September 9, 2025 • 35 mins
Ever wondered what working with your first clients can teach you about your true purpose? Join host Erin Power on her journey as she shares invaluable lessons from her first five clients. Discover how saying 'yes' to personal growth can reshape your career path.
Whether you're a new health coach or considering a career shift, these insights will highlight the power of specificity in client targeting and the significance of continuous learning and adaptation.
Episode Overview:
0:00 Intro
1:00 – Client #1 Tennille: Saying Yes to Your First Coaching Client
7:00 – Client #2 Veronica: Why Extreme Fat Loss Wasn’t My Calling
15:00 – Client #3 Jackie: Coaching Busy Moms & Setting Attainable Goals
23:30 – Client #4 Heather: Discovering My Ideal Client Avatar
28:40 – Client #5 Melanie: Firing a Client & Redefining Discovery Calls
34:30 – Final Lessons: Niche, Messaging & Building a Thriving Health Coaching Career
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.
(00:01):
Hello, friends.
I'm really excited to be back with you.
I want to take you through on a little journey today down memory lane and walk you through
my very first five clients and all the stuff I learned from them.
Ready?
Here goes.
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and mentor and your host of Health Coach Radio.
(00:25):
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.
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.
(00:46):
It's time for health coaches to make an impact.
It's time for Health Coach Radio.
My very first client, her name, which is an unforgettable name, her name was Tennille.
Tennille, a name you'll never forget.
She found me by a Google search.
(01:08):
So I literally had, quote unquote, been in business for a couple of months.
I built a website.
I kind of built some of the component parts of the customer journey.
So I had a website.
I had an intake form.
I was starting to build up my program.
I was thinking ahead of when inevitably my first client would show up.
(01:29):
And I was trying to put some of the customer experience stuff into play.
One of the first things I did was a website.
I built the website myself using one of those sort of inexpensive online tools and published it.
And this is important.
This was back in 2013.
And at the time, you know, it's a lot different.
The digital, entire digital landscape is very, very different.
(01:52):
So please take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt because website development,
search engine optimization is all different now.
But at the time, using this web building tool, I could put keywords into like a little text
field and it was going to kind of search engine optimize my website for me in a manner of
speaking.
(02:13):
So she found me via Google.
She Googled, she specifically Googled a paleo aligned nutritionist in the city that I live in.
So those keywords I had built into the back end of my website, just very simple.
I'm not an SEO expert.
This is not how SEO really, really works in this day and age.
(02:35):
But back then, before the internet really became the incredibly robust thing it is now,
you could kind of do these little sort of kindergarten versions of SEO and it would kind of work.
so she happened to punch in keywords that were just so specific to me paleo aligned nutritionist
in the city that I live in and found me and so we met because she lived in my city
(03:01):
she had a ton of autoimmune diseases that's mainly the thing she wanted to work on
with me. Now, I felt relatively confident-ish about autoimmunity. Like, I'd been reading about
it a lot and paying attention and kind of, you know, understanding it. I felt confident enough
(03:22):
to help her out. And I did, by the way. I did help her out. We worked together, and she had
pretty good outcomes in terms of her autoimmune symptoms. But it felt really hard for me. And I
felt a bit like a fish out of water. Like I was trying to be an autoimmunity coach, even though
that wasn't something that I really necessarily saw myself as. I think it makes sense to say yes
(03:46):
to the first person who asks to work with you. I really do. The first person who shows up, just say
yes. You know, at the beginning, you have tons of bandwidth. You don't really know who you are and
who you aren't yet. You're trying to figure that out. This is a really great way to figure out
what you do and what you don't do, what you stand for, what you don't stand for.
(04:08):
And, you know, it helps you get in your crucial first rep working with a person, you know. I think
we underestimate what it's like to work in a relationship with another person, unless you've
had a job like that before. I didn't. I came from marketing and advertising. I had an office job.
I didn't have a relational type job like this before. So figuring out how to engage and interact
(04:29):
with a person was a skill I needed to develop. And so because Tenille wanted to work on auto
immunity, and I had an okay grasp of it, I said yes. And if you take on that first client, like I
did, and you notice that the workload that you've done with this client, it just feels misaligned,
(04:50):
you're going to have that sort of sense of misalignment. And that's great information.
That's amazing information. Good to know. Adjust your niche. Adjust your website keywords.
Adjust your messaging. How do you talk about what you do?
And by the way, I think you'll be adjusting your niche and your messaging for years,
(05:14):
quite honestly, until you get it solidly in place. And a big part of that exercise is going to be
working with or communicating with people who are and are not in your wheelhouse.
And it takes time to get this stuff solidly in place.
You will get it solidly in place.
At some point down the line, you will have a solid, clear point of view, and you'll be
(05:34):
messaging it consistently, and it will be so clear there'll be no question what you do
and what you don't do.
But in some ways, you have to put in the reps, maybe saying yes to a client who's not ideal.
You can't really skip over this part of the process where you work with someone who's not
a perfect fit for you. And you'll learn a ton from that. The best takeaway that I got, for example,
(05:58):
from working with Tennille is that I loved it. I loved it. Even though Tennille didn't represent
the kind of client I ever wanted to work with again, I didn't want to do autoimmunity and I
never did again. Tennille and the relationship I had with her showed me that I made the right move.
(06:19):
Because for me, health coaching was a late in life career choice.
I never felt as excited and purpose driven and motivated in my 20 year marketing and
advertising career as I did in that first client relationship.
I just was so engaged, so invested.
That feels amazing.
(06:40):
It feels so good to be executing a job that feels so mission driven and is such an authentic
expression of self.
if you haven't had a job like that before, it's amazing. I think that's why a lot of people jump
into health coaching from other careers, because maybe at some point they recognize that they're
showing up for work, they're getting the paycheck, but there's nothing else there. That's what I felt.
(07:03):
That's what I felt for sure about my job. There was nothing. I didn't even know why I was doing it.
I even had that sort of come to Jesus moment in my office one day where I was asking myself,
why am I here? I don't care about this. I don't care about advertising. This isn't interesting to
me are exciting. I don't feel personally drawn to this. I'm sure some people do in the advertising
world, but I didn't. And so my experience with Sunil, my very first client, was the heck yes,
(07:28):
I made the right choice. Just the experience of working with her, irrespective of how much money
I made. It wasn't very much. I didn't charge her very much at all. Irrespective of what kind of
amazing outcome she had. She had some good outcomes. Irrespective of all of that, I loved it. I loved
it. My second client was Veronica. Veronica was somebody that I knew in my real life
(07:54):
who reached out to me because I'd been talking about my new gig. So I was pretty upfront with
my Facebook feed. 2013, that was the social media platform I was using. Hey guys, hey everyone,
just a heads up, I'm a health coach now. I'm working with women on health and weight loss.
