November 13, 2024 • 42 mins
Erin Power discusses the changing landscape of wellness coaching, focusing on GLP-1 medications and their implications for health professionals. She believes in the need for coaches to confront biases and adapt to new trends, such as evolving food narratives like the resurgence of cottage cheese.
Moving into the business area, Erin explores technology integration in coaching, highlighting user-friendly tools that enhance client relationships. Erin also shares strategies for using social media effectively, particularly on Instagram, to connect with prospective clients. Finally, Erin advocates for a growth mindset and the use of AI tools like ChatGPT to improve coaching practices, equipping health coaches for success in a rapidly evolving industry.
Episode Overview:
0:00 Intro
0:42 GLP-1 Drug Business Insights
10:07 Embracing Technology in Coaching
20:49 Business Communication Strategies
30:49 Cultivating a Business Mindset
38:40 Leveraging AI for Client Insights
Connect with Erin at:
- Submit your questions to hello@primalhealthcoach.com
- Website: primalhealthcoach.com
- Instagram: @primalhealthcoach
Health Coach Radio is a podcast that dives deep into the world of health and fitness coaching, brought to you by Primal Health Coach Institute, founded by the renowned Mark Sisson. Join your host, Erin Power, a proud graduate of Primal Health Coach Institute, as she shares inspiring stories and expert insights on elevating your coaching practice.
If you're curious about transforming your life through the power of health and/or fitness coaching, visit primalhealthcoach.com/hcr/. Discover the transformative journey of Primal living and explore how Primal Health Coach Institute can empower you to make a real impact on people's lives.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Well, this is going to be a business conversation. I've got some Q&A from some listeners about
business technology, business communications, and I'm going to do a little riff on business
mindset. But first, I want to start with a news topic that came across my desk, the business
of GLP-1 drugs. Hi, I'm Erin Power. I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and
(00:24):
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. Our mission is to help you
grow your career, elevate your income, change the lives of the clients who need your help,
(00:45):
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. Okay, so jumping on this bandwagon just a
tiny little bit because we might as well. They're here to stay or we don't really know,
do we? Here's what I think about GLP-1s, if I may editorialize for a moment. When these
(01:09):
medications first came out 18 months, two years ago, and we started really hearing about
them, personally, I didn't jump to any conclusion for or against because I didn't know anything
about them. So I'm not going to be the kind of person who jumps to a conclusion because
of any preconceived sort of bias that I have. So for example, you might have a preconceived
bias that big pharma is always bad, in which case no matter what they come up with, you're
(01:33):
not going to like it. You're going to be kind of closed off to it. Or you might have a preconceived
idea about how people need to just sort of bootstrap themselves into weight loss and
if they're taking any other approach, then they're cheating. These might be your preconceived
biases and we all have them. I really would encourage health coaches to confront their
(01:55):
biases. If that's you, if you're a health coach practicing or aspiring, it's a really
good idea to confront your biases because when you're a health coach, you're in partnership
with another human being who also has their own biases and yours might not align with
them and then what are you going to do? Argue? Fight? That's not a really productive coaching
client relationship. So we do want to kind of clear slate ourselves, at least in conversations
(02:21):
with clients. So imagine the perfect client comes across your desk but they're on GLP1
and you are morally opposed to them. What do you do? Are you going to say, "Get out
of my face. I don't work with people who cheat on weight loss." Or will you say, "I want
to help this person because I don't love that they're on these drugs. Maybe they can get
(02:41):
off them or feel good on them so maybe I can help." It would be really good to, I think,
accept some of the changing tides of the wellness industry. I don't know about you but I've
been in the wellness industry for 30 years. I started in the fitness industry when I was
18 years old and you better believe one million trends have come and gone in the fitness industry
for sure. I was even thinking about this the other day with respect to nutrition. Do you
(03:05):
remember when quinoa was all the rage? Quinoa, just little pseudo seed balls of crunchy whatever-ness
that we would sprinkle into salads or have as a side dish. Quinoa doesn't have any flavor.
It's not yummy. It's not really a life-changing food. It's sort of a plant protein I guess
(03:26):
and all right as far as proteins go. It was never really clear. As I look back, I'm not
really clear why quinoa had such a moment. Do you know what's having a moment right now?
Cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is having a moment right now as I'm recording this. Everyone's
talking about cottage cheese. In fact, I've had clients say to me, "Do I need to eat cottage
(03:46):
cheese?" and I'd say, "No. Why do you think you need to do that?" and they'll say, "Well,
I just keep seeing everybody talking about it everywhere. I mean I know, Erin, as a health
coach you like women to eat more protein. Do I have to eat cottage cheese? I really
don't like it." It's like, "No. You don't have to eat anything you don't like and cottage
cheese isn't particularly special." It's like, "Why cottage cheese? Why cottage cheese? What
(04:10):
is special about cottage cheese that it's having a moment?" I was chuckling to myself
because a client had asked me, "Is it okay if I eat sour cream? You know like sour cream
put on your whatever you're gonna put it on your taco salad if you make a taco salad or
whatever you're gonna put it on your potatoes if you're eating potatoes?" She wanted to
know if she was allowed to eat sour cream and I said, "Well, why wouldn't you be allowed
(04:32):
to?" She said, "Well, it's like dairy and I don't know it's got fat in it." It's like,
"Well, so does Greek yogurt. So does cottage cheese. I don't understand." This is the same
thing as a fermented semi-solid dairy product. Why do some semi-solid dairy products get
a pass and others don't? It's very strange. Or another client asked me if they should
swap Greek yogurt in instead of sour cream on their taco bowl and it's like, "Yeah, it
(04:56):
doesn't matter whichever one you like better it's kind of the same thing." Anyway, we get
into the weeds on sometimes I find humor in how we get into the weeds on health narratives.
We those of us listening to this podcast and engaging with this content are probably pretty
shall we say zealous. Pretty zealous. We're pretty excited about health topics. We are
devouring media. We're embroiled, yes embroiled in content and ever-changing perspectives
(05:23):
and that's our job. I think it's part of my job. It's part of my job to know why cottage
cheese is having a moment. That's why I'm asking you because I really don't know why.
So if you know why please email me at hello@primalhealthcoach.com and let me know what is so special about cottage
cheese. Maybe you want to come on and be a guest and explain cottage cheese to the listeners
(05:43):
and myself so I can understand why. So the point being we have to have our fingers on
the pulse of ever-changing trends which brings me back around to GLP-1s. It's the cottage
cheese of weight loss medications if you will. So if we can be open-minded to cottage cheese
can't we be open-minded to a peptide that somebody might inject to help them have a
(06:04):
different relationship with food and appetite and cravings and what have you? Interesting
idea. So this article came across my desk and it literally is titled "The Business
of GLP-1s Inside the New Weight Loss Drug Ecosystem" and it just runs through a few
organizations companies that are leaning in shall we say. So you might have heard that
(06:28):
Weight Watchers brought in like a concierge sort of medical team that was going to help
I think prescribe and manage GLP-1 medications to Weight Watchers users. Like what a departure
for Weight Watchers. Do you know I think about when my mom took me to Weight Watchers when
I was nine years old. By the way my mom took me to Weight Watchers when I was nine because
she couldn't find a babysitter okay. She wasn't trying to disorder my relationship with food.
(06:53):
She just couldn't find a babysitter. She was on Weight Watchers so I had to go with her.
But you know I remember the ladies sitting in the chairs at the community hall and lining
up one at a time to go stand on the scale and get weighed in front of everybody and
either receive praise or admonishment depending on how their weigh-in went. Totally crazy.
So what a departure from that sort of very analog experience of physically going to the
(07:17):
weigh-in and being either thumbs up or thumbs down to now we have these injectable medications
that might make weight loss feel easier for some people. But what's interesting as I scroll
through this article is just some of the examples of some of the fitness and wellness industries
or heavyweights and newcomers alike that are embracing and just accepting the GLP-1 reality.
(07:42):
And by the way the reason I'm talking about this is because this article came across my
desk but also I probably get asked this question from a health coach every week now. What should
we do? It's one of two questions and they're very similar. What should we do in the age
of GLP-1s and what should we do in the age of artificial intelligence? And my blanket
answer to both is maybe don't worry about it just learn about it and try to peacefully
(08:02):
coexist because it's here now. It's not like GLP-1s are gonna go away. It's not like AI
is gonna go away. It's here to stay. By the way since today's conversation is about
technology I am going to speak a little bit about AI toward the end if I remember to.
