Principles of Coaching Change (How to Help Clients Transform)
In this presentation the speaker outlines a practical framework for coaching clients through lasting change, emphasizing the art over the science. The core ideas are: (1) coaching requires both deep empathy and credible authority; empathy means understanding the client’s perspective without rescuing them, while authority comes from continuous education, mentorship, and mastery of the subject. (2) True empathy is built by asking probing questions that uncover a client’s dreams, motivations, and daily context, allowing the coach to anticipate problems before they arise. (3) Authority is cultivated through an annual education budget, mentorship, and a culture of surrounding oneself with people who are better. (4) Coaches must avoid the extremes of narcissism (self‑centered, profit‑first) and altruism (over‑giving, no boundaries); a balanced approach sets clear value, pricing, and limits. (5) Coaching is a guiding, reflective process—not a “tell‑me‑what‑to‑do” directive. The speaker uses a mirror metaphor and parables (the impatient swordsman) to illustrate that clients must own the process and focus on incremental, process‑driven change rather than radical, outcome‑driven jumps. (6) Compliance stacking and relative change (small, cumulative tasks) are more sustainable than massive overhauls. (7) Practical tools include self‑reflection logs for nutrition, sleep, and daily habits, soft commitments, and objective measurement (e.g., Oura Ring). (8) Setting clear expectations, boundaries, and pricing protects both coach and client and prevents burnout. (9) The speaker also promotes the Elite Results Bootcamp and the Enterprise Fitness Academy as venues for deeper learning. Overall, the talk provides a step‑by‑step mental model for coaches to develop empathy, authority, balanced mindset, and structured client management to achieve lasting transformation.
Chapters
This presentation is principles to coaching change. So this is less about the scientific aspect of things and more about the art of coaching. So this is based off a chapter in my book called Chapter 4, which is A Session with Miss Hungry. So Miss Hungry could be any number of my clients. I just called her Miss Hungry because I thought it was good because she came in and she was hungry because she was sick of chasing diet after diet. But it could be any number of my clients that I've seen over the years. So these are some lessons that are familiar that you might have with clients. There are some takeaway principles that I want you to take with you. So the first one is empathy versus authority, or rather than versus, it's empathy and authority. So the two most powerful forces in coaching, or the two things I think make a great coach— if I was to distill it down to two attributes, it's these two attributes and these two attributes alone— having empathy for your client and having the authority to to solve your client's problems. Empathy is not sympathy. Sympathy is jumping in the burning boat. The analogy that I use, difference between empathy and sympathy, is if I have empathy for you, yes, I understand your problem, that must really suck for you, and what do you want to do about it? I maintain the coach's lens. This is where I'm in the helicopter, you're in the burning boat, I throw down the rope ladder. Put your hand on the rope. Pull yourself up. Yes, you can do it. Yes, you can do it. One arm after another, and I'll coach you on grabbing that rope and helping you climb to safety. Sympathy, on the other hand, is jumping in the burning boat with the client. Now, if I have a helicopter and you're in a burning boat and I get out of my helicopter to jump in your burning boat, does that serve you? What's going to happen? We're both going to die. We're both going to meet our very horrific end by burning in the boat together. As a coach, you're not allowed to jump in the burning boat at any stage with the client. You must maintain that helicopter perspective over the client's problem and coach your client. You can bet you also want to be empathetic. I understand that you're in a burning boat. I understand that it's hard for you. And what would you like to do about it? Would you like to stay in that painful spot and be in the burning boat for the rest of your life? Or would you like to reach up and climb the ladder and let me help you take you to safety? Because you can go to safety. You just have to take the first step. You just have to reach up and grab the rope. It's not that hard. I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. You've got to take the first step. Okay, great, now let's take the second step. Not, fuck, let me rescue them. And that's what most trainers default to, is let me rescue them, let me get in the burning boat. So this is where the power exchange, or I suppose the relationship you need to understand with your clients— you're not saving your client. If you try and save your client, like, you know, put your, as they say in airplanes, the safety message, look after yourself first before you put someone else's face mask. It's the same concept in coaching. You need to look after yourself, maintain that coach's lens. If someone chooses not to reach out and grab onto the rope ladder, you still maintain the coach's lens and you still maintain that kind of space, if that makes sense, rather than taking clients' problems home with you and