The Absolute One Most Important Thing for Your Personal Training Business

EFT Billing is like Automatic Money

Well here I am writing from the airport in Denver.  My flight was delayed on my way back from Miami where I was meeting with my business mastermind group. This group is crazy; some serious contenders in fitness and other industries across North America, a number of them are seven figure earners. In fact had I not been flying out I’d be heading to a private club with them right now where Jay Z was going to be performing, a pretty hooked up group. Anyways, something very important I have learned is that if you want to be super successful at anything, you can greatly improve your chances by working with coaches and spending time with people far more successful than you, even if you have to pay them. However that’s not the point of today’s post, today we’re going to talk about the absolute one most important thing for your personal training business.

About three and a half years ago, even before One-to-1 Fitness came to be I began thinking about something and preparing to make a major change in my solo personal training business. If you only read one post on this website, or only pay serious attention, or only learn one thing, this should be it.

No matter what your goals are, whether it’s to earn a high income as a solo-trainer, employ a team or own a gym/studio you need to understand the value of continuity for you and your customer. In this post I am referring expressly to continuity of billing and specifically automatic or EFT billing.

Without EFT billing you are more vulnerable than the office employee who is afraid of being on the next cut list of company layoffs. Without EFT billing you don’t have a business, you have a job similar to a door-to-door salesman. You are forced to continually resell your clients and your income is directly proportional to how well, how much and how often you sell to your clients. What’s worse is you are continually working but without gaining any leveragability whatsoever. A bank will never consider providing you any sort of financing while operating in this manner.

Now if you are a solo-trainer automatic or EFT billing may seem like a daunting task but it is actually far simpler than you think. Work with your account manager to open a merchant account and then with one of their providers for your gateway and necessary software. A couple of simple steps each month and you now never have to worry about asking a client for a payment it all begins to happen automatically.

Now at first I was concerned if my clients would resist, but the truth is they won’t, and if a few do you don’t want them as they are likely to leave you high and dry at some point. But the beauty is automatic billing is also in their best interests. You see, if you are like I was with 50-70 clients at a time when I was on my own it was extremely time consuming to track who I needed to collect from and when. By automating my billing process I saved numerous hours that could now be used for more important things like: improving client testing/assessment, reviewing client files, and powerful client follow up that yielded significantly better accountability and improved results. Will any of your clients ever complain about better service and better results?

By implementing EFT billing you will begin to grow a real business, business that has real saleable value and one that will allow you the security and freedom of a real business owner. You won’t have to worry if Frank remembers his chequebook to pay for his sessions today or if you can afford to take next week off. Knowing what your cash flow is each month will also allow you to easily manage a budget for your growing business and develop a predictable plan for growth.

I hope you get it as this one thing will seriously change your life and if you don’t read it again and leave your comments so I can help you further.