Less Dogma, More Clients: Coaching That Works in the Real World

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.

When you've been coaching for a while, you start to see what actually works with clients and what just sounds good in theory. And that's why I love talking to experienced coaches like Erin Power, who's joining us today. She's got lots of years of real-life coaching experience under her belt, and she's got a unique voice and refreshingly flexible perspective to share with us.

In this episode, we talk about what it means to coach women around weight loss. I think you're gonna find that very interesting. And Erin shares about how she's helping a plant-based client through the lens of primal. If you know anything about primal or ancestral eating and living, then you know it's based heavily on animal protein.

So it's really cool to see how letting go of strict dogma can be beneficial for both the coach and the client. This conversation today is especially valuable if you've been wondering how to be yourself as a coach, how to connect more authentically with your clients, which Erin is amazing at, and turn your work into a real business.

If you wanna turn health coaching into your main thing, I did, like Erin has done, email the word “full-time” to me at michelle@healthcoachpower.com. And now let's go meet Erin. Hey Erin, welcome to the show.

Erin Power
Hey, Michelle. It's been a long time since we chatted. I'm excited. Looking forward to it.

Michelle Leotta
I know, and it only took us how many months to get this on the calendar, but worth the wait.

Erin Power
I know. Gosh, calendars. Calendars are so tricky these days.

Michelle Leotta
Tell everyone who doesn't know you, why you're so busy on your calendar, and what you do. And um, we'll take it from there. 'cause I'm sure a lot of people in my audience are familiar with you, but not everyone.

Erin Power
Well, I am a practicing health coach, which makes me really happy and, uh. I dunno why I say it makes me happy 'cause I just, I feel like I've been at it for about 12 years. It's fun to still be doing it and being able to grow as health coaching grows. I specifically work with women on weight loss, and I have a kind of a specific approach to weight loss and work as we should with a specific kind of woman.

Typically, I work with a woman who's in, call it her late forties or her fifties, as am I, and she's been embroiled in dieting for her whole life, and it's not working, and she doesn't know what to do. And it's sort of a, there's a weight loss component to it, but there's also, um, sort of a relationship with food component that I try to work on with women too.

So I work with women in these very long personalized coaching relationships to help them sort of just reorient to their bodies a little bit. I have only ever done that, I quite frankly, have been doing the same thing for 12 years. I've been saying the same thing for 12 years. I love it. I'm we're, maybe we'll talk about that, about how we can be really trustful and transparent with our approach and our storytelling.

But in addition to that, just to be thorough, I'm also an educator. I'm a health coaching educator, so I work on the faculty of the Health Coaching School. I'm the coaching director at Primal Health Coach Institute, and I've been doing that for about a decade. I love training and mentoring health coaches. I am really passionate about it and so one of the things I do at Primal Health Coaches, as I am really leading up our coach training staff are actually training the coaches to understanding the methodology of health coaching. The scope of practice of health coaching is something that I'm just really connected to and passionate about. So maybe the conversation could go around both those directions.

Michelle Leotta
That sounds fantastic. I mean, we've had a sort of a relationship with Primal through many years.

That's how I know you, and we have a lot of primal coaches in our audience. But what we talk about toda,y I think will be important for all health coaches, even our vegan coaches. I think anyone who is a big fan of or committed to a particular dietary style, you know, lifestyle, I love the way that you balance that with like reality.

And what you've been doing on Instagram lately, we'll share all your information at the end for everyone who's gonna wanna follow you. But what you've been doing on Instagram lately has been fantastic. And is that what you meant by like trust and storytelling? Is that what you've been doing?

Erin Power
Yeah. It's interesting 'cause I, I've, you know how it is, Michelle, on Instagram right now? I don't know. I find it quite annoying because there's all these viral tactics you can do, and so sometimes you get preoccupied by, I should have some kind of incredible hook that grabs someone's attention and suckers them into watching my reel, and I just.

I can't be bothered. So for me, as I mentioned a minute ago, I literally say the same thing. I have been saying the same thing, and there's something about the doubling down on it, which, first of all, there's no mistaking my message. Lik,e there's no smoke and mirrors here. I say the same, I stay sane, the same thing.

So I think there's an element of trust in that people can trust me. You either like my message or you don't. And if you don't, mom. It's fine. And also for me as a practitioner, it keeps it real simple for me. I'm connected to what I care about, what means something to me, and I'm not just going to, I'm not jumping onto fads.