Don't let me forget. So I'm reading through this article The Vitamin Shop which is a big
brick and mortar supplement store like a generic mall type supplement store. They're getting
(08:27):
into the GLP-1 game. They've launched a telehealth service connecting eligible consumers with
licensed healthcare providers to offer nutritional supplements and anti-obesity drugs. And they're
offering compounded versions of semaglutide and trzepatide which is so fascinating. And
as I scroll through this article there's actually almost like an aesthetic sort of boutique
(08:48):
compounding brand called Hims and Hers. Hims and Hers. It's grammatically on the bubble.
Hims and Hers Health. They've at the telehealth platform that recognized that there was these
ongoing shortages of the name brand GLP-1. So they got into the compounding game. So
(09:11):
compounding sort of pharmacies can create these drugs like generic versions of them.
They have to kind of mildly tweak I think the formulation just enough so that it's not
on the doorstep of like patent law. But I mean I'm looking at this packaging. It's beautiful.
(09:35):
These beautiful little jars, little vials with gorgeous branding and branded syringes
and needles and it's beautiful. It's really nice. You can have that in your fridge and
you wouldn't feel bad about it. It's just interesting. So I don't know. I think this
conversation is interesting because this is also technology. This is medical technology.
(09:59):
If you've ever really battled your weight excessively you might find this to be the
most miraculous thing. If you're a health coach who works in the weight loss space you
might feel personally threatened by it. I don't think you need to. Maybe just learn
to peacefully coexist with this and all technology. So let's get into technology. I had a couple
questions that came in from listeners. So Dan submitted this question. He says, "Do
(10:22):
you have a recommended online system for managing content delivery and client profiles?" Now
I do not. To start with I don't have a recommended platform. What Dan is asking for is something
in the realm of a, we might call it a client management system or a practice management
system. There's a lot of management systems. Okay so I'm going to use the phrase management
(10:45):
system a lot which is so funny because my very first job out of university was working
in tech and we would use phrases like management system or enterprise and it was all this goofy
sort of jargon that goes in one ear and out the other. And if you were listening to this
you're probably not super techy because not a lot of health coaches are. You don't really
(11:07):
have to be. You don't have to be super techy but I do think you have to embrace and accept
technology. It's here to stay. It's 2024. It's basically 2025 by the time this thing
goes live. We live in the future. I've said this before. We can't really afford to be
super super low tech anymore but these tools are very user friendly. I feel like I've said
(11:28):
this a hundred times on this podcast. But to answer Dan's question I don't have a recommended
system but I just wanted to sort of answer this question generally. So as far as systems
go there's a few systems that you might end up with in your business. One of them is a
customer management system or a contact management system CMS which is like your email system.
(11:50):
Okay so this is where when people find your website or they want to follow you or they
want to get on your email list and you have the opportunity to have their contact record
sort of in your ecosystem. This is where you're collecting contacts. Very very very useful
system. I would say a CMS and we're going to call it an email system or customer relationship
(12:10):
management system. These are crucial. You have to have one of these. You got to have
one of these. So good ones would be MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Entrepot. I don't
even know there's millions of them but if you start googling names like that you'll
come across hundreds of these CRMs. You want to have a place to collect contacts. Just
(12:31):
people. People who have come across you. These may or may not be clients. They will eventually
potentially become clients especially if you quote unquote own them inside your CRM. There's
a greater chance you can nurture them to become your clients. Nurturing contacts to become
clients is part of your job as a health coach. Okay so that's a CRM. Then we have things
(12:52):
like well another management system you might end up with which I think is probably useful
too is a learning management system or a curriculum system of some kind. Some place to host a
curriculum and that could be a Kajabi or a Thinkific or a Teachable or oh my gosh there's
a million of those too but a place where you could host a curriculum. You need to have
(13:13):
some place to host your protocol, your program, your methodology to enroll your clients so
they can do the learning on their own. I've even coached clients to simply use Google
Drive. So create Google Docs that describe your protocols and you can grant access to
docs and Google Drive folders to your client and it can behave in a similar way to an LMS
(13:37):
a learning management system if you're not ready to invest in technology yet. But a few
episodes ago I think I ran through with you folks how much money I spend in my business
on my supporting technology and it's something like $800 a month which maybe sounds like
a lot but I have a large coaching business and that is a drop in the bucket of how much
I earn. You will have to invest in technology. You will have to invest in systems. If you're
(14:01):
not quite ready to do that yet well choose your battles. I definitely think you should
have a CRM. I definitely think you need somewhere to host curriculum but you can use a free
option like Google Drive. But what Dan's question is to my understanding is managing content
delivery and client profiles. So content delivery once again those two things I just suggested
(14:26):
your CRM, your customer relationship management, your email system and your curriculum management
system or your learning management system are the ways you're going to deliver content.
Now for client management you have a client in your roster they need to be managed through
the program that depends on your program. So this is where business education and programming
(14:54):
kind of converge. So I always think about coaching the practice the art science of health
coaching in terms of there's the coaching element. How good are you at coaching? I hope
you're good at coaching. That would be the first thing to get right before you even worry
about technology. Do you know how to coach? Are you good at that? Then there's the business
elements like the nuts and bolts, the systems, the processes but then there's the programming
(15:17):
which is the methodology or the system you take your clients through. These things are
kind of separate little silos but they do converge. So anyhow, managing clients and
client profiles as Dan asks to me the first question I want to know is well how are you
working with them? Like what's the deal here? What's the relationship like? Is it one-on-one
(15:42):
coaching calls every week? In which case just having a document on your computer with all
the notes from the conversations probably is sufficient. You can keep data points in
there and the client can report in on a check-in form as to how they're feeling, how they're
doing, what their measurements are, what their data points are and you can just collect that
in a document and just have a specific client document. Fun fact, that's what I use. I have
(16:09):
a Google Doc for every client in my roster and when the client shows up for the coaching
call I open up their Google Doc and I type in a few notes. They also have edit access
to that Google Doc so they could type in their own notes. I love it. It's collaborative.
And here's the deal, my programming, my health coach programming is very, very, very relationship
(16:31):
based. I'm not collecting a ton of data. I don't care what their whoop strap or Oura
Ring says. I don't want a food journal. I'm not having them track their food. I don't
do that in my coaching practice. That's not part of my program. Therefore, my client profile,
client management system doesn't need to be anything incredibly formulaic. It's simply
(16:53):
conversations. So see how the tool you're going to use for this depends on the way you
deliver your program. Does that make sense? Now maybe you're a health coach that does
a lot of data tracking or you really want to quantify or you want a lot of data points.
So there are lots of platforms that will aggregate data from a Fitbit, from MyFitnessPal, from
an Oura Ring. There's very high tech platforms that will pull up a client's data so that
(17:18):
the client has a dashboard in front of them. If you're a data driven coach and your clients
are data driven people, right? So now we're getting into the realm of marketing, communication,
business development, programming. You have to make these decisions before you figure
out what technology you're going to use to manage your business, quite frankly. Maybe
you want to do things like progress pictures or food journals, in which case, you know,
(17:43):
something like, I think we use tools called Coach Catalyst and Practice Better and Healthy.
And there's a million of these practice management solutions. Or you could even Google coaching
software. Now, just so you know, I've looked at all of them. I've looked at all of them
just for giggles and I find most of them overwhelming. And I'm a tech savvy human. It's not that
(18:08):
the technology is overwhelming. It's just that there's so much packed into some of these
tools more than the average coach client relationship I think would need. So here's what I'm going
to say about this. I don't think the technology of your coaching relationship is where you
actually start. I know that sounds counterintuitive to what I've been talking about through this
whole conversation because technology is important. But before you decide to leap to some kind
(18:32):
of coaching technology, be a good coach, know who and how you help people. Because that's
going to determine where you go with this. You might just need Google Docs. Health coaches,
globally speaking, we are not bound to HIPAA, which is like the Medical Privacy Act, because
we're not taking medical documentation from our clients. If you're a health coach, you're
(18:56):
not playing in the realm of medicine. So we're not really bound to HIPAA. Now, if you're
working as a health coach inside of an integrative medical clinic, or some kind of collaborative
team system, the team might be bound to HIPAA, in which case some kind of platform like this
would be really useful to get the hang of. Practice Better is a good example, a really
(19:16):
common one that people use that is HIPAA compliant. It just has some security and safety, like
encryption built in. But health coaches, generally speaking, do not need to comply with HIPAA.