(08:16):
hit me up if you need any help if you know anybody who does all right bye I just was unapologetic like
I didn't care I didn't feel weird about that I don't know if I'm crazy but I didn't feel goofy
or strange about declaring to the world that I'd made a major vocational pivot and to this day I
still feel pretty damn proud of that like I again go back to what I just said a second ago which is
(08:38):
sure I could have stayed in my fancy advertising job and gotten my three to five percent inflation
pay increase every year and holding a paycheck and kind of just gone through the motions, but I
didn't. I didn't want to. So I didn't. And you know what? No hate, no shade to anybody who does that.
But a lot of people who are stuck in jobs wish they weren't. And so I was really pretty cool
(09:02):
about the idea of saying, hey, I'm not doing that anymore. This is what I'm doing now.
I just mentioned that because I think a lot of health coaches feel like bashful.
Those of us who are coming to this as a late in life career choice, we feel bashful about
announcing like, oh, well, I'm doing this new thing. Why? Why? Feel proud. Feel like a badass.
Do you know how many people don't do that? Do you know how many people don't make a late in life
(09:24):
career choice, even though they desperately freaking need to? So anyway, if that's you,
shout it from the rooftops. By the way, parenthetical. We have had at our health
coaching school, Primal Health Coach Institute, we've had more and more young folks come in
and train as a health coach as their basically post-secondary education. This is not their
vocational training. Out of high school into health coaching school. That's amazing, isn't it? Because
(09:50):
I think, yeah, I've been in the fitness industry for 30 years and it was always a side gig. Like,
I was a fitness professional. I was a personal trainer. I was a group fitness instructor. That
was my side gig that I did on the side, but I had a proper job. And now, now it is a proper job.
It's the kind of job people are getting into right from jump, making a career out of it.
(10:12):
That's amazing.
Anyway, but for me, it was a late in life career change.
And I shouted it from the rooftops to the extent that I could just on Facebook.
And Veronica was somebody that I knew.
And she wanted help with fat loss, which I had determined was going to be my specialty,
since that's a huge part of my origin story.
(10:35):
So now we're getting a little closer to somebody that I think I want to help.
You know, Tennille was autoimmune. That wasn't my thing. Veronica's fat loss, more my thing.
Now, I want to start by saying that Veronica and I had amazing results together. She wound up with
a freaking six pack. And even though Veronica was more in line with my ideal client than Tennille was,
(10:57):
it still wasn't quite there for me. Veronica was already an already lean and fit person. And she
wanted to get super lean. She had like sort of a really big body composition goal for herself. She
wanted to look shredded and lean and she did. She freaking did. And this is the type of fat loss
(11:18):
coaching, quite frankly, that I do not feel called to at all. And I file this under, that's good to
know. That's good to know for me. There's nothing wrong with it. I think this is one of the most
exciting things, by the way, of being in the weight loss or body recomposition space inside health
coaching, which is potentially one of the most generic and common categories. I mean, there are
(11:39):
a million and one ways to coach weight loss. And I think weight loss is probably the most common,
again, category that health coaches go into. And sometimes when you're in the weight loss space,
I know this because I'm in it, but also because I train and mentor health coaches and they tell me
this is, yeah, but it's already been said. Everybody's already doing it. It doesn't matter.
(12:03):
You're going to find enough clients to be successful. Don't stress about it. Everybody's
looking for weight loss. Different ways, right? Different kinds of weight loss. There are a
million and one ways to coach weight loss, even if the science of weight loss is pretty freaking
black and white. Weight loss is weight loss. But I didn't want to coach somebody to a six-pack.
It just wasn't that interesting to me. For some people, that's the most interesting. Do you know
(12:26):
what I mean? This lesson came back to haunt me, by the way. A few years later, I took on a client.
A client ended up in my roster who was obsessed with being thin and shredded and lean.
So Veronica was my first toe dip into this. We had great outcomes. She was amazing to work with.
(12:49):
It just didn't light me up in the way I was hoping it would. And then later on, a client came back
into my roster, I allowed her in by accident, who was also was very in kind of a problematic way
focused on getting very lean. And I just don't care enough about that to want to put up with that.
So I refunded that gal's money and made a vow to get very, very clear in my discovery calls who I
(13:11):
do not help. And I now treat discovery calls as interviews. Are you a culture fit for my roster?
So Veronica was great because she helped me recognize that, yes, weight loss is the space
I want to be in.
And then there's a subsection of weight loss that is more interesting to me and one that
is less interesting to me.
Less interesting to me is extreme body recomposition.
(13:32):
That's not my favorite thing.
But the good news is there's a huge market for that.
There's a hundred ways to do that.
If you love that very high performance, sort of that next level, super lean, bro-y kind
of approach to fat loss, I mean, gosh, it's a huge industry.
And if you don't like it, like me, there's a huge industry there too and everything in between.
(13:54):
Oh my gosh, don't worry.
We're never going to run out of clients in the weight loss space.
But here's another fun thing about Veronica I just want to mention to you.
This will blow your mind.
This is my second client ever, ever in my new career as a health coach.
She was a food engineer.
(14:14):
Okay, you always hear about food engineers.
You know, these scientists that work at Nabisco and Kraft and they make all the processed foods.
And they make sure the processed foods are shelf-stable and super tasty and super bingeable.
It's an occupation that's often maligned in holistic wellness circles.
(14:35):
Those darn food engineers.
And that was her job.
Her whole job was to go to work and conceptualize and taste test and tweak and make processed food items.
So first of all, I couldn't tell her to stop eating processed foods.
(14:56):
That was her job.
Anyway, just a fun, funny sidebar.
I couldn't believe that my second ever client ate processed food for a living.
What are the odds?
I'm not saying that's going to happen to you, but man, funny.
I still am very amused by that.
Let me tell you about my friend Carolyn.
(15:17):
She's an athlete with a passion for health.
She'd been health coaching friends, families, strangers, not even knowing it was a thing.
She just felt called to help other people live their healthiest lives.
Then she discovered the Primal Health Coach Certification Program,
and she went from feeling like an imposter to belonging to an amazing community of like-minded
(15:38):
health pros. Confident and finally able to enjoy a fulfilling and profitable career doing exactly
what she loves. Carolyn is one of thousands of certified primal health coaches living their best
lives and helping their clients do the same. The Primal Health Coach Institute offers a variety of
health and fitness certifications and specializations. Our graduates are practicing
(16:02):
unique coaching specialties and changing lives in countries all over the world.
We're always growing and evolving, so come grow with us. Visit primalhealthcoach.com to check out
our courses and offerings. My third client, I can't remember her name, so I'm going to call her Jackie.
(16:23):
Jackie was my third client. Now, by the way, before I get into Jackie, all of my first clients lived in my city. I zeroed in on local audiences and people I already knew right out of the gate. That just seemed easier.
Pretty soon, pretty soon after though, it didn't take me long to broaden to a bigger, call it global audience.
(16:50):
I will say my practice was virtual right from jump.
So I met with Tennille and Veronica in person once to go over their intake forms and onboard them.
And then after that, all of our coaching calls were done over the telephone.
