Time to Say Goodbye to a Client? 6 Signs and How to Break Up Nicely

If you’re a nutrition professional reading this, you may (like many people) have run into some roadblocks in your business or on your career path. We all do at some time or another; it’s part of running a business and working with clients. While we’re thrilled that you’re considering or were inspired to build or grow your professional nutrition coaching, health coaching, or otherwise wellness-focused practice—we never promised it would be easy. There are going to be days where you’ll want to throw in the towel, slam the door, and even give up on your dreams because some days, even doing what we love is still really hard. For every amazingly coachable client you have, you will probably have three or four that are a bit more resistant to making real changes in their lives—or worse, just incredibly difficult to work with. We’re not saying that you should only work with “perfect” clients who follow your advice 100% and come back each week or month with a smile on their face and a list of successes and straightforward areas for improvement. No one is perfect, and we don’t aim to help anyone accomplish perfection in any sense of the word. What we do want is for you to work with clients who are the right fit for how you coach, because these are the ones who will benefit most from what you have to offer and the ones that you’ll feel most fulfilled working with. If you’ve been struggling with a client, here are six signs that it might be time to break up. Signs It’s Time To Say Goodbye To A Client 1. Your client shows little (to no) signs of effort. Do you have a client that makes you feel like it’s Groundhog Day every day when you meet with them? Like nothing has changed since the last time you met? Like they literally go home and forget you even had an in-depth coaching session where you put all your effort and know-how into figuring out how to help them? There’s only so much you can do for your clients if they don’t meet you even part of the way. via GIPHY “In this scenario, it’s really helpful to have a conversation with your client about their readiness to change,” says Nutritious Life Founder Keri Glassman. “It’s important to sit down and assess where they are on their wellness journey. Maybe you need to have that talk with them before simply offering up more ideas for breakfast.” If, after that, you determine that the client is not committed to doing their part, it might be a sign to move on or take a pause. 2. Your client consistently reschedules your sessions. We understand that fitting something new into your schedule can be hard at first, but if you’re truly invested in getting great results, you put in the effort and make it happen. Of course, sometimes things happen, and appointments need to be rescheduled. “To avoid this from happening, I like to talk to the client early on about respecting each others’ time,” says Keri. “I also suggest having each client sign a contract in advance that outlines your guidelines for missed sessions. This step helps to reinforce the importance of sticking to a pre-arranged schedule.” If a client is still proving over and over again that they don’t value your time as much as theirs, then they aren’t worth your time, either. 3. Your client neglects to pay you on time. Money is always one of the least fun things to talk about when it comes to running your business. You want to help people to live healthier lives, or become healthier versions of themselves. But at the end of the day, you are, in fact, running a business—and your clients should respect that. To avoid having a client that is repeatedly late with payments, and/or is constantly coming up with excuses for why they need an extension on an invoice, it’s again helpful to have all your expectations in writing. “Make sure the contract your client signs outlines any and all financial obligations,” Keri says. “This is a great impetus for people to pay on time.” If they continue to neglect paying you, it might then be time to let them go. 4. Your client doesn’t respect your boundaries for communication. Unfortunately, there’s always that one client that just doesn’t hear your request for personal space, or flat out ignores it. They might pry and ask too many personal questions. Or maybe they regularly text you after hours like they would a close friend and expect you to respond every time they reach out. Of course, you want to help your clients with obstacles that come up day-to-day, but there is a time and place for that, and it’s important that they understand and respect that. It’s also crucial that they don’t cross the line in a client-coach relationship. “If the client-coach boundary is being disregarded, it’s up to you to draw those lines more firmly and communicate them to your client,” Keri says. If things don’t change, it might be time to go your separate ways. 5. Your client isn’t being honest with you. What’s more frustrating than a client that isn’t doing the work to make changes happen? How about a client that says they’re doing the work, but isn’t actually doing it. This is a tricky one because you don’t want to go around accusing clients of lying to you. But if they aren’t opening up about their mishaps, their challenges, and they’re always telling you what they think you want to hear, they might not be ready to commit. In this case, all the coaching in the world isn’t going to produce the results they want. This may again be a time to have a conversation about readiness to change. 6. Your client is disrespectful towards you. Some clients can just be plain rude. Maybe you notice that they’re the ones

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How to Build Diversity and Inclusion into Your Wellness Practice

