A View From the Summit…a Different kind of Fitness Conference

Only 3 people had a badge this long for attendance, contribution and achievement, you could say I'm a wiley veteran.

Like every other year the Fitness Business Summit was over the top in 2012.

If you’re like me you may have times where you’re feeling burnt out, tired, like it’s hard to focus and get shit done. If it means rolling pennies, turning in bottles to go to events like this you should. The raw energizing inspiration is invigorating, you will stretch your vision, rekindle passion for your business and come back believing far more is possible than you ever believed before.

This single event has been an evolution for me, I’m proud to call Bedros my mentor and friend, it’s pretty neat to take the stage each year and talk about our successes and even more neat to see all the new people talking about their successes.

The content is always fantastic. From basic understanding of there are only 3 ways to grow your fitness business:

1)   Get more clients.

2)   Raise your prices.

3)   Sell each customer more things.

More than a dozen strategies were walked through this weekend for getting more clients. From using appreciation tools like thank you cards and coffee shop gift cards as a mechanism for stimulating referrals to SEO strategies for organic leads to using the boy band post card to bring old customers back.

Pricing discussions always revolve around EFT and if you’re not using it you’re seriously leaving your business in a precarious situation. Then there is the discussion of bundling services and how you can easily create items of extra value with services like FreeConferenceCall.com or a simple FlipCam.

If all of this get’s your head spinning maybe answering these questions will help. They came from an excellent presentation by Craig Ballantyne on getting started with your first info product. Ever been to a conference where the presenter buys everyone in the room a beer? Like I said a conference like none other.

Fitness Business Summit is truly a different kind of conference, expected anything.

Ask yourself:

1)   What do I do better than everyone else?

2)   What are my best qualities, skills and characteristics?

3)   What do I know better than everyone else?

4)   Who are my raving fans?

5)   What is my ‘Magic Time’? (Magic time is those couple hours a day that we all have where our mind is the sharpest and we just get far more done in a short period of time. Craig says it’s critical to identify, utilize and viciously protect this time.)

These questions can be a real game changer in your business, you see as fitness professionals we all get caught up in being good technical trainers. We wait for people interested in our services to inquire. Truth is there are only a handful of those customers that every fitness professional is fighting for. There is a much bigger audience that wants to look and feel better about themselves but haven’t even considered using something like personal training, and the best news is there’s no one fighting for them.

Take the answers from the above questions and really focus on them. Everything you write, all the ads you create should be centered around identifying with those answers. This is how you create your brand image and your customers will love you for it.

Jay Abraham was amazing, he stretched your vision well beyond where many of us reside today. Hanging out with 8 time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman was pretty cool also. All in all the event was amazing but the absolute best part was just being around so many like-minded individuals. I was so motivated I created my lead box marketing product Saturday afternoon and put it up for sale late Saturday night. You will find those are the kinds of odd miracles that happen when you attend these kinds of events. I can’t wait for Profitable Personal Trainer Live next month to experience this kind of thrill and inspiration again. Not to mention to be able to monopolize Bedros at an event with only 100 people as opposed to 400 people is going to be a serious competitive advantage. Where are you in your business and where are you going?