And we now live in the era of Zoom. And I can say I'm super nostalgic for those days spent on the telephone because my favorite place to do those coaching calls was in my car. It was like my own little warm, cozy office on my cell phone. The acoustics were good.
(17:26):
if I wanted to change my scenery, I could just drive to a different parking lot or a different
park or whatever shopping complex. I would sit in my car. It was warm. It was comfy. I might have a
coffee or tea and chit-chatting, gesticulating in my car by myself to my clients. I loved it.
(17:47):
To this day, actually, if I have a client who would prefer telephone to Zoom, which is rare,
I give my clients the option, like, we'll do this over Zoom unless you'd rather take it over the
but if somebody requests a phone call, I take those telephone calls from my car. I get into my
car and I drive, even if I don't have to, just because I love remembering these early days. It
takes me right back to the beginning. It makes me smile. And I mention all of that because Jackie
(18:12):
wanted us to do all of our sessions in person. She wanted to meet with me in person.
Again, this is going back 13 years ago, and we didn't have Zoom.
We didn't really have web conferencing available to us readily.
So people really do think they need this very, very, very personalized, white glove, in-person
(18:35):
approach.
They don't.
They don't need you to be physically in their space.
Really, they don't.
Not for the kind of health coaching I was doing.
Maybe if you're a movement coach and you're doing movement assessments, I can see that,
obviously.
But even I know tons of movement coaches that do that online.
I mean, really, we don't have to be in person.
And clients think they need a lot of like really specific handholding, but they actually don't.
(18:55):
That's something I've learned over the years.
But Jackie wanted me to come to her house and have these conversations with her or not her house necessarily.
We would go to coffee shops sometimes, but she wanted to meet in person each week.
So that was interesting.
That was kind of the one and only time I ever did that.
Spoiler alert.
I was like, after that, it was like, no.
(19:15):
Now, Jackie wanted weight loss.
So now we're getting a little, we're back in my wheelhouse.
She wasn't really interested in getting shredded.
Cool.
Okay, we're zeroing in.
And Jackie was a busy mom.
And this was my first encounter.
First of many.
First of hundreds, if not thousands.
(19:36):
My first encounter with the busy mom archetype.
And the busy mom archetype is, I'm so busy that I can't take care of myself.
That's the busy mom archetype I'm referring to. Moms are busy. Humans are busy. We're all too busy.
100%. But the busy mom archetype that I'm referring to is, well, it's because I'm a mom that I haven't
(19:57):
been able to take care of myself. And Jackie literally made no time for herself. Even as we
worked through the coaching relationship and she and I would work together on putting some
practices and some goals in place, she would just never do them because she was too busy.
She's convinced she was too busy. So she was struggling, understandably, with her health and
(20:18):
with her happiness, and she struggled to get results in my program because the busy belief
overrode everything. Now, at this early stage in the game, I was trained in health and nutrition
but not coaching. So I was trying to tell her what to do. Well, you got to do this, Jackie. Now do
(20:41):
this, try this, try this, do this. It didn't work because she was busy being a mom to young kids.
It didn't fit into her life. And I could keep telling her what to do, but she wasn't executing
it. She just couldn't or wouldn't. I was stumped. I had nothing to go on. Try again, Jackie, try again,
keep trying. Since then, I've encountered the busy mom archetype hundreds of times, as I mentioned,
(21:06):
And now I have new tools in my toolkit because now I'm a qualified health coach.
So now I work with these women to truly understand and help them see where they maybe do have time and bandwidth for the bare minimum.
And I help, I work with them, I partner up with them for us to co-determine what is that bare minimum that you, the individual in front of me, can do.
(21:36):
It's different for everybody.
We have to co-create that plan.
What is the bare minimum?
The most attainable goal.
So you think about the SMART goal framework.
It's something I teach health coaches a lot.
The SMART goal framework, really basic goal setting framework.
There's a million ways to set goals, but we all know the SMART goal.
The A in SMART, attainable, as far as I'm concerned, is the most important part.
(21:58):
Is this goal actually attainable?
So we shrink it down to the most attainable thing.
But I didn't have those tools in my toolkit in the early stages.
Jackie was my third client.
I just knew health and nutrition and the weight loss stuff I'd learned and I was figuring it all out.
I wasn't really good at helping people goal set individually.
(22:20):
But now I do.
So now I work with the busy moms or anybody.
Every woman I work with is busy.
We're just all busy.
Hello, welcome to the modern human experience.
But like, what is the minimum most effective thing you can do this week? I honor the busyness. The
busyness in me recognizes the busyness in you. Namaste. But I also remind my clients that, remember,
(22:42):
this is important to you as well. I know being busy and everything that keeps you busy is important
to you. Remember, this is also important to you. So we have to have that values connection,
the connection to intrinsic motivators. You want to do this, what's the smallest,
tiniest part of this goal that you can accomplish this week.
So Jackie taught me two important things. Number one, I needed to learn how to become a more
(23:06):
client-centered coach. I can't just roll into the relationship in this boss role and tell people what
to do. That just doesn't work. Not for the long haul, not for certain people at all.
The second thing I learned is that I didn't want to be driving around to in-person meetings. So
(23:26):
in relationship with. Good to know. Very good logistical lesson to learn. My fourth client
was Heather. Heather was the literal embodiment of the ideal client that I envisioned when I pivoted
into health coaching. So much so that now to this day, whenever I do avatar work, like in a branding
(23:51):
or messaging workshop, or if I'm working on my marketing, if I'm working on my messaging,
if I'm thinking about product development, if I'm thinking about, you know, targeting,
I name my avatar client Heather. Heather is the name of my client avatar.
(24:11):
Heather was quite overweight, almost 100 pounds overweight.
She was insulin resistant and utterly at the end of her rope in terms of dieting and exercising.
She was like 40 years old.
She knew what to do.
She did tons of cardio, ate tons of salads, and it all stopped working.
Surprise, surprise.
(24:32):
And this was so identical to my own health journey.
So we all have to go through this experience, I think, in determining your expertise.
Like, what do you know the most about?
Well, probably the thing you know the most about is the thing that you personally persisted through.
And for me, it was exactly Heather's experience.
And it was like, as soon as I met Heather, a light bulb switched on for me.
(24:57):
This is my client.
This is my ideal client.
This and nothing else.
Only this.
This is who I want to work with.
I never want to work with anyone who's not a Heather.
So as much as I loved working with Tennille, I don't want to work with a Tennille.
As much as I loved working with Veronica, I don't want to work with Veronica.
But Jackie was more in the realm of my ideal client. I just didn't have the tools to help her. Heather was the physical embodiment of the person I wanted to work with. And I still remember every single thing about our relationship because Heather is still front of mind for me today. Whenever I write a post on Instagram, I'm writing it for the Heathers of the world.
(25:36):
The work with Heather was long and hard because I was so bought into it.
But also because what I learned about my ideal client and myself, what I learned about Heather and me and all these women that are like me and Heather, all these women that I was going to work with moving forward, is that we have a lot of psychosocial programming about weight loss.