That might change, just so we're clear, but as of right now, recording this in November
of 2024, it's not something we need to worry about. If you're keeping quiet documentations
on a locked computer, you're good. Health coach radio listeners, have I got a treat
(19:40):
for you. To get 72 hour free trial access to Primal Health Coach Institute and a 50%
off coupon code to the How to Become a Health Coach virtual summit, featuring video interviews
with over 30 industry experts, visit primalhealthcoach.com/hcr today. So I think we can, in some cases,
(20:04):
downplay the importance of technology. And in this particular case, I think we're overblowing
the importance of technology. Do you know who and how you help people? Start with that,
and then the technology that supports that will emerge. My advice would be, don't leap
to the flashiest technology for your coaching and client relationship management, because
(20:26):
it's actually not that important. The relationship is more important than the technology you
use to facilitate the relationship. Now I'm going to move on to like a business
communication chit chat, because another question I got, which I receive a lot often, and I
do apologize if I've answered this 20 times already on this podcast, it's quite possible,
but it's okay because the question keeps coming in, so people need to hear it again. I always
(20:49):
think about that when I'm working with humans, which is you listening to this or you submitting
these questions or my clients. I may have answered this question a thousand times, but
it's the first time somebody's asked it. And I actually think, here's what I think, as
a health coach, somebody who's trying to become a thought leader and have a really established
point of view, it's only upside for me to reiterate and reiterate and reiterate my perspective
(21:14):
on things. So for example, every few months I run a 21-day challenge and it requires me
to teach my method in kind of a rapid fire hose way to a group of people who have just
come in out of nowhere. These aren't people who I've nurtured. They've been kind of in
my ecosystem for a while. They may or may not be ideal clients. They're paying for a
(21:34):
low ticket, low barrier to entry coaching program. I'm delivering information. It requires
me to deliver my own information over and over and over and over and over again to a
new batch of people. And I actually think that training that muscle is really useful.
So all of that to say is I'm happy to train the muscle of answering this question, which
is from Nissi. Nissi says, "I understand the importance of sharing my story on social media.
(22:03):
Can I realistically attract clients through organic Instagram growth? And if so, how long
might it take to start seeing results without an existing following?" Okay, so like three
questions or one statement, which is, "I understand the importance of sharing my story." Let's
stop there. The importance of sharing your story isn't that important. You're actually
(22:24):
not that important inside your own Instagram feed. You forget it is your one on Instagram.
The story of the client you want to attract is highly important. Speak to them. Don't
make the mistake of talking about yourself because that's not interesting to a consumer.
Sorry, I think you're interesting. You're very interesting. But a person who's shopping
(22:44):
is more interested in what's in it for them. So you have to talk about them. So if you
start an Instagram feed, I would say at first, you're probably going to start with like,
"Here's what I eat in a day. Here's my workout. Here's what I do when I'm traveling." And
that's okay because nobody's looking. So you have no audience. So you can say whatever
you want. But pretty soon, you should practice the art of flipping that narrative to, "What
(23:09):
does my ideal client need to hear? What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What
do they need to solve?" Right? So let's use, for an example, healthy eating while you're
traveling. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that I'm in a hotel room. I'm
actually literally holding my microphone up. It's clipped to a coffee stir stick that I
got from the breakfast bar downstairs in the hotel. So real high tech setup here if you're
(23:31):
watching this on YouTube. If you're listening to this as a podcast, you're probably very
impressed that I'm pulling this off with such great sound quality. This is a $20 lapel microphone
from Amazon. If you don't have one, you got to get one. Make your content sound better,
even if you're on the fly. Okay. How to eat healthy while you're traveling.
(23:51):
So you might be traveling and you might say, "I'm going to video document how I eat healthy
while traveling and then I'm going to put it on my Instagram feed." Cool. That's great
because an ideal client of yours might watch you do that and pick up clues. So that's cool,
right? But just sort of like talking about yourself and the supplements you're taking
(24:14):
or the time you went to bed or your preferred type of squat in the gym, it gets a little
-- it's not that actionable for a person who's potentially contemplating working with you.
You know how back in the day the main criticism of Instagram was or social media in general
(24:34):
was, "Well, I don't want to be posting pictures of my breakfast all day. That's boring." That's
what it used to be. But now using Instagram as a business growth platform, you have to
be more client focused, more customer focused on the content. So what do they need to hear?
Okay, right out the gate, that was the first part of Nissa's question is, "I understand
the importance of sharing my story on social media. Actually sharing your clients' struggle
(24:56):
and offering solutions is more important. Be very solutions-oriented in your Instagram
rather than just sort of narrative. That makes sense." Then she says, "Can I realistically
attract clients through organic Instagram growth?" Well, I did. I built my whole business
doing that. So I'm going to go with yes. Is it easy? No. But I would say starting a business
from scratch is just not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. If it was easy, we'd all be doing
(25:20):
it, et cetera, et cetera. It's not easy. But this time is going to pass anyway. You need
to crystallize your point of view anyway. So you might as well do it on Instagram since
it's free and everybody's on it. Literally, that's where people in certain age groups
anyway do a lot of their shopping. So you might as well. Like I said earlier, when I
(25:40):
run my little 21-day challenge, the best thing I get out of that is that I'm constantly driving
home my message. I'm practicing saying it. I'm saying it to people. I'm saying it out
loud out of my face hole, practicing spinning this narrative so people can pick it up and
be excited about it. Same thing with Instagram. It's really a chance for you to just crystallize
(26:02):
and clarify your message. If you ever come across my Instagram feed and you start scrolling
through it, you're going to notice that I say the same things over and over again because
I have one clear point of view and I just use that platform to reiterate it. A client
who's following me is not just following me. They're not hanging on my every word. They're
not hanging on your every word. They don't know that you posted the same thing one week
(26:23):
ago with a different picture. They don't know. They're just picking up a lot of noise in
a very noisy marketplace. And if you're consistent enough, your noise will rise to the top and
they'll remember you. You'll become front of mind because they'll have seen you more.
There's a philosophy called the mere exposure effect. It's how politicians win elections.
(26:51):
It's how the hakutua girl goes viral. It's how virality happens. It's how people become
famous and known. Now, you men only want to become famous, but you want to become known.
So you have to just merely expose yourself constantly in the internet to the scrolling
consumer base so that they know that you exist and that you're always around. Yes, you can
(27:14):
realistically attract clients through organic growth as long as you're speaking to them.
Speak to them. Say things that they need to hear. I have a little hack for this later.
And then Nissi's final question is, "How long might it take to start seeing results without
an existing following?" Well, how much time do you have? So to quote or paraphrase a very
(27:40):
famous Instagram marketer, Gary Vaynerchuk, if you want to do something for the rest of
your life, don't give up on it after two weeks. It's going to take a long time. It's going
to take all the time. It's never going to not take time. You're not going to arrive
to success here. It is always a moving target. So when you say, "How long will it take to
(28:00):
start seeing results?" My question is, "What results are you looking for?" Because there's
the outcome goal, the thing you want, which is probably a successful business where you're
making an income and an impact that makes you really feel proud and happy. But then
there's the little tiny process goals that lead up to that. I got a new follower. Somebody
commented. Somebody booked a call. They didn't sign up, but at least I got to run through
(28:23):
a sales call framework with them. "Hey, now I've got a new client. I've got one client,
I've got two clients. I've got a third client. I've got 10 clients. I've got 100 clients."
Look at the continuum here. How long will it take to start seeing results? Completely
unknown. It depends on what results you're looking for.
I really do think that as a culture, and this is just a quick cultural narrative, we could
(28:46):
practice getting a little bit more excited about leading indicators rather than just
the lagging indicators of success because success is a lagging indicator. I think like
the big S success. I'm making money. I'm making an impact. I'm making a difference. That's
a lagging indicator of the work you're going to put in now. In the meantime, you have to
anchor to the leading indicators, the tiny little small S successes that are along the
(29:09):
way. So how long might it take to start seeing results? Well, it might take five minutes.
You might get a follower after your first post. Results. It might take five months.
You might have, "Oh my gosh, I have 500 people on my email list. I'm emailing people, 500
of them. 500 possible leads. It might take five years. Oh, I'm making a quarter of a
(29:33):
million dollars in my coaching business," whatever the thing is. It might, and anywhere
in between. But the sales cycle for online service-based businesses marketed through
platforms like Instagram, this data point always changes, but it's somewhere in the
neighborhood of like 16 to 20 months. On average, somebody has to follow you for more than a
(29:57):
year, almost two years before they might buy from you. So what are you waiting for? If
you start now, that happens sooner.
All right. So I had one more perspective I wanted to share. Business mindset, and it
actually just honestly leapfrogs off of what I just shared when I was talking to Nissi,
(30:18):
which is that I think the people who are very successful in health coaching are the ones
who are willing to persevere when it's hard. Well, actually, that's true of anybody who's
successful in anything. If you're successful in anything, it's because you were willing
to persevere when it got hard. So you hit the dip, you hit a wall, you came up against
a barrier, and you figured out how to solve it, pick yourself up and move on. You practice
(30:41):
the skill of learning to embrace failure and struggle as a learning opportunity. I know
this sounds like a lot of woo-woo pep talking, but I have to do this every single week in
my business. For example, last month, I had the potential for one of the most epic months
in my whole business. Okay? I had 35, 35 discovery calls in my calendar. 10 of them said yes.