thinking that you're going to be the solution. So Jocko Willink, he wrote an awesome— like, he's awesome. I love Jocko Willink, obviously, because we stock his Jockos and all that. I think he's a great guy. He wrote a book called Extreme Ownership, and then he had to write another book because everyone took it too far with Extreme Ownership. What was the second book? I forgot what the second book was called, but it's basically the balance out the message. Because yes, we need to take extreme ownership, we need to own our problems 100%, we do. But if I have a client relationship and they really choose, and I do everything in my power and they still choose not to go that certain way, then you need to— you just need to maintain that frame. So it needs to be, as always, a do-with process. So empathy is a coaching superpower. It's a coaching superpower. Actually, Gordie, I remember he used to, you know, when I taught this to him and I said I'd love to be a fly on the wall in my client's life to observe everything that they do, he took it next level. He was babysitting his ideal client and lived at their house and house-sitted and got to know them intimately. And I was like, man, that— props. Yeah, props. He house-sat. He told me, I'm like, man, that is next level. That is awesome. I'm like, that's sick. Can you turn to the person and answer these questions? What does your client really need? Why have they enrolled in your coaching? What is their dream outcome? What are you really helping them with? Why is it really important to them? Have they succeeded before? Can you describe the client? That to me is what real empathy looks like, because when you understand the client, you can get into their frame. And then again, if you can understand their frame, then you understand the problems before they even become a problem. So you want to really consider these questions for the next 10 years. This isn't the kind of thing you go, oh yeah, I've considered it. You want to, over time, deeply, intimately know what goes on in the conversation that your client has when they're on their own, if that makes sense. What do they think about before they go to sleep? What keeps them up at night? What stresses them? What excites them? Why are they really here? What does weight loss mean to them? What does getting the body composition? How does that change their life? Then you're better able to lead them, coach them, and understand their problems. And also, you, you naturally will come up with better solutions, and those solutions will be based on the pain points that they have. Again, using the context of if I'm working with a 20-something-year-old female who wants to compete, I need to understand her frame of reference for the world versus the busy businessman exec who really just wants a very efficient, time-effective workout routine and Really, like, he's happy to get to know me, but he doesn't want too much chitchat. He just wants to get down to, like, they're two different perspectives of the world. And when you really understand your client, you can then have better solutions to helping them with their problems. And that's where you really get longevity, because you know exactly what you're delivering. So a lot of you, you know, you question your worth, you question your value as trainers. What are we going to do? But I think it really, when you understand the client, you know what you're worth is because you know what problems you solve. So if you're having those kind of things I would say reflect on what problems are you actually solving for the client. And again, hint, it's not just body composition. It's not a superficial thing. I said it recently on a podcast that we did, was really from a spiritual aspect or a spiritual frame. I really feel like our bodies are the vessels which carry our spiritual essence through life, and it's our spiritual— and we are ultimately spiritual beings having a physical experience rather than physical beings having a spiritual experience. To me, it is wisdom to look after the body to be able to live our best life. So if we don't have a healthy body, that disempowers us to be the highest connection to whatever spirituality looks like to you. It might be God, it might just be inner peace. Whatever brings you inner peace is how I would define that, and enabling you to live your best life. So consider these questions, and these are some questions that are going to help you direct towards better understanding who your client is and developing that empathy muscle. It is a skill, it's a muscle, exercise it. To develop an authority, to be an authority, you need to set an annual education plan. At Enterprise, my trainers, our annual education plan is pretty much done and paid for the minute you get a job here. We are constantly educating our guys. My record for the amount of seminars done was 17 in one year. And by the way, that just wasn't one fluke year. When I was in my 20s, I would spend most of my income on courses. I mean, I'm still part of a mastermind. I still have a mentor. Actually, last week I just came back from Cairns to spend time with my mentor, who is a phenomenal business owner, and I got to hang out with some phenomenal people and learn from them in different areas. But mentorship, education, people who can add value to my life— if I don't have them in my networks I, I'll pay for it. Quite happy to pay for it because I always feel like sometimes