(25:58):
in addition to the biological struggles of overweight and insulin resistance, all the
sort of nerdy health stuff that most health coaches geek out on, like exercise, sleep,
stress, food, whatever. Apart from that, there's psychosocial elements to weight loss
that I was starting to recognize by working so closely with Heather. That's amazing to learn.
(26:23):
Heather really helped me build my program. So we worked together for basically an open-ended
length of time. I didn't even put boundaries on it. I was like, let's just work together.
Like, we're just going to go until we get this solved. And I really poured into Heather and
invested in her because I knew she was going to help me make the program that solves the problem
(26:46):
for the Heathers of the world. So we worked together for a really long time. She was helping
me see and understand exactly how to work with women like her. And I really, really wanted to
get her results. I wanted to see her get results. And I'm brand new. So I have to like, there's a
lot of figuring out I had to do, right? So Heather, unbeknownst to her, because I didn't tell Heather,
(27:08):
hey, just so you know, you're my fourth ever client. I never told anybody. I didn't tell
Tenille she was my first. Nobody knew. Don't do that, by the way. You don't tell people that you're
new. You're not. You're an expert, okay? Just behave as an expert. You are. So Heather didn't
know that I was getting a tremendous amount of value out of our relationship from the perspective
of product development and understanding myself as a health coach. I was trying to help her,
(27:32):
but I just kept extending the relationship. She had a great outcome because we worked together
for so long. So, so, so long. I just almost didn't even want to let her go. Eventually,
she was like, I think I'm ready to go. It's like a year and a half later. She was like,
I'm ready to go.
She helped me immensely.
The reason I mention this is because something that I teach health coaches is that your clients
(27:57):
will help you build out your method.
Okay, so yes, weight loss is my expertise for women, but the method that I use to achieve
weight loss is very, very specific to the type of person that you work with.
And you won't be able to get that kind of observational learning until you have a client in your roster who is that person.
(28:20):
So your clients will help you build your program.
You don't have to have your program built before you take on clients.
Don't, in fact.
Don't build your program until you have clients.
Heather helped me really finesse the program to what it is today.
I have her debt of gratitude.
My fifth client was Melanie.
(28:44):
Melanie again was an ideal client so more than 30 pounds of weight to lose I was getting real good
at that part she was mildly insulin resistant I was excited to roll on with my you know newly
established avatars feeling really I was feeling really established you know five clients in
but I fired Melanie this is the first time I really ever refunded anyone's money I've only
(29:08):
had to refund money. Like I can count on two hands, like two hands number of refunds I've ever given
in, in like 13 years of doing this 3000 clients, like not many refunds. And for whatever it's worth,
I have a no refund policy in my, in my client agreement, but I do take it on a case by case
basis. And in Melanie's case, I didn't want to work with her anymore. So I said, you know what,
(29:32):
we're done here. I'm going to give your money back. Enjoy. Good luck. Here's the story.
Melanie refused to change anything about how she ate, moved, or lived. She didn't believe anything
I said. She questioned everything, which I actually like. Question everything. Ask questions. Get
(29:52):
curious. Seek to understand. Yes. But she blew off our coaching relationship. She didn't think it was
important. She didn't want to do it. If and when she did show up for a coaching call, it was mostly
to complain and tell me it wasn't working and it wasn't going to work. This isn't going to work for
me. I'm destined to be stuck. So Melanie was not at a state of readiness to do the work necessary to
(30:18):
change. This is the stages of change, the trans-theoretical model. Maybe I'll do a future
podcast episode to explain that, but at a high level, people are either ready to change or they're
not. If they are, they're great. If they're not, don't even bother. Don't even bother. This is why
(30:39):
I think like cold outreach is pointless. I have had a lot of health coaching students say to me,
well, should I, you know, reach out to my friends? And I have like three or four friends who are
very overweight and sick and they really need my help. Should I reach out to them? It's like, no,
no, don't do that. Don't cold DM people and say, hey, you're fat. Do you want to work together? No,
(30:59):
They have to be ready. Melanie wasn't ready, which, first of all, is kind of strange because she
ultimately found me. She booked the discovery call with me. She said yes to working with me.
So she might have been in like a transient place between readiness and unreadiness.
But the thing is, this is the whole point of the discovery call.
(31:22):
This should have been readily apparent to me in the discovery call, that this wasn't that
important to her. She wasn't that serious about it. The pain of being stuck where she was wasn't
great enough to go through the struggle of trying to make a major lifestyle change.
I should have sussed that out in the discovery call, and I guess I didn't.
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I think, again, I mentioned this earlier, but I want to reiterate the whole point of the discovery
recall is frame it in your mind as an interview to determine fit. Is this the kind of person who's
going to benefit from my solution? Their state of readiness is a major factor. So start to ask
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questions like, is this important to you? Why is this important to you? How will your life be better
if you make this change? What else have you tried? Why don't you just go back and try that again if
that worked so well. Like just really almost like, in a sense, you're almost pushing people away to
see if they really want it, kind of, okay? Melanie taught me to reframe my discovery calls as
(32:26):
interviews. And I also learned from Melanie that it is never worth it to take on somebody who's not
a good fit or who doesn't want to be helped or you just don't get along with for whatever reason.
Now, when you're a new coach, not everybody listening here is a new coach, but some of you are.
When you're a new coach, you will take on anyone. And I did. Melanie was my fifth client. Of course,
(32:51):
I said yes to Melanie. I said yes to everybody. Melanie is the first person I had to say no to
midway through our relationship. And then it's sort of like I was like training my no muscles.
Now it's like, oh, there's the, there's another option. I don't have to take everybody. I can say
no to a client. Interesting. Very different, very big paradigm shift, right? I think you should
take on everybody who comes to you. You're going to take on everybody until you get your first
(33:14):
Melanie, your first person who you're like, oh, I wish I had never started this. And it's a
massively crucial learning experience. Massively crucial. I feel grateful that it only took me
five clients to have this experience. Like, you know, one, two, three, four, good, good, good,
good. Five was a no. Because I could have gone on for years before I had my first no client. And so
(33:38):
Anyways, maybe you're going to borrow my experience to fast track your own.
And what you could do is you could make a list of the qualities you think you don't want in a client.
You know what I mean?
Like, who don't you want to work with?
Who are the melanies for you?
What kind of traits or behaviors would you find difficult to get excited about?
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Now, I don't recommend putting this out there.
I wouldn't recommend posting this on your social feed.
Here's who I don't help.
I don't think that's very nice.
Don't worry about it.
Just have this as an internal checklist.
Have it as an internal checklist as you're going through discovery with people.
You have that little mental list of kind of your yellow flags, your red flags.
(34:21):
It's good for you to have.
It's a little inventory for you to keep track of.
And it will help you with your marketing, with your messaging, with your programming,
with your discovery calls.
that will help you by clarifying and sort of zeroing in on what you do want to do and who you
want to work with. Well, thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with me. I absolutely
(34:47):
loved revisiting the early days of my health coaching career, which is now in its 13th year.
