Grow Your Nutrition Business Podcast Episode 53: Top 4 Mistakes New Nutrition Coaches Make

In this episode, Ashley Osterman and Nicole Aucoin look back at the top four mistakes we made in a combined 25 years of experience working with nutrition clients.

We see every new nutrition coach make these mistakes, so we added a coaches evaluation as the last step of the training process for HSN Mentoring. I would rather new coaches get nervous and overcomplicate things with a dietitian on our mentoring staff than with their first client.

Coaches graduating from the training are feeling much more confident and ready to help clients because they are using a guided, tested and proven system, helping over 35k people worldwide.

Additional FREE Help Related To
Building A Nutrition Program In A Gym

  • LISTEN: How To Find A Great Nutrition Coach In A CrossFit Gym HERE
  • LISTEN: Inside The Nutrition Program At CrossFit Brighton & How Nutrition Coach, Darcie Helped Brent Lose 100 Pounds HERE
  • LISTEN: Nutrition Made Simple Podcast – CrossFit, Nutrition & Your Health HERE
  • HSN Mentoring Client Highlight: Meet Jocelyn & Barry Weidner, Owners of CrossFit Generation, How A 14-Year CrossFit Affiliate Changed Their Business Model To Make Nutrition Coaching The Foundation HERE

Episode Transcript:

Nicole Aucoin (00:05):
Welcome back to the Grow Your Nutrition Business Podcast. At Healthy Steps Nutrition we believe something as fundamental as nutrition shouldn’t be complicated, which is why we focus on a simple habit based approach when working with clients. We help gym owners and coaches build successful nutrition programs without reinventing the wheel. I’m your host Nicole Aucoin registered dietitian and founder of Healthy Steps Nutrition, CrossFit HSN, and HSN Mentoring. I’m also the author of the Basics of Nutrition Coaching CrossFit Preferred Nutrition Course. I’m going to teach you how to take one step at a time to build a successful nutrition program where you finally feel confident when talking about nutrition to your members and your communities. Last week actually marked a decade of me being a dietician. It’s funny going to school as a dietician or even taking an online nutrition course doesn’t give you all the tools you need to deal with every situation when working with nutrition clients. When I started Healthy Steps Nutrition in 2012, there wasn’t a blueprint of what I needed to do to really help clients make lasting results and meaningful change.

Nicole Aucoin (01:20):
In school, we learned all about how to manage disease and very little about motivational interviewing and habit based coaching. Over the past 10 years since building HSN and becoming a dietician our nutrition coaching program has gotten simpler and simpler. It’s almost too easy and that’s the way we like it. There’s so much stress going on in this season. The last thing your clients need is something complicated to follow or a super restrictive diet. In this episode, Ashley and I go back at the top four mistakes we made in a combined 25 years of experience working with nutrition clients. These are mistakes that we see every nutrition coach make, which is why we added a coaches evaluation as the last step of the training process for HSN mentoring. I would rather new coaches get nervous and over complicate things with a dietician on our HSN mentoring staff than with their first paying client.

Nicole Aucoin (02:24):
Coaches graduating the training are feeling so much more confident and ready to help clients because they are using a system that has guided, tested and proven helping over 35,000 people worldwide. We’ll get to this episode on the top four mistakes in just a minute. Did you know that HSN mentoring turns off the ability to sign up for mentoring the last two weeks of the year? We don’t want gym owners and coaches to sign up and rush through the training and have a poor launch of their nutrition program in January. We want to ensure that we are giving everyone in training that individualized support they need before launching their programs in January. Most gyms will launch with a nutrition challenge at the end of January or the beginning of February. To recoup the cost of the initial investment gain buy-in from existing members and take advantage of those people who are ready to commit in the new year.

