In this monologue, Kelly Alhooie examines why service‑based businesses (yoga studios, coaches, clinics, etc.) increasingly receive refund requests and argues that the root cause is a lack of client commitment and personal standards rather than a flaw in the service. She identifies two common moments when refunds are requested – around the third session, when clients haven’t yet seen results, and around the eighth‑to‑ninth session, when they become complacent and think the program is “good enough.” Alhooie links this behavior to low self‑belief and the modern “squirrel‑effect” of social‑media‑driven distraction, which prevents people from staying focused on a single path. She stresses that maintaining high personal standards, staying committed, and taking consistent, incremental steps are essential for both clients and providers. For providers, the practical takeaway is to set clear expectations, reinforce the value of persistence, and avoid automatically granting refunds; instead, help clients understand that progress takes time and that staying the course yields the best results.
Chapters
Let's talk about people asking for a refund and what you should do. So this is coming up more and more, I feel like, lately with people asking for refunds. And I have so many thoughts that you may or may not agree with, but I have so many thoughts on this. My first thought that comes to mind on this is personally, I would never ask for a refund when it comes to like packages or coaching or whatever else. Meaning, if I say I'm going to commit to something and make a commitment and make an agreement with someone, I would never ask for money back or saying, well, I just gave up on myself, so can I have my money back because I'm, I'm not utilizing this this much, or whatever else, right? And I'm talking about people that, like, patients that are asking for packages in, or if you commit to something, like, let's say you bought a package at a yoga studio and you are like, you know what, I'm not as zen as I want to be, and now I want to go do an Orangetheory membership. Well, these people are asking for their money back because they decided themselves that they were just over yoga and don't want to do it anymore. I want to go to like an Orange Theory thing. Okay. To me, this is a moral issue with the person themselves, meaning that I feel like less and less people are committed to what they actually say that they want or want to do. And so when something else becomes shinier or something comes more present in the forefront of their brain, they're like, up. You know what, I gotta change everything. Let me stop here. Let me go over here. And patients, guys, will do this. They will do this either around the 3-visit mark or around the 8- to 9-visit mark. They do it around the 3-visit mark is because they still don't know if they can actually get the result, so they give up before they even get there. They do it around the 8 to 9 visit mark because they feel like, yeah, I mean, I guess this is probably the best it's gonna get, even though they still have problems with like going to sprint or going to do something with like with leakage, or there's still something there, but they're like, this is good enough. And you know what this all comes down to, whether or not it's them asking for a refund from the yoga studio or them asking for a refund from you guys, It all goes down to standards. And what I have realized, the people that ask for the refunds are the people that don't have the standards. They don't have the standards, nor do they have belief in themselves, because they wouldn't have asked for the refund. And so with these people, you're probably thinking, okay, well, Kelly Alhooie, then what do I do with these people? Like, 'cause there's many of them out there. And there are, and then I feel like there's more and more because people aren't holding themselves to the highest standard because the way now social media is like training our brains, it's like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And then no one can stay focused on anything. And this is why I'm seeing just in the entrepreneur space, people not succeeding as much, meaning like they're not getting to their dreams because they're squirreling. They're thinking, I need every single thing that's out there because this thing says I need this and now I need this and this. And it's just, it's simple. It goes back to the basics. It's focus on what you need to focus on. Take one little baby step forward and like forward and forward and more forward, and you'll actually get there. But the reality is it's like, I gotta look over here. Wait, I gotta do what that person's doing. Wait, I gotta do that. And it's like, now you've lost the game because you're not even— your head's not even in the game because your head's in the clouds over here. And, and the same thing happens with patience. Is the patients, when they're on that third visit, they're like, till the third visit they got momentum, they're excited, and then they're not seeing the progress as fast as they want. And then what do you think happens? Well, you didn't get my knee pain to go away in two visits, so I can't do this, I'm done. Same thing happened with coaching clients. They'll be like, you didn't give me, you know, a patient in two days, so I'm done. And it's like, we're just getting started. You're just planting the seeds. Okay, same thing happens in the example that I was giving you with like the yoga studio owner. It's like, okay, well, they were all excited and they did a thing, and then they're like, well, I've been here now for a month, and they're like, yeah, yoga, I'm just kind of tired of doing the same up-down-down dog blah blah blah class, so now I think I'm gonna go try Orange Theory. It's like, stay committed, stay committed, stay committed. And when you stay committed, it's doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again until you get the best at it. That's how you actually win the game. That's how your patients win the game. That's how the patients are going to get the best results when they stay committed, which