I'm just one conversation away, one idea away, one tweak away from things shifting. And I can't tell you how many times that has been true in my life, and that's why it's something I actively seek— mentorship. And that's why I also offer Wolfpack, because as much as it is about me passing on knowledge to people who get into my mentorship, it also helps me step up and holds me accountable to my own growth. One of the things with the new Wolfpack is in it, you'll see that like I'm always, and James said it before, people, you know, you would have come into Wolfpack 4 years ago and go, oh, this is amazing, right? So far ahead, blah, blah, blah. But I look at that version, I'm like, I wasn't even in first gear. Now it's like, and I know in 10 years' time I'll say the same thing. And that's just the reality of the constant evolution is we're always like, I surround myself with people who are doing better than me. I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. Frankly, I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. That's— if you want to be the smartest person in the room, your growth is going to be very limited. And if you're looking around and going, yeah, I'm the smartest, find a smarter room. To develop empathy, you develop it by listening, being there for the client. Authority, you develop it with— it's the hard facts. It's educate yourself, learn your subject matter, become a master, apply, try things, have conversations, listen to podcasts, read books. Look at the people who are doing it better than you. Look at the people who are getting the results that you want to be getting. Look at models to follow. Ask questions. Be there. Show up. Try things. The good shit sticks. And no excuses, right? Like, oh, I mean, look, you can make an excuse, but you won't be an expert. Just resign yourself to the level that you're at now, basically, if that's what you want to do. I'm guessing if you're in this room, that's not what you want to do. So one of the first things I set annually is my education budget. And my education budget, if I really see value in something, I'll spend whatever to do that. For me, the Wolfpackers will know, I gave them the calendar 12 months in advance, and there's this green section of the calendar which I forget what I titled it, but it's Mark time or something. Mark's away, Mark manifestation time or something. Yeah, my education time. And there's quite a few of these my education blocks that are blocked out in the 12-month calendar, and I already know, like, I'm going away to learn shit, to level up. So I've I'd say the same approach for you. That's why, again, Wolfpack, I try and do it as an all-in-one kind of one-stop thing where it's training, nutrition, education, business, personal development, everything you need as a trainer. So the next principle is the narcissist versus the altruist. So what is a narcissist? A narcissist is the delusional person who thinks the whole world revolves around them. They can never do any wrong and they think they're amazing and they're the greatest thing, and it's always your fault. The altruist is it's always their fault no matter what. No matter how much someone wronged them, they will still assume it's their fault, right? Both of these are delusions, obviously. Both of these are illusions. You don't want to be narcissistic overly. You don't want to be overly altruistic, right? Especially in business and especially in coaching. The symptoms of both of these— if you're a narcissist in business, What will happen is you might be really good at marketing as a narcissist. You might get a lot of clients, but then if you're ripping people off left, right, and center and you're all about money, people are going to eventually say they're not going to come back. You're not going to have any returning clients. Then you're going to get a reputation as this person's a narcissist, this person only cares about money, and you're going to have a very short life in a service-based industry where people talk, right? You're not going to have a long stint. The L twist, the symptom of the L twist is this: you're gonna burn out. And I think what I've seen with trainers, most trainers are on the side of altruists. They're not on the side— I get very few narcissists. Like, probably for one narcissist, there's 10 altruists more type of trainers where they're going over and above and they're burnt out because they're not rewarded. And they'll give the shirt off their back and they just want to give and give, but they don't get the love and appreciation back. Again, that's a very fast way to burn out and just not want to do PT anymore and not want to give it to people. And it's not a fault of the client. It's a fault of you not having boundaries. You need to have boundaries because boundaries help you value yourself. The real balance here is you want to have both. You want to have, you want to recognize the narcissist side of you and you want to recognize the altruist side of you and marry them so that you can have a healthy balance. You can say to someone, yes, I want to overdeliver for you. I want to help you get these results, and I want to absolutely smash your goals. And I'm genuine, and I really want to see that for you. At the same time, I'm going to charge what I'm worth. I'm going to charge for my time and charge for my service because I honor myself and honor my value. I'm not here to rip you off, but I do need