I have a strong line in the sand, and I stay committed to it. I just think as social media becomes even more just problematic. In our world, especially for women trying to be healthy or anybody trying to be healthy, they open up their phone and the first thing they're bombarded with is 75 conflicting ideas.

And so it's nice to be this sort of voice of reason. It's just kind of like a metronome saying the same thing over and over again. I do encourage it as a social media strategy. I'm not a social media strategist, but. It feels nice. It's easier, and I think the message gets across to the people who need to hear it better that way.

Michelle Leotta
It's so clearly your voice and so clearly not running through ChatGPT, you know, like it really sounds like exactly what you would say if we were just having an off-the-cuff conversation.

So anyway, everyone's gonna wanna go see what you're doing over there on weight loss, if you don't mind. I had a conversation yesterday with a health coach, and she was like, gosh, my clients like they have more energy and they sleep better, and you know what, you know, have these other good results, and they never actually lose weight when their goal was to lose weight, and then they get all kinds of upset.

And I said, you know, a lot of health coaches have that issue where the clients don't lose weight. So, since that's like your main thing, do you find the same? Is that a problem?

Erin Power
I do find that, quite frankly, so I work with my clients now in six-month coaching relationships. So over the years, the duration of my coaching relationships has really grown.

I don't know why that is. I just felt like I needed longer to get results from people. I just noticed that, so literally my program used to be eight weeks long, and at eight weeks I could get weight loss, and now I need six months. Right. So the thing is, maybe it's 'cause my clients are maturing and so now we're in this different era of life where our bodies are responding differently.

I also think there's an element of like, I don't know, this is not a technical term, so please don't quote me on this, but like metabolic fatigue, just like over being overleveraged from doing a bunch of goofy diets. So we have, there's an element of like we have to sort of clear the decks here a little bit, get you just feeling better, working better.

And then weight loss will come as a side effect of feeling better. And also this is where coaching comes in clutch, because if you can say to your clients. If we got nothing else outta this, but you slept better, had more energy, skin was clear, you were happier, your mood was more level, you had more energy, wouldn't that be worth it?

And what if down the line, weight loss showed up as a cool side effect? Wouldn't that be worth it? That's not gonna land with everybody. But it doesn't have to land with everybody. It has to land with the people who it lands with. So frankly, yeah. I always tell my clients it's a six-month weight loss program 'cause that's how long it's gonna take.

And I don't make any promises that you're gonna see one to two pounds of weight loss per week. We have to forget that timeline. That's fake news. We're just gonna put in some work, work through all the feelings that we have, 'cause feelings are the biggest thing I'll work on with my clients, even more than food, quite honestly.

Work through all these feelings. Get your, you know, metabolically healthier again and sort of robustly nourishing and, and your body using fuel better. I have high confidence. Weight loss will come. But it's gonna take the entire six months, are you in? And some people aren't and some people are.

Michelle Leotta
You know, everyone always says, well, how long is my program supposed to be? And my answer is always like, how long does it take for your average client to see results?

Erin Power
Well, actually what I've been doing discovery calls lately, this just happened in the last few weeks. So I get to the prescription part of the discovery call, and I'll say, okay, so my protocol is a minimum of six months.

I've added the minimum. It's like, it's for sure six months. It could take longer. But you know, the thing is, I've had women push back and say, wow, that's really long. And I'll say, um, according to my notes, you've been gaining weight for the last 25 years, so seems like it's faster than that. Like, not to be snarky, but let's just be realistic here is really a minimum of six months.

That long and discovery, that's what you're trying to do. There's a big element of expectation management here. I'm not here to wow you with some kind of flashy outcome. This is a relationship. We're gonna be working through this together, so I'm gonna be really real with you upfront. It's a minimum of six months now. It might take longer.

Michelle Leotta
I love that. Well then, you're more likely to see the results. And I loved how you frame that or how you can frame that with like, Hey, wouldn't it be awesome if all these other things happen? 'Cause that is so very often the case. We can never, like weight loss, is really complex. Yeah.

Erin Power
Don't get started so complex. I actually think that biologically it's not that complex, but. At least for the women that I work with psychologically, psychosocially, I'm really doubling down on the psychosocial aspect of weight loss. Like what we think it's supposed to be, like, what we think our bodies are supposed to look like, how it's supposed to work.

