Cabel

Quickly Become the Local Expert

Quickly Become the Local Expert

Published by on December 1, 2011 | Leave a response

%image_alt%You may have heard recently that a story flew around how the US Government recently declared pizza to be a vegetable. At least that’s the version of this story that I was told. None the less it’s safe to say this weird situation, likely taken out of context and totally misunderstood, received a lot of publicity, press and exposure very quickly. I wonder if it ever hit the hot trending topics list on Twitter?

As a personal trainer and fitness marketer looking to maximize your fitness marketing strategy you should take note of the industry related topics that are hitting the headlines. One of the fastest ways I know to become the local expert is to simply make sure that you have an opinion on the most current topics. Voice them on Facebook, Twitter and especially in blog posts that are optimized for your primary keywords.

There’s no doubt that thousands of people were searching major search engines to find out just what was going on in this crazy pizza controversy. There’s no doubt that main people with your local area were amongst that group and likely a number of them may be people that fit your target customer profile.

At a local level it’s great if this audience begins to find you or assists in boosting your rankings by visiting and commenting on your posts relating to these hot topics. Just by following the media you have an immediate opportunity to quickly increase your organic traffic and be known as the savvy fitness expert of your area.

This has served me well in my local market in fact it ultimately lead to a regularly running column in both the major local newspapers a relationship, credibility and marketing vehicle that my competitors can’t touch.

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Know Your Customer...No Really

Know Your Customer…No Really

Published by on November 22, 2011 | Leave a response

%image_alt%This last weekend I was out in Vancouver speaking at CanFitPro’s western national conference. I’m always amazed at the responses I get when I ask, “who is your most likely customer?” Maybe I shouldn’t be, after all this might have also been one of the toughest things for me to comprehend.

I can’t stress enough how important is to know your niche or be able to close your eyes and literally see your most likely customer standing before you. Once you have this very complete description you will be amazed at how your ability to communicate and generate interest from your potential audience increases. You will begin to think of ideas on how to reach, meet and recruit clients in ways your competitors will never catch on to. I know that may sound ridiculous so let me try to put it in a simpler more dramatic fashion. Would a gun enthusiast read an opera magazine? Would the language used to describe last night’s performance contain fitting and descriptive adjectives to describe the latest hunting paraphernalia? I think you get my drift.

Here’s a little exercise, begin with the following questions, answer them for who you think your most likely customer is, then try to develop 10 more questions for an even more through description.

(HINT: If you’re uncertain of who your most likely customer is then answer these questions for each the following: 1) Who would you like to train? (ie. Athletes, not recommended but common) 2) Who do you think is most around you population wise? 3) Who do you think is currently shopping for services like yours? Once you’ve answered for all three of these you will generally have one that stands out to you leading you to begin exploring that niche’s viability.)

  1. Are they male or female?
  2. How old are they? (10-15 year range is fine)
  3. What would be their primary goal?
  4. Why would they benefit from working with someone like you? Be specific.
  5. How much income does their household earn annually?
  6. What kinds of careers do they have?
  7. What kinds of hobbies and interests do they have?
  8. What kind of vehicles do they, or would they like to drive?
  9. How do they dress?
  10. Where would they buy clothes?
  11. Where would they go out for dinner?
  12. What organizations might they belong to?

Once you have a big long list of who, what, why, and where you can begin to search your local demographics and guess as to whether a number of these desired people are near by.

From that point forward all of your marketing, content and offers should be targeted to be of interest to these groups of people. You should use language that would make sense if you were conversing with them, you should refer to characteristics or roadblocks of the goals they may be trying to achieve. Your offers should be of high value based on what you think they may be looking for and you want to make sure both you and your marketing materials are present in multiple places they might frequent.

The more razor focused you can be on that one specific customer the easier it becomes to not only attract them but others also. Specialization adds value; people always want to work with the specialist.

Perhaps they may seem like common sense but repeatedly in front of audiences or more when I review this concept only a sparse few hands go up. I can guarantee this little exercise if taken seriously will completely change your business in weeks to months.

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You Should Be Worried If They Say "No"

You Should Be Worried If They Say “No”

Published by on November 8, 2011 | 1 Response

%image_alt%Are you regularly asking your clients for testimonials? Most trainers are not. This won’t be a long blog post at all but it will be one packed with great purpose.