Nicole Aucoin (03:22):
HSN mentoring provides a turnkey solution so that you can save time and not reinvent the wheel when it comes to building a nutrition program from scratch. HSN mentoring starts with a training process that takes about 30 hours. It includes online modules, homework, and six mentoring calls. The training teaches you how to set up a nutrition program, how to market your nutrition program, how to coach clients using a habit based approach and most importantly, retain them. Lastly, we teach you how to run a successful challenge and convert clients ongoing coaching after the challenge is over. We provide you the systems, the framework, and even the access to the exclusive HSN app which is where you’ll manage clients. Now enjoy this episode on the top four mistakes new nutrition coaches make when working with clients. Ashley Osterman welcome back to the podcast.

Ashley Osterman (04:21):
Thanks Nicole. Always a pleasure to be here.

Nicole Aucoin (04:23):
Today we are talking about the top four mistakes new nutrition coaches make when we are starting to work with clients.

Ashley Osterman (04:32):
And you know these four mistakes are seen so often and I think are really preventable if we take the time to map out a plan and ensure that we are providing our clients with the best experience possible.

Nicole Aucoin (04:48):
At the end of the day I think it comes down to lack of confidence as coaches that has all of these mistakes in it. You want to feel confident as a nutrition coach, which means you really need the education and you need the systems.

Ashley Osterman (05:04):
Absolutely.

Nicole Aucoin (05:05):
So let’s talk about the top four mistakes. The first one I made this mistake under pricing.

Ashley Osterman (05:12):
Not valuing your time and the services you’re offering.

Nicole Aucoin (05:17):
There are so many times where I talked to gym owners and coaches and they say, well, we have a lot of informal conversations about nutrition or I give family discounts and I give this person discount. And then that person referred a friend and now they expect that discount. And then it’s like, okay, well that’s really your price then. And I think it, I did it when I first started and it was just because I didn’t feel confident with the value that I was providing. And now it’s like, hey, this is the price that everyone pays and if you’re ready, when you are ready to move forward here is how to get started with us. And if you’re not ready yet that’s totally okay. Here’s some free help for you to do on your own.

Ashley Osterman (05:57):
Nicole for new nutrition coaches that are listening and they’re like, jeez, I don’t even know how to begin to price my services.

Nicole Aucoin (06:06):
We actually did an episode on pricing and packaging back a little bit. I’ll put the link in the show notes. One of the things I would recommend that you do is build a 12 week program when you’re packaging your programs, your nutrition programs. The reason is because you do not want to have to feel like you’re reselling a nutrition client right away. You want time to build that relationship with them and get them to see the value of nutrition, coaching, and accountability.

Ashley Osterman (06:33):
And we know that results take time. And I don’t want clients to go in with an expectation that they’re going to see results and sustain those results in four weeks or six weeks. I want them to know that it’s going to take time to make this a sustainable lifestyle change. And it’s a simple habit based approach that they are going to be able to be successful with in the long-term.

Nicole Aucoin (06:56):
Absolutely. So you want to make sure that you’re pricing your services appropriately. And if you’re a gym you want to make sure that you’re pricing your nutrition and fitness options appropriately so that you can pay a coach and still make some revenue. We’re in the business of helping people, but it’s still a business and your business has to be around to help people. So you want to make sure that you’re pricing appropriately. At HSN HQ we charge 179 per month for three months as a lowest package to get started with nutrition coaching at our gym. It goes up to 299 per month. And it really is tiered based on accountability and support not the type of nutrition coaching that someone is getting. I would say the average gym charges between 139 and 179 per month for three months. And then it goes down a little bit after that.

Nicole Aucoin (07:47):
The reason we charge more for the first three months is because it’s more time that you’re spending with the client. That initial consultation. Follow-up visits. People have more questions at the beginning. You want to price your programs accordingly and build that time in. It’s not just the in-person time which is a mistake that I made when I figured out my pricing. You have to build in the behind the scenes time that accountability beyond those in-person visits. If you want your clients to be successful, they have to have support and accountability. And that goes beyond one check-in every four weeks. We really need more than that. So I would highly recommend that you build in some time between those in-person visits for you to check in with your clients and charge for it.

