Business Ignition Workshop – What Did You Learn?
Always meet new challenges head on!
Man what a weekend, first rafting down the Kicking Horse on Saturday with Apline Rafting and then spending the day with North America’s top fitness marketer Bedros Keuilian at my Personal Trainer Business Ignition Workshop in Calgary.
38 of Canada’s soon to be top fitness experts were drenched with nearly 8 hours of super valuable content ranging from getting going as a solo trainer, to expanding to operate your own studio, to every dirty little trade secret used by the world’s top internet marketers to dominate the search engines, out position, out perform, and out earn just about anyone in your path.
I’ve been coaching with Bedros for over 3 years; I’m part of his elite seven figure mastermind group. It was an honour to speak alongside him for the second time but it’s truly amazing how many new ideas and how much I learn still every single time I hear him speak.
Bedros Keuilian comes to Canada.
My favourite parts are still always the list building and conversion tactics, your list is so critical to rapid physical growth. For those of you that weren’t there this weekend I will share something with you that only my elite coaching clients have known or talked about to this point that was shared this weekend.
A little while ago working with one of my elite coaching clients we discovered something. Recipes are powerful list builders. By posting a simple classified with a catch title and the instruction to simply reply to the ad he has been growing his email list by as much as a 100 new contacts a week. By using ongoing contacts you can quickly grow a big list of warm prospects in as little as 30 days. A list of 500 people can easily produce a $100,000+ income for a personal trainer. So far he’s taken a list of a couple hundred to nearly a thousand in roughly 60 days.
Here’s a sample of what your ad might look like:
Mouth Water, Good For You, Chocolate Muffins
Everyone has a sweet tooth, satisfy yours while still getting in great shape. Simply reply to this ad with your name and email and I will send you this recipe and others like it for free. Recipes provided by (your area)’s top personal trainers.
This can be run on electronic classifieds; it could even be run in print. It has been one of our absolute best list building, high converting classifieds.
What were some of the “big” items you learned this weekend? If there’s enough interest I may make the workshop video available. Leave your comments let me know the big take away items for you and if you’d like to get your hands on the workshop video.
Personal Training Inside a Public Gym – The Grass is Greener Part 2
This scenario can take on many forms. In many ways the in the gym trainer may have the greatest opportunity to organize and grow their business in just about any direction. Initially most trainers will become employees of the gym. In this scenario they will dictate your hours, your dress, possibly how you run your programming, your session rates, your wage (or portion of the session rate) and if you sell they will likely dictate how you sell and how much you sell it for.
The business within a business model can be the most flexible with the least risk, though there is one drawback...control
Of all the training scenarios, you can count on this employee position being the lowest per hour rate. Now the lower rate is really not as bad as many may seem to think as essentially think of it like the income tax we all pay to cover the costs of the social programs we enjoy. In the world of the employee personal trainer the portion of the session rate retained by your employer affords you things like the following: in house marketing and lead attraction, all overhead and expenses to stock, maintain and clean the training areas, often liability insurance, independent sales that are hopefully better at closing clients than you are, operational systems, payment and debt collection and maybe even appointment booking. If you are a solo trainer trying to do all of this on your own you likely have some measure of appreciation as to how nice it might be to be able to rely on others to handle these items for you. The downside to being an employee is your employer of course would like to make as much profit as possible which also means it’s going to be the most difficult for you to drastically increase your earning potential in a short period of time.