(31:12):
That's great. 10 people said yes and paid me for my high ticket coaching practice. That's
a substantial five-figure month that I had. 25 didn't say yes. And as excited as I was
about the 10 new clients I brought on, it didn't take very long for me to start obsessively
fixating on the 25 clients that didn't sign up and then thinking, "Oh my gosh, what if
(31:37):
I had signed all 35 of them? That would have been a life-changing month. That would have
been a six-figure month." So thinking about and becoming sad and frustrated and fraught
by the 25 people who didn't sign up for my program, what did I do wrong? What's wrong
with me? What's wrong with them? What's wrong with this system? Is it the GLP ones? Is it
(31:59):
AI? Why? Why didn't they sign up? I don't know. I should figure that out. That's my
next step. I can't just wallow in 25 people that didn't sign up with me. First of all,
I have 10 new clients I need to support, which I'm excited about. Secondly, I have nothing
but learning to do from the 25 who didn't sign up. There's no way I want to allow that
to happen again. If I allow that to happen again, I'm just rolling over. I'm just deciding
(32:23):
I don't want to do this anymore. So you're making decisions and doing nothing is doing
something. If I say, "Oh, this sucks. I can't believe how bad I am at this. Man, most people
who I spoke to on the phone didn't want to work with me. I'm just going to go get a real
job again. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to just throw away 12 years of effort
because 25 people didn't sign up with me. I'm just going to do nothing with this. I'm
(32:46):
just going to wallow in it." Doing nothing is doing something. Doing nothing is deciding
that I'm going to accept this the way it is. That's not a business mindset. That is not
a successful business mindset. When I say business mindset, I'll be really honest with
you. I'm starting to get the ick around business coaching narrative a little bit. It's a little
(33:06):
bit noisy, at least maybe for me, maybe for you because I'm an online business owner.
So I'm hearing and absorbing and being targeted with a lot of business coaching narrative
because I'm the target audience for that. It's getting a little repetitive. It's getting
a little old. But because this question came in to me today, when I talk about business
(33:30):
mindset, I'm actually not even talking about business. I'm talking about your growth mindset
generally. Do you believe in your potential for anything and everything? And what would
you do if the thing you wanted mattered the most to you? We are hardworking, non-lazy,
(33:53):
productive creatures. You have been in other aspects of your life. You have to simply harness
that here. So it's barely business mindset at all. This isn't really business coaching.
This is personal development coaching. You have to be ready to develop yourself and be
really freaking uncomfortable sometimes. And here comes a business coaching cliche. Your
(34:15):
growth is on the other side of the discomfort. My growth is on the other side of figuring
out why 25 women didn't sign up with me last month. I have to push up against my natural
inclination, which is to turtle. Like, "Oh, I can't believe how bad that was. Turtle.
I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen." That's my natural inclination because the
(34:37):
conflict, the friction of that is immense. The friction of having to confront why 25
people said no is too immense and it feels uncomfortable physically in my body, uncomfortable
to contemplate it. But if I decide to turtle and accept that 25 people said no, then I'm
just perpetuating the narrative that people say no to me. But instead, what I need to
(34:57):
do is be a productive grown-ass adult about it and say, "Well, why did they say no? What
would have made them a yes?" Now, I can ask them that and quite frankly, I'm going to.
There's a few people who I thought were for sure yeses and they changed their mind at
the very last second. And I'm going to ask them, "Hey, Sally, if you have a minute, I
just would really love to know why you decided not to move forward." That feels a bit awkward
(35:23):
to ask, but I have to know. I have to know. I want to know. This is the thing. If my natural
inclination is to turtle and pretend it didn't happen, then me wanting to actually email
people and ask them why they said no is such an obvious outcome of my own personal development.
(35:43):
I've changed as a human being because me 10 years ago would have cringed at the idea of
emailing somebody to ask them why they didn't work with me. Now, it's the only thing I
can do. It's my only next step is to ask them why they said no. And I'm going to.
And then to close the loop on my technology chit chat today. And by the way, I do love
talking about technology, but I also love talking about other things. So if you have
(36:06):
questions you want me to cover on this podcast, I am a health coaching educator. I am a successful
health coach in private practice and have been for 12 years. I have a lot of wisdom
to share with you. So hey, reach out to me at hello@primalhealthcoach.com with your questions.
Many of the questions that I'm answering on this podcast come from our student body at
Primal Health Coach Institute where I'm on the faculty. But I love hearing from coaches
(36:31):
listening whether you're new in business, and I really love hearing from coaches who
are very established in business. And if that's you and you have an established health coaching
business, I really would love to hear from you because maybe I could interview you. I
could learn from you. Wouldn't that be amazing? Anyway, I do talk about technology a lot because
quite frankly, it's the questions I get asked the most. But I would like to also talk about
(36:51):
you and who you're going to become. Let's not relinquish all the potential success of
our health coaching business as some secret technology. Most of the wisdom and the strength
of character and this raw skills and talent you need are actually within you somewhere.
(37:12):
And if they're not strong, you need to strengthen those muscles much like I'm strengthening
my muscle by asking my clients why they didn't sign up with me rather than just pretending
it didn't happen. So you've got to lean into personal growth and then your business will
grow. And that's a business mindset.
Well, pep talk for you. As some parting wisdom, I want to share with you how I have been leveraging
(37:36):
the learnings from these 25 failed client consultations to learn more and using technology
to do so. So before every one of these consultations, and I just did that this month, this is something
that I tried brand new this month. Right before the client consultation, I opened up chat
GPT and I said to the AI robot, "Hey, I'm meeting with Sally this afternoon. Here's
(38:02):
what Sally told me she wants to work on. These are her main struggles. This is what she's
tried before that has failed. These are her goals. These are her dreams. These are her
pains. These are her fears." And I'll say, "What kinds of questions should I ask Sally
to get to the root of her pain and struggle and to identify the gaps between where she
is now and where she wants to be?" And I'll tell you what, chat GPT took that intake questionnaire
(38:25):
and fed me back some amazing conversation driving questions that I could fold into the
discovery call to get the client thinking. And these questions are amazing. They really
do drive home, again, pain, struggle, barriers, gaps, all the things that prevent people from
(38:46):
having success. I loved using this tool, but I don't know if it panned out. But I have
this conversation in chat GPT. I can say, "Okay, chat GPT, the following 25 people said
no. What do you notice about them? What's similar between these people? What did I miss?
What is it about these women?" Because I have, by the way, all the transcripts from our Zoom
(39:09):
calls as well, so I can fold that in. I could have chat GPT analyze how or why I missed
the mark on those 25 calls. And I'm going to.
Another thing I'm using chat GPT for, I started a new conversation with chat GPT and I said,
and I quote, "I'd like to hire and train you for the role of director of content. Are you
(39:34):
familiar with the work of Gary Vaynerchuk?" So I just mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk earlier
in this episode. I think he's a guy who just has a really sensible and very just super
productive focused approach to content marketing and marketing in the digital age. So I asked
chat GPT if it would be interested in coming on board as my director of content and if
(39:55):
it was familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk's approach. And chat GPT said, "Yes, I'm very familiar
with Gary Vaynerchuk's work." Explained a little bit about Gary V. I said, "Great. I want to
model Gary's approach. How can I best train you to be my content director?" So when I
say content director, I want chat GPT to tell me what to say. So I've been talking, I've
(40:16):
been flapping my gums on Instagram for a long time, 12 years. I have a really clear point
of view, but I'm also running out of things to say. And I also need to figure out ways
to say it that it gets right into the center of the heart of the matter that my clients
are struggling with, the things that are keeping them on the bubble from working with me. So
I asked chat GPT to tell me how to train it to be my Gary Vaynerchuk. And it did. It gave
(40:45):
me a 10-step list of ways to train chat GPT, the questions to ask, the prompts to provide.
I'm going to have chat GPT ask me questions. You can do that. Ask me 50 questions about
my ideal client, and it will. And then you can start to get very clear about who this
person is and what you should say to them. Once the robot has a sense of who your ideal
(41:05):
client is, you can say, "Give me 10 ideas for YouTube videos or Instagram captions that
will speak to the pains and struggles of my ideal clients." By the way, since I've posted
all of my client consultation application forms into chat GPT, that's all in there now.