I’m certain by now you know the benefits of testimonials. Social proof is worth more than just about any pricey, elaborate marketing campaign. It’s worth more than ten certifications and all kinds of post-secondary education. So I’m sure you understand the marketing value of asking for testimonials. But there is a far more important reason to be asking your clients for testimonials on a regular basis.

Let me be blunt, and glaringly obvious.

If you asked your client for a testimonial today and they said NO; what does this say about your service or the value you are providing?

If you are providing the value, results, and service that you both think and say you are, shouldn’t you be 100% comfortable asking your clients for a testimonial? I mean if they say no, shouldn’t you be concerned?

Maybe concerned isn’t the right answer but you should most certainly be asking, “what is missing from my service that you don’t feel comfortable providing me a testimonial?”

Now this isn’t just true of testimonials but also referrals, they go hand in hand. If your clients over the top love your service it’s a natural occurrence that they will want to share and tell their experiences to others, if they don’t something isn’t right.

Start asking, the feedback will catapult your business forward.

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Super Librarians and Choosing the Right Keywords!

Published by on October 25, 2011 | 1 Response

This last weekend I was presenting at CanFitPro Calgary conference on the topic of an effective personal training website and how it fits into your personal trainer marketing plan.

One of the things we talked about in detail was about keywords and optimized content. Now if you don’t currently have a website there is likely plenty you need to understand in addition to keywords but this will still be a very relevant place for you to start. In fact relevancy really is our topic.

First let me give you a warning. If you’re working with a website designer make sure you ask them about keywords, make sure you know exactly what they are providing and feel comfortable with the answers they’re giving you. You should understand a little better by the end of this post but in my experience most local website designers have great photoshop and programming skills but no real comprehension of how to build a website that will quickly be noticed by the search engines and ensure your potential customers find you.

%image_alt%Ok relevancy. Remember the old dewy decimal system at the library? The index cards that had all the books organized by title and subject that gave you a number to which shelf you would find them on, well this is essentially exactly how the internet works. Now the search engines are like super librarians, when you type in a word they go hunting for all kinds of options related to that word or series of words. Let’s take (Your Town) Personal Trainer for example. Search engines will find domain names with that series of words, then it will look to see if the pages assigned to that domain have programming tags that correspond to those keywords then it will look further and skim through the content to see if those words are listed in sentences. It doesn’t end there, file names, video titles, image titles and descriptions and so on. The more times that same keyword string is mentioned the more relevant search engines feel that is to your query, this is one of the ways they will “rank” you and decide who gets listed first.

It’s far from being the only way, after all it’s a big world and there is now a lot of information competing for the top spot. A few of the other things that contribute to rank are:

  • Age of your site
  • Number of pages on your site, and the natural growth of the site.
  • Back links, or people linking to your site.
  • Reviews, and more.

So anyways, how to pick keywords. Start by asking yourself the following, what would my potential customers likely be typing into a search engine to find more information?

Here’s a few ideas:

(Your Town) Personal Trainer, (Your Town) weight loss, (Your Town) boot camp, (Your Town) personal training, etc.

From there it may stem into people looking for more information on subjects that ultimately pertain to or make them good candidates for your services. Some examples might be:

Low fat recipes, how to lose the last 10 lbs, best way to lose weight, best exercises for weight loss, etc.

These secondary keywords are really good indicators of the type of content it might be good to have on your website, but here’s a way you can get a little more clarification. Visit www.google.com and type in “external keyword tool.”

It should be one of the first link that comes up. This tool for PPC users can be very useful in deciding how to position your website. Follow the steps to set the search parameters for local and your country, then enter a few of the keyword ideas above.

You’ll find that some may have more search volume than others, now here’s where you have to be crafty. Realize that bigger is not always better, for instance in a major centre like Toronto, the key word stream “Toronto Personal Trainer” is likely very competitive, let’s say on the keyword tool it comes up as 8900 or something. Even though there is a lot of people searching for this you are going to find there are also a lot of websites listed for this, making it harder for you to reach the first page quickly.

What you may want to look for in this case is variations that have 300-1000 monthly searches, these key word streams will be much easier to rank for. In fact try searching a few, you will begin to notice that completely different listings show up on the first page, this is a good indication there isn’t as much competition, thus a few carefully crafted pages using that keyword stream in the title, description, file name, etc will ensure you quickly reach the first page. Do this for 5-6 less competitive variants and you can give your website an immediate boost in its ability to generate visitors and potential leads.