Ashley Osterman (08:33):
Absolutely. If you’re not charging for your time you need to really sit down and do an evaluation because we shouldn’t be giving our services away for free or practically nothing. Value your time. And that starts with, like you said Nicole, being confident in the services that you provide.

Nicole Aucoin (08:49):
Absolutely. All right. Number two is not having a growth mindset.

Ashley Osterman (08:55):
I think as nutrition coaches we are in this business to help people. And one of the things that make great nutrition coaches really stand out is that they are always trying to grow. They’re always learning. They’re always asking questions. They’re always practicing and they understand how to keep it simple for their clients so that they can see success.

Nicole Aucoin (09:18):
You’re never going to get more tools in your toolbox if you don’t have a growth mindset. And I look back at how I started Healthy Substance Nutrition and what we told clients. The foundation of the program has always been the same. We want people to eat real foods. We want them to create a lifestyle, but if I didn’t really listen to feedback of my clients and figure out what worked well, what did not work well and make sure that we adjusted that did not work well so that it started slowly working better and better. The program would never be where it is today. So you have to have a growth mindset, which means you really need to invest in your education. You have to surround yourselves by people that are doing better than you. Having a mentor. And gosh, I have three different mentors that I talk to on a regular basis. And the reason is because I know there are things that I can improve on.

Ashley Osterman (10:11):
We should always be thinking of how we can improve. How we can get better. How we can support our clients better.

Nicole Aucoin (10:17):
And who better to surround yourself with and get yourself connected with a community that is all trying to achieve the same thing. People have different levels or some people that might just be starting with our program. There’s some people that might just be starting their nutrition program. There’s some people that have been using the platform for six years. There are some dieticians that have been coaching clients for years and years, but everyone always has things to learn from each other. And if you have that growth mindset, you’re able to feel more confident because you’re getting more tools in your toolbox things being surrounded by other people who are doing it well.

Ashley Osterman (10:52):
And I think the client feedback is such an important piece of the puzzle. Making sure that we’re sending out surveys. We’re asking what we can do to improve? What worked well? What could have been better? Getting that constructive criticism and looking at how we can improve our systems and overall improve our client experience for the better.

Nicole Aucoin (11:13):
When we talked to dieticians in particular so many type A dieticians. You want everything to be perfect before you release something and they never end up starting a business because they’re too scared that it’s not going to be perfect. Your version one is never going to be perfect.

Ashley Osterman (11:29):
No.

Nicole Aucoin (11:29):
And that is totally okay. But you have to have version one to get to version 20. And I think with social media it’s so easy to compare yourself to other more successful “nutrition coaches or dieticians or gym owners.” But the truth is you don’t know what they’ve done to get to where they’re at. And only one thing is shown on social media. Only the best. The highlight. So give yourself a little grace. But if you go in with a growth mindset, you’re going to be able to improve and constantly get better.

Ashley Osterman (12:01):
Growth mindset is one of the greatest things that you can do as a nutrition coach or as an owner to continuously evolve your business and eventually get more clients.

Nicole Aucoin (12:11):
And I think one of the biggest things I’ve learned is we always go back to this whenever we update education, we’re like, is this the simplest way possible we can teach this? Is there any where that there could be confusion? because if there is confusion then we need to make it simpler.

Ashley Osterman (12:29):
We don’t want to over-complicate or make things that are way too hard to understand because the message is going to get lost. The goal of the education is lost.

Nicole Aucoin (12:38):
We truly believe something as fundamental as nutrition shouldn’t be complicated. And if you have that mindset going back and keeping to make things more simple every single time is going to help your clients feel more confident that they can do what you ask them to do.

Ashley Osterman (12:53):
Yes. And if you want to listen a little bit more about how to keep it simple for your clients, we talked about that in our keep it simple podcast episode.

Nicole Aucoin (13:02):
Awesome. All right. Let’s talk about mistake number four.

