[Get Started Series] Client Engagement For Better Outcomes with Nathalie Garcia

Michelle Leotta:
Hello health coaches and welcome back for another episode of our very special get started series. This has been really cool because instead of just hearing from me during these episodes, you're hearing from other experts in the field of health, coaching, health, and wellness. And today, Nathalie Garcia is with us. Nathalie's from Practice Better. She's the co-founder of Practice Better and actually has been in the field herself. So, let me just pass it to you real quick, Nathalie, tell everyone a little bit about yourself and thank you for being here.

Nathalie Garcia:
Hi everyone. Thank you, Michelle. I love, I love any opportunity we have to chat with your community. Your community is so engaging, and you do such a great job at supporting them. So I love being here. Um, as Michelle said, I am Nathalie Garcia, I'm co-founder and CEO of practicebetter.com I come from a background of health and wellness as well. And that's where Practice Better was born from. So basically quick version of this as when I started practicing, I was just inundated in work and I don't know who can relate. Let us know if you can, but whether you're like starting with your first client or your hundredth client, it just doesn't get, it didn't seem to get easier. I would like, Oh my gosh, every new client that came in with like bittersweet. Yes, this is so exciting. Oh my gosh. So much more work. Right? So basically we built the practice management platform called Practice Better. That just helps you streamline your work. Helps it easier for you to keep clients accountable, helps them have everything that they need at their fingertips. Um, so yeah, so that's, that's how Practice Better was born.

Michelle Leotta:
Amazing. And Nathalie just happens to be wearing a shirt that is the same color as the Practice Better platform, which I love. You're so on brand, did you do it on purpose? Yes, of course. Of course she did. Very nice. Okay, good. So, one thing that I have loved about using Practice Better just in general, like with my coaching, I agree with you, it's kind of like you get a new client and you're like, great. And then you're like, I'm so busy. I barely have time to service this client. Um, so we need to make it easier. And the other thing that we need to do is, you know, you mentioned accountability. We need to make sure that our clients stay engaged with the process. And that can be tricky sometimes. So I thought we could start there. Just from like your personal experience, when you were still working in the field and also with like all the practitioners that you work with now, what are some of the sticking points where we lose that client engagement?

Nathalie Garcia:
Oh man, there are a lot of points. There are a lot of points to be honest with you because the problem you think about it, and as much as health and wellness might feel really natural to everyone listening right now, because you've gone through the training, you're living it, you're breathing it. And we're like, it's so easy to drink more water. It's so easy to get more sleep. It's so easy, right? These things that just now are so normal to us are not necessarily normal and easy to the people coming to see you. So if you say to someone who's drinking one glass of water a day, Hey, drink eight glasses of water, okay? Or, even drink five, right? They're going to be like, what? Right? And rethink that. It might be an easy thing, but you can't really move on to something bigger and to the next step until you have that first step down. So, they really end up needing a lot of like hand-holding.

Michelle Leotta:
Yes. That's, what's so awesome about having a health coach is that we can provide that deeper level of support that they're not going to get from their 10 minute visit with their doctor. Right? So this is a real opportunity to like to go deep, to really become part of our client's lives. Okay. So one thing would be to say, you need to drink more water. And the client's like, yeah uhuh, and they never do it. And the other thing would be actually following, like, how would you do that? Follow up every day, following up once a week.

Nathalie Garcia:
Do you want to say to them, hey, like, do you want to check in with them every day? Hey, how are you doing on this? Or do you want them to be messaging you every day? Do you want to say, have like this open door policy where they can contact you 24/7, that's also not sustainable. And we've got to think like, we go into this into this work because we truly want to get, we truly want to help them make these changes in their lives. We're so invested in them. We have to hold this space for them. Right? But that's really... To be honest, it could be quite exhausting. Right?

Michelle Leotta:
When we offer like a lot of coaches and I have done this too, we offer like unlimited email support between sessions or tech support. And then I don't know about you guys, but I kind of cross my fingers and hope that they don't actually text me that often because like that's a lot of extra time and you have to remember to get back to them. And it's just a whole other layer.

Nathalie Garcia:
We've got lives.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, we have. So, we have to balance like, yes, we want to hold our clients accountable and we need to keep them engaged. And also, we cannot be giving them 30 hours a week.

