How to Nurture Client Relationships Without Burning Out

I wish I lived near my best friend. We speak about the dream of living close by after her kids go off to college, and the idea of us growing old together, in our 80s frolicking and enjoying life with sass, some witty sarcasm, and loads of stories.

One of the things she enjoys is cooking. She always has, and part of it, I wonder, is the preparation and the anticipation of people coming together at the dinner table to share about their day and to express their gratitudes, including the gratitude of her home cooked meal.

When I was in my late 20s I lived in Guatemala and we had friends over all the time. I loved entertaining, cooking meals, having late night chats, or having all my girlfriends over to get ready to go out at night. It became a ritual.

But now, cooking for two and often times one, because our eating schedules change so often, means it loses a little of that joyous sparkle of a devotional act.

But can I tell you, making meals twice a day with midday snack time over the weekends for my puppies in replace of kids has brought me joy. I love figuring out the toppers, the nutritious special ingredient that I will add in for the day, and the bountiful circles and hops of extreme gratitude and excitement from each of them gets me up at 6:30 in the morning for their breakfast and 6 at night for their dinner.

This is a completely random way to open a piece about client relationships but wait, I really do have a point here.

If currently making food doesn't quite fill my cup, exchanging recipes does. Gosh, I would love to sit down with an index card and share recipes for wonder, client connection, magical synchronistic living, and so much more.

So let me hand you the first one.

A recipe for bestie love

Recipe for Bestie Love.Serves two, keeps for decades.

• Text messages, including audio, for the times that your perimenopause brain doesn't have it in her to actually write a cohesive thought, and audio lets you talk away.

• Unexpected FaceTime. I have chosen, even as an introvert, to now pick up a FaceTime or a phone call from a specific list of people I love, and to let go of any excuse of being too tired or too busy, because life is short.

• Send each other Instagram posts or memes for a good laugh, since even the inappropriate ones are accepted by your bestie.

• Accept your different skills and medicine as a friend, and love the ones your bestie has that you clearly lack in, without shaming yourself for not being a friend in the same way.

• Talk about the past.

• Talk about the future you have together.

• Make plans to meet, and give it a date, time, and location.

The swap that turns it into client care

Every recipe has a substitution, and here is the one for this dish. Everywhere I wrote bestie, write client, and all of it holds, one of them simply changes shape.

The audio message works exactly the same and it might be the most nourishing thing you do for a woman all month. The unexpected FaceTime becomes the unexpected voice note that is not about anything at all. The meme becomes the thing you saw and thought of her, sent with nothing attached to it. And talking about the past becomes remembering out loud what she told you six months ago, which is the moment most women realize you were actually listening to them.

And that one is talking about the future. You are speaking about the future of your client, not the one the two of you will share, but the one she is cocreating with the divine, and you get to hold her vision sacredly.

None of this is a client retention strategy, and I would gently say that is exactly why it works. A woman can feel the difference between being tended and being managed, and so can you, which is what keeps this from becoming one more task on a list you are already tired of carrying.

And if you need a business bestie along the way, I raise my hand, I wave it exuberantly and obnoxiously. Pick me. I would love to be your business bestie.

What is The Recipe Card?

The Recipe Card: a weekly letter from Sora Schilling, sent every Tuesday, carrying one usable move from her practice as an energy coach and spiritual mentor to midlife coaches, healers, and space holders. Each letter hands over a single recipe, a small set of ingredients and steps you can use the same week, along with the swap that adapts it to your own work.

It is one of three letters that go out each week. The other two are Still Following the Breadcrumbs on Sundays, a story from the week and what it came to teach me, and The Knot on Thursdays, one real tension and one way through it.

Going forward these letters are built from what readers send me. I could write a business and energy recipe every week on my own, and my design, as a 6/2 Projector, craves the connection and the invitation instead.

How to send me your recipe request

Email me at [email protected] and tell me what you would love a recipe for.

For example, how do I price something I have never sold before, or how do I follow up with someone without feeling like I am chasing her, or how do I talk about my work at a dinner party without going into the whole thing, or how do I hold a client who is spiraling without carrying her home with me.

To make it simple, share your first name and your question. One line is plenty and I will take it from there.

If you would rather hand me everything, tell me what you have already tried, where exactly you feel stuck, your Human Design, your Devoted Archetype, and your website or socials so I can go look at what you are building. The more you hand me, the more granular I get.

And tell me if you would love to stay anonymous. Plenty of these are tender and I will honor that completely, and if you do share your name and your links, I will always ask you first before I use either one.

One more honest thing. I answer one question per letter, and everything else goes into the pot. Sometimes a question sits for a month before it becomes exactly the right recipe for that week, so a quiet inbox from me is never a no.

May your table be full, and may you be the kind of woman other women send recipes to.

Sora xo

If you are not yet sure which medicine you are actually here to hand people, the Magic and Medicine quiz takes a minute and it is the doorway into all of this. And if the tension underneath your client work is really about what you charge for it, that one lives over in Why You Keep Undercharging for Your Work.