There's a biological truth to how the body utilizes fuel. That's just the basics of metabolic biochemistry, but the way we think it's supposed to work is the bigger issue to overcome. That's why I'm not kidding when I say I work mostly. With my clients on feelings rather than food. And I dunno if you've seen this, I've been kind of really doubling down on this on my social media lately, but I, there's three basic feelings I've identified that come up during, for sure, a weight loss journey, but quite probably any health journey or you know what, any personal development journey and the feelings are frustration, discouragement, and disappointment.

And I just think anything you're trying to get better at, you're gonna bump up against that if you're learning to snowboard, you're learning to speak a new language, you're gonna bump up against those three feelings, and that's when you start to think about quitting. So I say to my clients, yeah, yeah, food.

Food will get food working for you. Lifestyle, exercise, yes. We have to work on frustration, discouragement, and disappointment. So when those show up, that's when you come into the coaching call and we talk about those feelings so you don't quit, 'cause this will work if you don't quit. If you quit, it's not gonna work. I've really been zeroing in on that lately.

Michelle Leotta
When you said that, I said, oh, I thought to myself that's exactly what health coaches go through too in building their business. It's the same frustration. It's the same discouragement. It's the same. I think I'll quit now and go back to my other job. This isn't working, and we have to work through those.

Erin Power
Uh, you know, 'cause of your expertise as a business coach, I, I dabbled in it. I'm not quite the expert at it as you are, but anytime I'm working with coaches on developing their coaching practice, their coaching skills, I tell them, this friction that you're feeling right now is literally the exact same friction you are gonna be working your clients through. It's [00:11:45] exactly the same.

Michelle Leotta
It's exactly the same. Um, so I would love to get in a whole conversation about how you are helping these women lose weight, but maybe we should just back up and talk about like, what is primal? What is this ancestral way of eating and living for anyone who's not familiar? Like, let's just start there, and then we'll kind of get into how you make it work for people.

Erin Power
Right. So I mentioned that I'm on the faculty of Primal Health Coach Institute, and so this is it just by way of backstory, a health coaching school founded by a well-known dude in the health and wellness space, Mark Sisson. And actually just a quick little tiny sidebar. I was interviewed on a podcast earlier this week or last week, and the host didn't know that I had this primal health coach connection at all.

She name-dropped Mark Sisson. She said, have you seen this Mark Sisson guy? He's 72 years old, he's got a six-pack. I'm like, oh yeah, I know Mark quite well. So it's interesting 'cause Mark is this icon of just badass longevity. It doesn't matter if you're a primal person or not. You know, Mark, we all have seen the guy.

He is definitely goals, but he founded the primal philosophy probably coming up 20 years ago now, almost. And so the primal approach is, it's in the realm of the paleo diet. It is in the ancestral health realm. And the way I would describe it, I hope Mark doesn't mind me taking Liberty's, describing his approach.

It's this return to what I would refer to as the sort of ancient wisdom of our DNA, which sounds insanely kooky when I say it, but I'm gonna try to flush that out. I think it sounds cool, but go on. Okay. Okay, good. So, especially now, and we've already touched on this, you know, the modern sort of algorithmic zeitgeist that we're in, all this modern sort of thinking in the approaches we take.

At the end of the day, our bodies are running very, very old technology, and there's a certain way of eating, a certain way of moving, a certain way of living. Our DNA is expecting, and the mismatch right now couldn't be more strenuous. It's just, it's very off kilter. So 20 years ago, when Mark came up with the primal approach, it was like, here's, here's kind of how our DNA is expecting us to eat.

Here's how we're expected to move. Some of this stuff was very counter-cultural at the time. You know, it was like some of the foods and the food groups might not be exactly what we're meant to be eating, and some of the, um, exercises that we've been doing, maybe not the best. And you know, even things like sunlight exposure and stress management and things like that.

It was a bit counter-cultural at the time. It's so interesting because I think, depending on who you listen to, it's actually kind of mainstream these days. Minimally processed Whole Foods diet, protein forward, go to bed, get some steps, lift weights, like this was all Mark's principles 20 years ago, really have come full circle.

And when you hear them, it's like, well, that's not kooky at all. It makes perfect sense.

Michelle Leotta
Oh, but back then, I mean, it was the opposite. Be on the elliptical machine for an hour was the way to exercise and avoid fat and all of that.

Erin Power
Low fat. I was basically living on Diet Coke and rice cakes, and you know, not nourishing.