Now the big advantage I see to working inside of a gym is for the entrepreneurial trainer. Within a franchise this is likely difficult to impossible, but in an independent gym after establishing yourself as an employee it’s time to talk to your employer. You may be able to negotiate a position where any clients you attract through your own marketing you can retain a much higher percentage of session rates. Most employers understand that quality people may not stay long term and this is a position where working for your own gain will also benefit them, far more than if you were to open your own business. Or you may try to negotiate control of the whole personal training department so you move to begin developing and managing the systems of that end of the business providing the business owner with a steady predictable income stream with little effort or risk. These situations provide varying amount of risk to yourself but also substantial reward to the business owner. In this situation you would have many of the benefits (and headaches) of having your own studio without the huge opening costs or fixed overhead of your own brick and mortar location. The business within a business model is likely one of the lowest risk and highest reward scenarios for any personal trainer, the one factor you may find too limiting is you are still operating within someone else’s environment and for the most part they will dictate how you run your business which can be a real challenge if you don’t see entirely eye to eye. Next week I will complete this series with my own experiences of running your own stand a lone training studio.
Happy Birthday Canada and a FREE Gift For You!
Another birthday for the greatest country in the world, and an oddball day off in the middle of the week. Today’s post will be short as today is an RnR day and should be for you too. However I figured since our great country is celebrating a birthday that is as good a reason as any to give some of you a gift.
Where would you like your business to go? What could you do today that will make a world of difference tomorrow? How much would it help to know now what some of the most successful people in the industry know?
Here’s what I’d like you to do, write down 5-6 pressing questions or concerns you have about your business and email them to me. In celebration of Canada day I will be awarding the 4 people who respond with the best questions with a 30 minute phone coaching session. We will record this call and you will get a copy of your call (and with the permission of the others) a copy of their calls also. 30 minutes is enough time to easily discuss multiple high income generating strategies, in fact with the right questions 30 minutes can easily change the whole picture of your business in the next 90 days.
Pretty simple, all you need to do is think about what are the 5-6 things in your business right now that you struggle or need help with and send them in. Deadline to enter is a week from today, July 8, 2010. If you don’t already have my email address simply submit through the contact form here. (Never post your email on your site, spammers love it when you do.)
The Grass is Greener on the Other Side – Part 1
The Grass Always Seems Greener on the Other Side
How much money does a personal trainer make? This is a common question, in fact how much money does a personal trainer make is one of the most popular internet search terms for our profession. I think many people finish their education and certification with the idea of earning immediate substantial income from the hobby that they have become so passionate about, often to be disappointed. Usually this disappointment can be validated with assumptions like, “if I worked in a gym I could easily get lots of clients and make more money.” Or, “if I owned my own studio I would make more money by employing other trainers.” This three part post is dedicated to helping you understand the differences between these scenarios and what it might mean for your personal training income.
The Solo Personal Trainer
Ok one of the biggest downfalls of being a personal trainer is the hours. The peak times are 5:00 AM – 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM – 9:00 PM. So be prepared to work a lot of split shifts early in your career. In my opinion if you are personal trainer in Canada you should never charge much less than $1/minute as your base session price. Sure you can offer promotions, packages and discounts but if your rate is much less than $1/min you are likely undervaluing yourself, are undereducated, and hurting the overall market for your services in your area. As a solo trainer you have the lowest amount of additional business expense but most trainers at this point also don’t realize the cost and need for business expenses such as marketing, materials, equipment, insurance, etc. It doesn’t take long to eat up a chunk of that base session rate, but the good news is compared to a trainer working for a gym or studio, or owning a bigger business of your own you should be able to place a much higher percentage of that hourly rate right into your pocket. The solo trainer hands down has the highest per hour earning potential for individual sessions, but of course that comes with a price.
As a solo trainer be prepared to wear a number of hats; you now have to be the chief marketer, salesman, administrator and heaven forbid, debt collector. You trade your higher wage for the support of a team which of course means your ability to attract and train clients may be lessened as you are tied up with other business duties. However if I have made this sound bleak it is my opinion that if you master all the strategies of Profitable Personal Training you can easily earn a six figure income as a solo personal trainer. Does that sound reasonable to you? You will be busy, a high income solo trainer will undoubtedly work 40-60 hours a week, you will maintain a strong point of independence and truly be your own boss. There is only one real drawback of this scenario if you ask me, you will not have the freedom to leave the business the same way if you could simply delegate tasks to others. Your ability to grow will be limited to the time and attention you can dedicate to your business day in and day out for as long as you can avoid burnout. Each time you take an extended absence you will have to come back and work that much harder to make up ground as no one is there to stoke the fire when you are away. For solo trainers with families, I highly recommend disability insurance. This is where most of you will start; the question is where will you go? I think it’s really important to understand the dynamics of all scenarios for proper business/career planning. Next week we’ll discuss what business inside of another business may look like.