Ashley Osterman (13:06):
Too much at one time. I see this so often especially with newer nutrition coaches or nutrition coaches that really lack the confidence because we get this education. We have so much information and knowledge and we want to help people, but it’s not always the best strategy to give them everything at once. And over-complicate it. Give them too much at one time because your clients are really coming to you because they’re already overwhelmed. They’ve probably tried between seven to 10 diets before seeking out the help of an expert. And the last thing that we want to do is give them too much to work on. We want to start it simple. We want to keep it simple and work at one thing at a time.

Nicole Aucoin (13:51):
When we pick that one thing a lot of new coaches will pick the last thing instead of the right thing. So like you do this initial consult. The last thing you talk about is eating out. The client says they eat out once a month and then you start going down this rabbit hole of, okay, let’s talk about exactly what you’re going to eat when you eat out. If they only eat out once a month is that really going to help them move the needle forward?

Ashley Osterman (14:14):
Not necessarily. No.

Nicole Aucoin (14:17):
So when you pick this one thing, when we focus on one thing at a time. I personally and even I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I circle, highlight-

Ashley Osterman (14:28):
Star.

Nicole Aucoin (14:29):
… I do something to remind myself this is that one thing I want to go back to and maybe I’ll circle two things. And then I know this is the next thing that I think would move the needle forward when we talk about the lowest hanging fruit.

Ashley Osterman (14:41):
Yes. And when we’re looking at that one thing or that first thing that started off with a great strategy is looking at something to add instead of taking things away. When we’re adding things to the plate we’re really promoting a healthy lifestyle versus when we’re telling clients to stop drinking soda or stop eating three sandwiches a day, we’re really talking about a restrictive diet mentality and that’s not what we want to do. So instead if I have a client who’s drinking a lot of soda or sugar-sweetened beverages throughout the day, I’m not going to tell them to stop. What I’m going to do is I’m going to have them start drinking more water and then we’ll find by them drinking more water, you’re actually going to have them drink less soda.

Nicole Aucoin (15:22):
It’s the same thing with like carbohydrates. If someone’s having a ton of pasta or rice with every single meal, okay. I want you to add in vegetables and eat those first.

Ashley Osterman (15:31):
Yep.

Nicole Aucoin (15:32):
All right. What I’m really doing is telling you by the time you’re going to get to your pasta you’re not going to eat as much, but I’m not going to say that. I’m going to say, all right, I want you to add in more vegetables, going back to your point. We want to foster a positive relationship with food not a restrictive diet mindset. Because if you think about if I tell you, you can’t have ice cream.

Ashley Osterman (15:51):
I’m going to want it.

Nicole Aucoin (15:52):
Now when-

Ashley Osterman (15:53):
So I can think about it.

Nicole Aucoin (15:54):
… It is. All I can think about is ice cream. So what could we do instead? All right, well, why don’t you try this sweet treat at the end of the night? Why don’t you try this instead of, Oh, you can not have that or just have it, have it, then let’s move on.

Ashley Osterman (16:09):
Or just making a limit to that sweet treat. We find so much with clients when they try to restrict something they want it more and it’s not necessarily a lack of willpower. It’s just because I can’t have it mindset. So if we give ourselves things in moderation and foster that healthy relationship with food. It’s not going to seem so much as a have to indulge as much as I can right now, because you know you can have it in moderation.

Nicole Aucoin (16:32):
I’m the type of person if it’s in the house I will eat it, which is really tough because Jason has a sweet tooth. So there’s always something here. He always has something, but having a little bit of something and then moving on and helping your clients understand are you the type of person that if it’s in the house you can eat 10 of them and you’ll go overboard. Then maybe we don’t have it in the house or can you just have a little piece of something and then move on. Okay, great. If you can do that. Awesome. Like having a little treat and then move on. But I think it’s so important as a nutrition coach. And this is definitely I would say the biggest mistake is try to focus on just one thing at a time.