3,000 clients later, I still learn from every single one of them. And
is one you've already heard a million times, but I'm going to give it to you again.
Be as specific as humanly possible with who you do help, and then do everything in your power to
(35:11):
not work with anyone but that person. Staying focused on your specialty and your expertise
will make your health coaching professional journey much more rewarding and fun.
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
(35:36):
successful health coach, practitioner, influencer, or thought leader with a thriving business and an
interesting story, we'd love to hear from you. 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.
Hello, friends.
I'm really excited to be back with you.
I want to take you through on a little journey today down memory lane and walk you through
my very first five clients and all the stuff I learned from them.
Ready?
Here goes.
Hi, I'm Erin Power.
I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and mentor and your host of Health Coach Radio.
(00:25):
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.
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.
(00:46):
It's time for health coaches to make an impact.
It's time for Health Coach Radio.
My very first client, her name, which is an unforgettable name, her name was Tennille.
Tennille, a name you'll never forget.
She found me by a Google search.
(01:08):
So I literally had, quote unquote, been in business for a couple of months.
I built a website.
I kind of built some of the component parts of the customer journey.
So I had a website.
I had an intake form.
I was starting to build up my program.
I was thinking ahead of when inevitably my first client would show up.
(01:29):
And I was trying to put some of the customer experience stuff into play.
One of the first things I did was a website.
I built the website myself using one of those sort of inexpensive online tools and published it.
And this is important.
This was back in 2013.
And at the time, you know, it's a lot different.
The digital, entire digital landscape is very, very different.
(01:52):
So please take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt because website development,
search engine optimization is all different now.
But at the time, using this web building tool, I could put keywords into like a little text
field and it was going to kind of search engine optimize my website for me in a manner of
speaking.
(02:13):
So she found me via Google.
She Googled, she specifically Googled a paleo aligned nutritionist in the city that I live in.
So those keywords I had built into the back end of my website, just very simple.
I'm not an SEO expert.
This is not how SEO really, really works in this day and age.
(02:35):
But back then, before the internet really became the incredibly robust thing it is now,
you could kind of do these little sort of kindergarten versions of SEO and it would kind of work.
so she happened to punch in keywords that were just so specific to me paleo aligned nutritionist
in the city that I live in and found me and so we met because she lived in my city
(03:01):
she had a ton of autoimmune diseases that's mainly the thing she wanted to work on
with me. Now, I felt relatively confident-ish about autoimmunity. Like, I'd been reading about
it a lot and paying attention and kind of, you know, understanding it. I felt confident enough
(03:22):
to help her out. And I did, by the way. I did help her out. We worked together, and she had
pretty good outcomes in terms of her autoimmune symptoms. But it felt really hard for me. And I
felt a bit like a fish out of water. Like I was trying to be an autoimmunity coach, even though
that wasn't something that I really necessarily saw myself as. I think it makes sense to say yes
(03:46):
to the first person who asks to work with you. I really do. The first person who shows up, just say
yes. You know, at the beginning, you have tons of bandwidth. You don't really know who you are and
who you aren't yet. You're trying to figure that out. This is a really great way to figure out
what you do and what you don't do, what you stand for, what you don't stand for.
(04:08):
And, you know, it helps you get in your crucial first rep working with a person, you know. I think
we underestimate what it's like to work in a relationship with another person, unless you've
had a job like that before. I didn't. I came from marketing and advertising. I had an office job.
I didn't have a relational type job like this before. So figuring out how to engage and interact
(04:29):
with a person was a skill I needed to develop. And so because Tenille wanted to work on auto
immunity, and I had an okay grasp of it, I said yes. And if you take on that first client, like I
did, and you notice that the workload that you've done with this client, it just feels misaligned,
(04:50):
you're going to have that sort of sense of misalignment. And that's great information.
That's amazing information. Good to know. Adjust your niche. Adjust your website keywords.
Adjust your messaging. How do you talk about what you do?
And by the way, I think you'll be adjusting your niche and your messaging for years,
(05:14):
quite honestly, until you get it solidly in place. And a big part of that exercise is going to be
working with or communicating with people who are and are not in your wheelhouse.
And it takes time to get this stuff solidly in place.
You will get it solidly in place.
At some point down the line, you will have a solid, clear point of view, and you'll be
(05:34):
messaging it consistently, and it will be so clear there'll be no question what you do
and what you don't do.
But in some ways, you have to put in the reps, maybe saying yes to a client who's not ideal.
You can't really skip over this part of the process where you work with someone who's not
a perfect fit for you. And you'll learn a ton from that. The best takeaway that I got, for example,
(05:58):
from working with Tennille is that I loved it. I loved it. Even though Tennille didn't represent
the kind of client I ever wanted to work with again, I didn't want to do autoimmunity and I
never did again. Tennille and the relationship I had with her showed me that I made the right move.
(06:19):
Because for me, health coaching was a late in life career choice.
I never felt as excited and purpose driven and motivated in my 20 year marketing and
advertising career as I did in that first client relationship.
I just was so engaged, so invested.
That feels amazing.
(06:40):
It feels so good to be executing a job that feels so mission driven and is such an authentic
expression of self.
if you haven't had a job like that before, it's amazing. I think that's why a lot of people jump
into health coaching from other careers, because maybe at some point they recognize that they're
showing up for work, they're getting the paycheck, but there's nothing else there. That's what I felt.
(07:03):
That's what I felt for sure about my job. There was nothing. I didn't even know why I was doing it.
I even had that sort of come to Jesus moment in my office one day where I was asking myself,
why am I here? I don't care about this. I don't care about advertising. This isn't interesting to
me are exciting. I don't feel personally drawn to this. I'm sure some people do in the advertising
world, but I didn't. And so my experience with Sunil, my very first client, was the heck yes,
(07:28):
I made the right choice. Just the experience of working with her, irrespective of how much money
I made. It wasn't very much. I didn't charge her very much at all. Irrespective of what kind of
amazing outcome she had. She had some good outcomes. Irrespective of all of that, I loved it. I loved
it. My second client was Veronica. Veronica was somebody that I knew in my real life
(07:54):
who reached out to me because I'd been talking about my new gig. So I was pretty upfront with
my Facebook feed. 2013, that was the social media platform I was using. Hey guys, hey everyone,
just a heads up, I'm a health coach now. I'm working with women on health and weight loss.
(08:16):
hit me up if you need any help if you know anybody who does all right bye I just was unapologetic like
I didn't care I didn't feel weird about that I don't know if I'm crazy but I didn't feel goofy
or strange about declaring to the world that I'd made a major vocational pivot and to this day I
still feel pretty damn proud of that like I again go back to what I just said a second ago which is
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sure I could have stayed in my fancy advertising job and gotten my three to five percent inflation
pay increase every year and holding a paycheck and kind of just gone through the motions, but I
didn't. I didn't want to. So I didn't. And you know what? No hate, no shade to anybody who does that.