So, you know, my interpretation of primal over the years has really been more in the realm of robustly nourishing. And a word I anchor to a lot is satiating. Like, what is our body wanting from us, and what if we just delivered what the body's asking for?

So, really picking up the signals of the body. And one of the reasons I'm really doubling down on that now is because.

As I've already said 10 times in this conversation, I just think we're too influenced by outside forces and it's, to me, it's like we have all the wisdom we need inside. So I hope I'm answering this question, but the primal approach is a lifestyle approach. It involves a certain method of eating, sort of a structure of parameters, we'll say, of eating.

I would say probably the food parameters are probably what primal is most known for, which we can dive into the specifics on that. And, but also movement and living that just is in the ancestral realm. And this doesn't mean cavemen. It doesn't mean cavemen. Okay. It just means the way things used to be. If you don't believe in cavemen.

Well, how about your great, great, great, great grandparents? Like what some back then when things were better for us, right? That's all. This is sort of this ancient wisdom.

Michelle Leotta
Alright, well, maybe you could just top line some of the big tenets of what it means to eat and live in this. Prime away. And um, my question is, do you think it's right for everyone?

Like, would everyone benefit from this or is it like more appropriate for just certain people at certain stages of their life?

Erin Power
Yeah, that, I was thinking about that question a lot because I, in the spirit of being. Non-dogmatic. I do want to say no to this question. No, it's not for everybody. And you know, for example, let's, an extreme example would be somebody who's in the top 1% of their sport and needs some kind of specific fitness nutrition.

So maybe they have to be zeroing in on their meal timing and composition to a certain extent. Or somebody with a diagnosed disease state that has a very specific nutrition protocol. I think biologically it's sound for all humans. The thing is in practice, is it right? I mean, again, those populations I just described, but also if you have a moral opposition to consuming animal meat for, uh, animal protein for whatever reason, then don't do it.

It's not, you know, we can meet in the middle. We can negotiate to a certain extent, but I do have to say there's a part of me that does think that biologically it makes sense for all humans. And then one of the principles that, that we teach at Primal Health Coach Institute, and it just is known in the realm of epigenetics, is that we are 99.8% genetically identical, all of us humans.

So we have our human genes, and then we have our familial genes. Familial genes are what make me blonde and you brunettes and, but our human genes are what run us all, and there's a biologically appropriate diet for us, and I always use this example. Just like my horses and I always point, 'cause they're out the window here.

Yeah. Well, horses eat grass. They just all eat grass. You're not gonna go feed your horse a steak because you wanna have a carnivore horse. It's not happening. There's a biologically appropriate diet for a horse, and there's a biologically appropriate diet for your dog and for humans as well. So I do think the biologically is pretty sound for all humans, but it might not be in practice, and that matters.

Michelle Leotta
Well. Okay. So would you or do you take on clients who are plant-based who are against consuming meat for whatever the reasons are. Is that a client you'll take?

Erin Power
I won't, but I did by accident. So shout out to Jenny who might be listening to this, who went, who made it the whole way through the discovery process, signed up for my program.

We're working together some like two weeks in, she's like, oh, by the way, I'm plant-based. And I said, I, eh, I don't know. I don't know how this will work because I really do, I do have a strong, I personally, as a health coach, have a strong animal protein forward approach, but it's working. We're making it work.

You know, she'll come to the coaching calls and talk about the kind of vegan proteins she's eating, and she's still following the parameters. She's just using the foods that she feels better about, and she really is a moral vegan. It's moral for her. Doesn't wanna eat animals. It's working. So that was a bit of a come to Jesus. I guess for me, because I, for the longest time, I wouldn't have taken, the only reason I would've taken a plant-based person is 'cause I didn't think they were gonna be able to get enough protein to satisfy the parameters of my version of Primal. Um, but she's thriving, so maybe I'll have to revisit that.

Michelle Leotta
I love that because I hear, you know, and on both sides we plant-based health coaches, you know, and like that's all they're gonna do and they're not gonna work with someone who's like this and vice versa. And it creates such a divide when, you know, we almost always can split the difference. So that's really cool to hear and I think you're a perfect example of someone who is like very, I don't wanna use the word entrenched, but you know, you're very in this whole primal, ancestral thing and at the same time, the way you talk about it, I don't feel like you're thumping a bible over my head, making me like, have to believe in this one way of eating.

You speak in very rich everyday terms that like every woman would relate to. So how do you walk that line?

