Be Seen as the Expert & Get Clients (Without Needing More Certifications)

Michelle Leotta: Welcome to the Health Coach Power Community Podcast. I'm Michelle Leotta, ex-corporate girl turned certified health coach with over 15 years of experience growing a successful online practice. I started out with no idea what I was getting into and learned a lot of lessons along the way that have given me the freedom to do the work I love and raised two boys as a single mom.

I created a health coach power community over a decade ago to make it easier for health coaches to build a career they love and make the world a better place.

Hey there, health coaches. You want to be the health coach that clients want to hire. I know this, you don't wanna be the health coach that they're just rolling past and ignoring, but it's uncommon. It's very normal. If right now you feel not qualified enough, your brain might be telling you you don't have enough experience, you don't have enough credentials.

You hear that one? Who are you to coach anyone? Well. I've been there. I've been in your shoes. I started out as a health coach with a college degree in art, of all things, right? And creating a successful health coaching practice of 13 years is something I never expected for my career. But since I've gone through, I know for sure you have what you need.

If you've studied health coaching, if you've lived through your own wellness journey, and you care about helping people, then you are already miles and miles ahead of the people that you are meant to serve, health coaches who consistently sign clients. Please hear me on this. Are not the ones with the most letters after their names with the most certifications hanging on their wall.

In fact, I, tons and tons of coaches who've done certification program after certification program, this course, that course, and they don't have any clients at the end of the day. So what gives, in this episode, I'm gonna show you exactly how to become the coach that clients want to hire. So here's the thing, clients are not looking for those letters after your name.

They have never heard of the gut health course that you took last spring. Like they don't care about the stuff. They don't care if you're board-certified. They probably haven't heard of that either. But they are looking for help to solve their problems, and they're looking for someone that they trust, someone who feels relatable, they wanna feel like somebody gets them, and someone who makes it all feel doable.

'Cause it can be really overwhelming, right? The fastest way to be seen as that kind of expert is probably a little bit simpler than you think. So I'm going to give you a real-life example. Now, if you are here with me live, please say hello in the chat and let me know if you've worried that you just don't have enough.

You aren't enough to actually help anyone. You can just say, me, me. It's like, it's almost weird if you don't think that in the beginning. I think it's a rite of passage for health coaches to go through a little bit of imposter syndrome, but that's okay. We can get you through it, especially. When I share stuff, I think from my own real life, I hope you can see yourself in it.

So here's a real story from my own health coaching practice. I was working with a group of health coaching clients when I was running my own private practice, and I remember I just casually mentioned that they could prep meals ahead of time. We were talking about that sort of thing, and I said, Oh, you know, you can chop up ahead of kale and store it in the fridge for like a week.

And they were baffled by that, like mids blown that you could chop kale up in advance and that it would keep in the fridge. So I even made a quick video for them to demonstrate my very fancy technique. I'll tell you about it first. You hold the kale under the water like this in the sink and you rinse it off, and then you throw the whole thing onto the cutting board.

You get your big knife and you go chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. Just like that. And then you shove all of it into an old yogurt container. That's my secret. I've been doing it for years. You can try that. Oh, I forgot. And then at the end, I take a post-it note and I slap it on top and I write kale.

Boom, done. It's in the fridge. And people thought I was in like. A health goddess. Such a simple thing. Do you do anything like that in your kitchen? Like a little routine that makes things easy for you, that gets it done, even though maybe it's not that pretty. Maybe you're using a recycled yogurt container or whatever, you know?

Um, I'm just looking over here in the chat, saying hello. It's crazy how I will feel like I'm doing a great job, and then I can feel like, who the heck do I think I in? No kidding. Right? You'll have a high, you'll have like a win with a client, and then the next day you'll be like, but I'm, who am I? That was probably just luck.

I'm telling you, it was like these small things when I realized people were like having their minds blown by how I chopped kale, like I, I almost didn't believe it in the beginning, but it kept happening. So, like in this case, for these clients chopping fresh vegetables, that was like a big hangup.

That was the thing that was keeping them from eating healthy, so to speak. They felt it was too hard, too messy, you know, too time-consuming. So they would buy stuff, and it's in the fridge, and it decomposes and turns into liquid, and it's disgusting. And then they don't wanna buy vegetables anymore. You know, I was sharing the story with some health coaches inside Healthy Profit University, some of my fast trackers, last week, and about exactly this.

It's often these things that we find very, very simple. Very little things that make the biggest impression on people, not how much science we know. It's not that, that that makes them like, oh wow, it's the, here's how to chop up kale in 15 seconds. So anyway, I shared that same kale story with my Healthy Profit University members.

And Trisha, if you're listening, hello. Trish said, um, that one of, uh, when she works with, you know, her clients, she tells them that she just buys a bag of organic kale, the kind that's already chopped up, and she just takes the whole bag and throws it in the freezer when she gets home. And like we all laughed because yeah, why not do that?