But a lot of people who are stuck in jobs wish they weren't. And so I was really pretty cool
(09:02):
about the idea of saying, hey, I'm not doing that anymore. This is what I'm doing now.
I just mentioned that because I think a lot of health coaches feel like bashful.
Those of us who are coming to this as a late in life career choice, we feel bashful about
announcing like, oh, well, I'm doing this new thing. Why? Why? Feel proud. Feel like a badass.
Do you know how many people don't do that? Do you know how many people don't make a late in life
(09:24):
career choice, even though they desperately freaking need to? So anyway, if that's you,
shout it from the rooftops. By the way, parenthetical. We have had at our health
coaching school, Primal Health Coach Institute, we've had more and more young folks come in
and train as a health coach as their basically post-secondary education. This is not their
vocational training. Out of high school into health coaching school. That's amazing, isn't it? Because
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I think, yeah, I've been in the fitness industry for 30 years and it was always a side gig. Like,
I was a fitness professional. I was a personal trainer. I was a group fitness instructor. That
was my side gig that I did on the side, but I had a proper job. And now, now it is a proper job.
It's the kind of job people are getting into right from jump, making a career out of it.
(10:12):
That's amazing.
Anyway, but for me, it was a late in life career change.
And I shouted it from the rooftops to the extent that I could just on Facebook.
And Veronica was somebody that I knew.
And she wanted help with fat loss, which I had determined was going to be my specialty,
since that's a huge part of my origin story.
(10:35):
So now we're getting a little closer to somebody that I think I want to help.
You know, Tennille was autoimmune. That wasn't my thing. Veronica's fat loss, more my thing.
Now, I want to start by saying that Veronica and I had amazing results together. She wound up with
a freaking six pack. And even though Veronica was more in line with my ideal client than Tennille was,
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it still wasn't quite there for me. Veronica was already an already lean and fit person. And she
wanted to get super lean. She had like sort of a really big body composition goal for herself. She
wanted to look shredded and lean and she did. She freaking did. And this is the type of fat loss
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coaching, quite frankly, that I do not feel called to at all. And I file this under, that's good to
know. That's good to know for me. There's nothing wrong with it. I think this is one of the most
exciting things, by the way, of being in the weight loss or body recomposition space inside health
coaching, which is potentially one of the most generic and common categories. I mean, there are
(11:39):
a million and one ways to coach weight loss. And I think weight loss is probably the most common,
again, category that health coaches go into. And sometimes when you're in the weight loss space,
I know this because I'm in it, but also because I train and mentor health coaches and they tell me
this is, yeah, but it's already been said. Everybody's already doing it. It doesn't matter.
(12:03):
You're going to find enough clients to be successful. Don't stress about it. Everybody's
looking for weight loss. Different ways, right? Different kinds of weight loss. There are a
million and one ways to coach weight loss, even if the science of weight loss is pretty freaking
black and white. Weight loss is weight loss. But I didn't want to coach somebody to a six-pack.
It just wasn't that interesting to me. For some people, that's the most interesting. Do you know
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what I mean? This lesson came back to haunt me, by the way. A few years later, I took on a client.
A client ended up in my roster who was obsessed with being thin and shredded and lean.
So Veronica was my first toe dip into this. We had great outcomes. She was amazing to work with.
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It just didn't light me up in the way I was hoping it would. And then later on, a client came back
into my roster, I allowed her in by accident, who was also was very in kind of a problematic way
focused on getting very lean. And I just don't care enough about that to want to put up with that.
So I refunded that gal's money and made a vow to get very, very clear in my discovery calls who I
(13:11):
do not help. And I now treat discovery calls as interviews. Are you a culture fit for my roster?
So Veronica was great because she helped me recognize that, yes, weight loss is the space
I want to be in.
And then there's a subsection of weight loss that is more interesting to me and one that
is less interesting to me.
Less interesting to me is extreme body recomposition.
(13:32):
That's not my favorite thing.
But the good news is there's a huge market for that.
There's a hundred ways to do that.
If you love that very high performance, sort of that next level, super lean, bro-y kind
of approach to fat loss, I mean, gosh, it's a huge industry.
And if you don't like it, like me, there's a huge industry there too and everything in between.
(13:54):
Oh my gosh, don't worry.
We're never going to run out of clients in the weight loss space.
But here's another fun thing about Veronica I just want to mention to you.
This will blow your mind.
This is my second client ever, ever in my new career as a health coach.
She was a food engineer.
(14:14):
Okay, you always hear about food engineers.
You know, these scientists that work at Nabisco and Kraft and they make all the processed foods.
And they make sure the processed foods are shelf-stable and super tasty and super bingeable.
It's an occupation that's often maligned in holistic wellness circles.
(14:35):
Those darn food engineers.
And that was her job.
Her whole job was to go to work and conceptualize and taste test and tweak and make processed food items.
So first of all, I couldn't tell her to stop eating processed foods.
(14:56):
That was her job.
Anyway, just a fun, funny sidebar.
I couldn't believe that my second ever client ate processed food for a living.
What are the odds?
I'm not saying that's going to happen to you, but man, funny.
I still am very amused by that.
Let me tell you about my friend Carolyn.
(15:17):
She's an athlete with a passion for health.
She'd been health coaching friends, families, strangers, not even knowing it was a thing.
She just felt called to help other people live their healthiest lives.
Then she discovered the Primal Health Coach Certification Program,
and she went from feeling like an imposter to belonging to an amazing community of like-minded
(15:38):
health pros. Confident and finally able to enjoy a fulfilling and profitable career doing exactly
what she loves. Carolyn is one of thousands of certified primal health coaches living their best
lives and helping their clients do the same. The Primal Health Coach Institute offers a variety of
health and fitness certifications and specializations. Our graduates are practicing
(16:02):
unique coaching specialties and changing lives in countries all over the world.
We're always growing and evolving, so come grow with us. Visit primalhealthcoach.com to check out
our courses and offerings. My third client, I can't remember her name, so I'm going to call her Jackie.
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Jackie was my third client. Now, by the way, before I get into Jackie, all of my first clients lived in my city. I zeroed in on local audiences and people I already knew right out of the gate. That just seemed easier.
Pretty soon, pretty soon after though, it didn't take me long to broaden to a bigger, call it global audience.
(16:50):
I will say my practice was virtual right from jump.
So I met with Tennille and Veronica in person once to go over their intake forms and onboard them.
And then after that, all of our coaching calls were done over the telephone.
And we now live in the era of Zoom. And I can say I'm super nostalgic for those days spent on the telephone because my favorite place to do those coaching calls was in my car. It was like my own little warm, cozy office on my cell phone. The acoustics were good.
(17:26):
if I wanted to change my scenery, I could just drive to a different parking lot or a different
park or whatever shopping complex. I would sit in my car. It was warm. It was comfy. I might have a
coffee or tea and chit-chatting, gesticulating in my car by myself to my clients. I loved it.
