Is Your Lizard in Control?
Someone directed me to this video of Seth Godin and I thought it was great, I think it pretty much applies to anyone who is or wants to be an entrepreneur.
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?
Lead Box 3.0 – The Ultimate Lead Box
http://www.GetClientsNow.ca Lead boxes suck unless you know how to use them the way I do. This simple
Continue reading Lead Box 3.0 – The Ultimate Lead Box »
Part 3: From Absolute to Relative, Let Your Passion Work For You
After establishing ones self as an expert in their given niche, it is important to further diversify yourself from other given experts that may be in the same field. While doing this you may also find additional ways to leverage your time further and develop not only a greater absolute income for yourself but also a relative income that is more passive and conducive to your lifestyle. Consider the population you have made yourself an expert in and now consider ways you can reach similar individuals on a grander scale, with little to no additional time investment.
An absolute income is one that you will continually trade time for dollars for. This is fine, considering that your passion has now lead to an income and therefore the time you trade is something you enjoy doing; however, to be truly successful you need to be able to separate yourself from a business model and have it continue to generate your income. By separating yourself from this income stream you are now free to consider additional populations and repeat your successful model, or you are now free to relax and enjoy additional things in life outside of business.
A relative income is such that little to no work is involved in order to maintain an income. This can be established and accomplished in a number of ways including, but not limited to, hiring additional individuals to train according to your principles while taking a percentage of the income generated as a bonus to yourself for hiring and teaching the individuals these principles. As well, generating a series of manuals or possibly an ebook that allows for little to no overhead costs while still generating an income for individuals looking too educate themselves on your expertise.
Time is the only limited commodity. There are limitless amounts of money in the world; however, money does not buy you time. Make time for yourself and let your success be defined as the achievement of an ideal lifestyle and not the most riches.
At the end of the day the worst thing that can happen is failure. Period. And as soon as you determine the worst case scenario and ways to avoid it then you have not only defined your fear but have generated ways to stay away from it. Keep failing! Fail better. Learn from mistakes, and keep moving forward.
Define your passion. Let it drive you. Riches will follow suit.
Joshua K. Neufeld
Managing The Flow…Cashflow That Is
When I first started in the fitness industry nearly two decades ago there certainly didn’t seem to be the many marketing tools, programs and gurus that there are today. (And if there were I sure didn’t know how to find or use them.)
One of the many gaps I still see in the education for fitness professionals is in the actual mechanics and systems of running a business. The last five years have been a whirlwind, it’s hard to believe that our training studio has even been open that long. What’s more bizarre is thinking back five years to the countless hours painting and getting ready to open. Though we had a business plan that was all we really had. We didn’t have an elaborate marketing plan, in fact our whole opening strategy was an ‘opening soon’ ad on the radio, a small mailing list, and our network of past clients, friends and family.
Fast forwarding a few years I can’t even imagine a day going by without having an operations manual to turn to, many documents that ensure a consistent measure of service for our clients and an understanding of and frequent review of KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in my opinion are a critical component to the long term health, predictability and success of your business. As you know we’re all emotional creatures and many of the decisions we make in life are greatly influenced by our emotions. In my short time as an entrepreneur I can tell you that every day is a rollercoaster of emotion based on the many things that occur, from victories and client successes, major breakthroughs, praise in the community as we’ve won awards, to an unhappy customer, uncollectible accounts, staffing issues and relationships, and the list goes on. You can’t afford to make the major decisions in your business solely on emotion, it’s critical you have a list of KPIs that are quick and easy to review, that eliminate as much erroneous information as possible, that are easy to understand, and that you are comfortable reviewing often.
Some of the KPIs we track in our business are: session/usage volumes, prospect generation, lead conversion, EFT growth/decline and cash flow planning.
Cash flow planning has always been one of the most confusing to me and I think depending on who you talk to it can be referred to in many forms. I know what is now my cash flow plan has taken the form of: expense tracking, budgeting, a simplified income statement and ultimately now what I’m pretty sure is an actual cash flow statement.
When it comes to cash flow planning I consider the following four things primarily:
1) Revenue Sources – Depending on the products and services you offer you may have multiple sources of revenue. Within our studio we only have two currently: services and merchandise. (Don’t confuse yourself by thinking that each service you may offer is a different revenue stream. For the purpose of a KPI you want to simplify and minimize the amount of additional information to be able to look at the raw performance.)