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Be a Ferrari

Be a Ferrari

Published by on October 18, 2011 | 1 Response

%image_alt%This blog post is going to be one of those posts that just comes straight from the hip. You see the fitness industry is undergoing a rapid evolution right now and I fear many trainers are in danger of being left behind.

If you’re NOT making more than $100,000 a year in total revenues, you absolutely need to read and take note of the following:

Know Your Customer

You should be able to close your eyes and see the person you most wish to attract as a client. It should be one specific type or group of people. It doesn’t mean you can’t or won’t service other people with other goals but the specialist is always sought out and looked upon as much more valuable.

Under Promise and Over Deliver

Personal training has caught on, I think in my small city someone recently told me there are more than 26 gyms, personal training centres, bootcamps, etc all competing for customers. Additionally there are the main stream weight loss centres, rec department activities and support groups. If you’re going to not just survive but thrive you better bring something special to the table. Now more than ever service is an opportunity for the small entrepreneur, large business continues to cut corners, pinch pennies and reduce the customers feeling of being valued. They’ve painted themselves into corner they have no other option than to compete on price and push for volume, customer loyalty is at an all time low.

Find ways to increase the feeling of being appreciated and valued, this may even exceed results in the statistics of customer retention.

Be a Ferrari

Since the time I was a boy cars have been a commodity that generally involved price haggling, a commodity that on the right day of the month with the right ability to negotiate you could really save big. As time has went on dealerships have narrowed this ability to haggle more and more, and rightly so, with so much price fluctuation it must have been extremely difficult to really have accurate long term business planning. Now look at high end cars, there’s never been an ability to haggle, there’s never been compromise, they are and always have been expensive and if you didn’t like the price you didn’t buy because they were confident in the value they brought to the table.

Every truly successful personal trainer will find their own way to be like Ferrari, you don’t need to be the cheapest, you don’t need to worry about your competition’s price what you need to be is confident in what you bring to the table. If you can consistently deliver what you say you will you will find people willing to buy your service (within reason of course.)

Create Faster

I forget what book it was that I read an excerpt of a conversation with Ray Kroc. Someone was asking him if he was frustrated by other companies that copied or duplicated McDonalds. He responded, “no we simply create faster.”

I’ve faced everything from people stealing documents, copying my business, copying and pasting my website, marketing campaigns, even my fundraisers. It’s frustrating to say the least, and hard not to become emotional, but the truth is the answer is to be like Ray Kroc. Whether it’s dealing with competition or evolving economic conditions being able to “create faster” or rapidly evolve and adapt will be critical to your long term success. Success as a personal trainer is based on lifelong learning and the ability to create a unique selling proposition for your potential customers. Continually strive to offer something unique and you will never really have any competition.

Continually Give to Others

This may seem obvious, for without true compassion and giving it will be nearly impossible to consistently help your clients, but you mustn’t stop there. Give to others in your community, share your marketing successes with other businesses, communicate with other fitness professionals outside of your immediate area, form strategic partnerships and most importantly give us much of your wondrous fitness knowledge away as possible. Write articles, blogs and Facebook posts that enrich people’s lives and allow them to learn. Anything you do to improve someone else’s life always has a cumulative affect on your own it’s like being able to invest every dollar you every made in a totally secure high yielding investment.

Maybe if you’ve just finished reading this it all seems obvious but I challenge you to put that to the test, spend the next 30 minutes detailing each of these areas in your own business, what you are doing, how you are doing it, and any new idea on how you can make it better. I guarantee you will come up with one new idea that has the potential to dramatically change your business.

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The Value of Multiple Mediums

Published by on September 27, 2011 | Leave a response

Ever feel like you get shiny object syndrome? You know what I mean, where this new idea comes along and you jump at it, and then another idea so you jump over there.

It sort of seems to me that a lot of the fitness professionals I’ve met seem to organize their fitness marketing this way. Heck, even I’ve been guilty of this.

If you’re going to make a career in this industry I hope this will help you both acknowledge a flaw in your fitness marketing strategy as well as give you some direction on how to correct it.