Ashley Osterman (17:10):
The research is there. We see that if you focus on one thing at a time, one habit, one lifestyle change the rate of actually being able to sustain that for a year or more is about 80%. But then like when we dropped down to two things or more it’s less than 5% and then three things are more less than 3%. So the science is there. The research is there. We’ve learned this in practice too. It really helps just to focus on one thing at a time. Don’t over-complicate it. Don’t bombard your client with tons of life changes because it’s not going to be sustainable.

Nicole Aucoin (17:45):
And you have to understand that your clients are thinking that they need to change everything at one time. So helping them navigate that objection and then figuring out a plan that they feel comfortable and confident with. And most importantly why, is going to help them understand why you’re just focusing on one thing. A really great book that I absolutely love is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It talks about habits stacking, which is a really important thing when you’re thinking about focusing on one thing at a time. I don’t want to create an entirely new habit from scratch when you’re just working with a client. Let’s see if we can layer something onto something that they’re already doing so that they can feel confident with that. And you want to make sure that you can track your client’s progress with that one thing. So if you don’t have a way to track your client’s progress that is something that we need to figure out. And it goes into our most common mistake number four, we need a system.

Ashley Osterman (18:38):
You have to have a system to be able to track the progress. You need to be able to manage your clients somewhere. Communicate with their clients somewhere. You need to have a consistent experience and you need systems for that.

Nicole Aucoin (18:51):
I think the one thing that leveled up our nutrition program was adding in the app and the app was done for a few different reasons. One, I wanted away to provide my clients with support beyond those visits every two or four weeks. So what we did to navigate that was weekly we made videos. So every single week there’s four videos that go to client’s profile. They first started with this wood background and in front of me and my iPhone, and then down the road a couple of years ago we had a videographer come in and then the videos looked way better than on my iPhone.

Nicole Aucoin (19:34):
And then it was like, okay, let’s start creating these more robust programs. And then it was all right, a pandemic happened. Let’s have the videographer come in this week so that we can create an entire program to support our clients during this season. Oh, it’s the holidays. Let’s create an entire holiday accountability program to support our clients in this season. And the cool thing is, now they have videos that are relevant to what they’re dealing with right now. And if you want to help clients you need to provide them with information that’s relevant to the season that they’re in.

Ashley Osterman (20:06):
Absolutely. You have to support them no matter what the season. And I really love the weekly videos and my clients rave about them because you get some nutrition tips from our dieticians and staff. You get an easy, healthy recipe. You get some tips and tricks for the kitchen. They’re so valuable and they help keep those clients engaged. And the thing about engaged clients is that they’re going to stick with you for the longterm.

Nicole Aucoin (20:30):
The biggest upgrade we did to the HSN app was the addition of the habits in the habit tracking. We’ve always been talking about we want to focus on a habit. Focusing on one habit per week, and this allows coaches to create their own habit based on where clients are at. And most importantly put it in the app and clients can go in and hit mark complete. So why is that important? Well, at the end of the week when you check in with their clients you can see did they actually do what they said they were going to do? And why is that important? That provides them accountability and support. If you don’t have that, then what’s going to happen is you have four weeks going by two weeks, however long it is for your in-person check-ins or virtual check-ins with their clients. Now they’ve gone a couple of weeks before you’ve actually talked to them to help them overcome the obstacle that they’ve been dealing with.

Ashley Osterman (21:24):
And what I’ve found too from the past and experience with lack of systems is that when you’re not having that communication you’re not being able to contact them and get in touch to support them. You miss an opportunity to help them where they might’ve been struggling. If we’re not checking in with our clients, we might miss an opportunity to help them when they’re having a bad night or a meal prep, or they weren’t able to complete their actions that because of A, B and C, and we need to go and reevaluate and change that action step to help it be something that they can commit to and consistently complete.