I can say, "Hey, chat GPT, friend, go back into the consultation strategy conversation
(41:29):
we had and pull out for me the top 25 major concerns that women seem to have with their
bodies at this stage of life." Now I have clear the top 25 things that all women seem
to be struggling with are, and I can start to create content based on that. Okay, so
another little deep dive on technology. The housekeeping staff is outside in the hallway
(41:49):
of this hotel making a lot of noise, so I'm going to wrap it up here. Do let me know if
you have more things you want to talk about. Reach out at hello@primalhealthcoach.com,
and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. 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/call. Or if you're already a successful health coach,
(42:14):
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@primalhealthcoach.com and
let us know why we need to interview you for Health Coach Radio. Thanks for listening.
Well, this is going to be a business conversation. I've got some Q&A from some listeners about
business technology, business communications, and I'm going to do a little riff on business
mindset. But first, I want to start with a news topic that came across my desk, the business
of GLP-1 drugs. Hi, I'm Erin Power. I'm a health coach, a health coaching educator and
(00:24):
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. Our mission is to help you
grow your career, elevate your income, change the lives of the clients who need your help,
(00:45):
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. Okay, so jumping on this bandwagon just a
tiny little bit because we might as well. They're here to stay or we don't really know,
do we? Here's what I think about GLP-1s, if I may editorialize for a moment. When these
(01:09):
medications first came out 18 months, two years ago, and we started really hearing about
them, personally, I didn't jump to any conclusion for or against because I didn't know anything
about them. So I'm not going to be the kind of person who jumps to a conclusion because
of any preconceived sort of bias that I have. So for example, you might have a preconceived
bias that big pharma is always bad, in which case no matter what they come up with, you're
(01:33):
not going to like it. You're going to be kind of closed off to it. Or you might have a preconceived
idea about how people need to just sort of bootstrap themselves into weight loss and
if they're taking any other approach, then they're cheating. These might be your preconceived
biases and we all have them. I really would encourage health coaches to confront their
(01:55):
biases. If that's you, if you're a health coach practicing or aspiring, it's a really
good idea to confront your biases because when you're a health coach, you're in partnership
with another human being who also has their own biases and yours might not align with
them and then what are you going to do? Argue? Fight? That's not a really productive coaching
client relationship. So we do want to kind of clear slate ourselves, at least in conversations
(02:21):
with clients. So imagine the perfect client comes across your desk but they're on GLP1
and you are morally opposed to them. What do you do? Are you going to say, "Get out
of my face. I don't work with people who cheat on weight loss." Or will you say, "I want
to help this person because I don't love that they're on these drugs. Maybe they can get
(02:41):
off them or feel good on them so maybe I can help." It would be really good to, I think,
accept some of the changing tides of the wellness industry. I don't know about you but I've
been in the wellness industry for 30 years. I started in the fitness industry when I was
18 years old and you better believe one million trends have come and gone in the fitness industry
for sure. I was even thinking about this the other day with respect to nutrition. Do you
(03:05):
remember when quinoa was all the rage? Quinoa, just little pseudo seed balls of crunchy whatever-ness
that we would sprinkle into salads or have as a side dish. Quinoa doesn't have any flavor.
It's not yummy. It's not really a life-changing food. It's sort of a plant protein I guess
(03:26):
and all right as far as proteins go. It was never really clear. As I look back, I'm not
really clear why quinoa had such a moment. Do you know what's having a moment right now?
Cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is having a moment right now as I'm recording this. Everyone's
talking about cottage cheese. In fact, I've had clients say to me, "Do I need to eat cottage
(03:46):
cheese?" and I'd say, "No. Why do you think you need to do that?" and they'll say, "Well,
I just keep seeing everybody talking about it everywhere. I mean I know, Erin, as a health
coach you like women to eat more protein. Do I have to eat cottage cheese? I really
don't like it." It's like, "No. You don't have to eat anything you don't like and cottage
cheese isn't particularly special." It's like, "Why cottage cheese? Why cottage cheese? What
(04:10):
is special about cottage cheese that it's having a moment?" I was chuckling to myself
because a client had asked me, "Is it okay if I eat sour cream? You know like sour cream
put on your whatever you're gonna put it on your taco salad if you make a taco salad or
whatever you're gonna put it on your potatoes if you're eating potatoes?" She wanted to
know if she was allowed to eat sour cream and I said, "Well, why wouldn't you be allowed
(04:32):
to?" She said, "Well, it's like dairy and I don't know it's got fat in it." It's like,
"Well, so does Greek yogurt. So does cottage cheese. I don't understand." This is the same
thing as a fermented semi-solid dairy product. Why do some semi-solid dairy products get
a pass and others don't? It's very strange. Or another client asked me if they should
swap Greek yogurt in instead of sour cream on their taco bowl and it's like, "Yeah, it
(04:56):
doesn't matter whichever one you like better it's kind of the same thing." Anyway, we get
into the weeds on sometimes I find humor in how we get into the weeds on health narratives.
We those of us listening to this podcast and engaging with this content are probably pretty
shall we say zealous. Pretty zealous. We're pretty excited about health topics. We are
devouring media. We're embroiled, yes embroiled in content and ever-changing perspectives
(05:23):
and that's our job. I think it's part of my job. It's part of my job to know why cottage
cheese is having a moment. That's why I'm asking you because I really don't know why.
So if you know why please email me at hello@primalhealthcoach.com and let me know what is so special about cottage
cheese. Maybe you want to come on and be a guest and explain cottage cheese to the listeners
(05:43):
and myself so I can understand why. So the point being we have to have our fingers on
the pulse of ever-changing trends which brings me back around to GLP-1s. It's the cottage
cheese of weight loss medications if you will. So if we can be open-minded to cottage cheese
can't we be open-minded to a peptide that somebody might inject to help them have a
(06:04):
different relationship with food and appetite and cravings and what have you? Interesting
idea. So this article came across my desk and it literally is titled "The Business
of GLP-1s Inside the New Weight Loss Drug Ecosystem" and it just runs through a few
organizations companies that are leaning in shall we say. So you might have heard that
(06:28):
Weight Watchers brought in like a concierge sort of medical team that was going to help
I think prescribe and manage GLP-1 medications to Weight Watchers users. Like what a departure
for Weight Watchers. Do you know I think about when my mom took me to Weight Watchers when
I was nine years old. By the way my mom took me to Weight Watchers when I was nine because
she couldn't find a babysitter okay. She wasn't trying to disorder my relationship with food.
(06:53):
She just couldn't find a babysitter. She was on Weight Watchers so I had to go with her.
But you know I remember the ladies sitting in the chairs at the community hall and lining
up one at a time to go stand on the scale and get weighed in front of everybody and
either receive praise or admonishment depending on how their weigh-in went. Totally crazy.
So what a departure from that sort of very analog experience of physically going to the
(07:17):
weigh-in and being either thumbs up or thumbs down to now we have these injectable medications
that might make weight loss feel easier for some people. But what's interesting as I scroll
through this article is just some of the examples of some of the fitness and wellness industries
or heavyweights and newcomers alike that are embracing and just accepting the GLP-1 reality.
(07:42):
And by the way the reason I'm talking about this is because this article came across my
desk but also I probably get asked this question from a health coach every week now. What should
we do? It's one of two questions and they're very similar. What should we do in the age
of GLP-1s and what should we do in the age of artificial intelligence? And my blanket
answer to both is maybe don't worry about it just learn about it and try to peacefully
(08:02):
coexist because it's here now. It's not like GLP-1s are gonna go away. It's not like AI
is gonna go away. It's here to stay. By the way since today's conversation is about
technology I am going to speak a little bit about AI toward the end if I remember to.
Don't let me forget. So I'm reading through this article The Vitamin Shop which is a big
brick and mortar supplement store like a generic mall type supplement store. They're getting
(08:27):
into the GLP-1 game. They've launched a telehealth service connecting eligible consumers with
licensed healthcare providers to offer nutritional supplements and anti-obesity drugs. And they're
offering compounded versions of semaglutide and trzepatide which is so fascinating. And
as I scroll through this article there's actually almost like an aesthetic sort of boutique
(08:48):
compounding brand called Hims and Hers. Hims and Hers. It's grammatically on the bubble.
Hims and Hers Health. They've at the telehealth platform that recognized that there was these
ongoing shortages of the name brand GLP-1. So they got into the compounding game. So
(09:11):
compounding sort of pharmacies can create these drugs like generic versions of them.
They have to kind of mildly tweak I think the formulation just enough so that it's not
on the doorstep of like patent law. But I mean I'm looking at this packaging. It's beautiful.