Nearly five years ago now, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I started to meet, read and follow some of the most successful marketers in the fitness industry. I learned a lot from them especially about building lists and using email marketing with tools like iContact, 1shoppingcart and FitPro Newsletter (which after failing to keep a newsletter consistently on track for longer than a month I am so thankful for FitPro and it’s done-for-you content.)

Soon email marketing became a really prominent part of my overall fitness marketing strategy, and it was incredibly successful, but ultimately it’s very flawed. You see, most commonly fitness professionals get stuck in what I call the “desperation loop.” The desperation loop is where you realize you need clients (generally because you might be financially strapped or seeing your income decline) so you scramble to create some sort of aggressive, lowcost promotion to attract clients.

If things go well you attract a bunch of clients and life is good, you’re busy so your attention to future marketing wanes and you carry on until again you realize, due to financial distress, you need more clients.

Now, in a city, a solo trainer could likely do this for years. In fact I did. But why would you if you only knew better? Your fitness marketing strategy needs to become just as regimented, calculated and methodical as the training and nutritional habits you are teaching your clients, and for the same reason, synergism.

There is no doubt that when you utilize basic forms of marketing on an ongoing basis (things like classifieds, lead boxes, strategic partnerships, business cards, brochures, posters) and combine that with your focused efforts (high value email, direct mail, addressed mail offers at periodical times) and then wrap them together with branding and awareness efforts (like black signs, sandwich boards, lawn signs, radio campaigns, bus benches and so on) you have a system that generates a predictable, sustainable, profitable, long term business.

Now I know if you’re a solo trainer or perhaps even have a small team or studio the challenges of managing a fitness marketing budget, it’s easy to spend thousands of dollars with little to no return, so start small. If you do a little searching you may find that large corporations will often spend 8-10% of total revenues on marketing, we’ve never done this with One-to-1, and likely never will, however this might give you a place to start, you might set a goal of setting 5% of total revenue aside for marketing.

Start with what costs the least and build a foundation, set a target to create custom lead boxes for your business and have 30 or more placed within your community. This can provide a slow steady trickle of leads to your business as well provide a very inexpensive method of branding.

Use online classified like kijiji or craigslist and just make it a habit to consistently post ads on certain days of the week.

Leave cards and brochures with trusted colleagues and then utilize all this extra awareness with targeted email and addressed mail campaigns. When you can deliver someone an offer that also is exposed to your name and image sometime and somewhere else during their day you increase the chance of them buying, this is what synergistic marketing is all about.

Start small and as revenues grow so will your marketing budget allowing you to utilize more expensive mediums and for a greater overlap of campaigns. Just pull out a calendar and start blocking of days and weeks for ideas that you can run now, this is way easier than you think (it just feels intimidating so don’t think, do.)

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List Explosion, Ethical Marketing?

List Explosion, Ethical Marketing?

Published by on September 20, 2011 | 2 Responses

%image_alt%This post on very viable personal trainer marketing might raise a few eyebrows and ruffle a few feathers.

Recently I learned of an amazing new strategy of adding 100s of new contacts to my list in minutes using Facebook and Yahoo. The prospect of this could potentially generate thousands of dollars of revenue instantly for anyone ready to run an email campaign for gaining clients or selling an information or internet product.

Naturally I was instantly thrilled and excited about this, afterall, having an edge, an opportunity to dramatically grow your business is always exciting. So I’m going to share it with you.

If you goto Yahoo.com and set up a new email address there is an option that will allow you to import your contacts, one of the ways you can do this is to import all of your friends from Facebook. Once that’s done there is an option to export all of your contacts to a spreadsheet, from there they could be added to your favourite email marketing software like Aweber, iContact or what I use; FitPro Newsletter.

Presto, you could add as much as 5000 new contacts in just minutes.

But wait a minute…

%image_alt%Is this ethical? How will these contacts respond? If they respond negatively will they still buy?

Truth is I started to listen to the reports of others that have done this, some were bad, some were really bad, some were not so bad, but very few were extremely positive.

None the less, any diligent marketer knows you’re going to face a few haters along the road to success, so what.

But…

The more I began to think about it the less I liked it, maybe it’s because I’ve been so immersed in Books like Delivering Happiness and Pour Your Heart Into It that talk about company culture, core values and beliefs that I just really didn’t feel comfortable with the idea exploiting what Facebook was originally intended to do…socially connect people.

Everything I’ve learned about effective marketing really comes down to a basic fundamental that I continually try to stand by, treat others I as I hope to be treated, and always try to over deliver.