to be inspired about coming to work. And to do that, this is my fee. And if someone says, I want a discount, you've got your prices set. And you say, I understand that you may want that, but I'd never want to discount the service to you, that which I provide, and I would never want to show up anything less than 100% for you. So as a result, there's no way I could discount because your goals are way too valuable to me that I wouldn't ever want to half-ass the effort. I want to show up 100% for you. For me to do that, this is what I feel I need to be paid. All right, so Marry those two. In coaching, I did touch on this in previous presentations, is clients will come in with a just tell me what to do mentality. Who's had this with clients? Just tell me what to do. I used to love that. I used to have clients say, oh, just tell me what to do. And then I realized, oh shit, this is actually really bad. Because when people ask you just tell me what to do, depending on obviously how they're saying it, some people might say in the right intent, but a lot of the time people are saying just tell me what to do is just solve my problems. It's not my problem, it's your problem. Just tell me what to do, right? Rather, I want to hold the mirror up. I want to show them what they're doing wrong and again take that 100% ownership. So coaching, again, it's not always about having the answers. It's about being reflecting, being like mirrorless, colorless. If someone is angry, rather than you being angry back at them, you help observe them and help them. By observing them, they help observe themselves, if that makes sense. You reflect back on the behaviors that they give you so that they can deeply reflect and then change. So it's more of a guiding force. You're constantly guiding with coaching rather than forcing. You actually don't want to force things. You think of it as a guiding mechanism. That's where the— I've got a picture here of a mirror. I think about it as a framework that I think about in my head is I want to mirror back and reflect the constraints, the behaviors, the limiting beliefs back to the client, and then leave them with that so they can go back and start to think about these things and take ownership. Rather than give them the answers all the time. I love this parable. Bonzo went to Jiro and said, I need to be a master swordsman. And he said, okay, yes, it's going to take you 2 years. He was like, no, I don't think you heard me. I need to be a master swordsman as fast as possible. I don't think— okay, yeah, for you, it's definitely going to be 5 years. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. What's the fastest way? I don't think you're listening to me. I need to be a master swordsman. "as fast as possible." "Let me think about this, 10 years." He gets even more angry, he's like, "No, no, no, no, no, I— can you teach me the secrets? You're a master swordsman, I want to be a master swordsman as fast as possible, I don't think you're listening to me." 50 years. What's the parable about? Basically, the more impatient we are, the longer it's going to take us to get our goal. If you're impatient, and this is where a lot of clients, they will come to you with their impatience of they need to have their goal now. That impatience is often the very thing that's going to cause them not to have long-term success. So I love the parable about the apprentice and master mindset. The apprentice goes to master, can you do it faster? For you, 2 years. No, you're not listening to me, I need to do it even faster. 5 years. 50 years. And as long as they maintain that I have to do it fast, they will go slow. Rather, again, this is the point about— I think this parable is really great about process being process-driven rather than outcome-driven. If you can switch it to process-driven, it just happens. You just allow, you learn things, you're not stressed out. Again, this is what we want to teach our clients. I interrupt this podcast to give you a very special message. December, we are running an Elite Results Bootcamp. What is the Elite Results Bootcamp? It is a 3-day bootcamp where we teach our systems around strength, hypertrophy, and fat loss. It is intense. There are 6 workouts over the 3 days, and our trainers not only spill the beans on all the techniques, methods, systems that we use to get next-level results, we take you through actual workouts so you can experience in real time. If you're a client, if you're someone who's interested in Enterprise Fitness, or if you're a trainer looking to level up, check out our course. Enterprise Fitness Academy and click on Elite Results. One of— another frame that you want to be conscious of, especially for business owners in the room, and I paint this to trainers as well, and this is helpful even in this perspective, but these are just kind of what happens with clients is any, any mentoring relationship and coaching relationship management relationship is you have injected and projected values. So if this is you, for example, if you look up to someone or, you know, as a perceived authority— so this is the perceived authority— what often happens is we inject that person's values into us, and then we start doing the 'I should,' 'I must,' 'I have to' do these things. But if we start using this language, it usually isn't your value. It's usually their value that you've accepted from a projector. Consequently, we also do this in the