Nicole Aucoin (21:56):
Your goal as a nutrition coach is to keep your clients accountable. And you need a streamlined way to do that so that you don’t feel overwhelmed with only 10 clients. The other thing that you want to be able to do is have one way to communicate with your clients. We say this all the time, but if we don’t have that. Your clients are going to be texting Facebook messaging, emailing you. And you’ve got all of this conversation happening and it’s impossible to keep track of the conversations. And trust me, I know from experience, it is not easy to build a nutrition program if you don’t have a streamlined way to communicate with your clients. The other thing you want to look at is what is the recommended timeline for getting back to your clients? You don’t want to feel like you’re clients send you a message and you have to respond back immediately. They’re going to really become super reliant on you if you foster that relationship with them.

Ashley Osterman (22:45):
You need to lay out those expectations in initial consultation. when I talk with my clients I let them know that the app is how we’re going to be communicating from here on out after their initial consultation. And if they messaged me they can expect to hear back from me within 24.

Nicole Aucoin (23:01):
I think that’s such an important part because you want to make sure that you are communicating with their clients consistently providing them feedback, but you’re not the on-demand nutrition coach. That’s just not feasible to scale.

Ashley Osterman (23:12):
Do you don’t have time for that. You can not scale and grow your business being on demand.

Nicole Aucoin (23:17):
One of the things that I think is important too is being able to track some notes and track biometrics within the app, which is helpful because during a season where we were seeing a lot of clients virtually not from the office, it was easy for me to go in for my home computer and see where the client was at because it’s all on an online dashboard.

Ashley Osterman (23:37):
And the other thing that’s really great too with me and some of my clients is that the HSN app integrates with my fitness pal. So I would have some clients that log their food. And it’s really great way for me to go in and see what they’ve been eating and provide them feedback.

Nicole Aucoin (23:51):
So obviously the HSN app is the way we manage the structure of our clients. But let’s talk about nutrition coaches who are not part of the platform. How can they work with clients? I think one thing that’s super easy to do is set up a Google sheet-

Ashley Osterman (24:08):
Spreadsheet.

Nicole Aucoin (24:08):
… for your clients. So set up a Google spreadsheet for your clients so that you guys can go back and forth in one place. And it’s always constantly updated. You can have one sheet for your client and then track their biometrics in there. Have notes in there. Have weekly habits in there that are customized to them. It’s not automated. It’s going to be more time and manual work, but at least it’s one platform to manage your clients that way. The other thing you want to do is make sure you have a scheduling software to have clients book with automations in there.

Nicole Aucoin (24:37):
So we use Acuity. I love Acuity. I wish I would have invested in that because we’ve had thousands of coaches sign up with Acuity since working with us. But Acuity is a really great way because you can set nutrition hours of the month as a nutrition coach. And going back to undervaluing yourself or under pricing if you don’t have nutrition hours of the month what will happen is you have one client on Tuesday morning, then you have an eight hour break and you have another client Tuesday evening.

Ashley Osterman (25:08):
Who wants to do that?

Nicole Aucoin (25:09):
It’s tough. You’re not valuing your time then you end up just wasting a bunch of time. And when you calculate your hourly rate it’s not very good. So instead what we recommend is that you pick a four hour block once per week then you have clients book in, as those hours fill up, add more hours to your nutrition coaching hours of the month. Saturdays after our morning classes are always the first hour skip field. But doing afternoon and morning hours. So you reached different clientele would be helpful for you.

Ashley Osterman (25:42):
Have kind of scattered availability. I think it’s one of the best strategies we’ve found with our HQ nutrition coaches.

Nicole Aucoin (25:48):
The other thing as a nutrition coach and another tip that I would recommend that you do is schedule follow-up visits during consultations. This took me way too long to figure out and way too many clients fell through the cracks because they did not do this. So schedule your followup visits. This goes for challenges. This goes for initial consultations. You always want a followup visit on the books.

Ashley Osterman (26:12):
And that’s really important because one, you have that on the books for your clients to come back and two, they have like an end goal. They know that they’re working on this and they’re going to see you here. It’s on the books and it helps them really make sure that they stay on track a little bit more when they have that next date on the books.