Ultimately I just didn’t feel this strategy fit my core values for marketing, and it really got me thinking about all the crazy marketing things I have tried and the marketing that we presently offer and will offer in the future.

As things continue to move at lightspeed, and as service seems to fall lower and lower on the list of large corporate values I think this becomes an even bigger opportunity for the small entrepreneur. It’s easy to be distracted and dissuaded from your core values, it’s easy to walk on or cross over the line at times so I urge you to review, assess and re-evaluate often your own practices.

I’d love to hear your comments.

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Dealing with Burnout

Published by on August 30, 2011 | 1 Response

%image_alt%Does this ever sound familiar?

You learn something new about your business, something you didn’t think was possible, or something that seems so simple you can’t believe you didn’t think of it sooner. You make a plan, you dive right in, you work, work, work and achieve massive results.

At some point you determine you need a break, maybe a day or two of down time, perhaps a short vacation. When you return you find it hard to get going again, you feel distracted, discouraged, frustrated and begin to feel the weight of self-doubt.

I think if you’re an entrepreneur this is inevitable.

Part of what makes you an entrepreneur is that the spark of inspiration can grip you, it can take you places you never thought possible allow you to work long hours and just be engaged in something with absolute passion. Quickly though the scales of burnout can shift leaving you feeling overwhelmed to just plain uninterested.

In an effort to avoid this burnout (or at least deal with it as quickly as possible) here’s what I recommend you do.

1)      Set defined work hours, when the end of the day comes try to truly make it the end of the day go do something that get’s your mind off work.

2)      Each evening before going to sleep try to set a priority list for the next day, I recommend using a small scrap of paper and writing down 3 things to get done. No more than 3 or procrastination and indecision can become a problem. As long as you get something crossed off your list each day you will often still retain a sense of accomplishment or that the work day had value.

3)      Plan frequent getaways, even just a weekend. Most importantly avoid the urge to “just take a nice relaxing weekend at home.” Believe me this is one of my favourite things to do and we have a beautiful home but if you’re an entrepreneur you likely do some work at home and by Sunday afternoon (or sooner) you’ve already begun to think about the work week ahead. A relaxing weekend at home is never as fulfilling as being away seeing or doing something out of the norm and truly leaving your work week environment behind.

4)      Set defined times for personal development. For me I start my weekend early and try to engage in personal development every Friday afternoon. The more continually you keep learning the more you will find yourself inspired with new ideas and a sense of new energy for whatever you are passionate about (hopefully growing your business.)

5)      Get an assistant, seriously. I was resistant to hiring an assistant but the moment you have one you realize just how valuable they are. Your job changes, you have a responsibility to yourself to find things for them to do, you have a responsibility to them to keep their role valuable and engaging. I think as creative people entrepreneurs more often than not struggle with implementation having someone I can trust and delegate to has massively improved my speed of implementation and the amount of work I can complete with far less stress.

Remember times of burnout or disinterest are normal its how quickly you can get past them that will have a dramatic impact on your continual success. I hope you’ve found this helpful and I’d love to hear your comments.

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Remember It’s About the Numbers

Published by on August 23, 2011 | Leave a response

%image_alt%So last week I ran an email referral contest to generate new names and leads for my mailing list. I’d avoided this contest for months because I didn’t like the greyness of it in association to privacy (something I take very seriously.)

Now ultimately I opted to run this contest because of the success of colleagues in other areas, some have gained thousands of emails in just a week. It is a given that a number of the emails received won’t be viable customers but even if 10% are, it’s often a very winning venture.

I do and have tracked just about everything in any way I possibly can. A number of things I’ve overcomplicated because of my hunger for understanding and information (and have now eliminated once I’ve gained that understanding.) At one point I could tell exactly how much it cost on average to generate an email address from a radio, newspaper, online classified or a Facebook PPC ad in my area. Without a doubt I can tell you that the results typically achieved with the email referral campaign would be the equivalent of spending thousands of dollars in these other mediums.

Anyways…

I’ve felt August to be an especially great time to run an email referral campaign, often sales are a little better than July but still not up to par with the school months where everyone has regular schedules. Leading into September it only makes sense to expand your list in an effort to have a wider audience to educate in the fall and hopefully if enough value is provided turn them into paying customers.