(17:47):
To this day, actually, if I have a client who would prefer telephone to Zoom, which is rare,
I give my clients the option, like, we'll do this over Zoom unless you'd rather take it over the
but if somebody requests a phone call, I take those telephone calls from my car. I get into my
car and I drive, even if I don't have to, just because I love remembering these early days. It
takes me right back to the beginning. It makes me smile. And I mention all of that because Jackie
(18:12):
wanted us to do all of our sessions in person. She wanted to meet with me in person.
Again, this is going back 13 years ago, and we didn't have Zoom.
We didn't really have web conferencing available to us readily.
So people really do think they need this very, very, very personalized, white glove, in-person
(18:35):
approach.
They don't.
They don't need you to be physically in their space.
Really, they don't.
Not for the kind of health coaching I was doing.
Maybe if you're a movement coach and you're doing movement assessments, I can see that,
obviously.
But even I know tons of movement coaches that do that online.
I mean, really, we don't have to be in person.
And clients think they need a lot of like really specific handholding, but they actually don't.
(18:55):
That's something I've learned over the years.
But Jackie wanted me to come to her house and have these conversations with her or not her house necessarily.
We would go to coffee shops sometimes, but she wanted to meet in person each week.
So that was interesting.
That was kind of the one and only time I ever did that.
Spoiler alert.
I was like, after that, it was like, no.
(19:15):
Now, Jackie wanted weight loss.
So now we're getting a little, we're back in my wheelhouse.
She wasn't really interested in getting shredded.
Cool.
Okay, we're zeroing in.
And Jackie was a busy mom.
And this was my first encounter.
First of many.
First of hundreds, if not thousands.
(19:36):
My first encounter with the busy mom archetype.
And the busy mom archetype is, I'm so busy that I can't take care of myself.
That's the busy mom archetype I'm referring to. Moms are busy. Humans are busy. We're all too busy.
100%. But the busy mom archetype that I'm referring to is, well, it's because I'm a mom that I haven't
(19:57):
been able to take care of myself. And Jackie literally made no time for herself. Even as we
worked through the coaching relationship and she and I would work together on putting some
practices and some goals in place, she would just never do them because she was too busy.
She's convinced she was too busy. So she was struggling, understandably, with her health and
(20:18):
with her happiness, and she struggled to get results in my program because the busy belief
overrode everything. Now, at this early stage in the game, I was trained in health and nutrition
but not coaching. So I was trying to tell her what to do. Well, you got to do this, Jackie. Now do
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this, try this, try this, do this. It didn't work because she was busy being a mom to young kids.
It didn't fit into her life. And I could keep telling her what to do, but she wasn't executing
it. She just couldn't or wouldn't. I was stumped. I had nothing to go on. Try again, Jackie, try again,
keep trying. Since then, I've encountered the busy mom archetype hundreds of times, as I mentioned,
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And now I have new tools in my toolkit because now I'm a qualified health coach.
So now I work with these women to truly understand and help them see where they maybe do have time and bandwidth for the bare minimum.
And I help, I work with them, I partner up with them for us to co-determine what is that bare minimum that you, the individual in front of me, can do.
(21:36):
It's different for everybody.
We have to co-create that plan.
What is the bare minimum?
The most attainable goal.
So you think about the SMART goal framework.
It's something I teach health coaches a lot.
The SMART goal framework, really basic goal setting framework.
There's a million ways to set goals, but we all know the SMART goal.
The A in SMART, attainable, as far as I'm concerned, is the most important part.
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Is this goal actually attainable?
So we shrink it down to the most attainable thing.
But I didn't have those tools in my toolkit in the early stages.
Jackie was my third client.
I just knew health and nutrition and the weight loss stuff I'd learned and I was figuring it all out.
I wasn't really good at helping people goal set individually.
(22:20):
But now I do.
So now I work with the busy moms or anybody.
Every woman I work with is busy.
We're just all busy.
Hello, welcome to the modern human experience.
But like, what is the minimum most effective thing you can do this week? I honor the busyness. The
busyness in me recognizes the busyness in you. Namaste. But I also remind my clients that, remember,
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this is important to you as well. I know being busy and everything that keeps you busy is important
to you. Remember, this is also important to you. So we have to have that values connection,
the connection to intrinsic motivators. You want to do this, what's the smallest,
tiniest part of this goal that you can accomplish this week.
So Jackie taught me two important things. Number one, I needed to learn how to become a more
(23:06):
client-centered coach. I can't just roll into the relationship in this boss role and tell people what
to do. That just doesn't work. Not for the long haul, not for certain people at all.
The second thing I learned is that I didn't want to be driving around to in-person meetings. So
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in relationship with. Good to know. Very good logistical lesson to learn. My fourth client
was Heather. Heather was the literal embodiment of the ideal client that I envisioned when I pivoted
into health coaching. So much so that now to this day, whenever I do avatar work, like in a branding
(23:51):
or messaging workshop, or if I'm working on my marketing, if I'm working on my messaging,
if I'm thinking about product development, if I'm thinking about, you know, targeting,
I name my avatar client Heather. Heather is the name of my client avatar.
(24:11):
Heather was quite overweight, almost 100 pounds overweight.
She was insulin resistant and utterly at the end of her rope in terms of dieting and exercising.
She was like 40 years old.
She knew what to do.
She did tons of cardio, ate tons of salads, and it all stopped working.
Surprise, surprise.
(24:32):
And this was so identical to my own health journey.
So we all have to go through this experience, I think, in determining your expertise.
Like, what do you know the most about?
Well, probably the thing you know the most about is the thing that you personally persisted through.
And for me, it was exactly Heather's experience.
And it was like, as soon as I met Heather, a light bulb switched on for me.
(24:57):
This is my client.
This is my ideal client.
This and nothing else.
Only this.
This is who I want to work with.
I never want to work with anyone who's not a Heather.
So as much as I loved working with Tennille, I don't want to work with a Tennille.
As much as I loved working with Veronica, I don't want to work with Veronica.
But Jackie was more in the realm of my ideal client. I just didn't have the tools to help her. Heather was the physical embodiment of the person I wanted to work with. And I still remember every single thing about our relationship because Heather is still front of mind for me today. Whenever I write a post on Instagram, I'm writing it for the Heathers of the world.
(25:36):
The work with Heather was long and hard because I was so bought into it.
But also because what I learned about my ideal client and myself, what I learned about Heather and me and all these women that are like me and Heather, all these women that I was going to work with moving forward, is that we have a lot of psychosocial programming about weight loss.
(25:58):
in addition to the biological struggles of overweight and insulin resistance, all the
sort of nerdy health stuff that most health coaches geek out on, like exercise, sleep,
stress, food, whatever. Apart from that, there's psychosocial elements to weight loss
that I was starting to recognize by working so closely with Heather. That's amazing to learn.
(26:23):
Heather really helped me build my program. So we worked together for basically an open-ended
length of time. I didn't even put boundaries on it. I was like, let's just work together.
