Your Own Personal Training Studio – The Grass is Greener Part 3
In 2007 One-to-1 Fitness came to be, 2000 square feet, every penny we had to our names on the line and nothing but hopes, dreams and healthy dose of fear for the future. What a ride it has been, from 3 trainers and no staff, barely 100 appointments a week to now 11 trainers, 2 support staff, 2 massage therapists and routinely over 500 appointments a week in double the space. Last year I am proud to say we were a strong finalist for the local chamber awards for Small Business of the Year.
The question on your mind might be would I recommend opening your own studio to everyone? That’s an easy answer, no.
I wouldn’t change for a moment any decision we have made (even though there are plenty we could have done better or done without.) the experience we’ve gained at every step has been invaluable and will shape multiple new opportunities in the future.
The main advantages of owning your own studio are:
1) Leverage – You may now hopefully leverage your time and the time of others to produce bigger results, higher volume leading to greater sales and a very predictable income.
2) Flexibility – If you focus on building a proper business plan and work to systemize your business throughout you enjoy the flexibility of being away when you wish, possibly for extended periods, or being able to leave on a moment’s notice always knowing your clients will be taken care of.
3) Assets – All the money you have tied up in equipment, your regular volume of sales (if you use EFT) will provide value to financial institutions allowing you to continue to grow fast than you could without.
4) Income Potential – Within a system you now have the opportunity to earn significantly more income. To a degree your income potential is only limited by your ability to push the business forward but this potential also comes with a price, sometimes worry and responsibility.
5) Something Saleable – And of course the big goal for any business owner, someday being able to sell your product to someone else and finally enjoy the fruits of your labours monetarily.
Now before you go sign the lease on your studio location and open up shop don’t forget to review the potential obstacles in your way.
1) You are the last to eat – Heaven forbid business or the economy takes a down turn. As an employer you now have a responsibility to your staff all their needs must often be met before your own.
2) Does risk bother you? – Expect to sign general security agreements that tie every asset you own to the business, are you prepared to risk your home and every asset you own on your new venture?
3) Start up costs – Even a successful business will often owe its owners or shareholders a significant amount of money for years. Are you comfortable with the idea of tying up tens of thousands of dollars in your new venture?
4) Your success will be limited by the strength of your team. – Unfortunately your vision or opinion may not always be shared by others. Yes you are the boss but you can’t force anybody to do anything. Company culture is more important than you will ever know and not entirely in your control. How will you balance the social structure of a growing team?
5) You are the owner, manager, trainer, boss, crook, janitor, chief marketer, systems analyst, and nearly any other role, title or comment you can imagine. As soon as you apply director to your name you are the one that ever aspect of your business must matter the most to. To how clean your sinks and toilets are to when the vacuuming was last done, to how you will track and outpace rising employee costs (EI, CPP, holiday pay etc, on average every dollar you pay an employee will cost you 15-20 cents more. How money do you currently earn each month? Apply that math for a moment.), to customer service and quality control. Be prepared to make late night journeys for when the alarm goes off or the roof decides to leak, plan on dealing with any unhappy customer when someone makes a mistake, and be prepared to receive the least amount of appreciation.
Hmmm, after looking at just some of the aspects of the good and the bad how do you feel about the idea of owning your own personal training studio?
If you are now wondering, would Cabel do it all over again? The answer is a resounding yes, there are still far many more days I wake up excited about the potential before me than there are days I cringe in the corner in fear. Just be prepared for both!
Why I Think You Should Use WordPress
Whether you are a personal trainer or not you may find this post helpful when it comes to setting up your first website.
Just about every hosting company out there offers some kind of simple tool to quickly build an attractive website and maybe even have it operational in the next 60 minutes. Though I am not intensely familiar with all of these basic HTML editors I can tell you that their ease of use may seem appealing but over the long term they will require far more knowledge and time commitment to produce a website that works the way you want it to.
The problem with the HTML editors is they are not made to provide easy optimization for the less tech savvy individual. If you understand the ins and outs of website coding and optimization you can easily overcome this but I would still argue that WordPress will handle it easier, faster, and better. If you are not familiar with the term Search Engine Optimization understand that an optimized website will be more likely to be found on the first search page and will typically drive visitors to your website that you didn’t send there by word of mouth.
Personal trainer websites should be on wordpress in my opinion.
Using WordPress makes adding new pages and items to your website nearly as easy as writing an email. Visually it can be reconfigured with drag and drop widgets and only the smallest amount of direct HTML knowledge is really required.
Now when you combine WordPress with a number of powerful plugins it really goes to work for you. Starting with All in One SEO Pack you will be given the opportunity to give each new post a search engine crawler friendly keyword title, description and even a list of specific key words. Additionally you can also configure a number of options like to create meta tags from your post tags for instance. Meta tags are placed specifically for the search engine crawlers to read, identify and categorize your website and its content. None of these happen with a website builder included in most host packages unless you do it all manually.