2) Fixed Costs – Your fixed costs are all the obvious things like a lease, utilities, and consistent monthly expenses. They are an expense whether you do business or not and they don’t fluctuate greatly based on the volume of business that you do. At first it may seem confusing but things like front desk employees and even class instructors are fixed expenses if their wage isn’t fluctuating by the number of customers. (ex. Instructor costs the same if there is 1 participant or 20 and you have a consistent class schedule.)
3) Variable Costs – The only real cost I consider to be a variable cost is the wage/session paid to my trainers. Because the revenue they generate versus the wage they earn is completely dependent upon how many sessions of service they provide this cost may fluctuate significantly.
4) Service/session Volume – The final consideration for my cash flow plan is another of our KPIs, total session volume. Total session volume helps me
Once you’ve organized and have separated and organized your revenue streams and expenses this historical data can really aid you in the acquisition of your crystal ball. For instance if you look back over a year of historical data in the areas described above you will likely notice peaks and valleys. Though each year is different you’re going to find the general pattern of your business, an example would be higher revenues in January with the New Year’s Resolution craze. Each year forward you might begin planning for these ebbs and flows with an increased marketing campaign frequency or tighter spending to ensure the long term health of your business.
There is also a number of interesting pieces of information you can extrapolate. By dividing your service volume by total revenue you can find out approximately what each visit by a customer is worth to you, this helps you plan for and predict revenues or growth based on volume. You could then divide total fixed costs by your total volume to understand what the average customer interaction costs you whether it’s a consultation to a training session. This can be useful when considering pricing strategies or promotional pricing.
There is a number of other ways this information can be used, the more you work with it the more you will find it can give you an instant snapshot of the health of your business and a glimpse of the future.
I highly recommend identifying the KPIs of your business and finding simple ways to track, evaluate and separate them from all the erroneous information that many forms of club management software provide. This is one of the many things I focus on and teach within the context of the Profitable Personal Trainer mentorship program.
Facebook Foot Soldiers and “Punching” Your Clients
How would you like to create tonnes of social proof, dozens of raving fans, create oodles of referral leads with very little effort?
A short time ago one of my coaching clients was doing something really cool with Facebook that I wanted to share with you. This works especially well for fitness boot camps and group personal training. (Additionally check out my update at the end that can make this work for pretty much any program you offer.)
By now you may have heard of the “human billboard” concept or offering deep discounts to people that can generate referrals for you. Today we’re going to take that a step further with Facebook. We all know just about everyone has a Facebook account, and if they are one of the rare few that don’t, it’s only a matter of time. What my coaching client is doing is having clients “tag” his studio in comments. Each time someone tags his facility in a comment it will also show on his studio fanpage, this makes it easy to hold your foot soldiers accountable.
So how does this help you? Well on average most people have 200 or more friends on Facebook, every time they make a comment that comment get’s shown multiple times on all of their friends news feeds. The more interaction with those impressions the more times it’s shown, it’s that simple. You can quickly see how you can suddenly have a third party endorsement or viral marketing span across 100s of people in a very short time because they’re all on Facebook way too often. (To further validate this the statistics of four fanpage show that with less than 1000 fans our social reach in our community is extending into the tens of thousands on a weekly basis, we are reaching an insane amount of local people on a weekly basis just with our fanpage, imagine how much further you can go if people are tagging and talking about you.)
Now you don’t have to do this for billboards, it’s easy to run challenges, ask people to tag your studio or you in comments, set a goal like the first person to comment on such a day wins a prize…you know what they say early bird get’s the worm. Or the first person to make 3 unique comments, it could be anything really.
Important things to remember:
- Posts don’t need to be (and likely shouldn’t be) sales oriented.
- The best posts are just legitimate comments, like “My workout @PersonalTrainingRedDeer was amazing today!” or even better, “My trainer @PersonalTrainingRedDeer weighed me today, I’ve lost 20lbs!”
- Facebook is about natural conversation, don’t encourage spamming people will just ignore it.
(TIP: If you don’t know how to set your page username go to www.facebook.com/username.)
A little tip that can go a long way for generating massive referrals and creating your tribe, the ideas are endless from referral contests, referral rewards, fan building and much much more. Use your imagination….in fact in the spirit of Facebook here is my latest update.