Now additionally a few of my coaching clients have been running this same contest at the same time. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, I always find it interesting when I have a heavy week of emailing, or a campaign that some people don’t like the reaction you sometimes get. You know what I mean the….

STOP %$^KING EMAILING ME

When all they had to do was click the unsubscribe link at the bottom. Now I don’t know about you but I don’t enjoy negative feedback from my audience, for more than seven years I’ve written countless articles for newspapers, websites, blogs, etc trying to educate people to lead a longer, healthier happier life. I receive many great comments like…

“Cabel You continue to selflessly provide some of the best info to your clients and friends. Once again, Thankyou for your e-mails.”

Yet still just like you the occasional hatemail seems to make me doubt it all. Mid way through the contest, I think after my 3rd broadcast for the week (low by internet marketing standards) I’d received about three such hatemails, it honestly made me apprehensive about sending the fourth, I felt bad.

I’ve had coaching clients that shut down promos because one person on a list of a thousand replied with something negatively, or others contact me in worry and question their current marketing objective because of the reaction of a couple of people out of hundreds.

Remember it’s about the numbers, negative constructive feedback is very valuable but negative general feedback is just a distraction don’t let it weaken you. Marketing is about behaviours, we can never really predict them so all we can do is quantify them, if you are ever doubting your initiative check your math to see if your doubts are simply an emotional reaction, if so get over it as quickly as possible and move on.

NOTE: I’m not an expert on privacy laws so I’m not sure where this falls in relation, but I truly believe in being very transparent so if you run a similar contest it’s critical to utilize good practice and send all the emails a welcome email explaining how you received their information and giving them a fair opportunity to opt-out immediately. Additionally bring real value to people, if you are asking for referrals you must truly believe in what you are providing. Recently I offered advice to someone that potentially saved them from a serious health concern, so much so their doctor made a point to thank me, these are the reasons you should be wanting these referrals so you can bring real value to the people that are referred to enrich their life whether they ever buy from you or not.

Below are the exact emails I sent, feel free to use them if you’d like to run a similar contest.

EMAIL #1: Mon

Subject line: hey…

Title: Win an IPAD2 this Friday!

(Consider adding pic of iPad at store with clerk, caption win an iPad this Friday all the details in this email)

Hey, this is Cabel at One-to-1 Fitness, your local fitness expert

You’re getting this because you subscribed to my newsletter that I send out twice a month so you are either a client or a local resident. What I am looking to do is help more local residents get in the best
shape of their life. I realized my One-to1 Fitness Newsletter does that because of the feedback I’ve received from you.

So what I would like to do is help more Red Deer residents have access to my healthy articles, fitness tips and tasty recipes. So I’ve decided to hold a contest; what I want you to do is send me the email addresses of all your local friends, family and co-workers so that I can add them to my newsletter. Twice a month they can get awesome tips to looking and feeling great via their email. Oh, and don’t worry, I don’t ever share anyone’s email addresse, promote bs stuff or fill up their inboxes with junk. This is the same content rich newsletter that you get twice a month. As always, they can unsubscribe with a single click at any time.

Now to make this contest more interesting, I set the end date for this coming Friday, (Insert date) and I’m giving away 2 prizes – to the first and second place winners.

Prize one is an Ipad2 to the person that sends me the most email addresses.

Prize two is 3 months of free group personal training and if you are an existing client we are going to add 3 months to your current Group PT program.

So here’s what I want you to do now. Go to your email contacts, hit reply to this email and send those emails on over to me and I’ll be keeping track to let you know if you win by this Friday.

Thank you so much,
Cabel

Email #2: (Wed)

subject line: Urgent Update!! (Notice the two exclamation marks 🙂

(Consider photo of Ipad again, top caption, Win an iPad this Friday, bottom details in this email, and the top 5 worst Starbucks drinks to order!)

Hey it’s Cabel again,

Wow! It’s been an overwhelming response & a very tight race with about 30 people contributing. Who’s it gonna be? Contest Ends: Friday @ Midnight!

Just wanted to let you know I spent a few minutes on the Starbucks website and I found the top five drinks that have the highest calories and here’s what they are.