Nicole Aucoin (26:30):
It’s going to help you decrease the amount of clients that fall through the cracks.

Ashley Osterman (26:34):
Absolutely.

Nicole Aucoin (26:34):
When you have those follow-up visits on the books. So make sure you do that. Ashley to recap, talking about the four mistakes. The first one is undervaluing and underpricing yourself as a nutrition coach. You want to make sure that you’re valuing your time and that you’re pricing your programs appropriately so that you are able to help more people and not have to have 1 million clients to make a full-time salary as a nutrition coach. Number two is you want to have a growth mindset. So not having a growth mindset and not investing in yourself, continuing the education. Surrounding yourself by other coaches. You are already where you want to be. If you’re the smartest one in that room you need to go to a different room.

Ashley Osterman (27:17):
I love it.

Nicole Aucoin (27:18):
You have to surround yourself. Have that growth mindset. And it’s okay. Get out of your comfort zone. You don’t have to be perfect, but you’re never going to get better if you don’t push yourself outside of your comfort zone.

Ashley Osterman (27:30):
Number three. Too much at one time. Guys, we can’t stress it enough. You have to keep it simple. The more simple you can keep it for your clients the more success that they will find.

Nicole Aucoin (27:40):
Definitely go back and listen to the keep it simple series if you haven’t listened to that one already. And the last mistake is the lack of systems. If you do not have systems this will by far be the toughest way you’re going to have such a struggle of trying to scale your program because you’re recreating everything from scratch every single time. It takes time to create those systems or if you don’t want to reinvent the wheel go ahead and book a free call with us. Then you can use the system that we provide it for all of our mentoring clients and coaches. But the goal really here is we all have this passion for helping people. And there are so many people out in the world that need help with nutrition coaching. You wouldn’t be able to set yourself up for success. And so avoiding these mistakes is going to help you set yourself up for success as a nutrition coach.

Nicole Aucoin (28:33):
So many nuggets in this episode, I think every single nutrition coach as you’re listening or even gym owner can say, “Yep, I’ve made that mistake. Yep. I made that mistake.” And you know what? That’s part of owning a business, but the best businesses make mistakes. And then they learn from them and they do better. You’re having that growth mindset is so, so important. What worked last year isn’t working right now and it definitely didn’t work in those middle months of 2020 when we’re forced to move to a virtual platform. As a business owner, as a nutrition coach, you have to have a growth mindset. You have to learn and figure out how you can improve your experience. Not only retain your clients, but also provide an exceptional world-class experience for them. As a nutrition coach I think the number one mistake we see is over-complicating nutrition programs.

Nicole Aucoin (29:28):
You really have to keep it simple when you’re working with clients and I’m making it a goal for myself for clients to say, “That’s it. That’s all you want me to do?” In month after month clients come back and they say, “Hey, this is the one thing I want to work on. Can you help me with this one thing?” Whether it be some different balanced snack ideas or ways to get in more protein for breakfast. And we talk through different strategies. Things they’re going to actually do. And one of the other things we make sure that we do at the end of every consult is how competent will you feel leaving this office that you can actually do what you say you’re going to do or leaving this virtual consult. We want clients to say at least 90 to 100% confident. Otherwise, you might be over-complicating it.

Nicole Aucoin (30:12):
Even if you don’t think you’re over-complicating the plan for them. As a nutrition coach you have to keep it simple. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review and share this podcast with a friend. Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss an episode again. Next week we will be talking to Adam Feit from Precision Nutrition. I love working with these guys. They have built a really great course. I’ve been through it. Many of our coaches at our HSN HQ have been through it. We even get a discount on the course for our HSN mentoring clients, and anyone can buy the course open access at any time through our link. But Adam and I are talking about why we focus on a habit based approach and working with athletes. Athletic performers. And of course he has two young kids. We just released this cookbook. Please talk a little bit about kid’s nutrition. Make sure you tune in to the next week’s episode with Adam Feit from Precision Nutrition.