(09:35):
These beautiful little jars, little vials with gorgeous branding and branded syringes
and needles and it's beautiful. It's really nice. You can have that in your fridge and
you wouldn't feel bad about it. It's just interesting. So I don't know. I think this
conversation is interesting because this is also technology. This is medical technology.
(09:59):
If you've ever really battled your weight excessively you might find this to be the
most miraculous thing. If you're a health coach who works in the weight loss space you
might feel personally threatened by it. I don't think you need to. Maybe just learn
to peacefully coexist with this and all technology. So let's get into technology. I had a couple
questions that came in from listeners. So Dan submitted this question. He says, "Do
(10:22):
you have a recommended online system for managing content delivery and client profiles?" Now
I do not. To start with I don't have a recommended platform. What Dan is asking for is something
in the realm of a, we might call it a client management system or a practice management
system. There's a lot of management systems. Okay so I'm going to use the phrase management
(10:45):
system a lot which is so funny because my very first job out of university was working
in tech and we would use phrases like management system or enterprise and it was all this goofy
sort of jargon that goes in one ear and out the other. And if you were listening to this
you're probably not super techy because not a lot of health coaches are. You don't really
(11:07):
have to be. You don't have to be super techy but I do think you have to embrace and accept
technology. It's here to stay. It's 2024. It's basically 2025 by the time this thing
goes live. We live in the future. I've said this before. We can't really afford to be
super super low tech anymore but these tools are very user friendly. I feel like I've said
(11:28):
this a hundred times on this podcast. But to answer Dan's question I don't have a recommended
system but I just wanted to sort of answer this question generally. So as far as systems
go there's a few systems that you might end up with in your business. One of them is a
customer management system or a contact management system CMS which is like your email system.
(11:50):
Okay so this is where when people find your website or they want to follow you or they
want to get on your email list and you have the opportunity to have their contact record
sort of in your ecosystem. This is where you're collecting contacts. Very very very useful
system. I would say a CMS and we're going to call it an email system or customer relationship
(12:10):
management system. These are crucial. You have to have one of these. You got to have
one of these. So good ones would be MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, Entrepot. I don't
even know there's millions of them but if you start googling names like that you'll
come across hundreds of these CRMs. You want to have a place to collect contacts. Just
(12:31):
people. People who have come across you. These may or may not be clients. They will eventually
potentially become clients especially if you quote unquote own them inside your CRM. There's
a greater chance you can nurture them to become your clients. Nurturing contacts to become
clients is part of your job as a health coach. Okay so that's a CRM. Then we have things
(12:52):
like well another management system you might end up with which I think is probably useful
too is a learning management system or a curriculum system of some kind. Some place to host a
curriculum and that could be a Kajabi or a Thinkific or a Teachable or oh my gosh there's
a million of those too but a place where you could host a curriculum. You need to have
(13:13):
some place to host your protocol, your program, your methodology to enroll your clients so
they can do the learning on their own. I've even coached clients to simply use Google
Drive. So create Google Docs that describe your protocols and you can grant access to
docs and Google Drive folders to your client and it can behave in a similar way to an LMS
(13:37):
a learning management system if you're not ready to invest in technology yet. But a few
episodes ago I think I ran through with you folks how much money I spend in my business
on my supporting technology and it's something like $800 a month which maybe sounds like
a lot but I have a large coaching business and that is a drop in the bucket of how much
I earn. You will have to invest in technology. You will have to invest in systems. If you're
(14:01):
not quite ready to do that yet well choose your battles. I definitely think you should
have a CRM. I definitely think you need somewhere to host curriculum but you can use a free
option like Google Drive. But what Dan's question is to my understanding is managing content
delivery and client profiles. So content delivery once again those two things I just suggested
(14:26):
your CRM, your customer relationship management, your email system and your curriculum management
system or your learning management system are the ways you're going to deliver content.
Now for client management you have a client in your roster they need to be managed through
the program that depends on your program. So this is where business education and programming
(14:54):
kind of converge. So I always think about coaching the practice the art science of health
coaching in terms of there's the coaching element. How good are you at coaching? I hope
you're good at coaching. That would be the first thing to get right before you even worry
about technology. Do you know how to coach? Are you good at that? Then there's the business
elements like the nuts and bolts, the systems, the processes but then there's the programming
(15:17):
which is the methodology or the system you take your clients through. These things are
kind of separate little silos but they do converge. So anyhow, managing clients and
client profiles as Dan asks to me the first question I want to know is well how are you
working with them? Like what's the deal here? What's the relationship like? Is it one-on-one
(15:42):
coaching calls every week? In which case just having a document on your computer with all
the notes from the conversations probably is sufficient. You can keep data points in
there and the client can report in on a check-in form as to how they're feeling, how they're
doing, what their measurements are, what their data points are and you can just collect that
in a document and just have a specific client document. Fun fact, that's what I use. I have
(16:09):
a Google Doc for every client in my roster and when the client shows up for the coaching
call I open up their Google Doc and I type in a few notes. They also have edit access
to that Google Doc so they could type in their own notes. I love it. It's collaborative.
And here's the deal, my programming, my health coach programming is very, very, very relationship
(16:31):
based. I'm not collecting a ton of data. I don't care what their whoop strap or Oura
Ring says. I don't want a food journal. I'm not having them track their food. I don't
do that in my coaching practice. That's not part of my program. Therefore, my client profile,
client management system doesn't need to be anything incredibly formulaic. It's simply
(16:53):
conversations. So see how the tool you're going to use for this depends on the way you
deliver your program. Does that make sense? Now maybe you're a health coach that does
a lot of data tracking or you really want to quantify or you want a lot of data points.
So there are lots of platforms that will aggregate data from a Fitbit, from MyFitnessPal, from
an Oura Ring. There's very high tech platforms that will pull up a client's data so that
(17:18):
the client has a dashboard in front of them. If you're a data driven coach and your clients
are data driven people, right? So now we're getting into the realm of marketing, communication,
business development, programming. You have to make these decisions before you figure
out what technology you're going to use to manage your business, quite frankly. Maybe
you want to do things like progress pictures or food journals, in which case, you know,
(17:43):
something like, I think we use tools called Coach Catalyst and Practice Better and Healthy.
And there's a million of these practice management solutions. Or you could even Google coaching
software. Now, just so you know, I've looked at all of them. I've looked at all of them
just for giggles and I find most of them overwhelming. And I'm a tech savvy human. It's not that
(18:08):
the technology is overwhelming. It's just that there's so much packed into some of these
tools more than the average coach client relationship I think would need. So here's what I'm going
to say about this. I don't think the technology of your coaching relationship is where you
actually start. I know that sounds counterintuitive to what I've been talking about through this
whole conversation because technology is important. But before you decide to leap to some kind
(18:32):
of coaching technology, be a good coach, know who and how you help people. Because that's
going to determine where you go with this. You might just need Google Docs. Health coaches,
globally speaking, we are not bound to HIPAA, which is like the Medical Privacy Act, because
we're not taking medical documentation from our clients. If you're a health coach, you're
(18:56):
not playing in the realm of medicine. So we're not really bound to HIPAA. Now, if you're
working as a health coach inside of an integrative medical clinic, or some kind of collaborative
team system, the team might be bound to HIPAA, in which case some kind of platform like this
would be really useful to get the hang of. Practice Better is a good example, a really
(19:16):
common one that people use that is HIPAA compliant. It just has some security and safety, like
encryption built in. But health coaches, generally speaking, do not need to comply with HIPAA.
That might change, just so we're clear, but as of right now, recording this in November
of 2024, it's not something we need to worry about. If you're keeping quiet documentations
on a locked computer, you're good. Health coach radio listeners, have I got a treat
(19:40):
for you. To get 72 hour free trial access to Primal Health Coach Institute and a 50%
off coupon code to the How to Become a Health Coach virtual summit, featuring video interviews
with over 30 industry experts, visit primalhealthcoach.com/hcr today. So I think we can, in some cases,
(20:04):
downplay the importance of technology. And in this particular case, I think we're overblowing
the importance of technology. Do you know who and how you help people? Start with that,
and then the technology that supports that will emerge. My advice would be, don't leap
to the flashiest technology for your coaching and client relationship management, because
(20:26):
it's actually not that important. The relationship is more important than the technology you
use to facilitate the relationship. Now I'm going to move on to like a business
communication chit chat, because another question I got, which I receive a lot often, and I
do apologize if I've answered this 20 times already on this podcast, it's quite possible,
but it's okay because the question keeps coming in, so people need to hear it again. I always
(20:49):
think about that when I'm working with humans, which is you listening to this or you submitting
these questions or my clients. I may have answered this question a thousand times, but
it's the first time somebody's asked it. And I actually think, here's what I think, as
a health coach, somebody who's trying to become a thought leader and have a really established
point of view, it's only upside for me to reiterate and reiterate and reiterate my perspective
(21:14):
on things. So for example, every few months I run a 21-day challenge and it requires me
to teach my method in kind of a rapid fire hose way to a group of people who have just
come in out of nowhere. These aren't people who I've nurtured. They've been kind of in
my ecosystem for a while. They may or may not be ideal clients. They're paying for a
(21:34):
low ticket, low barrier to entry coaching program. I'm delivering information. It requires
me to deliver my own information over and over and over and over and over again to a
new batch of people. And I actually think that training that muscle is really useful.