1.Peppermint White Hot Chocolate 720 Cal

2.Iced Peppermint White Mocha 700 Cal

3. Mint Chocolatly Chip Frappucino 680 Cal

4.Tazoa Green Tea Frappucino 650 Cal

5. Eggnog Latte 630Cal

And because it should never be all bad news here are the 5 drinks with the lowest number of calories. J

1. Skinny Caramel Macchiato 140 Calories

2. Skinny Latte 130 Calories

3. Caffè Misto 110Cal

4. Frappuccino Light Blended Beverages 110 Cal

5. Unsweetened Brewed Coffee or Tazo Tea 0-5 Cal

If you go to Starbucks (like I know many of you do) you probably want to know if the drinks you choose are in the top fatty ones or the top low calorie ones.

And oh by the way…… Remember I am running that contest for referral emails because I want to help more Red Deer residents. Seriously we get so many positive comments about our free fitness newsletter and our new fitness magazine we know it helps people, please help us reach as many people as possible.

“Keep those emails coming, the best information I’ve seen anywhere and it all makes sense.” -Bob Fournier

So far it’s been overwhelming; a lot of people are sending me emails…the race for the IPad and the 3 months of Group PT is a tight race with about 30 people participating and I bet you are one of them. So if you want to be sure you win the first place iPad, just keep replying to this email and send me the email addresses of local friends, family and co-workers.

Remember to do before midnight on Friday. That’s when I turn into a pumpkin…err I mean is the deadline. I’m keeping score and will let you know who won the IPad and who won the 3 months of boot camp.

Have a great day everyone!

Yours in health,

Cabel McElderry

Director, One-to-1 Fitness

2009 Finalist for Small Business of the Year

Email #3  Thurs

subject line – I screwed up…(but am making good, time sensitive.)

Hey this is Cabel again,

I screwed up and I failed to let you know that I decided to make it 4 months of free Group PT for second place in the referral contest and not three. I made that decision on Wednesday due to the overwhelming response (we just really wanted to say thank you) when I emailed you but I failed to tell you. I raised the stakes from 3 months to 4 months for the second place prize. (We really want to help a lot of Red Deerians (is that even a word?) get access to newsletter for fitness
tips, recipes etc)

Remember they can unsubscribe anytime they want to and the more local residents you can help me reach, the more local residents will get in the best shape of their lives…and by the way it may ensure Red Deer stays of the Men’s Health Magazine’s list of top 10 fattest cities.

Did you know that statistically as many as 3 of 10 people in Alberta are considered obese and Alberta’s obesity rate is almost 20% higher than the national average?

So, here’s what you want to do, hit reply to this email and start helping your local friends and family stay in the 7 of 10 rather than the obese 3 of 10 in our population our totally free newsletter is a great place to start, that and the 100s of articles we publish and send out are really making a difference for some people.

Don’t worry we’ll send them a welcome email and they can unsubscribe with a single click anytime they choose, you have until tomorrow at midnight to do this to win the iPad and Group PT. Help us help Red Deer.

Yours in health,

Cabel McElderry

One-to-1 Fitness

Email #4. (Friday early)
subject line: Holy cow…

Do you love Booster Juice as much as I do? Unfortunately their smoothies can still be loaded with sugar, here are my top 4 personal rules when ordering a smoothie @booster juice below:

1. Ask for No Sorbet
2. Ask for No Fruit Juice
3. Ask for No regular yogurt
4. DO ask for extra berries, water, ice, milk, and maybe an extra
boost (i.e extra protein/energy)

Hope this helps:

100% Committed to your success!

Hey, I also just wanted to give you a heads up, tonight at midnight, Friday, the contest ends. There are over 10 people in the running for first place to win the IPad2 and about 8 people in the second place running to win the 4 months free Group PT. I want to help more Red Deer residents get in the best shape of their life. I want to add your friends, family and co-workers that are local to my fitness newsletter. So please send those email addresses to me and I will let you know this weekend once I do the math (it’s crazy hard when I run out of fingers…and toes…and toothpicks, to count that high 😛 You know personal trainers don’t count so well right?) who won the IPad2 and who won the 4 weeks of Group PT.

Yours in health

Cabel

PS. 1st and 4th place are only separated by 50 emails.

Friday #2)

re. Hey…a welcome email to your referrals

Hey, I had just a couple people raise concerns about sharing their friends emails with us, and you know i understand the way the world is today, so I wanted to send this to you so you know just how polite we are about people’s privacy.

Here’s what your friends and family will receive.