But most of the time, people don't think that way. And her client's minds were blown by that idea. Like, what do you mean you can freeze it? You can freeze kale. Yes, you can freeze. And then another one of our coaches, Ellen, she said that one time she shared a photo of the inside of her refrigerator. She was basically, basically like me; she was helping her clients get meal prepped in advance.

So she was like, here's all my stuff. I'm all prepped for the week. And her clients, the thing that they really like latched onto was how organized her refrigerator was. Like they were really impressed by that, and they wanted her to come organize their fridge, show them how, because this is where they were getting tripped up.

So that's like, it's not like a big health problem, but it's this little specific problem that she clearly had the solution to. That's the thing that people resonate with. That's the thing that makes them go, oh, you can help me not by spouting off facts, but by showing me how to like get it done at home.

And none of the stuff that I just shared is very fancy. And I'm sure again that you have all kinds of things like this, whether it's how you chop up your. Dark leafy greens or what you buy frozen or how you organize your stuff, it's like kind of mundane. Doesn't that sound mundane? Like, oh my God, I went to school to become a health coach, and I know all this stuff about functional medicine or whatever you've studied, but it's the everyday things.

I think that's what gets clients most excited and most, um, like it impresses them the most because they need this stuff to feel doable. And they wanna see that you can help with their busy, messy, imperfect lives. Even better if you also have busy, messy, perfect life, that they can go, oh, like it's not just me.

Oh, look, you can, you can do this stuff. If you can do it, I can do it. There's so much power in that. It's not like they need you to be, um, more qualified and better than them. I say better in them in quotes because that can make them feel bad about themselves. Like, if everything you do is perfect and you know, it's, it's almost like beyond aspirational, it actually becomes a turnoff.

They want somebody that they can admire without being overwhelmed by. That's really the sweet spot, and I don't think doctors do a good job of this. I don't think most health influencers do a good job of this. I think they tend to speak from like, um, a pedestal or from some like lala, like wellness Lala land.

You know, imagine if I told my clients that I had done PhD research in kale, and the only way to eat it, the only way I ever eat it, was to grow it in my organic garden, and then I pick it fresh each day, and I wash it meticulously. Pull each leaf from the stem, let's say, while I'm repeating 37 affirmations, chopping meticulously.

Eating it within 30 minutes, eating, chew it at least 100 times for maximum vitamins and mineral absorption. Ugh, it might make me sound like an expert. Some that might even be true. You know, fresh out of the ground probably is better than something that was picked weeks ago and stuck in a bag.

This is not somebody that they wanna hire. This is someone that's starting to make them feel like, oh, they'll never be good enough. Well, you're worried if you're gonna be, they're worried that they can just never get this part of their life together. Never get their act together like this. You can show them that they can, the easy way, the simple way.

Like remember the easy button and like those Staples ads, like if you can show that now they're listening to you. Listen, I started getting paying clients. Before I had even graduated from health coachschool, and I want to remind you, I have a degree in art. I had zero experience in any health-related field, but I built a full private practice.

I was seeing clients for 13 years. I ran programs. I had like 50, 70, 90. Women enrolled at a time and built a reputation as the coach the people wanted to work with because they liked how they felt. They didn't feel less than; they didn't feel like they couldn't keep up. They felt like, Oh yeah, I can do this.

And I found myself earning hundreds, hundreds, you know, plural of dollars per hour because of that relatability. You know, can you think of anyone like this? Maybe it's a coach that you follow, or even just someone in your life that you're like, Oh, like I can relate to this. I realized, you know, especially in, I was just a little bit ahead of where my clients were at, and that's important.

You know, you don't have to be, um. Like, have the PhD. You don't have to have, you know, graduated from Yale to be an expert. I had already changed my diet, and I had overcome really bad anxiety. Now I had clients who were still struggling with anxiety. I was just this far ahead of them. You know, I wasn't a doctor, I wasn't a psychiatrist, none of that.

I didn't have any special certifications around mental health. Sometimes I still struggle and struggle with anxiety, of course, right? We don't have to be perfect as coaches, but I had learned how to manage it naturally. Wow. People really needed to hear that. I made it easy for clients to understand and implement.

Whether it was about kale or it was about eating less sugar or less caffeine. I mean, how do you go about that? How can you really create these habit changes? You know, whatever we were working on. The key is to make it extremely doable and relatable. I did not get up on my health, not a, and speak to them in a bunch of jargon that they understand and make them feel like, oh gosh, okay, I'll try help them see that they can do it too.

And that is my biggest suggestion to you. Take that health pedestal and throw in the garbage. Right? Get in the weeds with them and talk about the real-life stuff. Like, even just that simple thing. I've had to chop some vegetables up in the kitchen, or like I talked a lot about, and I do talk a lot about coming from corporate America.

So women in corporate connect with that. Talk about what you know. Talk about like real-life experiences. Don't just talk about health and wellness all the time. I think, uh, a lot of my clients saw me juggling being a mom. And so if they were a mom, they knew I would get those challenges about feeding the kids and feeding themselves.