So all of that to say is I'm happy to train the muscle of answering this question, which
is from Nissi. Nissi says, "I understand the importance of sharing my story on social media.
(22:03):
Can I realistically attract clients through organic Instagram growth? And if so, how long
might it take to start seeing results without an existing following?" Okay, so like three
questions or one statement, which is, "I understand the importance of sharing my story." Let's
stop there. The importance of sharing your story isn't that important. You're actually
(22:24):
not that important inside your own Instagram feed. You forget it is your one on Instagram.
The story of the client you want to attract is highly important. Speak to them. Don't
make the mistake of talking about yourself because that's not interesting to a consumer.
Sorry, I think you're interesting. You're very interesting. But a person who's shopping
(22:44):
is more interested in what's in it for them. So you have to talk about them. So if you
start an Instagram feed, I would say at first, you're probably going to start with like,
"Here's what I eat in a day. Here's my workout. Here's what I do when I'm traveling." And
that's okay because nobody's looking. So you have no audience. So you can say whatever
you want. But pretty soon, you should practice the art of flipping that narrative to, "What
(23:09):
does my ideal client need to hear? What are they thinking? What are they feeling? What
do they need to solve?" Right? So let's use, for an example, healthy eating while you're
traveling. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that I'm in a hotel room. I'm
actually literally holding my microphone up. It's clipped to a coffee stir stick that I
got from the breakfast bar downstairs in the hotel. So real high tech setup here if you're
(23:31):
watching this on YouTube. If you're listening to this as a podcast, you're probably very
impressed that I'm pulling this off with such great sound quality. This is a $20 lapel microphone
from Amazon. If you don't have one, you got to get one. Make your content sound better,
even if you're on the fly. Okay. How to eat healthy while you're traveling.
(23:51):
So you might be traveling and you might say, "I'm going to video document how I eat healthy
while traveling and then I'm going to put it on my Instagram feed." Cool. That's great
because an ideal client of yours might watch you do that and pick up clues. So that's cool,
right? But just sort of like talking about yourself and the supplements you're taking
(24:14):
or the time you went to bed or your preferred type of squat in the gym, it gets a little
-- it's not that actionable for a person who's potentially contemplating working with you.
You know how back in the day the main criticism of Instagram was or social media in general
(24:34):
was, "Well, I don't want to be posting pictures of my breakfast all day. That's boring." That's
what it used to be. But now using Instagram as a business growth platform, you have to
be more client focused, more customer focused on the content. So what do they need to hear?
Okay, right out the gate, that was the first part of Nissa's question is, "I understand
the importance of sharing my story on social media. Actually sharing your clients' struggle
(24:56):
and offering solutions is more important. Be very solutions-oriented in your Instagram
rather than just sort of narrative. That makes sense." Then she says, "Can I realistically
attract clients through organic Instagram growth?" Well, I did. I built my whole business
doing that. So I'm going to go with yes. Is it easy? No. But I would say starting a business
from scratch is just not easy. It's not supposed to be easy. If it was easy, we'd all be doing
(25:20):
it, et cetera, et cetera. It's not easy. But this time is going to pass anyway. You need
to crystallize your point of view anyway. So you might as well do it on Instagram since
it's free and everybody's on it. Literally, that's where people in certain age groups
anyway do a lot of their shopping. So you might as well. Like I said earlier, when I
(25:40):
run my little 21-day challenge, the best thing I get out of that is that I'm constantly driving
home my message. I'm practicing saying it. I'm saying it to people. I'm saying it out
loud out of my face hole, practicing spinning this narrative so people can pick it up and
be excited about it. Same thing with Instagram. It's really a chance for you to just crystallize
(26:02):
and clarify your message. If you ever come across my Instagram feed and you start scrolling
through it, you're going to notice that I say the same things over and over again because
I have one clear point of view and I just use that platform to reiterate it. A client
who's following me is not just following me. They're not hanging on my every word. They're
not hanging on your every word. They don't know that you posted the same thing one week
(26:23):
ago with a different picture. They don't know. They're just picking up a lot of noise in
a very noisy marketplace. And if you're consistent enough, your noise will rise to the top and
they'll remember you. You'll become front of mind because they'll have seen you more.
There's a philosophy called the mere exposure effect. It's how politicians win elections.
(26:51):
It's how the hakutua girl goes viral. It's how virality happens. It's how people become
famous and known. Now, you men only want to become famous, but you want to become known.
So you have to just merely expose yourself constantly in the internet to the scrolling
consumer base so that they know that you exist and that you're always around. Yes, you can
(27:14):
realistically attract clients through organic growth as long as you're speaking to them.
Speak to them. Say things that they need to hear. I have a little hack for this later.
And then Nissi's final question is, "How long might it take to start seeing results without
an existing following?" Well, how much time do you have? So to quote or paraphrase a very
(27:40):
famous Instagram marketer, Gary Vaynerchuk, if you want to do something for the rest of
your life, don't give up on it after two weeks. It's going to take a long time. It's going
to take all the time. It's never going to not take time. You're not going to arrive
to success here. It is always a moving target. So when you say, "How long will it take to
(28:00):
start seeing results?" My question is, "What results are you looking for?" Because there's
the outcome goal, the thing you want, which is probably a successful business where you're
making an income and an impact that makes you really feel proud and happy. But then
there's the little tiny process goals that lead up to that. I got a new follower. Somebody
commented. Somebody booked a call. They didn't sign up, but at least I got to run through
(28:23):
a sales call framework with them. "Hey, now I've got a new client. I've got one client,
I've got two clients. I've got a third client. I've got 10 clients. I've got 100 clients."
Look at the continuum here. How long will it take to start seeing results? Completely
unknown. It depends on what results you're looking for.
I really do think that as a culture, and this is just a quick cultural narrative, we could
(28:46):
practice getting a little bit more excited about leading indicators rather than just
the lagging indicators of success because success is a lagging indicator. I think like
the big S success. I'm making money. I'm making an impact. I'm making a difference. That's
a lagging indicator of the work you're going to put in now. In the meantime, you have to
anchor to the leading indicators, the tiny little small S successes that are along the
(29:09):
way. So how long might it take to start seeing results? Well, it might take five minutes.
You might get a follower after your first post. Results. It might take five months.
You might have, "Oh my gosh, I have 500 people on my email list. I'm emailing people, 500
of them. 500 possible leads. It might take five years. Oh, I'm making a quarter of a
(29:33):
million dollars in my coaching business," whatever the thing is. It might, and anywhere
in between. But the sales cycle for online service-based businesses marketed through
platforms like Instagram, this data point always changes, but it's somewhere in the
neighborhood of like 16 to 20 months. On average, somebody has to follow you for more than a
(29:57):
year, almost two years before they might buy from you. So what are you waiting for? If
you start now, that happens sooner.
All right. So I had one more perspective I wanted to share. Business mindset, and it
actually just honestly leapfrogs off of what I just shared when I was talking to Nissi,
(30:18):
which is that I think the people who are very successful in health coaching are the ones
who are willing to persevere when it's hard. Well, actually, that's true of anybody who's
successful in anything. If you're successful in anything, it's because you were willing
to persevere when it got hard. So you hit the dip, you hit a wall, you came up against
a barrier, and you figured out how to solve it, pick yourself up and move on. You practice
(30:41):
the skill of learning to embrace failure and struggle as a learning opportunity. I know
this sounds like a lot of woo-woo pep talking, but I have to do this every single week in
my business. For example, last month, I had the potential for one of the most epic months
in my whole business. Okay? I had 35, 35 discovery calls in my calendar. 10 of them said yes.