Nathalie Garcia:
For the price of one hour or two hours.

Michelle Leotta:
That's right.

Nathalie Garcia:
All things that you have to think about is like, you know, how much support do they need to make the changes that you guys are working on together. Right? And then you multiply that by how many clients you want. Right. And you think I can't do this by myself. It's just impossible. So you've got to get creative with thinking about how you're going to prompt them, how you're going to be in their ear on a regular basis and show up and show them that you're invested in that you're paying attention and that you want them to succeed. But in a way, that's not going to just completely obliterate your ability to work on anything other than that one client.

Michelle Leotta:
Okay. So let's just talk about one scenario that comes up all the time. Cause I'm like, where do I fall down when it comes to engagement? And here's something that happens. I'll have a client who has a certain package, a certain number of sessions they have to use in a certain period of time. We have a session or two or three, and then it's like, okay, great. You know, book your next session. I'll see you in a couple of weeks. And they book nothing. And I forget because it's on them to book the next session. Right? So sometimes weeks go by and I think, well, on one hand, if they're not interested in booking, that's on them right there. You know, the package is going to expire. But on the other hand, it's like, well, maybe I should be following up, but how often, and how do I remind myself to do that? So that is one problem that I definitely encounter.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yeah. So now that's pretty easy. So using the platform, now you can actually automatically generate a task in conjunction to that booking so you can remind them. So for example, let's say they book a session with you for, let's say two weeks from now. Okay. You can remind them after that session. So you can say like time of period after to book again, you don't have to wait the two weeks. And another, another really great way is to just actually get them to book right then and there, before they leave. But if that's not an option for them, because they got to check their schedule, they got to chat with their partner, whatever the case might be. Um, you can set a task for them to do that. So then either you do it via an automation or you just actually go in and during your session. So you're not taking time to do this outside of your sessions. You go in and create a task and say, book your follow-up appointment, remind them in a week at this time.

Michelle Leotta:
Okay. So this is, what's so funny about Practice Better. I've been using Practice Better for like, I don't know, 5 years. And I still, probably only use like 30% of the features that you guys have because I'm always learning new stuff. So, I'm totally going to figure that out because it's always that thing. Oh, let's book your next session. Oh, I don’t know when, I'm free. Oh, okay. I'll send you a link and then crickets. Yeah. So I would really love to be able to, maybe there's a way to do this. Like automate something that says your package is about to expire like that. Cause that comes up right. And you can have a client who signs up today and a year and a half from now. They're still trying to book their last session.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yeah. That doesn't work very well either. But yeah. Setting something up like a task, whether that task is for now, you can have the task before them so that they can just kind of own it themselves. And they go in and they book the appointment or you can set the task for yourself. I mean, definitely not as easy as just having them book themselves. But if you are the one booking, in some instances, that's what happens in practices. Some people prefer to do the bookings themselves. Then you can set that reminder or you, you can create a task for yourself and say, don't forget to, you know, contact Jenny to rebook or whatever.

Michelle Leotta:
Right. I also just want to point out for everybody listening. If you do hear a little baby crying in the background, good Lord, it is not mine. It is. Nathalie's.

Nathalie Garcia:
That's not the special surprise today, right?

Michelle Leotta:
No. Oh, heck no, but we love to hear a little babies in the background and I know that most, not most, but a lot of health coaches are in their own homes trying to do work and have kids in the background. So bless, bless all of us. We're all making it work.

Nathalie Garcia:
We all just got to roll with it.

Michelle Leotta:
Correct. All right. So good. So that's one area of engagement, just getting the darn appointment on the books. That is a big one. Um, what other specific scenarios do you see coming up?

Nathalie Garcia:
Well, I think that another place that we can do a better job at engaging with some people might be. I think, I think, okay, what I always try and do is like, where can you, where do you, where do you have to engage? And where can you engage without engaging?

Michelle Leotta:
Right. Sounds like it. I like it. Tell me more.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yeah so, for example, if you're using Practice Better, um, and we do have a mobile app, so in the mobile app that could be used for you as a practice, your or with your clients. So introducing that as part of the tools that you're going to work with to help them along their journey. So for example, and you just let them know when you update something in the, in the, um, in the app or on the website I'm notified on automatically so that they know that when they're interacting with the app, they're interacting with you and then depending on, so that's a good first step. If you want to add kind of low touch points, but you know, something that's really easy to do. Let's say they're engaging with the, um, with the food tracking. They're telling you, hey, I ate this. Give them a thumbs up. Right?

