My current client count is just under a third of the total clients I have worked with. More people have walked in, stayed for a bit and left than have stayed. This is reality.

But here’s what I like to know from ex-clients when I run into them: Are you still training? Anywhere? In any form? Are you still active? Are you doing more than you did before you worked with me? How about the nutrition thing. If you’re not happy with your body composition, do you have a rough sense of what might be amiss.

This might help soothe my bruised ego a bit. But more importantly, it tells me that i managed to produce an informed client who knows what to do. They might need the right place and person to nudge them into action. But they have a good sense of what works.

And as for the clients who continue to help me pay my bills. I just work as hard as I can to ensure they’re learning and having good time. Because in the game of training and nutrition, winning means just keeping at it with no real end in sight. Except the actual end.

Takeaway

Client dropouts are best seen as experience not baggage. Coaching is a repetitive job. And most coaches have far more failures than successes. Even the best of them. That’s the nature of the game. Effective coaches aren’t jaded by this reality. They just become more effective at reading the client and communicate in a way that improves the odds of making the relationship work. Worst case, put them on to another coach who the client might resonate with.