Talk about what your day-to-day is like. They will appreciate it. They don't wanna see you as a high in the sky expert. Heck, they even saw me, and many of you saw me navigating a divorce years ago, taking care of myself while taking care of my kids, and that means that I've had clients who trust me to guide them through the hard stuff, too.

I was never a doctor, not a published author. I've never had 500,000 followers on Instagram. Any of the things that you think you need in order to be taken seriously, people just. Could see themselves in me, and that's what made me their expert. You can do that. Like I said, it was actually a little bit shocking because people will tell you, like, oh, you're so aspirational, or, oh, like I never forgot that one thing that you taught me.

And you're like, really? You know, you know how to chop kale in 15 seconds, and suddenly that changes somebody's life. But if you know how to make seemingly difficult things simple. That is gold. That is gold. So, think for a moment what is something that your people seem to struggle with? And if you're here live, you can tell me in the chat what's something that you hear people struggling with.

Of course, big things, they want to lose weight, or they have this disease or this symptom. Yes. But like the day-to-day stuff. Struggle with going to bed at a decent hour, struggle with that chocolate. At the end of the day, you know that everyone's got their dark chocolate and wine at night, meal prep, those small things, and then think, all right, how could I make it dead simple for them to feel success with this?

Even if it's just like. 1% success, you know, because then they feel like they did it instead of feeling like, I can't live up to that standard. You said nighttime snacking is what we hear in our workshops. Great. That, I mean, I could suggest like 10 different ways to go about it, Christie, but just like, like what would be the easiest way to help them get a win with that?

You don't have to solve it completely. You know, you don't have to like make it go away entirely. But how could they feel like they're winning because of something that you hired them to do, told them was okay to do? Right? Kim says, I'm not coaching yet, but these are all the things I struggled with too.

Of course. Good. And I'm sure maybe you haven't solved all of us. You know, we all still struggle sometimes. Please, please don't ever look at me and think I don't. But there's some things I know how to do really, really well and I've found those routines through the years, like the kale. Those are the things I want you to share.

You think it's no big deal because you do it every day or every week. They think you are a freaking genius, and that's what they're gonna pay you for. It's the implementation. I mean, sometimes we do some educating, but information is freely available online. Maybe their doctor has told them exactly what they need to do to fix their health problem.

Fine. They don't do it, and that's where health coaches come in, helping them implement, because the advice out there, gosh, it feels impossible to follow. Or, or they're, you know, sometimes clients are trying to maybe follow their doctor's orders or the latest health fads that they see on social media. And why do they keep failing?

Because they're trying to do too much at once. They're trying to go from zero to 60 in a day. You know, they're trying to do a hundred different things. Maybe they're going too hard and they're getting hurt, or they're psyching themselves out because, you know, like people psych themselves outta exercising all the time, right?

Because they just don't see themselves as a person who exercises help them get a small win so they can start to see themselves as somebody who moves their body. Whatever it's, we want, wanna make it just dead, dead simple. So that they can change little by little, and they feel those compounding successes and they will love you forever.

I got people still following me today, even though I haven't been in private practice for a long time. They still follow. They still like comment, email me, you know, I want that for you too. I have all these fans and followers. I feel like if I turned around tomorrow, I could step back into my own private practice with health coaching and be there.

Keep in mind, I'm no health expert. I'm really not. I never have been, but people see me that way. Maybe you have even seen me that way, right? Because I'm in this health coach industry. But boy, I tell you, all you gotta do is show someone how to chop up that head of kale in 15 seconds, and they will go, whoa, thank you.

You're the best. You know, we talk a lot about choosing a target market. Maybe a few episodes ago, we actually did an episode all about target markets, and I'll link to that in the show notes, but let's say you're targeting women with thyroid issues, that is definitely one way to become known for something, but you'll love this even before that, like even if you aren't clear on the target market yet, even without that, you can become known for, let's say your practicality.

Or your organizational skills, your relatability, or your humor, or your warmth, you know your personality. So lean into that stuff. Lean into who you are, what makes you unique, and be more of that, you know, highlight that stuff. We don't need a bunch of cookie-cutter health coaches in the world who are all saying the exact same thing. Stand out.

Because you can become known for that one thing or that one health tip that you share far and wide, and you make them go, Whoa, thank you. Creating fans and clients of life. And if you wanna plan for how to show up consistently, make the offers consistently, sign paying clients, the system that worked for me. For you.

It's all laid out in my free 90-day blueprint, which you can get at HealthCoachPower.com/Blueprint. And I want you to remember, you already are the coach that someone out there is looking for, exactly as you are right now. You're ready to start acting like it. That's why I want you to grab the blueprint.

Remember, that's at HealthCoachPower.com/Blueprint because it's all closer than it feels. We make it feel like there's this huge mountain between us and clients, and it's not like that. Go be the coach that people want to hire, and I'll see you next week. Take care, everybody.

Thank you so much for listening to the Health Coach Power Community podcast. Please take a moment, leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. It helps us reach more coaches and allows me to bring you this free content every week to join us live. Ask your questions and have a direct line to me. Join our free Facebook group at HealthCoachPowerCommunity.com.