I Turned Down a Recovery Client. A Few Years Later, She Wrote a Book

The complimentary call is the part of coaching nobody talks about honestly. (click the image above for the full video interview.)

It's the twenty-minute conversation a coach offers prospective clients for free—a chance for them to share what they're working on, ask a few questions, and decide if they want to hire. From the coach's side, it's something else: it's a sales call. The conversion rate from these calls to paid engagements is the metric that quietly determines whether a coaching practice survives. The coaches who grow fastest are the coaches who convert.

I sat down for one of these calls a few years ago and didn't convert it.

The woman on the other side of the screen was thoughtful, articulate, and ready to do work. She told me, with the kind of clarity that takes courage to bring to a stranger, what she'd been carrying. She told me what she wanted to change. She told me how long she'd been waiting to ask for help.

Before she'd finished the first part of her story, I knew I wasn't the right person.

What she was describing wasn't a goal that needed support. It was past trauma. Old, layered, real trauma — the kind that lives in the nervous system, the kind that doesn't soften because someone reframes it, the kind that asks for a clinician trained to sit inside it without flinching. Recovery coaching is many things, but it isn't clinical trauma treatment. The certification I hold—through the International Association of Professional Recovery Coaches—is explicit about that scope. Even when trauma-informed, we help people move forward. We don't focus solely on excavating what's underneath.

So I told her. Plainly, and as gently as I could.

I said what she was describing sounded like past trauma, and that was therapy's territory, not mine. I told her that if she tried to do this work in coaching, with me, we would either skim past the part that mattered or drop into something I wasn't trained to hold, even with a social work degree. I was not practicing as a clinician; I am practicing as a coach and upholding the ethics and standards of coaching. That would not serve her at this time. I said the most useful thing I could offer was the truth: she needed a therapist first.

I told her that when she'd done the work with a clinician, when the trauma had somewhere to go, and when the ground felt steadier under her, I'd love to be in her life as a coach. The door wasn't closed. The door was waiting. 

She trusted me and she thanked me. The call ended. She did not become a 1x1 client, although she did join my Insider community membership for continued connection, support, and education. I made less than 5% of the potential revenue that I turned away on that call.

I've been thinking about that call recently because I just published a piece about how the wellness industry has turned sobriety into the latest trend and how the influencer-coach economy is selling something it isn't trained to deliver. Writing that argument is one thing. Living it is another.

The sober-curious moment we're in is, in many ways, a good thing. It's a lowered stigma. It's opened conversations. It's given women a cultural permission slip to ask what their relationship with alcohol is actually doing to them. But the same wave that brought legitimate exploration also brought a flood of unregulated coaches selling courses, programs, and 90-day "resets" to people whose situations are far more complicated than a curiosity. Most of those coaches will never tell a prospective client no. The conversion math doesn't allow it.

This is what credentialing exists for. Not to gatekeep, coaches with lived experience are some of the most powerful people in this work, but it's important to draw a clear line between "I can hold this" and "I can't, and someone else needs to." The IAPRC training, like every legitimate body in this field, is built around that line. Most of what you learn is when to say no.

What you don't learn — what no certification can teach — is what it costs.

The coaches who never say no on free calls don't carry that cost. They also don't carry the responsibility for what they're putting their clients through. The two go together. A coach who can't say no on the front end is a coach who will say yes on the back end to work she shouldn't be doing, with someone she shouldn't be doing it with, in a way that can quietly hurt people who came in already hurting.

The version of integrity that this industry rewards is the kind that fits in a caption. The version of integrity that actually serves clients is the kind that fits in an unconverted intro call, in your inbox a week later, and in your bank account that month. It looks like nothing. It looks like a number that didn't move.

That's why I keep telling this story.

The woman on that call did the work.

She found a therapist. She did years of trauma work, the slow, expensive, unglamorous kind that doesn't trend on Instagram. She kept going when it was hard. She kept going when it wasn't immediately rewarding. She kept going when most of what wellness culture sells would have told her she was almost there, just a little more journaling, just one more breathwork session, just one more reset.

And now, she's publishing a book about it.

I recorded a conversation with her in the run-up to her launch, her telling her side of that referral and what it meant to be told the door wasn't open yet, and me reflecting on what it taught me about being in this work the right way. I'm telling you now because the arc of this matters more than any individual detail. The arc is she came to a coach, a coach said no, and the no was the beginning, not the end. The work she did between then and now is the proof that ethical referrals don't lose people. They place them.

If you're standing somewhere on this spectrum yourself—and most people who've read this far are—the question worth asking isn't what kind of help is trending right now. The question is, what kind of help actually fits where I am?

If you're sober-curious, exploring, or dipping a toe—coaching might be a beautiful fit. So might the community. So might a 30-day challenge, an alcohol-free aisle, a mocktail menu, or a curious conversation with a friend. None of these are small.

If you're carrying something older than the drinking—grief, trauma, or an old wound the wine has been keeping company with—please don't trust your healing to a coach who will take you on without a flinch or inquiring more. 

And if you're considering working with a coach for any of it, ask them when they last said no on a free call. Ask them what it cost. The answers tell you more than any certificate ever will.

I'd take that call again the same way. The work I do now—with the clients I'm right for—is built on top of the calls I let go.

That's the credential.

(Want to hear about her powerful book when it drops? Get on the list.)

If this resonated, I send a letter once a week—quiet, honest, and with no pitches. You can join here. And the recorded conversation we just talked about will land in your inbox when it's ready. If you're looking for a one-time support call to figure out what type of support will be best for you at this time, schedule HERE.