What’s in a name anyways?
Quite often I receive questions from new personal trainers wondering how to decide on a name for their fitness and personal training business. The truth is when it comes to fitness marketing and selling personal training a catchy name means very little. I learned this the hard way so you don’t have to.
When I began personal training I went through the same dilemma, and for some reason I loved the name Fitness F/X, which naturally was taken so I had to settle for Cabel’s Fitness F/X. I was fortunate that at the time people were just really getting online and one of my first few clients insisted I need a website and as luck would have it www.fitnessfx.com was available.
Now here’s the thing, you and I, we’re not Nike, we’re never going to have a swoosh of our own. We simply do not have the millions upon millions of dollars to spend to develop a known, recognizable symbol like the swoosh. You and I we have to work smarter, we have to think about what exactly Average Joe and Jane are doing right now.
Average Joe and Jane likely just got home from work or are relaxing after dinner after a long day of office duties, running after the kids and chores. A thought crosses Jane’s mind, she came across what used to be her favourite pair of jeans in the closet this morning and they didn’t fit when she tried them on. She just never lost all the baby weight she gained during her pregnancy and tonight she’s feeling a bit down on herself about it. Joe well he’s being working 50 hours a week trying to do the best for his family, after years in the office he’s finally moved into that new position and is home to his family at a reasonable time. Life is good financially they are comfortable and can enjoy some of the finer things, one problem though, his belly sticks out further than his chest and his wife just never looks at him the same way much anymore.
Jane and Joe respectively grab their laptop or iPhone and not wanting their partner to really know their insecurities think maybe it’s time to figure what they could do to get back into shape. What do they do?
The go to Google and they begin typing in things like, “fastest way to lose weight” “best weight loss diet” “workout program for weight loss” and of course “personal trainers in (insert your city name).”
Do you happen to see Cabel’s Fitness F/X anywhere in there? Nope, me either. So neither Joe or Jane ever found my website or me, but I bet quite likely they would have found LA Weight Loss, Jenny Craig or a Profitable Personal Trainer that really understood how to attract clients. If only I had named my business Personal Training in Red Deer…..hmm you may notice now in spite of my studio being named One-to-1 Fitness our website is built on www.PersonalTrainingRedDeer.com and you will never ever hear me refer to www.Oneto1Fitness.com even though I do own it.
So by now you should see the actual name of your business doesn’t really mean much when it comes to selling personal training, fitness marketing and putting yourself in the place people will actually find you.
Now it’s not bad at all to have a catchy name, I would suggest one that is gender neutral and leans toward the first thing you think most people think of when they think of getting in shape. This was how we selected One-to-1 Fitness; it was our idea of a catchy way to instantly describe what we wanted to be known for.
If you are just starting your business though, don’t spend a lot of time or money on this endeavour it’s just not time for that if you are determined to become and ultra-successful Profitable Personal Trainer.
What The Alarm Salesman Did Wrong…
Is your personal training business secure?
Yesterday an interesting thing happened it has nothing and everything to do with selling personal training and fitness marketing. The doorbell rang. I was in my home office intently concentrating when this noise distracted me. Seriously these days you know when the doorbell rings unexpectedly it’s a sales call. Funny, I like sales calls now, it’s like they just unexpectedly walked into a practical exam for sales and marketing. The poor alarm guy, though he was nice enough, he failed miserably.
