to think about this, right?
You definitely, as part of going to business as a health coach, you can't skip this part.
You have to understand, like, what's the journey?
My client is going to go on.
What's the first thing they need to do?
What's the second thing they need to do?
How are they going to do this?
And they really break this down into gettable steps.
Okay, so we need to create frameworks that feel easy.
(24:15):
The final item on my list, number seven, is support so they don't quit.
Once again, this is a list of factors that health coaches must consider that go beyond diet, exercise, and lifestyle change.
When working with clients in personalized coaching relationships, the long-winded working title of this episode.
(24:39):
Number seven is Support So They Don't Quit.
Just this kind of just
Expands on what I just said.
The support of a health coach is the game changer.
I'm using the word support intentionally.
Because I'm trying not to use the word accountability.
And here's why.
Here's the slight semantic difference that I think of when I think about those two words.
(25:00):
Your clients might come to you and say, the reason I want to work with you is because I need someone to hold me accountable.
And they probably do need that.
That's probably how they think about what you do.
But
In reality, accountability must be fostered from within the client.
They must be accountable to themselves.
So, how do we make a client feel accountable to themselves?
Go back to point number one (25:21):
get those intrinsic motivators dialed in.
Think about their feelings.
What do you feel about this?
How will it feel when it's different?
So they must be accountable to their own motivations and feelings and what they want.
What do you want?
That's what you're accountable for.
Accountable too as the health coaching client.
(25:43):
So we're not really the accountability buddy.
I don't know if that's an unpopular opinion, but like I'm not my client's accountability buddy.
I'm a stranger.
They started following on Instagram.
Now we're in a working relationship.
We have a desired outcome that we're working on together.
I want them to be accountable to that outcome to themselves because I want them to graduate out of my program and be very successful forever.
(26:05):
I want them to never have to jump into a program ever again.
That's my goal.
So, for that reason, they have to be self-accountable and they have to learn that.
That's part of the skill development (26:11):
developing the skill of being accountable to oneself.
But they need support so they don't quit.
So I feel like my job and your job, our job is the support piece.
Lean in for support from me.
When you have a struggle, let's
Problem solve it.
Let's navigate the ups and downs inevitable in life.
(26:34):
Don't quit, right?
If you quit, nothing works.
If our clients quit, it's not going to work.
That's why we have to go back to the last point.
Make it feel pretty easy and then give them the opportunity to lean in for support so they don't quit when it gets hard, because it will get hard.
Anything we do, any skill we try to develop has its moments where you're like, F this, I can't learn how to do this, it's too hard.
(26:57):
And you want to quit, that's when they need to lean in for support.
Support so they don't quit.
We don't want our clients to quit.
You can build into your health coaching program different kinds of touch points and systems that help your clients to check in with you.
For example, in my health coaching program, now I will acknowledge that I do group coaching.
(27:19):
My clients get personalized one-on-one support in a group model.
So I'm not doing one-on-one coaching calls anymore.
But it's not much different.
It's just that there's a small group of people in the coaching call.
Every single person gets their one on one support, but they also have a check in form that they can fill in if they'd like to touch base.
All of our conversations are tracked in an ongoing client document, which is basically a narrative, living document of what we talked about, good, bad, or indifferent.
(27:44):
I have a staff member who tracks down clients who have sending signal that they're discouraged.
When a client seems like they're ghosting, my peer mentor, employee
Connects with them, tries to bring them back into the coaching call.
Hey, don't forget, this is exactly when you need to lean in for support.
Your clients need you the most when it's hard in some cases.
(28:08):
But you know what?
That depends on where you're at in the continuum.
In the early stages of your health coaching relationship, they're going to be leaning on you to get the information, the tactics.
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
How do I do it?
It's very, very tactical.
As they move down the path toward autonomy and self-efficacy, which is where we want to ultimately get them to.
Now they're trying to be this, they're trying to have this identity shift.
(28:30):
They're trying to become the kind of person who, but they're still in this no man's land where they haven't quite.
Solidified the skills yet, right?
So to go through skill development to identity shift, there's a lot of little hiccups and rocky moments there.
Where you've kind of got it, but not quite good enough yet.
You know, the quadrant, this quadrant of, I don't know what I don't know, then I know what I don't know, now I know what I know, then
(28:54):
Don't know what I know.
So that we're going to this unconscious competence.
Which would be the autonomy.
I'm speaking of the self-efficacy, is this unconscious competence.
I am the kind of person who does this.
Period, end of story.
I'm not in danger of relapsing.
But before you get there, you're in this sort of no man's land where it's like, do I know what I'm doing?
I think I know what I'm doing.
I don't know if I do.
(29:14):
And that can feel very high friction.
And that friction of, like, I think I'm getting it, but I'm not totally sure, is what can cause people to kind of just pull back.
You got to go back.
You got to bring them back in.
This is not the time for them to quit.
So, in your programming,
Figure out how you're going to handle the inevitability of a client who waffles, stumbles, needs a little support.
(29:41):
To get them out of the dip, the little dip that we all go through as we're changing.
So here's my seven items that go beyond
Basic diet, lifestyle, and exercise stuff that health coaches must factor into their health coaching relationships with clients.
Number one, their intrinsic motivations, meaningful motivations that matter to them.
Number two,
(30:01):
the psychosocial programming, everything they think, feel, believed, and have been programmed to think they know about their bodies and about health.
Number three is their feelings.
Number four, skill development.
Number five
The identity shift that must happen in order for them to embody this change forever.
(30:22):
Number six.
frameworks that feel easy, and number seven, support so they don't quit.
This podcast was brought to you by Primal Health Coach Institute.
To learn more about how to become a successful health coach, get in touch with us by visiting primalhealthcoach.
com forward slash call.
Or if you're already a successful health coach, practitioner, influencer, or thought leader with a thriving business and an interesting story, we'd love to hear from you.
(30:49):
Connect with us at hello at primalhealthcoach.
com and let us know why we need to interview you for Health Coach Radio.
Thanks for listening.
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