Subject line: Welcome (action required)

Hey, I’m Cabel McElderry from One-to-1 Fitness, Red Deer’s Top Fitness Expert.

You are getting this email because your friend, family or co-worker is either a client or a subscriber of our free fitness newsletter and magazine and cared enough that they suggested we send it to you also. Our newsletter and magazine is bi-monthly and is packed with healthy recipes, fitness tips, and cool fitness articles.

Now we totally respect your privacy which is why I’m sending this welcome email. For whatever reason you decide you don’t want to get this newsletter at the very bottom of this email, and all the emails I send
to you, is an unsubscribe button, just click it and you will never get this email from me again.

Otherwise, enjoy the emails that I send you, I think you’ll find the content very valuable in fact right below,
here is the first one.

Hope this helps you and many others in Red Deer look and feel amazing!

Cabel McElderry

Director, One-to-1 Fitness

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Welcome Alwyn Cosgrove

Published by on August 16, 2011 | Leave a response

As you know things have changed a lot for me in the last four years, thanks to many kind and gracious fitness professionals that have been willing to share their business success secrets with me. I’ve been able to move my career in a direction I never believed possible, in essence that’s what brought Profitable Personal Trainer into existence. My decision to begin writing and coaching was a result of the desire to want to pass on what’s been given to me by other fitness professionals to many more in hopes that we can help still more people live longer, healthier, happier lives.

Let me introduce Alwyn, another giving, well known fitness professional who was kind enough to share some words on just what happened that allowed his own career to change and grow. I know there are a number of people that read this blog that are where I once was, or where Alwyn once was and I remember how motivating it was for me to learn what made the difference for others. I hope this helps you with that next big step.

Committed to your success,

Cabel

Introducing Alwyn Cosgrove,

%image_alt%The turning point in my career came when I realized that everything I needed to know about the fitness profession, training people and running a business was already out there.

All I had to do was read it or listen to it. I then started to invest in myself and I’ve never stopped.

I decided in 1995 that I would take one training session’s worth of income each week and invest it in my own education. At that time I picked up 2 books per week and committed myself to reading them. If there was a seminar or educational event I attended that. At that time there were no Perform Better educational events – really there were only certifications – so in a short time I ended up with I think 17 certifications from various organizations. Every week I disciplined myself to read 2 books or watch a video (there were no DVD’s then!) or listen to an educational audio.

It all started when I read this quote-

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations – we fall to the level of our training” -Archilochus, Greek Soldier – and believed in it so much that it changed my direction

My goal was to learn one new thing per day — so that in a year I’d know 365 more things. That progressed to one hour of study per day – so I’d spend nine full 40-hour work weeks per year by comparison fully immersed in education.

I also started writing a 100 word summary on every training session I did – results, coaching cues that worked, exercise modifications etc. I averaged around 35 sessions per week at the time – so at the end of one year – I had close to a 200,000 word thesis on training and coaching methodology. Then, different strength coaches and rehab specialists started holding seminars. I attended everyone’s events (and actually started hosting them for additional events).

Around about the time we opened our gym I had a realization. As a trainer, I could get anyone better results with my programming and my instruction than they could on their own. I recognized that I became a black belt martial artist because of my instructors programming and instruction, better than I could on my own.

“All wealthy top achievers have coaches” – James Malinchak

So it hit me – it was time to move beyond self-education and actually hire coaches for my business. All aspects of my business. Coaches who could really fast-track my business progress and get me to the next level faster. And as a direct result of that decision – Results Fitness is one of the most successful fitness businesses in the country.

You see coaches help with a lot of things. Most goal setting programs work something like this (from the book: The Secret Code of Success):

1. Set goals (know what you want)

2. Take action towards your goals

3. Evaluate your progress

4. Adjust the approach based on your evaluation

The problem with that – is that’s not how it works for most people in the real world — here’s pretty much what happens:

1. The Fog (you have no clarity – no idea of what you truly want)

2. Treadmilling (you’re busy – really busy – but you aren’t actually moving forwards)

3. Feel like a failure (as you didn’t get any closer to your goals)

4. Try again (hoping that doing the same thing over and over will somehow lead to different results)

Hiring a coach helps figure out EXACTLY what you want – and provides ACTION steps to get you closer to that.

The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone in this field is to continually invest in yourself. Education is the single biggest difference maker in any field. Investing in yourself never fails to reap big rewards.

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