(31:12):
That's great. 10 people said yes and paid me for my high ticket coaching practice. That's
a substantial five-figure month that I had. 25 didn't say yes. And as excited as I was
about the 10 new clients I brought on, it didn't take very long for me to start obsessively
fixating on the 25 clients that didn't sign up and then thinking, "Oh my gosh, what if
(31:37):
I had signed all 35 of them? That would have been a life-changing month. That would have
been a six-figure month." So thinking about and becoming sad and frustrated and fraught
by the 25 people who didn't sign up for my program, what did I do wrong? What's wrong
with me? What's wrong with them? What's wrong with this system? Is it the GLP ones? Is it
(31:59):
AI? Why? Why didn't they sign up? I don't know. I should figure that out. That's my
next step. I can't just wallow in 25 people that didn't sign up with me. First of all,
I have 10 new clients I need to support, which I'm excited about. Secondly, I have nothing
but learning to do from the 25 who didn't sign up. There's no way I want to allow that
to happen again. If I allow that to happen again, I'm just rolling over. I'm just deciding
(32:23):
I don't want to do this anymore. So you're making decisions and doing nothing is doing
something. If I say, "Oh, this sucks. I can't believe how bad I am at this. Man, most people
who I spoke to on the phone didn't want to work with me. I'm just going to go get a real
job again. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to just throw away 12 years of effort
because 25 people didn't sign up with me. I'm just going to do nothing with this. I'm
(32:46):
just going to wallow in it." Doing nothing is doing something. Doing nothing is deciding
that I'm going to accept this the way it is. That's not a business mindset. That is not
a successful business mindset. When I say business mindset, I'll be really honest with
you. I'm starting to get the ick around business coaching narrative a little bit. It's a little
(33:06):
bit noisy, at least maybe for me, maybe for you because I'm an online business owner.
So I'm hearing and absorbing and being targeted with a lot of business coaching narrative
because I'm the target audience for that. It's getting a little repetitive. It's getting
a little old. But because this question came in to me today, when I talk about business
(33:30):
mindset, I'm actually not even talking about business. I'm talking about your growth mindset
generally. Do you believe in your potential for anything and everything? And what would
you do if the thing you wanted mattered the most to you? We are hardworking, non-lazy,
(33:53):
productive creatures. You have been in other aspects of your life. You have to simply harness
that here. So it's barely business mindset at all. This isn't really business coaching.
This is personal development coaching. You have to be ready to develop yourself and be
really freaking uncomfortable sometimes. And here comes a business coaching cliche. Your
(34:15):
growth is on the other side of the discomfort. My growth is on the other side of figuring
out why 25 women didn't sign up with me last month. I have to push up against my natural
inclination, which is to turtle. Like, "Oh, I can't believe how bad that was. Turtle.
I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen." That's my natural inclination because the
(34:37):
conflict, the friction of that is immense. The friction of having to confront why 25
people said no is too immense and it feels uncomfortable physically in my body, uncomfortable
to contemplate it. But if I decide to turtle and accept that 25 people said no, then I'm
just perpetuating the narrative that people say no to me. But instead, what I need to
(34:57):
do is be a productive grown-ass adult about it and say, "Well, why did they say no? What
would have made them a yes?" Now, I can ask them that and quite frankly, I'm going to.
There's a few people who I thought were for sure yeses and they changed their mind at
the very last second. And I'm going to ask them, "Hey, Sally, if you have a minute, I
just would really love to know why you decided not to move forward." That feels a bit awkward
(35:23):
to ask, but I have to know. I have to know. I want to know. This is the thing. If my natural
inclination is to turtle and pretend it didn't happen, then me wanting to actually email
people and ask them why they said no is such an obvious outcome of my own personal development.
(35:43):
I've changed as a human being because me 10 years ago would have cringed at the idea of
emailing somebody to ask them why they didn't work with me. Now, it's the only thing I
can do. It's my only next step is to ask them why they said no. And I'm going to.
And then to close the loop on my technology chit chat today. And by the way, I do love
talking about technology, but I also love talking about other things. So if you have
(36:06):
questions you want me to cover on this podcast, I am a health coaching educator. I am a successful
health coach in private practice and have been for 12 years. I have a lot of wisdom
to share with you. So hey, reach out to me at hello@primalhealthcoach.com with your questions.
Many of the questions that I'm answering on this podcast come from our student body at
Primal Health Coach Institute where I'm on the faculty. But I love hearing from coaches
(36:31):
listening whether you're new in business, and I really love hearing from coaches who
are very established in business. And if that's you and you have an established health coaching
business, I really would love to hear from you because maybe I could interview you. I
could learn from you. Wouldn't that be amazing? Anyway, I do talk about technology a lot because
quite frankly, it's the questions I get asked the most. But I would like to also talk about
(36:51):
you and who you're going to become. Let's not relinquish all the potential success of
our health coaching business as some secret technology. Most of the wisdom and the strength
of character and this raw skills and talent you need are actually within you somewhere.
(37:12):
And if they're not strong, you need to strengthen those muscles much like I'm strengthening
my muscle by asking my clients why they didn't sign up with me rather than just pretending
it didn't happen. So you've got to lean into personal growth and then your business will
grow. And that's a business mindset.
Well, pep talk for you. As some parting wisdom, I want to share with you how I have been leveraging
(37:36):
the learnings from these 25 failed client consultations to learn more and using technology
to do so. So before every one of these consultations, and I just did that this month, this is something
that I tried brand new this month. Right before the client consultation, I opened up chat
GPT and I said to the AI robot, "Hey, I'm meeting with Sally this afternoon. Here's
(38:02):
what Sally told me she wants to work on. These are her main struggles. This is what she's
tried before that has failed. These are her goals. These are her dreams. These are her
pains. These are her fears." And I'll say, "What kinds of questions should I ask Sally
to get to the root of her pain and struggle and to identify the gaps between where she
is now and where she wants to be?" And I'll tell you what, chat GPT took that intake questionnaire
(38:25):
and fed me back some amazing conversation driving questions that I could fold into the
discovery call to get the client thinking. And these questions are amazing. They really
do drive home, again, pain, struggle, barriers, gaps, all the things that prevent people from
(38:46):
having success. I loved using this tool, but I don't know if it panned out. But I have
this conversation in chat GPT. I can say, "Okay, chat GPT, the following 25 people said
no. What do you notice about them? What's similar between these people? What did I miss?
What is it about these women?" Because I have, by the way, all the transcripts from our Zoom
(39:09):
calls as well, so I can fold that in. I could have chat GPT analyze how or why I missed
the mark on those 25 calls. And I'm going to.
Another thing I'm using chat GPT for, I started a new conversation with chat GPT and I said,
and I quote, "I'd like to hire and train you for the role of director of content. Are you
(39:34):
familiar with the work of Gary Vaynerchuk?" So I just mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk earlier
in this episode. I think he's a guy who just has a really sensible and very just super
productive focused approach to content marketing and marketing in the digital age. So I asked
chat GPT if it would be interested in coming on board as my director of content and if
(39:55):
it was familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk's approach. And chat GPT said, "Yes, I'm very familiar
with Gary Vaynerchuk's work." Explained a little bit about Gary V. I said, "Great. I want to
model Gary's approach. How can I best train you to be my content director?" So when I
say content director, I want chat GPT to tell me what to say. So I've been talking, I've
(40:16):
been flapping my gums on Instagram for a long time, 12 years. I have a really clear point
of view, but I'm also running out of things to say. And I also need to figure out ways
to say it that it gets right into the center of the heart of the matter that my clients
are struggling with, the things that are keeping them on the bubble from working with me. So
I asked chat GPT to tell me how to train it to be my Gary Vaynerchuk. And it did. It gave
(40:45):
me a 10-step list of ways to train chat GPT, the questions to ask, the prompts to provide.
I'm going to have chat GPT ask me questions. You can do that. Ask me 50 questions about
my ideal client, and it will. And then you can start to get very clear about who this
person is and what you should say to them. Once the robot has a sense of who your ideal
(41:05):
client is, you can say, "Give me 10 ideas for YouTube videos or Instagram captions that
will speak to the pains and struggles of my ideal clients." By the way, since I've posted
all of my client consultation application forms into chat GPT, that's all in there now.
I can say, "Hey, chat GPT, friend, go back into the consultation strategy conversation
(41:29):
we had and pull out for me the top 25 major concerns that women seem to have with their
bodies at this stage of life." Now I have clear the top 25 things that all women seem
to be struggling with are, and I can start to create content based on that. Okay, so
another little deep dive on technology. The housekeeping staff is outside in the hallway
(41:49):
of this hotel making a lot of noise, so I'm going to wrap it up here. Do let me know if
you have more things you want to talk about. Reach out at hello@primalhealthcoach.com,
and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. 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/call. Or if you're already a successful health coach,
(42:14):
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@primalhealthcoach.com and
let us know why we need to interview you for Health Coach Radio. Thanks for listening.
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