Erin Power
No, I think that's really. Cool observation because I bet you 15 years ago, when I started doing this, when I found the primal approach, because I myself had become pre-diabetic, which was crazy. So I was trying to figure out how to resolve this metabolic dysfunction, and that's how I found this ancestral approach and just dabbled in it to see if it was gonna help me.

And it did. So then I was evangelical and super dogmatic about it.

Michelle Leotta
Oh, I bet. It's so annoying at first, aren't we?

Erin Power
I know. And so one of the things that really set me straight on that was, and this is gonna sound so, I don't even know snobby or something or name dropping, but I went to Mark's house. Okay.

So the first time I got to like really hang out with Mark was at his house for, um, uh, some meetings that we had, and he had a catered dinner brought in. It was like, you know, there's meat and there's vegetables, and there was bread and there was chickpeas and lentils and beans and grains. And I was like, Mark, what are we doing here?

Like, I thought grains and beans were off, you know, off limits for the primal approach, 'cause that's one of the nutritional philosophies, is the idea that some foods maybe aren't ideal for us. Uh, you know, biologically. He was kinda like, eh, and the thing is that Mark is the least dogmatic guy, like the founder of the principle isn't.

So as soon as I saw that, and he's obviously thriving, it occurred to me that he uses this phrase called like the minimum effective dose. He kind of borrowed from pharmaceuticals, but it's like what is the minimum effective dose of healthy eating and food fixation and a body obsession and micromanagement that I can do the least amount of that while still getting great results. And that's the sweet spot.

Michelle Leotta
Wow. You would never expect that from the founder of Primal to be like, yeah, whatever. Have some greens, have some bread, have some beans.

Erin Power
Listen, all the primal health coaches I've met, I've met a lot of them. Mark is the least dogmatic, primal guy of all the primal people I've met.

But like I go back to what I said was just, it's absolutely working for him because we can be the most dialed-in nutritionally perfect thing on planet earth, but if like, we're not having fun and we're not living our lives, we're, we're human beings having a lived experience. And Mark does that. Mark plays, Mark has a glass of wine with his red steak, despite it being a literal poison where there's no safe amount, and all the stuff you're hearing on that, like he, it's just, it doesn't make sense.

It's not realistic. It's gotta be a realistic approach, something that somebody can do. And there's the outliers who are very good at being dogmatic and strict, but that's not most of us. That's not me. I'm definitely not that person. I'm not good at being strict. I don't want to be. So it's really been interesting to soften my own evangelism, I suppose, and just sort of relax into this approach of it. And it still works amazingly,

Michelle Leotta
It's reminding me of, um, well this one particular party I remember being at, but there were so many friends, community members there, and I was very purposefully eating like several slices of pizza because I really needed people to know, and I feel like it, every health coach could benefit from just a little bit of this.

When people think that you are like perfect all the time, it's a huge turnoff. Yeah. Yeah, they don't wanna talk to you. They don't, they're embarrassed of whatever they're doing, eating, whatever. They don't wanna hire you. They don't wanna be judged by you. So it's really important to be human. So like, I probably ate like four slices of pizza at that party just because I was, I was to prove a point.

Yes. To prove a point. Exactly. And I think that no matter what. Your dietary style is whatever, you know, the area you're coming from, do try to be human. That's such a great way to relate to other humans.

Erin Power
I think so. But you know, I completely agree with you, and you know, ultimately every health coach has their expertise and their mission, their passion, the type of person they help.

And there are lots of health coaches that wanna be the very. On point, very strict, very dialed in, and there are clients who gravitate toward that. Uh, not my clients, though, so it doesn't serve me to be that kind of person. You know what I mean? Like I just, I treat, I tell my clients all the time, I treat myself whenever I want.

I treat myself to whatever I want, whenever I want. I just don't want to that much. Like I've just kind of gotten to this point where it feels good to be healthy. Most of the time, I like to opt into supportive food and lifestyle choices, but if I want a treat, I'll just go have it and like literally not even bat an eyelash about it.

And it, that's actually astonishing to some people who think we have to be perfect. So I love that you went and just made yourself sick eating pizza to improve. Like, we don't have to be perfect. Like we, we have to live our lives and we're going to eat pizza. Like it's not, we're never eating pizza again.

We're not, we're never having gonna slice of birthday cake again. It's like it's not happening. So why would we pretend that's how it has to be?