Nathalie Garcia:
So something short and sweet. You don't need to get into everything. But it's a nice, easy way that you can acknowledge. You saw what they did. They did a good job, but they could, you know, work on something. And then you walk away, you can come back and you can talk about it a little bit more in your actual sessions, but you can tell them, Hey, every time you take out your mobile app and you engage with it and you tell me what you're eating. So make it, let them know they're telling you what they're eating. They're telling you how much they're sleeping. It's not, they're just telling the app. They're telling you. So you get that information. So that allows them to engage in a different type of way.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah. Let's talk about that. Cause we get a lot of questions inside of our Facebook group about, does anybody know of an app that lets our client track their food? I want to see what they're eating. Maybe upload a picture, et cetera, et cetera. Honestly, this falls into that category of things that I have not even used Practice Better for, but I know it exists. So, tell me why I should be using it and tell everybody a little bit more about that feature because I think it's a good one.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yeah. So I mean, obviously you're all going to practice differently again. So there a there's a bit of custom, uh, customizability there. Um, but what you're going to do is you give your clients access to the mobile app or they, again, they can log in through website as well. If you're not using their mobile device for tracking, they can tell you what they ate. Like Michelle said, they can type it in. They can tell you, I, I can say I ate a tuna fish sandwich, like literally type in what they ate in their own words. Um, they can, they can look into a nutritional, uh, into our nutrition database so that they can actually select the foods to tell you how many grams or ounces or cups or whatever the measurement might be and actually get the nutritional breakdown of that food. Also, you can disable that if you don't want them to see that, um, or they can take a photo, right?

Nathalie Garcia:
Cause every person's going to probably want to tell you what they're doing differently. Um, there's also an activity tracker. So if you're really focusing on getting them moving, they could go into the activity tracker and tell you how much they're moving in a day. So now you can keep track of that. Maybe you guys made a goal together. They're going to get out and move five days a week. So now you can see that. And when they come back to your session, this is a big piece. When they come back to your session, they're not trying to like, they're not scratching their heads saying, Oh, what did I do over the last two weeks? Because then you're that I know this is maybe not quite where we were going with this conversation, but that's part of it like that guesswork, doesn't help you do your job right now. You're working and make trying to guide them with incomplete information.

Michelle Leotta:
True. True. They do. You could spend a whole session saying, well, maybe this, maybe that maybe next time it'll be like this. Yeah. Okay. So that's really cool. And I can't tell you how many times someone's asking about that inside of our group. Can they take a picture? Can they do this? And I love that you can disable the calorie counts or whatever, if you don't want to be getting into that, or if it's a trigger for your client, that feature alone is super, super valuable. You guys, literally, I love having Nathalie here because she just makes it all sounds so doable. Every time there's a new piece of technology, there's going to be like a little bit of a learning curve. So when I started using Practice Better, it's like, okay, I'm going to use it for... It does everything, by the way, it does all your client management.

Michelle Leotta:
So you're scheduling your cancellations and rescheduling your payments, your payment plans. You know, I think I just started with the scheduling. Like, let me just use it as a scheduler. Okay. I got that. Now let me start using it to accept payments. Okay, now I got that. You know, it was, I keep kind of like creeping into more and more of the features. I'm just about to run my first like online program using the platform. Yeah. So that's super cool. And I use the messenger a lot because I don't really want people sending me like their lab tests and their personal information through my Gmail or a text message. I want them to send it through a secure platform, like Practice Better so that, you know, there's no chance that anybody else is going to get their eyes on that info. I think that makes them feel more secure and I feel better about it. So anyway, there's so many things we can be doing, but I really need to get into this whole food tracking and activity tracking.

Nathalie Garcia:
There's a sleep tracker in there as well. They can even connect their Fitbits. Yeah...