At One-to-1 we have a very defined marketing funnel. We religiously track our new leads and specifically what we’re offering to people and how many are buying. At any given time I can tell you how many people inquired, were booked, purchased and what they purchased for any month in the last couple years.
If you don’t have a similar system you will want to read this post.
I can now see the patterns of the ebb flow of our business each year. This has allowed me to design and develop promotion and awareness campaigns that allow us to keep leading our market. One of the things that I think is critically important is having a plan for ensuring you meet or exceed what you did the previous year. For instance let’s say last year in February you had 30 new people inquire about your services, and 20 signed up or bought something. But this year it’s already the 15th of February and only 8 people have inquired, what are you going to do?
Ok I'm not actually suggesting you punch your clients.
Here’s a facebook idea to solve this problem. If you have a fanpage (and if you don’t you will have your personal profile which you should be ‘friending’ your clients) if you edit page and review the insights you will see a graph of how many people like, visit your page, etc. On the right side there is a link that allows you to ‘view likes’ or see all your fans.
Click on a fan, you end up on their personal profile, and ultimately quite often can even see their friends and ultimately navigate to a number of their local friends where you could post on their wall…
“Hey it’s Cabel from One-to-1 Fitness, a facebook friend of yours is a fan of ours, we’ve selected you for our BFF friend of a fan award. We have a special (prize/program) just for you, please contact us at ________ to claim before (5-7 day expiry/dedline.)”
The response at first may be low, but be diligent, I bet with copy and past you could do a few hundred of these in an hour, I’m guessing math wise 1-4% should ultimately respond, meaning you could calculate roughly how many people you need to contact to generate your missing inquiries. Your only cost, a couple hours or hours of your assistant.
There are numerous ways you can use or improve this, you can direct them to a private link and explain exactly what you have for them, sweeten the deal with an instant gift of content or videos (give them something of real value, expect nothing in return.) The law of reciprocity will assist you.
You could also post on your fans walls about the ‘BFF Referral Award’ and since they’re a fan any of their friends receive special treatment or a special offer for a very short period of time. (Scarcity is essential.)
This is just one of a number of simple business building ideas I’ll be sharing in express detail at the upcoming www.ProfitablePersonalTrainerLive.com workshop.
I’d love to hear what you think or your results if you use any of these strategies.
Niche Your Passion
You may have tuned in a couple weeks ago as Joshua Neufeld talked about finding your passion in the fitness industry. What many of you may no know is that Joshua only began his real fitness career barely 3 years ago, it began as two very nerve racking interviews with my business partner and myself at One-to-1 Fitness. Joshua has progressed from college grad to senior trainer at One-to-1 Fitness, and more importantly, a budding entrepreneur as an author who’s made his way to five continents.
It’s been amazing to watch Joshua grow, he’s really a product of his environment as I’ve always aimed to share what I’m learning with our whole team in an effort to see each of them grow in this industry, yet I’d hardly take credit for what he has achieved.
I wanted to share this with you simply because no matter where you are now, unless your career or business is exactly what you want it to be, you can quickly grow more than you thought imaginable just as I’ve seen Joshua grow over these last couple years. Beyond your passion understanding your niche is the next critical step.
____________________
After establishing what it is you want in life, it is important to find a way to leverage that passion so that you can continue to do it for as long as you so choose. The great thing about passion is the motivation to be better always exists; however, it is also important to stay mindful of your lifestyle and the types of things you still need to account for (ie. Mortgage, family, bills…etc.). Therefore, after defining your passion it is important to establish the types of things you wish to keep in the remainder of your life, more specifically the amount of cash-flow you need to continue your lifestyle.
What do you need to make your world go around?
After establishing some absolute numbers for income, break it down further on a quarterly, monthly, and evenly weekly basis as to how much you really need to generate to allow for your lifestyle to continue while pursuing your passion. Dependent upon your situation it may be necessary at this point to control some variables in your life according to the amount of income you can generate in a given location. As well, be mindful of the fact that you ALWAYS get out of situations what you put into them. So when pursuing your passion, do so whole-heartedly.
In the fitness industry passion is plentiful, but developing a niche to leverage can be difficult. Consider populations that are unaccounted for and begin to develop ways that you can cater specifically to them and how you can convince these individuals that the service you offer is worth the dollars they earn. At the end of the day any true fitness professional would agree that all individuals (without exception) can benefit from the effects of proper training and nutritional coaching. Therefore, step outside the box and explore populations that have been overlooked by the rest of the industry and by your competitors!