He opened with a, do you have a security system now? Terrible! As terrible as these following personal training headlines:
- Get in Shape for Summer
- A Personal Trainer Can Get You Better Results
- Spring and Summer Boot Camps – Spots available, start today!
His question though seemingly valid wasn’t, you see the answer doesn’t matter, in that split second he disconnected with me and put me on the defensive as I knew his primary objective was to sell me on his new alarm system.
You Have to Get Them Emotional…
A much better approach would have been to introduce himself, and tell me something like, “Did you know that 50-100 break and enters occur in Red Deer every month? (Real number easily found on google.) Did you know that means that X# of people in this neighbourhood had their house broken into last month? (Divide number of neighbourhoods by total per month.) Your house is being targeted and here’s why…(high perceived value item, maybe like the 10 things you are doing every day that will make your house a target for serious theft. Like not locking your garage door to your home, like leaving your registration and garage door opener in your vehicle, like not quickly picking up the newspaper on the front step showing that you aren’t home or don’t pay attention, like not displaying alarm signage as a deterrent, gee and I am a personal trainer.)
Now let me ask you, do you feel comfortable knowing your house is a target? Do you do some of those above things I mentioned? Does that make you worry in the slightest?
About a year ago my neighbour had his vehicle broken into on the exact weekend we were away, that easily could have been our house. Similarly my wife’s poor co-worker had her house completely emptied in broad daylight. I bet you have or have heard a similar story, does thinking about that raise your level of paranoia?
We are hardwired to become emotional when we use the right language, as a successful coach you need to understand that attracting clients (and more importantly having them commit and comply with your instructions) will be much more successful if you can generate a vested emotional interest within them.
The point is just by changing your approach you now have a prospect that may naturally have been on the defensive and resilient to sales now defenceless because they are emotionally invested. Even though we have a security system in our home, between this failed sales visit and writing this post even I think we need to be more careful with our home, the power of emotions.
The same is true of personal training. The headlines above can be more powerful, here are some examples:
- · Get in Shape for Summer Good news, there is a simple way you can lose 10-15lbs before July.
- · A Personal Trainer Can Get You Better Results Your gym membership failed you, Jenny Craig failed you, this won’t!
- · Spring and Summer Boot Camps – Spots available, start today! Do you qualify for this weight loss program? 5 spots available.
You know what? As a Canadian personal trainer trying to learn the ins and outs of fitness marketing strategies you have a serious problem. You are too nice, too plain, and don’t use enough emotional language, it’s time to start! You will thank me later, adjust your headlines, your ad copy, brochures and even your conversation, every little step will drastically improve your results, I guarantee it!
8 Steps to Becoming a Profitable Personal Trainer
If you want to become a member of the elite, a fitness marketing specialist, someone who can sell personal training with ease, a truly profitable personal trainer than you best pay attention to the following:
1) Stop doing 60 min sessions, switch to abbreviated training either a 45 min session or better yet a 30 min. If you think you can’t get a client an effective workout in 30 minutes you are not alone, I felt that way too but just trust me and do it. 60 minute personal training sessions are counselling sessions that will burn you out fast and keep you broke. 30 minute sessions allow you to appear to be cheaper than your competition while in reality you can be more expensive on a per hour basis. Your clients will find them easier to schedule and will be able to afford more of them which overall means their results will be better.
2) Don’t sell packages of personal training sessions, sell the lifestyle. No one loses 40lbs, corrects hypoglycaemia or lowers blood pressure in 10 sessions. You want clients that are serious about adopting a new lifestyle and the need you more than ever. Do yourself and them a favour and make it easy, sell ongoing monthly training packages not packages of sessions. (Ideally using EFT.)
RnR is an important part of being a Profitable Personal Trainer, Wendy and I like to get away any chance we get, our May long weekend was spent at Radium in BC.
