If they feel like you’re the only one calling the shots and their preferences or lifestyle or desires doesn’t matter, and you’re just the authority figure that tells them what to do. They won’t feel like you actually care or see them as anything special. You’re just kind of showing them that they’re one of many clients.

Hello my friends, and welcome back to not another Mindset show. I’m your host, Dr. Kasey Jo. My goal with this podcast is to take the science of mindset and behavior change and distill it down into actionable takeaways for you. Together we’re gonna unpack research around motivations, self-sabotage, willpower, and so much more, and we’re going to take all of that and translate it into strategies you can immediately apply to your health fitness.

Relationships, business, marketing clients, all of the things. But just to be clear, it’s not all serious and sciencey around here. We’re gonna have a ton of fun too, and I’m so excited to share all of this with you. All right, let’s go ahead and get into the episode. Oh my friends, welcome back to not another mindset show.

I am speaking to a lot of you out there that are health and fitness coaches or your coaches in some capacity and. Oh man, this doesn’t feel good. When you are working with clients and you know that there is so much more potential for them, there’s so much more they can do, so much more you can achieve together and they decide to leave.

They get to the end of their. Three month, six month coaching contract and they’re telling you I’m ready to try this stuff on my own. And you know, they are not ready to try those things on their own. You know that they are not fully equipped to coach themselves That. They are still far away from the goals that they wanted to achieve.

They’re still really struggling with consistency and they’re self-sabotaging themselves, but they’re telling you, Hey, I, I’m at the end of my coaching contract and I want to be done. And it can often just feel like this is how it goes. Sometimes people just don’t wanna stay. I don’t know why. I know I can help them more, but.

Guess onto the next client, and I want you to recognize that there is always a reason why they’re choosing to leave, and many of those reasons are things that you can control and you can improve upon. We talk a lot about mindset and behavior change and psychological type of coaching strategies on this podcast.

It’s everything that I do, and that’s what I wanna get into here. And also with the disclaimer that your goal should not be to keep clients forever. At some point, they should feel totally equipped to do this stuff on their own, and that should be thanks to your coaching. But many clients leave or don’t renew their coaching contracts before they reach this point, and I know you guys feel that.

And it can often leave you feeling confused, hurt. Because you’re wondering, is it something that I did? Is it something that I said, what’s going on? But again, it, it can be really easy to just be like, all right, that happens sometimes and move on. But I want you to know that there’s likely more to the story, and I wanna talk through that with you today.

So to do this, to improve. Maybe some of your coaching strategies to understand that there is likely something going on and something that maybe you can’t control is going to maybe require you to get a little uncomfortable and recognize that there’s more that you could be doing. There’s different strategies that you could be trying, but ultimately, if you get a grasp on these things.

Then those clients who are leaving you before they’re ready, they’re going to stay and that’s going to help you long term. So I need you to have a little bit of a growth mindset about your coaching. And the things that you’re currently doing, and have a belief in your ability to improve them. Okay, so why might a client leave you before they’re ready?

There’s honestly so many reasons, but I’m going to touch on a. Some of them that I believe to just be most common and things that coaches are overlooking. So the first thing, first, truly so important, and I do, I talk about this on the podcast a lot, so that should also kind of ring true for you. If you’ve been listening, you’re an avid podcast, listener to the show is not supporting client autonomy.

Your client should feel like they’re in the driver’s seat and you’re just holding the map, and that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re saying. Telling them exactly where to go and what to do all of the time, they’re actually in control and they do feel in control of the decisions that are being made in the coaching relationship.

If they feel like you’re the only one calling the shots and their preferences or lifestyle or desires doesn’t matter, and you’re just the authority figure that tells them what to do, they won’t feel like you actually care or see them as anything special. You’re just. Kind of showing them that they’re one of many clients, that’s how they’re going to feel at least.

So how can you help your clients be part of the planning process? The decision making process? Maybe give them options and have them decide and tell you why they chose that option, rather than saying, this is your option. The more we can help clients feel autonomous. The more likely they are to stick to the plan to actually learn things and to get to a place where they are ready to do things on their own and not leave you before they are.

And on that note too, you have to remember you are the expert on nutrition, on fitness, on whatever your specific niche is, but not the expert on your client’s life. So be careful not to make assumptions of what you think they need when the reality is they should be part of that conversation. Next reason why your clients might leave you before you’re ready or before you’re ready, and before they’re ready.

They don’t feel connected to you. They feel like it’s a transaction and not a relationship. The more connected to you they feel, the more they’re willing to share about what’s going on with them, the more information they’re going to give you, the better you can coach them. The more results they will see, the more likely they are to stay before they leave and they don’t feel like they got everything from you.

I can’t tell you guys the number of times in my coaching career where I have chatted with a prospective client and they have told me about past coaching relationships. Told me, oh yeah, I learned things. I saw some progress, but I just, I didn’t feel connected to them. I didn’t feel like they really cared about me.

Relationship is so important, and here’s the thing. If you’re listening to this podcast, I’m sure this isn’t new information to you and you are really trying to cultivate a relationship with your clients, but once you have. 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 clients on your roster. It can be hard to not see your client.

Check-in list is just a checklist and just something to get done. And when you start to get into that mode, you may be missing out on a lot of the relationship building aspects of the coaching relationship. And it is a relationship. It’s not a transaction. And people hire people because they want people, not because they wanna hire chat GPT.