Ask Keri: As a wellness professional, how can I make sure my practice serves clients from a diversity of backgrounds?   Keri Says: This is such an important question to tackle at this moment and time, but it’s also a question we should be asking ourselves every step of the way—from the start of our careers onward. After many years teaching and engaging with all kinds of wellness professionals through the Nutritious Life Studio’s educational programs, I know that nutritionists, trainers, yoga teachers, and health coaches are service professionals. Almost all of us choose these jobs because we are driven to help people live healthier, happier lives. Figuring out the best way to do that is an ongoing process. As a registered dietitian who has been seeing clients for nearly 20 years, one of the important principles I’ve come to depend on is that “wellness is personal.” The concept is even part of the Nutritious Life Manifesto: “Whatever science or tradition says, if a strategy isn’t right for your body and your lifestyle, it won’t work. Every individual is unique, and there is endless variation in terms of what your most Nutritious Life looks like.” But here’s the thing: The fact that every individual is different doesn’t mean that overarching factors like race, gender, and economic status don’t have a serious impact on health risks. In fact, scientific evidence tells us those factors are inextricably linked to varied outcomes in terms of diet-related diseases, mental health, and more. So, if we want to support a diversity of clients, we have to recognize those factors, when, for example, a Black woman comes in to work on her nutrition goals versus a White man.  Here are some tips and resources to prepare yourself and your practice to better serve a diverse clientele, especially to support historically underserved populations in living their most Nutritious Lives.   How to Build Diversity and Inclusion in Your Wellness Practice   1. Educate Yourself on Racial Healthcare Disparities Recently, it’s become clear that Black Americans are being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. Unfortunately, that’s a current example of how people of color have long faced higher disease risks and worse health outcomes in the US. A 2017 report found that Black Americans are at higher risk for high blood pressure and are twice as likely as White Americans to die from heart disease, and that Black people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s are more likely to live with or die from conditions like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes, which typically occur at older ages in White people. Another example: The mortality rate for African American women diagnosed with breast cancer is 42% higher than for White women.  As a wellness professional, your first job is to educate yourself on these disparities before a client sits down in your office or steps onto a yoga mat. That doesn’t mean you should stop treating each client as a unique individual (don’t!), it’s just about educating yourself so that you’ve got context whenever you need it. 2. Consider Culture and Life Experiences Race and culture are not the same thing, but they can be intertwined in many ways. And dietary patterns and preferences are heavily influenced by culture. If your client is Jewish and keeps Kosher, your Simply Roasted Shrimp recipe isn’t going to fit into their healthy eating plan.  By the way, it’s also important to respect and give credit to the cultural roots of health foods that are presented as new “trends” in wellness. Often, those foods are “new” only in the sense that White people are starting to eat them. Take turmeric, for example, which we love at NL. While it’s gotten a lot of attention in the past few years, it’s ancient. In fact, Indian people have been using it in food and medicine for thousands of years. Acknowledging those cultural roots is an important step towards making sure the way we talk about health and wellness is not framed entirely by a White perspective. Finally, another piece of wisdom from the NL manifesto: “We like to ask big, philosophical, and scientific questions about the best ways to lose weight and stress less, but it’s the stuff of life—meetings, bills, phone calls, family drama, and annoying errands—that distracts, damages, and derails us from our true purpose. Dealing with those details is where the magic happens…” In order to serve diverse clients, you’ve got to acknowledge that that “stuff of life” may be very different for people from different racial and economic backgrounds. Acknowledge that you may not know what a client’s “stuff” looks like if their background is incredibly different from your own, and ask questions instead of assuming. 3. Consider Issues of Access Some of the health disparities mentioned earlier are partially attributable to the fact that Black people are also less likely to receive preventive care  and often receive lower-quality care. They’re also less likely to have health insurance. As wellness professionals (and especially for those of us in a position of white privilege), it’s our job to actively work to address those inequities in care.  Maybe that means making an active effort to change your marketing to diversify your clientele or offer special services to historically underserved populations. Or maybe it means pricing your services on a sliding scale, offering discounts for people of color and/or low-income clients, or setting aside a certain amount of time each month to offer free or donation-based sessions. In the end, we can all do our part in making nutrition and wellness more inclusive and tackling health and wellness disparities. One of my most important principles is the idea that all of the different pillars of living a Nutritious Life—from stress to relationships to eating habits—are connected and influence each other in all directions. It’s a philosophy that intersects with tackling disparities, since race and gender and economic status are all interconnected, too, and influence each person’s ability to live their healthiest life. And learning to