3) Utilize sincere selling. Care about your clients and prospects, when you meet a new client use an extended meeting to get to know them, to learn about their goals, fears and pain. Ask them questions that stir emotions about why the need to make lifestyle changes. Your job is to make them feel as though you are saving their life because potentially you are. The more focused and aware you become about their needs the more they will fulfil your financial needs and with far less resistance.
4) Increase the value. Your job description when it comes to client appointments can be summarized in two words: service and value. Provide killer service and always find ways to provide more value: ie. Valuable additional content in the form of articles, newsletters, strategic business partnerships and discounts, tele-seminars, paper system materials.
5) Ask everyone for a testimonial, social proof will be better than any advertisement you can ever dream up, take before and after photos and videos and ask for testimonials often from every single client.
6) Always be building your list. Use public speaking, opt-ins, Facebook ads, classifieds and special free programs to constantly create an influx of new leads.
7) For each new step document the system. Longevity becomes about time and task management. As each new spoke of the wheel begins to turn document the system so it may become a repeat process. If you do not have anyone in your network to delegate to you will eventually but only if you have systems to teach. Take it from me, I failed to duplicate 4 times before I succeeded because I didn’t have documented systems.
8) Don’t forget to take time off and relax, get away from the business of personal training and do something fun. I hope you had a great long weekend!
4…3…2…1…We Are Go For Launch!
Did you wake up this morning full of passion and desire to succeed in a way that you have never felt before? Did you wake up with ideas and tasks swimming in your head that you absolutely need to attack and complete this coming week? Did you open your notebook to find that you now possess a complete 8 week, step-by-step plan detailing how even as a brand new trainer you can sell $100,000 in personal training and fitness programs in the next 8 weeks?
I know a number of individuals who made the trip to Edmonton, Alberta this past Saturday will be nodding a resounding yes to all of these questions. (That is if they have the time to even read this post.)
The Alberta average wage for a personal trainer in 2009 was just over $22,000, we can do far better than this. Our industry is growing faster and is needed more than ever. One of the biggest road blocks I’ve seen in new personal trainers is first understanding exactly how to improve their skills and acquire many new clients in the easiest, fastest, lowest cost manner possible.
Below is a short video of a discussion we had on this topic at the Personal Trainer Business Ignition ($100k in 8 Weeks) Workshop. Watch the video and adopt the right mindset and if you’re lucky maybe some of the attendees will comment on some of the great things they learned! (Also if you haven’t already go to the form on the right an download Factor 3, this will push you in the right direction to becoming a Profitable Personal Trainer.)
Do you have a mailing list? If so how many people are on it and when did you last contact them?
Contact Management is essential for fitness marketing!
As a follow up to my last post this is the next big step for you and likely also your website. You see as fitness professionals we’re pretty limited to the dollars we can spend on advertising and various fitness marketing strategies. For us relationship marketing is where it’s at, but as the world continues to move faster and faster we are all governed further by technology; traditional networking is becoming increasingly difficult.
As will be a major topic of discussion this weekend at the Business Ignition Workshop it’s critical you learn as many ways as possible to build a ‘list’ of customers and prospects. It’s quite common that when people start building a list they forget to nurture it only to become frustrated as they now possess a dead list.
You nurture you list by frequent contact, an example is the words you are reading at this very moment. I try every week to make sure I contact you on Monday and Thursday so we might engage for just a few moments and continue to build our relationship. As you will learn from my good friend Mr. X these relationships are extremely valuable and never just from the standpoint of making a sale.
This website and my attempt to gain regular contact with numerous fitness professionals has already brought me new colleagues and ideas that have allowed my training studio and other businesses to make huge strides forward. This is why of all the fitness marketing strategies you might learn; the idea of content, list building and continuity are the foundation principles that will determine your total success as a whole.
Anyways…back on topic, a key element for list building is automation through some form of contact management. If you can provide an easy way to provide regular contact with your list without spending a lot of time; you are free to keep performing the technical work that many of you are trying to grow beyond. (I mean let’s face it, if you’re a solo trainer you still have to train people, and yet you need to develop the systems so you don’t always have to train people, get it?)