Michelle Leotta
Wow. I love that. Yeah. I'm sure people are coming to you saying, okay. I wanna lose weight, and you know, you have a system and you just tell me what to eat. And, given that plus, you know, this idea of maybe not eating so many grains or beans and whatnot, how do you balance, helping people [00:24:30] figure out what to eat or not eat and staying within scope of practice as a health coach.

Erin Power
I love talking about scope of practice. I'm so glad we're going here. But, so first of all, it, it is very within scope of practice to make food suggestions to clients. Okay? So this is where it gets a little muddy, 'cause I, because meal plans are not in the purview of a health coach, I think people are surprised by that. The meal plans are fully in the realm of the dietician. Even a personal trainer that gives you a meal plan shouldn't be doing that anyway. It's, it's, I think it's a bit of a gray area. No one's cracking down on it.

But what we can do is we can educate and offer resources. So what, what I've done over the years though is, uh, so I take, you know, this primal approach. I think the way we might look at it is, well, here's all the things you can't eat. Maybe that's how I started. Like, no, no grains, no beans, you know, whatever it may be.

Erin Power
Dairy is kind of on the bubble for primal, but instead, what I've done over the years because is because that doesn't really resonate with people very well, at least not my clientele. It's like, well, here's what you can eat. Here's the benefit of having animal protein. Here's the benefit of like, you know, healthy amounts of dietary fat.

Here's what fiber does in the body. Here's the plants, you know? Then we can talk about, like for example, I had a client this past week who. She came to me and she wanted to lose weight, but she also had this persistent bloating. She'd wake up in the morning bloated, and that's not normal. Like we can say, that's probably not a normal digestive situation.

Something going on there. I said, you know, we can work on that. Let, let's just get some good eating habits in place and then we'll maybe zero in on this bloating that she, and see if we can do something there with that later. So. Had her introduce a bit more animal protein. I have this method of eating where it's sort of like meal timing, you know, like, I want women to eat breakfast.

I'm over the fasting, I'm over the collagen. Coffee. Let's have a proper breakfast. Let's just eat food. Let's actually freaking nourish ourselves. So I'm teaching people how to eat, how to feel hunger, and then eat. And that's, that's basic. That's health coaching one-on-one. Like, here's what hunger is, here's how you answer hunger.

There's nothing prescriptive about that. It's hunger. Once she's gotten those habits down pat and she's starting to feel better, she said to me. I'd be curious to know what we can do about this bloating that I've got, because I'd really like to get that going. And then what I can say is, well, sometimes what happens is people have certain things in their diets that just irritate their gut a little bit.

We don't necessarily know why, but sometimes what can be helpful is if we practice taking a few things outta the diet just to see what might be causing it. So this kind of language is how language is one of the ways we stay in scope, right? Well, sometimes what people notice is they might have a, I might say, for example, I've learned that I have a sensitivity to corn, and when I eat corn, I get very bloated.

So what we can do is we can work on, just like running some experiments, let's try taking something that's pretty commonly in your diet, out of your diet, if you're up for it, see if it makes a difference. So. We zeroed in on a few things. She's always having cream in her coffee, so I'm thinking, okay, maybe would you be open to maybe taking the cream out of your coffee?

She said, no. I said, blame. She has a sandwich for lunch every day on like wheat bread. I said, you know, sometimes people have an issue with, uh, protein inside the wheat plant called gluten. Maybe you've heard of it. I'm just offering resources, right? Not everybody, but some people do have a struggle with it.

So would you be open to maybe just having a different kind of lunch for a few days instead of a sandwich to see if that could help? And she said, I think I could do that. Great. What would you have for lunch instead? Well, I could have leftovers from dinner. Great. I'm helping her execute this change. I'm not coming down on weed.

I'm not anti-wheat. I'm just like, maybe we could explore this just to see what happens. Anyway, long story short, it was the wheat. She took the sandwich out, and years of bloating resolved itself in a matter of five days, and so. Now we don't say, aha, you're celiac, or you're gluten intolerant. Just like, okay, so now you know that the bread on your sandwich might be contributing to your bloating. So knowing that that's just information. Yeah,

Michelle Leotta
Well, like what decisions would you, you know, make based on that? And I'm sure she'll still eat a sliced pizza here and there, but it's like, as grown adults, we can make that decision. Like this might make me bloated, and I'm gonna have it anyway.