It’s no secret that weight loss is always going to dominate the fitness industry, and given the latest trends in childhood obesity and the poor activity and nutritional habits of the majority of North Americans this is not going to change. But in business sometimes it is better to be a big fish in a small pond, than the opposite. Rather, by stepping away from the “norm” of weight loss clients and going after special populations with more specific needs you will soon establish yourself as a given expert in your “pond” and will leverage your income in a way that most “dime-a-dozen” trainers simply cannot.
The idea is not necessarily to be better, but rather to be different! When walking into a gym for the first time a middle-aged individual will have a hard time determining which trainer will suit them best and in turn your chances of landing that client are slim. BUT! If you can establish yourself as an expert in a given field, and masterfully market yourself to those individuals then you will have successfully established not only a niche clientele but also a definitive and secure place for yourself inside the industry.
Biceps and Business
As trainers we never stop learning, you can’t, there is simply too much to know. Even things you’ve done a certain way for years can suddenly take on new meaning, like a normal barbell bicep curl for instance.
This blog post isn’t about business, marketing, lead generations or pushing profits into the stratosphere. Yet if it get’s you thinking and improves your skill as a trainer (or mine, or someone else’s) then it is absolutely about business, clients success, retention and industry longevity. All are inclusive of exactly what the Profitable Personal Trainer is all about.
So let’s have some fun, let’s talk about bicep curls. (And for the record I can’t even mention the word bicep without thinking about Pumping Iron and good old Arnold and Franco training back in the day.)
Barbell bicep curls are for me a product of an era gone by, my bodybuilding days. When I think about bicep curls I can’t help but think about one of my major mentors and role models from my younger days, you might recognize him. When vanity was my primary objective and having those big hanging biceps was part of the job description I did a lot of bicep curls. Over the years as I evolved as a trainer their use faded, as truly for most it’s not a movement that serves for much of a variety of purpose. We know that many of our clients will often present with rounded shoulders, the sign of a deteriorating upper shoulder girth, shortened pecs, internal rotators and quite often shortened biceps.
In its simplest form the bicep curl doesn’t really seem like a logical choice dealing with someone with rounded shoulders and deteriorating posture. In no way am I disputing this but then sometimes the most difficult part of working with a client as actually physically getting them to perform, activate or use the actual muscles that you want them to. I’m sure like I have, you’ve found scapular retraction/manipulation to be one the most common, and often difficult, focal points of improvement for clients.
Recently I’ve taken a keen interest in Serratus Anterior and it’s role. I’ve always found it interesting that if we removed all the muscles from our shoulder blade it’s basically only attached to our skeleton at the end of the collarbone where it meets the sternum. Without the muscles holding it in place it could move all over the place, yet containing the shoulder joint it’s a major stabilization point for our arm and many of its movements as well as our head. It’s easy to see through our life, with most of our life spent moving in front of us, why the muscles of the shoulder girth could become unbalanced and dysfunctional. To me it’s even more frightening to think about how bad it really could get with the only structural anchor point for the shoulder girth to be at the sternum, this creates a broad range of displacement for a lot of muscles involved in a lot of movements.
Anyways, serratus, as you probably know the serratus originates on the back side of the shoulder blade, it wraps around our torso attaching to a number of ribs on the front side of our body. In conjunction with other muscles of the shoulder girth one of the big things it can do is flatten the shoulder blades (scapula) against the rib cage. Because of the convenience generally of our lives this is typical point of dysfunction. Our lives are typically not physically demanding enough to encourage efficient, regular neurological recruitment of the serratus to flatten the shoulder blades.
If you Google or search YouTube for improving serratus function you’ll undoubtedly find modified versions of push ups and presses, all of which I am a fan of and use extensively. However from a pure coaching standpoint recently I have had tremendous success with my clients using a light barbell bicep curl.
When my client is performing the barbell bicep curl I will stand behind them cuing them to flatten the shoulder blades and squeeze the bottom of the scapula together. I ask them to try to maintain this position while performing the bicep curl. I then place my hands on top of the shoulder with my thumbs sitting just below the ridge separating supraspinatus and infraspinatus so I can detect any movement.