So a client could literally be seeing results and getting a lot out of working with you, but the relationship aspect is missing, and that could be a reason why they’re wanting to leave before you feel like they’re ready to leave.

The last one I wanna talk about, and this one, oh gosh. They’re just also important guys. They are more concerned about not disappointing you than actually improving themselves. And we have felt this before. We’ve seen this before, and this can happen when your, your clients are ghosting you too. Which obviously if you have clients who are ghosting you on check-in day, there’s a pretty good chance they’re not gonna be renewing their coaching contract when that day comes.

And this often can stem from. Clients simply not wanting to show up and say, Hey, I didn’t do so well this week, or, I’m not really happy with my progress, or I don’t really feel great about coaching this week. And so they don’t talk to you about it. And this is also kind of comes back to the relationship aspect and the autonomy building.

It’s all one and the same, but they’re more worried about making you upset, disappointing you not showing up as a star client than they are. About actually improving themselves through the coaching to, they’re more concerned about upsetting you than they are about building skills and getting better and seeing their own progress, truly.

So they would rather just not check in. They would rather just not re renew their coaching contracts. And I’ve, I’ve talked about this before on a previous podcast episode where it’s like basically things you shouldn’t say as a fitness coach. And literally there’s a reel that I saw from this coach. He was talking about how he fires clients who are not sticking to the plan and don’t like, basically don’t listen to him.

It just like so cringey, so cringey. But I’m just thinking to myself, anybody who sees this real, that then hires you as a coach. All they’re gonna be thinking about all the time is that they have to perform for you. They have to do well for you. It actually has nothing to do with whether or not they feel good about themselves if they’re celebrating themselves.

It’s all about like, I can’t get kicked off. I have to show up. I need the tough love. I need all of this stuff from this coach. And the reality is they’re doing it all for you and they’re not doing it for themselves. So coaches who sit too much in that like expert or authority position are the ones who lose clients the most because those clients are more concerned about how they are seen by their coach rather than how they are developing and growing and learning and the things that they’re getting for themselves.

This also just kind of relates to the concept of mastery versus. Performance oriented goals and can play into like a growth versus fixed mindset conversation too. If we are seeking mastery oriented goals, a more growth mindset approach, we are seeking to get better at something to develop, to improve over.

A performance oriented goal, meaning I’m just doing this to look a certain way, to be a certain way to be seen by others a certain way. And that is much more on the fixed mindset side because it often is coming from a place of, I don’t actually believe I can grow and develop and improve and do all of these things, but at least I wanna be seen like I am so.

Clients who care more about performing for you as the coach, typically, rather than mastering will have a harder time being successful and a harder time seeing the value of working with you because it becomes all about you and not about them. So I just want to leave you with the understanding that there’s a lot that you can be doing to support your clients so they have a better experience.

See better results. And don’t just leave you after a few months or are ghosting you throughout the coaching relationship. And it can be hard to take responsibility in this area. And we want to be able to say that like, okay, sometimes there’s just people who wanna leave and there’s nothing I can do about it, but what if you could do something about it?

And that’s what I mean. That is the basis for everything that I do, whether it’s on the podcast, it’s the content that I make on Instagram. The health mindset coaching certification is literally. Empowering you to better understand that there are tools and strategies and things you can learn in understanding client psychology.

So your clients stick to the plan, they stick with you longer. Like that’s some of the clearest metrics, KPIs, if you will, that I hear from students who have graduated from the health mindset. Coaching certification is literally like verbatim. I could show you when I have Johann, one of our students in my mind saying that.

They took their average retention rate in their coaching company from three months to, I think it was like somewhere between 10 and 12 months, I wanna say. He said like 11.4 months or something. ’cause he had the exact stat. And that is the power of this stuff. And I know it can feel like I just, I don’t wanna take responsibility.

I want to be able to say, some people are just not a good fit and they need to leave and they don’t know why and all of these things. But there’s usually a why. That they’re leaving and there’s usually something that you could be doing to improve your coaching, and I know that that can be a tough pill to swallow, but I hope this, this episode helped.

I hope the podcast helps you in general, and if it does, would you be so kind to leave a five star review. I would so appreciate it. If you’re getting something from this podcast. You’re like, man, I wish that I could just let Kasey know some way that she’s really helping me out. Are you thinking that?

You’re thinking that? Right? A five star review would be so helpful. And then also I would give back to you again because we have a giveaway every single month. If you leave a review and then you screenshot that review and put it into the review form, which is linked in every single episode in the show notes.

It’s the only way we know how to contact you. That’s why you have to do the screenshot thing. Do the review, screenshot your review, put it into the review form, and you will be up for winning one of my DIY workshops or programs for free. And not a lot of people do this, so your chances of winning are pretty high.

So if you would be so kind, I would so appreciate it. It also just helps us get the podcast out in front of more people who need to see it, who need to hear these messages as well. So that would be amazing if you could otherwise either way. I will see you next week. I will still be here. Whether you leave that five star review or not, I will see you next week.

I appreciate you so much for being here for your time and attention always, and just knowing that. You’re here because you want to be better, and I get to help you do. That is so cool. So thank you. Thank you so much, and I’ll see you next week. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Not Another Mindset show.

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Or just wanna connect, hang out, chat a little bit. Come find me on Instagram. I’m Coach Kasey, Jo over there. That is where I hang out the most in the land of social media. Alright, my friends, that is all I have for you this time. I so appreciate you being here and love to see you prioritizing your growth.

I’ll see you next time.