Erin Power
Exactly. That's my favorite thing. I call that the self-honoring choice. I've got the information, now I know why. I've been bloated for five years, 10 years, however long it's been, forever. Yay. I'm not bloated. This feels amazing to her. And yeah, she's gonna eat sandwiches again. She's gonna have a sandwich someday. She's never not having a sandwich again.

But now she knows. I know that when I eat popcorn, I get bloated, I get brain fog, and I cannot get my contact lenses in. I don't know what that's all about. Dry eyes. So it's like when I go to the movie theater, I think to myself, I have meetings. I don't wanna be brain foggy. I just, I don't wanna have, I just, I'm not gonna have popcorn, just not for today.

It's not the right time. Or I might say, hell yeah, let's go extra large popcorn, extra butter. I don't care. Like I know I, it's just information and not in the spirit of villainizing any food, 'cause frankly I don't wanna do that to women anymore. And that's how I think a health coach should approach something that is inherently sort of like, like a primal approach is maybe on paper, an elimination diet, but it's not, that's not really in the purview of a health coach either to prescribe elimination diets.

So let's introduce what's supportive in the diet and then just run experiments and let the client pick up the signal from the experiment.

Michelle Leotta
I love that. And people are smart and their bodies are smart, and they will notice when they feel better and be able to, oh, I did this and now I feel like this, and make the decision moving forward also. Isn't that like get people out of the I cheated mindset? That whole, like, I'm making this decision to either feel this way or feel this way.

Erin Power
A hundred percent. I think it's a really powerful change in language because it's, again, it's not that wheat is bad. It's not the best choice for me, that's all. It's like, not, it's not a moral standing.

It's just for me, not the best choice for her. For me, it's corn. Right? It just it takes the morality out of it, the good, bad, the very binary thinking, which again goes back to in the spirit of not being dogmatic. That's how we as health coaches. Should be approaching these sorts of dietary changes with clients.

Michelle Leotta
I hope everyone heard that. Regardless, again, of what kind of coaches we're talking to. I mean, my goodness, these days we have coaches, uh, we have cannabis coaches, we have, there's so many varieties of how one should eat and live and move and whatnot, but just that right there, it's never good morally or bad.

It's just decisions. Yep. All right. That is beautiful. So since you've been in this, doing this work for so long, and thanks for some many of these insights that you've shared so far, I thought maybe we could talk a little bit about the business side and how you've seen things perhaps change through the years in terms of getting clients, like what's working right now, and have you noticed anything different with how.

And social media, you know, like has changed stuff up in the last few years.

Erin Power
I have. And so I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are too on this, because I feel like probably even your fingers on the pulse of this stuff more, more than mine. But I can only speak to my experience as a practicing health coach.

I just feel like I hate invoking this time of life, but up until about five years ago, give or take, things felt a little breezier, a little easier, a little more light, I guess, and you could say something that caught someone's attention and they would find that compelling enough to book into your calendar and you'd have a nice conversation on discovery and they'd say, what the hell?

Let's do it. And now people are I think, because they're just chronically being talked at on their phones. Like they open up their phone, and it's just hit a fever pitch. Sort of the, I guess, the influencers influencing the influenced. And so, your client is influenced; they've been influenced a thousand times by the time they get to your profile on Instagram, they've heard 10 conflicting pieces of information.

So whenever I'm on discovery calls with prospective clients, the one thing I chronically hearing that I hadn't heard before was, I'm completely overwhelmed. I don't even know what I should be doing. That's pretty new, I find. So right out the gate, I will be frank and say that it's been harder to convince people to sign up.

Selling has become something that I hate using the word selling, and I'm not a salesperson, I'm a health coach, but convincing someone to take a leap, to trust me, to guide them, it's been harder. So what I've very recently been doing and realizing is that this just speaks to the need for nurture.

So when I think about all the business stuff we have to do. It seems to me that nurturing your audience, whether that's your social poll or your email list, just being with them, not in a promotional way, just, Hey, I'm here with you. Here's an idea. Here's something I made. Here's a free thing. Here's something I was thinking about.

Just, I'm here with you. I'm in the conversation with you. I'm not coming at you with a supplement regime or a 21-day shred program. I'm just here with you, shoulder to shoulder kind of thing. I've really just changed my language. Authenticity, transparency, trust. You've heard, we've all heard there's a trust recession.