reverse, is if we tell other people they need to, they should, they must, they have to, we're injecting our values of what we deem as valuable into them. Now, we want to be aware of this dynamic because ultimately Ultimate coaching isn't, as this little infographic I've got, someone comes to you, I'm so amazing. Yes, I am so amazing. I should live life like you. Yeah, do what I say. Like, that's tempting for a lot of people, but I'm telling you now, don't do that. Rather, as a student, you want to be like, what can I learn? As a mentor, I'm just like you. You encourage me to be better than I was yesterday. I just really focus on this one intent because it's really important to me. So understanding that if you admire someone in say business, that they have a set of values in which they live their life by, which filters. I have lots of questions. I'm not, no, I'm not either better or worse because of it, because of that success. So coming from that middle ground, not from injecting people's values into you, trying to live according to them, but not projecting your values onto them, rather being from that neutral place of asking questions and observation. Self-reflection is a part of the plan. So what gets managed gets measured— sorry, what gets measured gets managed. I like to get clients to do an exercise of self-reflection rather than just a diet log. And again, this is to put their diet in the context of their life rather than just address their, uh, their diet, if that makes sense. So when you are looking for things and answers for clients, rather than it just be about like what food are you eating, also like, well, Where are you when you eat those foods? Because there might be events that trigger them to overeat and overconsume or go off the rails, so to speak. Think of it more when you, you pose diet recall log and that kind of thing, rather than just call it a diet recall log, look at it as an opportunity for the client to reflect on the productivity of their day and how nutrition fits into their day and how they feel over that day, when they feel tight, how they feel. So even like the language that I use, rather again, it's not a nutrition log, it's a self-reflection log. Include things that are notable to you that we should know, because ultimately they're going to affect how you feel. And if to manage these things you're drawn to food, then we should definitely note that as well. If your client can't log food, by the way, counting macros and calories is probably the wrong strategy. Yeah, you're probably going to need to— I mean, as a coach, you can theoretically get their baseline, their maintenance, put them in a deficit, and base your meal plan recommendations off those calories for sure, and then give them a meal plan. But then don't expect that they're going to be able to flexible diet, for example, and interchange things. They're going to be following a meal plan that you set based off the calories that you set rather than, oh, here's the meal plan and just, yeah, just make it fit 30 grams of protein. If they're not measuring, how are they going to know what 30 grams of protein is? You're going to have to use a loose set of rules. So how to log I like to log it with columns of protein, fat, vegetables, carbs, liquids, supplements, and then notes. And then on the other side, what time they wake up and what time they eat and the notable times. The reason why I like to do it like that is to start to get clients to think about what is a protein? Am I eating protein? And I also got that first. So when they go through their day, actually I'm not eating any protein. What is a fat? They start to think about foods in terms of macronutrients. Maybe they can start to itemize things. So how to log— they can write it on a piece of paper, they can take photos, they can use an app. Just more about the information, right? Other notes you want to consider is where are they— home, work, school, on the road— because that may influence food choices and what's available. Poo— is it easy, is it hard, times per day, changes? Again, if you're going to talk about nutrition, you talk about poo because anything that changes, any changes in bowel movements What goes in has to come out, and if there are changes there, then you want to know because it may not be working, it may be exacerbating issues, needs to be— have a conversation. Is there regularity? I mean, once I had a client come see me, I was like, oh, how often do you go to the toilet? Oh, once every 4 days. Like, geez, what's up? She's like, oh, I really want to lose weight. I'm like, well, we're not going to be talking about weight loss until you go to the toilet at least every day. So, but that's not what I came here for. Look, This is absolutely a constraint to getting your goal. Like, how do you think you lose fat? You have detoxification. If you can't eliminate what you're eating and I make changes, then we're going to be in trouble. We can't really have a conversation about this and change too much until we get that regular. What triggers are there? Positive and negative. Notable feelings from anger to overjoyed. What cravings are there? What digestive abnormalities do they feel eating certain foods? No log. Get soft commitments, right? If they can't keep a log, you can get soft commitments. So soft commitments are like, so what time do you wake up? I wake up at 6:30. Okay, cool. So when could you eat? Oh, I normally