How to Guarantee Your Nutrition Clients Better Results
May 27, 2025
What if I told you that one small change I made to my nutrition coaching four years ago doubled my income in half the time, and made my clients happier than ever?
In today’s blog, I’m going to show you what this change was and how you can take your nutrition coaching check-ins to the next level, delivering your clients better results, in less time, so you can make more money and create more impact.
To grow your nutrition coaching business, you already know you need to be a good coach. You have to be able to get clients' results, but also be someone that people want to work with. You also have to deliver a high-quality, professional service.
What I’m going to show you today is called the “Hybrid Check-In,” and it’s going to really impress your clients, but also blow away your competition.
Here’s how most nutrition coaches correspond with their clients: after they onboard their clients and set them up on a plan, they’ll check in with them on a weekly basis. The frequency of once per week is the sweet spot. This gives the client enough time to put your feedback into action, and not so much time that you aren't close to the process.
The best practice in this area goes as follows:
- Your client submits some pre-determined data and fills out a feedback form that gets sent right to your inbox.
- Then you review the information, provide detailed feedback and any adjustments, and action items, and send it back over.
The process is streamlined, so you don’t need to meet with your client, but you can still coach and describe all of the important things necessary to deliver client results. Truthfully, clients like it better this way. Although we do develop relationships with our clients, live meetings can contain too much small talk or discussion that is unrelated or unnecessary. This gets right to the point, and it's best for everyone involved.
You don’t need to do live check-ins, and you certainly don’t need to do them in person. Almost 10 years ago, even when I was working with 50+ in the same city, and I saw them in the gym, we would still do all of our correspondence online. This is the best system because it's effective and streamlined, and it’s a great set-up for both parties.
What I’m going to show you today is how you can make this process even better, with my “Hybrid Check-in Strategy.” With Hybrid Check-ins, you’ll be able to infuse more of your personality into the check-in by using technology to do more talking instead of writing, making it easier to communicate key points, and with practice, it ends up being a lot faster.
Plus, the client gets to feel like they’re being taken care of by their coach because they get to see and hear you. Now, you can’t just take a video of yourself and send it over. You want to address things in a step-by-step manner, so it remains effective. Still, leverage some written communication so you never have to waste time re-watching yourself week to week.
This is very simple to do, but without seeing it done, you may not incorporate it. So, let me show you how.
We’ll start by breaking this process down:
Step 1: Streamlined Check-In Form
To make the process straightforward, you want to include a check-in form.
Here's an example:
The questions asked should be specific to your approach, but can be the same for all clients. As you can see, this is a form I’ve used since 2018, and it has about 4300+ entries on it. Clients should always know where to find this form.
I use Google Forms and a plug-in that sends all of the details of the response right to my inbox, so I can respond directly. Include questions on your check-in form that give clients the chance to reflect on their week, plus your opportunity to assess.
Some of my favourite reflective questions are as follows:
- “Describe any successes you had this week:”
- “Describe any setbacks or issues you had this week:”
- “Do you foresee any challenges or anything you need to plan for this week? (social events, travel, vacation, etc.)”
When we ask these questions, clients will get a chance to reflect, add some insight, and we can address them in our check-in.
Step 2: Video and Clear Action Steps
Here’s the game-changer:
We want to work an element of video review into the check-in. Having clients see your face, talk about their week, and review is one of the smartest things you can do. You don’t need to do it live or in person to make it effective. Doing a video review will take you less time (once you get comfortable with it), and you can communicate much more clearly. It becomes easier when you use screen capture/screen share technology, and you can point to what you’re seeing that needs to change.
Here’s what you do in the video.
- Start with pleasantries.
- Talk about what you’re seeing positively about what happened in their week.
- You need to find this and talk about why it’s important and how far they’ve come.
- Then talk over how well they stuck to their plan, with how you’re measuring adherence.
- Then we can point out areas to improve.
- Make any adjustments or keep the plan the same.
Regardless of any changes we make, we’ll make 1-2 clear action steps for what they need to do this week. This could be the same thing if it’s work, or something different to keep them engaged. We want to talk this all over in a 2-3 minute review. Maybe closer to 5 minutes if you’re new.
We use software called Loom. It’s the best for a few reasons:
- The screen capture is very fast and easy to use.
- You can send over direct links, meaning you don’t need to download files and attach them.
You can check out a free trial here: Loom Free Trial
Incorporating video in your Hybrid check-in is fast and is going to save you time, and allows your clients access to you. They can hear your voice and feel like they are really working with their coach.
This saves time on both sides, and it is very effective. This is the best practice for check-ins for online coaches, since it leads to better client results and, thus, the ability to make more money.
Step 3: Combine with Email
You have a great video to send over to clients, but you still want to include this in an email response. Why? Because it’s the best way to pass it along in a professional way. Probably the most important thing is that you want to make it clear what clients need to do moving forward and what’s changed. Sometimes this takes repeating yourself.
You also want to create a paper trail for yourself. When you have what you’ve discussed in writing, you can quickly review it week to week when you’re corresponding with your clients. Then you never have to rewatch your videos, regardless of how helpful they are, or dig for information.
Step 4: Clear Communication and Getting Them Involved
To get great client results, you need to be prescriptive. You want to identify areas for improvement and prescribe how the client will fix this. You also want to use some motivational interviewing techniques to get them involved in the solution.
For example:
If protein intake was an issue, you could pose the following as an action step:
“I made note of protein intake as the biggest room for improvement. What are two things you can do this week to improve it?"
“Being prepared seems to be your biggest issue. On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to prepare one batch meal this week?”
Then you can go back and forth communicating about the best course of action. This gets your client to agree to the solution, which means they are going to do something because they know they need to, not because you want them to. This type of self-efficacy is what will get them results in the long term.
Want to see it in Action?
Watch the full video to learn how to do the Hybrid Check-in Process!
Final Thoughts
This is the hybrid check-in, and it’s completely taken my nutrition coaching check-ins to the next level. Use it to save time, provide a better service, and make more money in your nutrition coaching business, and let me know how it goes.