Like, we're just going to go until we get this solved. And I really poured into Heather and
invested in her because I knew she was going to help me make the program that solves the problem
(26:46):
for the Heathers of the world. So we worked together for a really long time. She was helping
me see and understand exactly how to work with women like her. And I really, really wanted to
get her results. I wanted to see her get results. And I'm brand new. So I have to like, there's a
lot of figuring out I had to do, right? So Heather, unbeknownst to her, because I didn't tell Heather,
(27:08):
hey, just so you know, you're my fourth ever client. I never told anybody. I didn't tell
Tenille she was my first. Nobody knew. Don't do that, by the way. You don't tell people that you're
new. You're not. You're an expert, okay? Just behave as an expert. You are. So Heather didn't
know that I was getting a tremendous amount of value out of our relationship from the perspective
of product development and understanding myself as a health coach. I was trying to help her,
(27:32):
but I just kept extending the relationship. She had a great outcome because we worked together
for so long. So, so, so long. I just almost didn't even want to let her go. Eventually,
she was like, I think I'm ready to go. It's like a year and a half later. She was like,
I'm ready to go.
She helped me immensely.
The reason I mention this is because something that I teach health coaches is that your clients
(27:57):
will help you build out your method.
Okay, so yes, weight loss is my expertise for women, but the method that I use to achieve
weight loss is very, very specific to the type of person that you work with.
And you won't be able to get that kind of observational learning until you have a client in your roster who is that person.
(28:20):
So your clients will help you build your program.
You don't have to have your program built before you take on clients.
Don't, in fact.
Don't build your program until you have clients.
Heather helped me really finesse the program to what it is today.
I have her debt of gratitude.
My fifth client was Melanie.
(28:44):
Melanie again was an ideal client so more than 30 pounds of weight to lose I was getting real good
at that part she was mildly insulin resistant I was excited to roll on with my you know newly
established avatars feeling really I was feeling really established you know five clients in
but I fired Melanie this is the first time I really ever refunded anyone's money I've only
(29:08):
had to refund money. Like I can count on two hands, like two hands number of refunds I've ever given
in, in like 13 years of doing this 3000 clients, like not many refunds. And for whatever it's worth,
I have a no refund policy in my, in my client agreement, but I do take it on a case by case
basis. And in Melanie's case, I didn't want to work with her anymore. So I said, you know what,
(29:32):
we're done here. I'm going to give your money back. Enjoy. Good luck. Here's the story.
Melanie refused to change anything about how she ate, moved, or lived. She didn't believe anything
I said. She questioned everything, which I actually like. Question everything. Ask questions. Get
(29:52):
curious. Seek to understand. Yes. But she blew off our coaching relationship. She didn't think it was
important. She didn't want to do it. If and when she did show up for a coaching call, it was mostly
to complain and tell me it wasn't working and it wasn't going to work. This isn't going to work for
me. I'm destined to be stuck. So Melanie was not at a state of readiness to do the work necessary to
(30:18):
change. This is the stages of change, the trans-theoretical model. Maybe I'll do a future
podcast episode to explain that, but at a high level, people are either ready to change or they're
not. If they are, they're great. If they're not, don't even bother. Don't even bother. This is why
(30:39):
I think like cold outreach is pointless. I have had a lot of health coaching students say to me,
well, should I, you know, reach out to my friends? And I have like three or four friends who are
very overweight and sick and they really need my help. Should I reach out to them? It's like, no,
no, don't do that. Don't cold DM people and say, hey, you're fat. Do you want to work together? No,
(30:59):
They have to be ready. Melanie wasn't ready, which, first of all, is kind of strange because she
ultimately found me. She booked the discovery call with me. She said yes to working with me.
So she might have been in like a transient place between readiness and unreadiness.
But the thing is, this is the whole point of the discovery call.
(31:22):
This should have been readily apparent to me in the discovery call, that this wasn't that
important to her. She wasn't that serious about it. The pain of being stuck where she was wasn't
great enough to go through the struggle of trying to make a major lifestyle change.
I should have sussed that out in the discovery call, and I guess I didn't.
(31:43):
I think, again, I mentioned this earlier, but I want to reiterate the whole point of the discovery
recall is frame it in your mind as an interview to determine fit. Is this the kind of person who's
going to benefit from my solution? Their state of readiness is a major factor. So start to ask
(32:05):
questions like, is this important to you? Why is this important to you? How will your life be better
if you make this change? What else have you tried? Why don't you just go back and try that again if
that worked so well. Like just really almost like, in a sense, you're almost pushing people away to
see if they really want it, kind of, okay? Melanie taught me to reframe my discovery calls as
(32:26):
interviews. And I also learned from Melanie that it is never worth it to take on somebody who's not
a good fit or who doesn't want to be helped or you just don't get along with for whatever reason.
Now, when you're a new coach, not everybody listening here is a new coach, but some of you are.
When you're a new coach, you will take on anyone. And I did. Melanie was my fifth client. Of course,
(32:51):
I said yes to Melanie. I said yes to everybody. Melanie is the first person I had to say no to
midway through our relationship. And then it's sort of like I was like training my no muscles.
Now it's like, oh, there's the, there's another option. I don't have to take everybody. I can say
no to a client. Interesting. Very different, very big paradigm shift, right? I think you should
take on everybody who comes to you. You're going to take on everybody until you get your first
(33:14):
Melanie, your first person who you're like, oh, I wish I had never started this. And it's a
massively crucial learning experience. Massively crucial. I feel grateful that it only took me
five clients to have this experience. Like, you know, one, two, three, four, good, good, good,
good. Five was a no. Because I could have gone on for years before I had my first no client. And so
(33:38):
Anyways, maybe you're going to borrow my experience to fast track your own.
And what you could do is you could make a list of the qualities you think you don't want in a client.
You know what I mean?
Like, who don't you want to work with?
Who are the melanies for you?
What kind of traits or behaviors would you find difficult to get excited about?
(33:59):
Now, I don't recommend putting this out there.
I wouldn't recommend posting this on your social feed.
Here's who I don't help.
I don't think that's very nice.
Don't worry about it.
Just have this as an internal checklist.
Have it as an internal checklist as you're going through discovery with people.
You have that little mental list of kind of your yellow flags, your red flags.
(34:21):
It's good for you to have.
It's a little inventory for you to keep track of.
And it will help you with your marketing, with your messaging, with your programming,
with your discovery calls.
that will help you by clarifying and sort of zeroing in on what you do want to do and who you
want to work with. Well, thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with me. I absolutely
(34:47):
loved revisiting the early days of my health coaching career, which is now in its 13th year.
3,000 clients later, I still learn from every single one of them. And
is one you've already heard a million times, but I'm going to give it to you again.
Be as specific as humanly possible with who you do help, and then do everything in your power to
(35:11):
not work with anyone but that person. Staying focused on your specialty and your expertise
will make your health coaching professional journey much more rewarding and fun.
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
(35:36):
successful health coach, practitioner, influencer, or thought leader with a thriving business and an
interesting story, we'd love to hear from you. 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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