have coffee at 6:30. Okay, cool. So when would you be able to eat? Oh, not until I get to work at night. Okay. And then you just go through in this fashion. You sit down with them and just create a map of what they're doing, like conversationally, and you can write it down as you go. What time do you train? What are your go-to meals? What's your routine? Tell me about your routine. Tell me about your sleep hygiene. And sleep's one of those things where if you ask people about their sleep, what do most people say? The same as if you ask people about their food. How do you eat? I eat well. How do you sleep? Oh, I sleep fine. And you ask them, oh, actually, yeah, my sleep's shit. Okay, so you got to press them. So let's define some things on sleep, right? Simple one. Do you sleep in a pitch-black room? Let's define pitch-black room. If you have a TV light in your bedroom, it's not a pitch-black room. If you have any light in your bedroom, it's not a pitch-black light. If you came into my bedroom, if you put your hand in front of your face, you wouldn't be able to see your hand. That's how dark it is. It's black. It's pitch black. That's what a pitch-black room is, like sleeping in a cave. That helps with melatonin. Our brains really can't tell the difference between overhead light in terms of melatonin production and sunlight. We get the same register. Light blocks melatonin production. Essentially, it reduces melatonin production, I should say. What's your wind-down process like? Do you turn off overhead lights? Blue lights, certainly, like your phone, computer, will have an impact on melatonin production. We want to increase melatonin naturally before we go to bed and create that wind-down process. We don't want to be anxious before bed. Are we doing things that are anxious before bed? Are we eating too close to bed? You can measure your sleep with an Oura Ring. That's my favorite tool to measure sleep. Pricing varies. You get from secondhand to $1,000. You get the subscription for the membership or the free plan. But I find it a really useful tool to measure what my heart rate does, what I do, how to— all those other things. Heart rate variability, which is a great insight to what's happening with your autonomic nervous system and also just helps hold me accountable to what I'm doing with my food. Sorry, with my sleep. Sleep hygiene is an important one that you can objectify. Things to win the day. Things to win the consult: establish a routine, establish habits with your client, and establish it in the context of their daily life. And also think about it like there's radical change and there's relative change. And I've already touched on this, but I always shoot for relative change rather than radical change. I actually don't like radical change most, most times because people don't sustain it. Biggest Loser, that's a radical change. Relative change. So they did a study on halfway houses. So halfway house is basically where introducing someone back into society after being like drug, drug, alcohol, or in prison is what's known as a halfway house. And they study the most successful halfway houses that introduce criminals back into society. What did they do is they gave them small tasks over a long period of time that wasn't overwhelming. So for example, make your bed every day before you leave the house. Okay, you've done that for a week. Okay, I need you to make your bed and clean the dishes. You do that for a week. Okay, I need you to make your bed, clean the dishes, wash your clothes. That, that was far more successful than here's a whole list of stuff that you need to do. So I apply the same principle with coaching clients is I don't ask for too much, I just ask for those things over time, and as a result I get, I get more buy-in. It's much more easy and manageable. So the way I look at it is essentially it's compliance stacking. All right, once you get comfortable with one idea, I can introduce another idea, then I can introduce another idea, and I can just another idea, just stack compliance. And if you're not going to be compliant, let's say for example we get to a week and you really struggle with this thing that I've said, then I'm just going to stay on this one thing until you can, or maybe reduce the ask. But if I really need you to do this one thing, I may negotiate it, but we're not going to move forward until we're able to achieve that because otherwise it feels like failure. So stack your— with nutrition particularly, like, we all accept that it would be negligence if a new client came in who hasn't trained before and we put 200 kilos on the bar and we asked them to squat it. We'd agree that's negligence, right? In nutrition, that's what most people do, and in coaching, that's what most people do, is they have a new client that comes in and here's everything. That's the equivalent of putting 200 kilos on the bar and hoping for the best. It's a relationship. And I, again, I explain to clients, like, if you're looking for a set-and-forget program, like you're going to print off bodybuilding.com and a meal plan, that's not what coaching is. Coaching is we are going to do this over time. This is why I say people ask us for— people ask us, oh, do you just do nutrition? The answer is no. One, we're too busy to just do nutrition. We don't have time. We don't have spots just for nutrition. But that's also not how we work. We do the whole thing because that's