Michelle Leotta:
Lots of touch points. So, they feel like there's somebody kind of holding their hand, even when you, as the coach are fast asleep on the other side, getting our beauty rest while our client is still going ahead and tracking whatever it is that they're doing and communicating with us in a way.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yeah, absolutely. And that's such an important piece because again, like I said, we get into this field because we want to help and we want them to understand that. Right. But we also need to give them the tools that they're going to be able to do it on their own. So you're there to support them. You're there to offer feedback as needed. Right. But they're also, they're also kind of driving the bus. So you give them some liberties. Right. And you jump in when you need to. So I always think about like, I'm this person who loved to like audit my life. I like to audit my work. I love to audit my day. Like, this is what I just love this. Like I kind of, I, so if you kind of map out all the different things that you do with a client and you think about how many times would you like to touch base with them?

Nathalie Garcia:
Like how many times do you think that they should have, um, you know, some sort of contact or interaction with you as a really good starting point? And then you can start figuring out which parts of those can be automated. So the person feels, um, they feel seen, they feel important. They feel like you're invested. And then, but they may not necessarily need you to call them. Right. It doesn't have to be very, labor intensive on your end. And then what, so those pieces be automated. And then which are the pieces that are really crucial, that it's actually you talking to them, you sending them a message, something that's really, truly coming from you. Um, these are really great place because as you get further and further into your practice, you're going to realize the more you want to start seeing more people, the more you're going to have to have a system and phrase, that's going to make it easier for you to do that because otherwise you're just going to be limiting how many people you can help and also limiting. And I know this is like not always the fun topic, but limiting your potential income because these pieces as important as they are, they can be very time-consuming.

Michelle Leotta:
Yeah, of course. Now I'm thinking of a client that I had a while ago, who had some great results, right? She was, she was real, she's like a client that I didn't have to stay on top of. She was really on top of it. She was a real go getter, you know? And, and sometimes we're blessed with those and sometimes not so much, but anyway, because she was still very engaged, she got amazing results. And I will always remember her because she was just such a character. And then she referred me to like 12 of her friends. And this is the beautiful thing. Cause most health coaches, you guys, I kind of, I kind of liked the marketing stuff. Right. Cause I used to work in advertising. That's kind of my jam, but I know for most of you guys, you don't like the marketing stuff, right?

Michelle Leotta:
It's like your least favorite thing. So if we can have really great results with our clients, it's going to lead to those referrals. And if one client can turn into two and two clients can turn into four or six, suddenly your practice is going to fill without having to do so much heavy marketing. So I'm curious Nathalie, with, um, health coaches inside the practice, better community, like what are some successes that are happening? What are some stories that you hear about? Do you have any, any, uh, anecdotes for us? Cause I think it's nice to hear what other coaches are up to.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yeah. So I think a big thing that's been happening right now is just we get the feedback all the time with like practitioners say, Hey, like I looked so cool. So this is, this, isn't a small thing. But sometimes just like coming to us and saying like, Hey, Oh my gosh, I feel so much more professional. So much more professional, so much so that I was able to raise my prices and my clients didn't change. Like they did like change their minds about working with me sort of thing. Um, that's a really big one. Just the fact that you feel like that professional, that you feel like you're putting your foot forward as a professional and now you feel like you can charge professional prices. I mean, you were always a professional, but right. But to feel like you're offering almost a better service now, um, that's really cool to be able to just reach more people.

Nathalie Garcia:
Now they're seeing these really great options to run like hybrid programs, hybrid practices. So now clients are, not clients, but practitioners telling us that, you know, Hey, I was, I don't have to work one-to-one anymore, but I don't have to go only group. So being, being able to do both of those at the same time in one single program, cause some people don't want to do only one of those. Um, but then we get the feedback from our users or our users, clients and practitioners, clients, which, you know, we don't always have that much, interaction with their clients, but we get those clients coming to us. And those are like pretty special when they take the time to reach out to the company that, you know, created the product. And they say, I have to tell you, this has been the best platform I've been using.

Nathalie Garcia:
It makes it so much easier. I have everything I need. And we're like, wow. You know, that really probably took a lot of effort on their part to kind of reach out to us and tell us that. Um, so it's, it's really gratifying to hear from practitioners how much time we've given them back, how much flexibility we've given them into like how they want to run their business. Because as we saw in this past year where all of a sudden everyone was scrambling, if you weren't already online, you're scrambling to figure out, you know, how do I get online? You know, even how do I expand the, the services I was offering online? Um, so it's really amazing to see people kind of take off, being able to take the ownership back and, and have like more options. But it's really, really, really cool to hear from their clients telling us like, wow, this made, this has made it so much easier.