By using a contact management product you save a lot of time, by using a website blog and publishing regular content that you then also distribute to your list you leverage further; you maintain regular contact and also attract new prospects with all the posted content. The icing on the cake is now you can put the two of those together to help build your list also, this is the opt-in. An example of an opt-in is the offer for Factor 3 up in the top right corner of this website. I have offered you some very valuable information in exchange for the trust of contacting you next week, my goal each week is to continue to offer you value in hopes that eventually we’ll find a way to help each other and grow our respective businesses.
Makes sense right? Now the question for those not super techno savvy is there an easy solution to handle this problem? Well, in my opinion yes, as a fitness professional you absolutely should have some form of contact management as part of your fitness marketing strategy, and an electronic product is by far the cheapest and these days most successful. Though you can use simple products like iContact, Constant Contact, or Aweber I hands down recommend FitPro Newsletter, you see as I have mentioned previously FitPro is the only product designed for fitness professionals, it’s completely customizable but the beauty is it’s also done for you. Their professional writers add great new articles to every issue so you don’t have to worry about it like the others. Come times like now where you are super busy training people you don’t even need to think about sending content to your list as they will all receive great new content every two weeks on your behalf. Now when you need to contact your list for other reasons they’ll even still remember who you are. J
The list is king! Grow it, nurture it, it is the key to your success.
5 Critical things, a Video, and Where it All Began…
The video below is an excerpt from last year when I spoke in Anaheim at the Fitness Business Summit (The 2010 summit starts tomorrow). This is the first year I have missed the summit and it sort of has me a little disjointed this week. You see this conference is what started it all for me. It was the first time I was ever in a room with trainers from all over the world that were gathered to learn one thing, how to grow their fitness business. It was the first conference I had ever seen that really delivered real how-tos on how to go from zero to hero. It was also where I met and hired my first paid business mentor, very reluctantly.
After returning home from that very first conference in 2007 and soon being told with authority to, “Ready, Shoot, Aim” I worked tirelessly to complete the business plan for One-to-1 Fitness. Soon after I met with RBC, only to have my business plan rejected. Because of the inspiration, confidence and a notebook full of ammunition of information this rejection didn’t even faze me. By accessing what little equity we had in our home we pushed ahead and One-to-1 Fitness was born, and well you know how well that’s worked out.
Now what’s amazing is ever year at the time the summit has come around, without realizing, I have always rewarded myself big time (trips, cars and houses) as a result of the success of the previous year, in fact I didn’t even realize it until my mentor pointed it out to me the other day. Anyways, here’s what’s important about all of that:
1) Always set clear goals for yourself.
2) Surround yourself with people that contribute and rid yourself of the people that hold you back.
3) Always have a plan.
4) Ready, Shoot, Aim.
5) Never, ever, give up.
I am so excited to launch the Personal Trainer Business Ignition Workshop on May 15 because I know for someone (and hopefully more like everyone) this is going to have the same impact on them that it had for me in Anaheim.
Anyhow, wow this was supposed to be a short post about the video below and totally turned into a heartfelt gimpse of how sad I am about to not be seeing friends and colleagues in Anaheim this weekend. Anyways, the exciting news is not only is the Business Ignition Workshop CEC approved by CanFitPro; yesterday I applied to be a presenter at the fall conference in Calgary. I believe that this information needs to go main stream, it’s totally changed my life and I want to see it change others. Part of the application process is I had to submit a video of me lecturing, below is an excerpt from Anaheim where I affirm what I feel is one of the single most important points of owning a fitness business as opposed to it owning you. If you’ve been paying attention to my previous posts you already know exactly what it’s about. Enjoy!
YES! Contact me today to schedule a FREE no obligation consultation and trial workout.