what's going to get you the best results. Expectations is huge. Expectations, I mean, there's so many things in expectations that I told the story yesterday that we had a client who lost 4 kilos in 2 weeks and was disappointed. I'm like, whoa, you're ahead of what we would have expected, uh, in terms of the BHAG, the Big Hairy Audacious Goal. You're 2 kilos over what the Big Hairy Audacious Goal is. But you always do need to frame up expectations to the clients because you could be killing it, like you could be technically killing it, and the client feel like you're not— they're not getting results because the expectation hasn't been set. Likewise, like, we had a client comes in, and we've had, like, before— so we signed someone up, Hemming will set the expectation. Someone coming, I want to compete in 12 weeks. Yeah, look, it's not going to happen in 12 weeks. This is going to be a 12-month process, and we'll tell them straight out. And I've had consults before. I remember I had one girl who was so angry at me because I wouldn't take her on. She's like, I want to compete in 12 weeks. I'm like, I wouldn't. She's all, I can. I'm like, look, you probably could, it's just that I'm not going to coach you to do it because I know what's going to happen after the 12 weeks, and for me it's not worth it. If I'm going to coach you, this is the date that I'll coach you towards, otherwise I'm not coaching you. And she's all— she got quite angry, but I'm like, I'm not doing it because the repercussions of it, I'm to do it, well, I'm going to put your health in jeopardy, and it crosses my boundary and values. And she didn't sign up. I never heard from her back again. Fine. It's a decision I made as a coach. I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to— I didn't want to crash diet her. And this is where it's completely okay. Like, you can set expectations and have very honest conversations with people and tell them what to expect. Remember, nutrition is is a do-with. Or coaching, coaching, nutrition, training, all of it, education. It's a do-with process. It's not a do-to process. You're not doing something to someone, you're doing it with them. So all my language when I bring people in is, let's do this together. Even when I'm teaching you guys today, it's like, how can I make this 11 for you? How can I deliver? You've got to give me participation. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on. I want communication. Needs to be two channels that are back and forth. It needs to be a conversation rather than a lecture. Phrases of negation to watch out for, and this specifically relates to this as is I have to, I ought to, I'm supposed to, I need to, I must, I'm missing out on. If you— I put these words here because if you hear a client saying this, if you hear yourself saying this, you're either— if you hear yourself saying this, you're operating by injecting someone's values. If you say this to someone else, you're injecting your values. It's something to be aware of. If you hear a client saying it, it's, oh, this isn't really in alignment with what this client wants. 'Oh, I really need to do this.' If anyone ever says 'I really need to do this,' why do you need to do that? Understand their why. 'I'm really supposed to do this.' Why? 'Oh, because I'm supposed to lose weight.' Why? Keep digging until it's 'No, I really want to do this. I really like to do this. I'm choosing to do this. I'd love to do this. I'd love to have the opportunity to do this.' Those words have a much different feeling than 'I have to do this.' And if people are missing out on— I always reframe the missing out on with. You also look at all the opportunity, new opportunities that you're going to have by changing your lifestyle. We have one guy, he's— him and his wife train here. He's lost 15 kilos. He looks amazing. He looks probably in his 50s. Oh, not that old, but maybe 40, 45 when he started. And now he looks like— he looks amazing. He looks in his 30s. He really looks very young, fit, completely changed in his demeanor. And he jokes about how his normal week, his normal day after work was drinking wine with his neighbor. And now his neighbor trains here too, and him and his neighbor, they drink water and they laugh often because they're not drinking wine. But they both look— they've both lost a whole bunch of weight and completely changed their life. They feel better than they ever have and they're healthier than they ever have. So, but again, they have felt so much more benefits. They don't feel like they're missing out on that old lifestyle. What's been replaced with it is so much more valuable. Often just remind clients that yes, there is a sacrifice, but it's not coming without something else. It is getting replaced with something better. I spoke about this at the last presentation— normal versus common. Normal is shitty food. Normal is McDonald's, it's KFC, it's Uber Eats. That's what normal is. It's not common. That's what's common. What's normal is healthy foods. What's normal is fruits, vegetables, meat, hunted, fish gathered and plucked. All right. So, so normal is eating healthy food. Common is eating shitty foods. But people confuse the two. They think pizza and Uber Eats is normal. It's, it's common, right? Oh, hi there. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. While I've still got you, why not check out our book, www.enterprisediet.com today and grab your copy.