Michelle Leotta:
I'm really surprised to be like one of my clients on their end saying, what does this platform Michelle has been using? Let me reach out to them. Like they do that. Wow.

Nathalie Garcia:
Yes. I mean, I'm not saying it's, it's not, not saying every day, but it happens more than I would have ever thought. Um, and it's really special and we're okay. Cause we know, we know what's working on the practitioner side. I mean we get feedback and practice shows that their clients are loving it, but to be the amount of effort that the client had to put in to let us know that it's working for them is pretty cool.

Michelle Leotta:
That is really cool. And I just wanted to circle back on the thing you said about running hybrid programs. Cause that's what I'm currently in the midst of developing. And I think that a lot of coaches want to run online programs, online courses, things like that. Talk about fall off, talk about not having engagement with any online course in any field. You're going to get huge drop off. You guys, people sign up, they do the first lesson. They never do anything else. So it, so I like this idea of a hybrid model where we I'm still able to check in one-on-one with each individual in the group. And yet I'm not repeating myself about gluten or whatever, 900 times. Like they could just watch that video, get the information and then get the coaching from me and these smaller bite-sized chunks. So when we're just talking about like engaging with clients, I think we all want to consider that particularly when it comes to the online course stuff. Yeah.

Nathalie Garcia:
I think the online core stuff is cool too, because it's so flexible, right? Like if you were thinking about again, you know, we, when we, when we're starting to build a program, starting to build out our services, we're starting, we think about, you know, how we anticipate helping the people that are, you know, our ideal clients, but obviously everyone needs support in different ways. Everyone engages with content differently. And also too, like, are you catching them on a day where, you know, they're, they're checking on the content, like your, your program content at the end of the day where they've lost, they just can't be bothered to read something. Now they want to, they'll rather listen to a video or audio clip or something like that. So, the videos, the videos, the programs give you a lot of flexibility in terms of how you want to present your content.

Nathalie Garcia:
So you can have a nice little mix of content types or mediums. So that way your clients can be engaged kind of no matter where they are in their day, if they have the time to read something or they just have time to hear something, or even if they're just a person who's more visual. Um, so the programs, for example, or even if you're doing protocols, like if you're making recommendations to your clients and in a more organized fashion, um, then you have the option to be there. She goes, you have the option to be putting videos in there, putting, um, external links, putting, you know, graphs or photos or whatever you want to do to engage them, to show them what it is that you're teaching them or the importance of something. Um, so I think the programs is so important. It's just gives you again, it's all about flexibility and how you can engage people in a way that's not going to exhaust you and you don't have to, like you said, talk about gluten again.

Michelle Leotta:
That's right for the millionth time. Cause it does get a little old after a while. I'm going to tell you, in my first year of coaching, I was very excited to do it all by year 12. I'm like a little tired of having the same conversation. So it's great to be able to just scale that stuff. So you guys will, like I said, we get a lot of questions about, uh, food trackers. We get a lot of questions about how do I get my form signed. We have a lot of questions about what's the best payment, uh, you know, way to accept payment. Uh, what calendar should I use? What this, what that, I mean, you could have like 20 different tools you could be paying for all of them. Or you could just be paying one time, a very reasonable fee use practice, better to take care of all of it together.

Michelle Leotta:
It's like a godsend. You people, I need to like tell you this to your faces. So if you're interested in like unlocking this power, which clearly I still have to unlock like at least half, but even, even just half capacity, I'm still getting so much out of it. Go to healthcoachpower.com/practice. And you can use code hcpower30 to save 30% off your first three months. We will put that in the show notes. So you don't have to memorize it. Nathalie, thank you so much for joining us today and helping us put our time and energy into what we do best instead of all the admin work.

Nathalie Garcia:
My pleasure, my pleasure. Anytime you, anytime you want to talk about making your practice any simpler, I'm your gal, any better go Practice Better.

Michelle Leotta:
We'll do that. Thanks so much. And thanks for joining us. You guys keep your eyes open because we, I am releasing quite a number of these get started series episodes. You'll see them popping up over the next few weeks with experts from all different areas of the field of health, coaching and health and wellness. So I'll see you next time and I'll be back on Tuesday with our regular 2:00 PM, Q&A. I'll see you then.