Just about everyone moves a little, and this greatly decreases the efficiency of movement of the bicep curl. But what it does do is give them an immediate sense of what their scapula is doing, feeling the activation of lower trapezius and serratus as the attempt to keep the scapula from moving or stabilizing by elevating the traps with their upper fibers. This ineffective bicep curl has proven to be extremely beneficial in establishing the mind to muscle connection for better serratus activation and postural improvement.
The best part is your clients can see and feel an immediate difference. We all know with great results comes great client retention, increased customer referrals, and the development of your brand. Just maybe bicep curls can find a place into your business building strategy afterall.
Identify Your Passion
A special guest post by: Joshua Neufeld, NeuFitness
To do what you love, and be able to make money doing it, is something few individuals have the opportunity to truly experience in their lives. The fitness industry is such that if you don’t show up to work every day with a passion for changing lives, then your existence will be short and unsuccessful. In order to be truly effective in such a vast and complex industry it is important to not only adapt, but identify what it is that truly makes you tick. What do you wake up every morning hoping you accomplish with your clients? Better yet, define your client. Your IDEAL client. Who is it you want to work with, and why? This is your passion, and this is what makes getting out of bed so much easier.
Simply put, a life without passion is one of monotony.
A passion is something that you do with the expectation of nothing in return. Therefore, income generation is not necessarily the goal. Rather the idea that when one is passionate enough and is willing to pursue such interests, riches are bound to follow. Separate yourself from the idea that your passion HAS to make you money and ask yourself: If I already had all the money and riches I desired, what would I do with my time? Guess what! This is your true passion. How you would spend your time if money was no object is the ultimate determining factor of one’s passion in life. Therefore, money cannot be ones motivation as it is more often than not the only factor limiting one from their passion.
A man’s fortune is not of riches but of experiences; fulfillment, not to be confused with accumulation.
With a passion comes an otherwise unattainable level of focus and drive towards your commitments. The internal motivation that comes with doing something you love everyday and knowing your lifestyle will be catered too because the effort put forth (although seemingly similar) will be much greater when the idea of time and hourly wage are no longer prevalent and you are simply going about your dreams, instead of punching a clock. Wake up with purpose beyond cash-flow. Remember, pursue your dreams and riches will follow once you put yourself in a position to be truly successful emotionally and mentally. Financially, the success will follow.
“What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do. As I have heard said, a person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.” –Timothy Ferris
Much the same, the uncomfortable conversation you must have with yourself when deciding to abandon the status quo and go after a dream. Define your passion, and then go after it, relentlessly.
Come learn from Josh on April 21-22 in Edomonton at www.ProfitablePersonalTrainerLive.com
Renew, Rebirth, Revitalization
Profitable Personal Trainer is almost two years old. It’s been quite an adventure as a part time project aside from our studio.
I’ve cherished the moments and learned as much as I’ve taught, it’s taken some time but I feel I’ve finally found my voice. I’m very excited about 2012. Watch for the evolution of Profitable Personal Trainer, I have big goals as far as providing more resources to fitness professionals throughout North America (and beyond) to become more successful in the industry we love.
There will be an evolution beyond my current focus of marketing and systems.
This evolution will take a bit of time, so I may not be posting regularly in the next short while but do stay tuned for some exciting announcements.
You may want to save the dates of April 21-22, 2012 as I’ll be hosting “Profitable Personal Trainer Live” likely in the Edmonton market with my good friend and mentor Bedros Keuilian. We’ll also be featuring other fitness professionals with some killer content on some of the top training techniques, practices and niche markets. (Like specific training for the MMA crazy, or specialized nutritional coaching.)
Watch for these changes and further announcements coming soon, and in the meantime have a very Merry Christmas.
Just one more thing…
I couldn’t post something without giving you something great you can use right now. Below is an image of my most effective facebook ad for generating new “likes.” These likes are funnelled into an immediate lead generation offer that gets them in our door.
This ad leads to our page where ppl are met with a gateway page offering free training if they simply like the page, you can view this at www.facebook.com/personaltrainingreddeer
The easiest way to add one of these pages on your own facebook page is using a free little plugin called WooBox from www.woobox.com.
I just wanted to share this with you because it could be a great tool for last minute New Year’s marketing.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- …
- 30
- Next Page »
YES! Contact me today to schedule a FREE no obligation consultation and trial workout.