Off-Plan ≠ Off-Track: The Client Tool Every Online Coach Needs

Full transcript

Coach, don't you just hate when the client goes off plan, and then we're looking at their nutrition and wondering why all the numbers aren't adding up? Well, I created a tool for one of my clients to help them with their client consistency, because it's natural that their clients are going to go off plan. Things are going to come up where they need to swap something out. They're going to need to eat out at a restaurant. They have their kid's birthday. There's all sorts of things that can go on. And teaching them how to actually swap things out and still maintain whatever calorie and macro target we have, that's the difficult part. So this should make it a lot easier.

This is a coaching tool that I built for my clients over at Get Sculpted. We are building essentially a macro meal swap guide for the clients. Now, this isn't just a shoddy PDF. This actually has a lot of functionality, and we're going to go into it. These are the coaches here at Get Sculpted, well, the three founders, and they also have a load of coaches underneath them as well, as the business is growing quite a bit.

Now, one of the things is, with their clients, they'll get a message like, hey, I'm out of chicken, what do I swap for here? Or, I'm out for dinner at an Italian restaurant, what pasta should I have? Or, is this thing covered in oil? What do I actually do? I need to swap this for that. And all these conversations are almost like little educational moments. But what if we could give the client a resource to find that answer straight away? Because if they're going out to a restaurant and they're eating, if they're already at the restaurant, the coach is no help to them. They need to be able to make that decision.

So this is essentially what we're trying to do. We want to make sure that an off-plan meal doesn't mean that they're off track. We want to make sure that it's a resource they always have on them, and it becomes almost like a go-to part of the coaching experience inside their coaching programme. They have a client journey, and they teach their clients different things at different stages, so they're equipping them with the knowledge. And this is actually going to be used at a certain time frame, where the thing is to start trying to swap things out and learn about the calories and the macros, and this tool is now going to help them do that.

So this is essentially what we built. Now, one of the things that I was adamant about, and they were too, was that we had to make sure this database was really good. Because you know yourself, if you go to AI right now and say, hey, how many calories in an egg, or how many grams of protein in an egg, it will get stuff wrong and it will start hallucinating. And that's the last thing we want, their clients saying, yeah, well, I asked ChatGPT what I could have instead, and it told me I could have this, and then we realise it gave them completely inaccurate values. So to fix that, instead of using AI, we actually used a database that was pre-written into the app. We've got 304 foods, and it's extracted from the USDA, and that basically makes sure it's super accurate. So we have a load of food in there, we have the USDA backed macros and default portions already set up. So it's not "what is 100 grams of egg or 100 grams of egg yolk", the portions are already done.

Then we have the actual macro food swap itself. The way it works is the client would search anything, for example chicken, and we need to know: if we're going to have chicken and we need to swap it for something else, what's going to be the closest thing that's within the same food group, foods that they actually enjoy, and closest in the calories and the macros? That's essentially what it is. You type it in, it instantly starts filtering, and then you'll be able to see the closest matches. So we have the chicken here, turkey breast is the closest match, and then it goes down from the closest match. You see the little 93% match here, then 88%, and it gets further away. It will show the closest eight. You'll be able to see, with the calories and macros, what it's above and what it's below. This one is actually 12 more calories, but it's got more protein. And then this one is around the same. And you'll be able to see, from food to food, what's actually going on.

Then we have the filter for what they actually eat. So if you are, let's say, gluten free or dairy free or vegetarian or vegan, you can filter by that. You can also use the tabs there to filter: right, just show me all the protein sources, show me the carb sources, show me the fat sources, and filter them one by one. Now, if you want to, say, filter just carbohydrates, it will give you a list of all the carbohydrates we have. So you could use those little tabs, but then if you're like, oh, actually, I have this, what could I have instead of that, you can click on it.

And what's important is it's not just giving you the values per 100 grams. Because if someone said, oh yeah, we'll swap rice for bread, you're like, oh, bread was actually way fewer carbohydrates, and then you look and realise it was actually the portion they were using. So it puts it to the likely portions they're having, and then displays it: right, this is a 60 gram portion versus 100 grams. And you'll be able to see that.

Now, how fast can the client actually use this? Because that's the thing. Well, their clients just get one link. They can save it to their phone. They download it to the home screen of their phone. They don't need to download any other app or get into the app store or anything like that. They literally click the button, type the food, and it's there instantly. So, say three or four seconds to get it working and actually use it. And it solves that problem of the macros always being there in front of them. There's no excuse of "oh, I didn't know what to have instead of this". You could literally type it in, it takes three seconds. And even when there's no coach there, we're still closing the loop between them having the issue of knowing, right, we need to consume protein at this meal, we're not going to have the chicken, what are we going to have? We have all those options there.

And then after, say, 50 swaps, that tool becomes like a backup resource. They're going to learn that knowledge about the macros and the nutrition, so they won't actually need to use the tool as much any more. And again, it's going to educate them, get them more consistent, and better results across the board. Before, it was, oh, I don't have chicken, what do I do? Now it's, right, no chicken, turkey is basically the same amount of protein, cool, let's go with that. Or, is sweet potato a carb? Cool, education sorted. It makes it so much easier for you as the coach when you have these tools in place.

And then if you want, you could go and build all this out more. You could add in more features and everything. But I think really we're trying to solve for stuff like this: it's 7pm in the kitchen, there's no chicken, what are we going to eat? Or we're out at a restaurant, what should we have? Or we're travelling and we're away from home, what should we have there? If we can solve for those three, that's the majority of the nutritional situations covered. And that tool does essentially that.

If you want this set up in your business, where it's white labelled for you, and by the way, this is all custom done per person, it's not just slap a new logo on it, we go through a process of tweaking it and everything there. If you do want this set up for you, or any other parts inside your coaching business, drop me a message with the word audit on Instagram. We'll have a chat, we'll run through every single area inside your coaching business, see what's going on with the lead gen, the lead tracking, the sales, onboarding, client delivery, all that kind of stuff. From there, I'll be able to show you what we actually do and how we can help. And if it seems like a good idea for both of us, we'll go ahead. If not, you'll still have a great idea about what you can do in your business.