Personal Training Business Tips


Fear, Success, Math, Your Baby Steps

Fear, Success, Math, Your Baby Steps

%image_alt%As fitness professionals we’re so methodical, analytical and task oriented that sometimes we really do miss the forest for the tress. Combine that with a healthy does of entrepreneurial fear and it’s not hard to see why so many fitness professionals struggle to build a career that affords them the lifestyle they deserve. I know this was totally true for me for my first few years in the industry, wherever you are now stick with it, don’t give up, and keep an open mind.

At a recent mastermind meeting with some of my mentorship clients I was listening carefully as each detailed their situation. With this particular group most people were in the early stages of their career with young businesses. In many ways this is the most difficult stage, it’s seemingly difficult to get a big rock rolling, but when you do…

On Sunday I began thinking to myself of days gone by, when I was really struggling. At times I felt like I was never going to make it, in fact I was so broke on multiple occasions I tried to leave the industry three different times. I’d get down and out thinking it was impossible to earn a decent living doing what I loved to do, then I’d find the determination in a new plan only to fail again.

I’ve come to realize, and see it being repeated in many fitness professional (and truly entrepreneurs in general) that we seemed to overlook the simple details or don’t break it down to simple enough steps that just like many of our clients we become frustrated and ultimately fail.

Anyways, back to Sunday at the mastermind, as these thoughts and revelations dominated my mind and moved on to where I am now and the whirlwind of growth that has occurred in the last five years something dawned on me, something I wish I had thought of many years ago. Immediately I asked everyone to give me their attention to try a little exercise. (In many ways the thanks for the inspiration for this goes out to Craig Balantyne and his mathematical formula for success, which ironically I’m currently flying to go see as part of a mastermind I participate in.)

If you have any clients at all first I want you to calculate or consider what is the average amount of money each client spends with you each month and the amount of hours you contribute to provide that service. If you don’t have any clients currently the following information will likely serve as an example. I’m finding world wide whatever your currency is the average cost for personal training seems to be universally set around the $1/minute or $60/hr. Let’s consider that our most popular program at One-to-1 is 3 X week for 30 minutes or about 12 sessions a month or 6 hours of service, on average worldwide this will cost approximately $360.

Now I ask you, what is the first big landmark for you for total revenue? For most people I find it’s $100,000 to start but you can choose any number you choose.

Let me ask you a simple question, would you be willing to work 1 year of your life if I could guarantee you would generate $100,000 or more in revenue as a personal trainer for ever year after? If the answer is yes read on, if the answer is no than ask yourself how many months am I willing to commit to reach this goal?

If you, like most, would be willing to contribute the next 12 months to reaching your first landmark of $100,000 in personal training revenue than I’m excited to show you just how easy that can be.

%image_alt%$100,000 / 12 = $8,333/mth / $360 (client’s average spend price) = 23 clients paying you $360/mth will produce $100,000 in total revenue over 12 months. (The great news is once you exceed 23 you’re well on your way to much larger amounts of revenue.

Now since we have 12 months to reach our goal look how easy this becomes, this means that you only need to find 2 new clients each month to pay you $360/mth to be easily on track to reach your goal.

I can tell you from experience that almost any good trainer will convert half or more of all clients that come to them interested in their services, so this means you only need to meet 1 person a week that has an interest in reaching a fitness goal.

Do you think in 40 hours you could meet enough people to find 1 person that would be interested in hearing about your services? By now most of you should be thinking this sounds pretty easy.

I’d like to go further and ensure it really is easy.

Would you be willing to use Google to look up a meet-up group or other networking group in your area, attend a meeting this week and introduce yourself at the meeting as a trainer looking to provide a free assessment and training session to anyone interested?

Would you be willing to offer the same free assessment and training sessions as a free bonus to any network marketer to give to any of their new customers?

Will you take the time to write a short classified for Kijiji or Criagslist detailing your services and offer to give anyone interest a trial package of sessions or a money back guarantee if they try your services?

Will you take the time to contact friends on Facebook and ask them for referrals with similar trial offers?

Will you take the time to approach local businesses to offer to spend an hour with their staff and teach them valuable techniques for improving posture or improving nutritional habits?

Do you think you could meet just one person a week that would like to talk about reaching their fitness goals? Remember you only need half of them to take an interest in your services.

By now you should be thinking that meeting one person a week is so easy that you’re excited to consider what would happen if you met 3-4 instead. Anyone can do it, there are dozens of other great strategies equally as easy that can allow to generate even more prospects. Three of my top ones are explained in detail and available in my 3D Client Attraction product.

What are you waiting for? If you want to be a profitable personal trainer you will be!




Plan Backwards

Plan Backwards

%image_alt%Being an entrepreneur is tough. On any given day you’ll be bombarded with numerous things. It’s easy to become overwhelmed, feel unappreciated, overworked, and generally burnt out. When this happens it’s common to go through periods of frustration and even resentment toward the business you are usually passionate about. What’s worse is all these negative thoughts often cloud your mind so much that you forget the simple logic that continually propels you forward, each obstacle feels insurmountable and no matter how much effort you contribute you can’t seem to formulate a plan that makes sense.

These last couple years depending on where you are in the world have been especially difficult for many fitness professionals. Unpredictable economic conditions have produced cash flow and revenue problems for many. I’ve received a lot of questions lately about how I continue to reach and exceed my revenue targets; my answer is always the same plan backwards.

I’m going to walk you through this process the same way I’m looking at future facilities.

In my mind the goal for a new facility will be to reach $500,000 total revenue in 18 months or less. This means simply I need to reach $28,000 reoccurring revenue/month.  If it takes me 3 months of aggressive promotion to get near to this that number rises to $33,000/month to reach my 18 month goal.

The average cost of personal training in my area is around $1/minute or $60/hr. we’ll use these numbers for this illustration. Most of my clients train an average of 3 30 minute sessions/week, or an average cost of $360/month in this example.

$28000 / $360 = 92 clients. I have 90 days to find 92 clients or simply 31 clients per month, or 1 day.

What is your average closing ratio of new prospects? Meaning how many people that inquire become paying clients? My program manager regularly maintains 75% to 85% even with aggressive trial offers and promotions for continual lead generation.

For this example let’s use 60%, very attainable for a new trainer.

So to reach my 31 client target I will need to meet with 52 prospects each month, or 13/week.

When you set consultations or sales appointments how many show up? We find consistently in our area it’s at least 80%, usually more. So assuming the same is true in your area that means I need to set 63 appointments this month or 16 appointments per week.

This is your most important task, ask yourself how am I going to set 16 appointments per week? What means of promotion can I use that will allow me to talk to 16 new people about what I do?

When you become razor focused on this one objective (or break it down even further to 2 a day) you’ll be surprised at how much easier this becomes.

Ask your clients for referrals, use email promotion, use facebook ads, online classifieds, direct mail, door hangers, flyers, trade shows, run aggressive trial offers and short term fitness challenges, all you need is to be able to 2 people a day.

%image_alt%If you want to know what I do check out www.3dclientattraction.com these are the exact strategies that we’ve been using to hit our targets.

In just 90 days I could be easily on track to reach $500,000 in total revenue from scratch in 18 months or less. Having worked backwards is there any reason you couldn’t continue to apply this process and easily exceed that goal?

It’s so easy to be distracted by your emotions with all the unexpected things you must face each day. Take a minute, focus think about what you really want and then plan backwards, once you understand the baby steps it’s much easier than you think. Doesn’t this sound a lot like the same things you probably tell your training clients?

 





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.


Niche Your Passion

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.

____________________

%image_alt%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.

Joshua K. Neufeld, Neufitness.ca