That's, I guess what I'm basically saying is there's a trust recession. Nobody trusts anybody. People think I'm a scammer. I get that comment on my Facebook. Facebook only, not Instagram, but on Facebook. This is a scam. It's like, oh. Working with me for six months to heal your relationship with who has a scam.

I don't know how this is a scam, but that's, if I were gonna run a scam, I would hope it was making far, far, far more money, you know?

Michelle Leotta
Exactly. Like we do this work because we love it and believe in it, and hopefully make some money also. Yeah. But you know, like do better if it's a scam.

Erin Power
I know, I agree. So like the scam thing is interesting because somebody will comment on a Facebook post and say that, what a scam.

And I'm thinking like. This is a free piece of content. You just scrolled past how? How is this a scam? But people feel like they're getting scammed all the time, that anything anybody says is some kind of affiliate code or something. So I don't know, like this is not like, I'm not saying this is the be-all, end-all business advice, but what has really helped me is what could I do to be the opposite of a scam, I guess.

Erin Power
So I'm just gonna keep being me. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, my, my posts almost never have a call to action. I don't use a lot of ManyChat automations. I'm not trying to get people in all the time. I'm trying to just have this conversation with them, and I think it's a slower game. It's a longer game, but I like that.

So I'm leaning in on nurture for my organic audience, I'm using paid ads as well. Lately, that's something newer that I've been doing the last, um, maybe three years. That's a whole can of worms. That's a can of worms. I can't say for sure that that's been great than just getting a lot more leads into your email list, which is always ultimately good.

And then when they're there, great. Now I'll just nurture the heck out of you. And the last few people that I've signed up into my six month program have been following me for years. They're not new. They need to be warmed up. I don't blame them, quite frankly. So it's the long game now, the Instagram coaches are gonna tell you how to go viral. I'm saying the opposite. Be the nurturer. Be transparent. Be real. Be the human. Yeah.

Michelle Leotta
Well, I mean, in a world of AI. I mean, which is, you know, it's not like it used to be. Obviously, now you could be talking to a bot and not even know that it's a bot. I think ships and technology also, the way the algorithm serves up like, like literally serves up exactly what you were talking about yesterda,y and it's creepy and it's weird.

Like I think there's, that has a huge amount to do with the changes that we've seen in the last couple of years. So, I agree that we have to do something. Different. So even things that I was teaching five, even like three years ago, it's like, oh, okay. The world has changed in some really significant ways.

So we have to be brave, and the more robotic everything gets. I love how you're leaning into the human aspect.

Erin Power
We were basically cyborgs now, and I have a tremendous amount of discomfort in. I don't know if you saw, I was on a walk the other day, my Instagram stories. I was like, you know what I gotta get is, is there an analog, like what's the most analog way I can live my life?

You know, I live on a little acreage here. It's nature, it's the country. I'm thinking of ways to claw technology away from my life, and I don't think I'd be alone on that. So while all the AI around us, and apps and technology, what have you, continued to build to a fever pitch. Health coaches are humans in relationship with other humans.

I just think we have this amazing opportunity to be human, and that's always been my favorite thing about health coaching is it's like non-prescriptive. It's conversational, it's client-oriented, it's person-to-person. It just is. And, and the appetite for that I just feel is, I just, is my hunch is the appetite for person-to-person connection is going to be growing soon.

Michelle Leotta
Yes, I think it is a big opportunity 'cause people are more starved for that than ever before, even though we're so connected to everything else. Actual human connection. That's fantastic. Aaron, please tell everybody where they can find you, especially your Instagram, but anything else that you think is useful?

Erin Power
I would say Instagram's probably the most useful at eat.simple.erin, and then I would direct anybody who's interested in what I'm doing at Primal Health Coach Institute to PrimalHealthCoach.com. We're doing lots of cool stuff in the coach training space and supporting coaches in their careers, and even in getting jobs in the job force.

We have a lot of cool things on the go. We've been in the health coaching. Education game for a long time. We're one of the OG schools, so go to PrimaryHealthCoach.com to find out that I have two podcasts, so I host the Eat Simple podcast and Health Coach Radio. Those are both available where you get your podcasts, and I do think long-form content is absolutely an area to double down on.

So I'm loving doing podcasts. I'm loving listening to podcasts. I think podcasting is a great place for coaches to grow, too. And so, anyways, I've got two podcasts too that you can track down.

Michelle Leotta
You are a busy lady. I know that. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Erin Power
Thanks, Michelle.

Michelle Leotta
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.