Other plugins like SEO Images and SEO smart links will create automatic keyword links within your content, allow you to apply keyword titles to your images and so on. All these little things will likely go unnoticed to you for a time but you will see the effect they soon have in your site rank and its ability to generate traffic (ie. Potential customers) to you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There are thousands of plugins available and not just for better ranking but also for time saving features like posting video content as well as all kinds of elements to utilize social networking to its fullest.
In my opinion WordPress is far superior if your goal is to build a website that brings you customers rather than one you like the look of but nobody ever sees.
Personal Training Inside a Public Gym – The Grass is Greener Part 2
This scenario can take on many forms. In many ways the in the gym trainer may have the greatest opportunity to organize and grow their business in just about any direction. Initially most trainers will become employees of the gym. In this scenario they will dictate your hours, your dress, possibly how you run your programming, your session rates, your wage (or portion of the session rate) and if you sell they will likely dictate how you sell and how much you sell it for.
The business within a business model can be the most flexible with the least risk, though there is one drawback...control
Of all the training scenarios, you can count on this employee position being the lowest per hour rate. Now the lower rate is really not as bad as many may seem to think as essentially think of it like the income tax we all pay to cover the costs of the social programs we enjoy. In the world of the employee personal trainer the portion of the session rate retained by your employer affords you things like the following: in house marketing and lead attraction, all overhead and expenses to stock, maintain and clean the training areas, often liability insurance, independent sales that are hopefully better at closing clients than you are, operational systems, payment and debt collection and maybe even appointment booking. If you are a solo trainer trying to do all of this on your own you likely have some measure of appreciation as to how nice it might be to be able to rely on others to handle these items for you. The downside to being an employee is your employer of course would like to make as much profit as possible which also means it’s going to be the most difficult for you to drastically increase your earning potential in a short period of time.
Now the big advantage I see to working inside of a gym is for the entrepreneurial trainer. Within a franchise this is likely difficult to impossible, but in an independent gym after establishing yourself as an employee it’s time to talk to your employer. You may be able to negotiate a position where any clients you attract through your own marketing you can retain a much higher percentage of session rates. Most employers understand that quality people may not stay long term and this is a position where working for your own gain will also benefit them, far more than if you were to open your own business. Or you may try to negotiate control of the whole personal training department so you move to begin developing and managing the systems of that end of the business providing the business owner with a steady predictable income stream with little effort or risk. These situations provide varying amount of risk to yourself but also substantial reward to the business owner. In this situation you would have many of the benefits (and headaches) of having your own studio without the huge opening costs or fixed overhead of your own brick and mortar location. The business within a business model is likely one of the lowest risk and highest reward scenarios for any personal trainer, the one factor you may find too limiting is you are still operating within someone else’s environment and for the most part they will dictate how you run your business which can be a real challenge if you don’t see entirely eye to eye. Next week I will complete this series with my own experiences of running your own stand a lone training studio.
Happy Birthday Canada and a FREE Gift For You!
Another birthday for the greatest country in the world, and an oddball day off in the middle of the week. Today’s post will be short as today is an RnR day and should be for you too. However I figured since our great country is celebrating a birthday that is as good a reason as any to give some of you a gift.
Where would you like your business to go? What could you do today that will make a world of difference tomorrow? How much would it help to know now what some of the most successful people in the industry know?
Here’s what I’d like you to do, write down 5-6 pressing questions or concerns you have about your business and email them to me. In celebration of Canada day I will be awarding the 4 people who respond with the best questions with a 30 minute phone coaching session. We will record this call and you will get a copy of your call (and with the permission of the others) a copy of their calls also. 30 minutes is enough time to easily discuss multiple high income generating strategies, in fact with the right questions 30 minutes can easily change the whole picture of your business in the next 90 days.
Pretty simple, all you need to do is think about what are the 5-6 things in your business right now that you struggle or need help with and send them in. Deadline to enter is a week from today, July 8, 2010. If you don’t already have my email address simply submit through the contact form here. (Never post your email on your site, spammers love it when you do.)
The Grass is Greener on the Other Side – Part 1
The Grass Always Seems Greener on the Other Side
How much money does a personal trainer make? This is a common question, in fact how much money does a personal trainer make is one of the most popular internet search terms for our profession. I think many people finish their education and certification with the idea of earning immediate substantial income from the hobby that they have become so passionate about, often to be disappointed. Usually this disappointment can be validated with assumptions like, “if I worked in a gym I could easily get lots of clients and make more money.” Or, “if I owned my own studio I would make more money by employing other trainers.” This three part post is dedicated to helping you understand the differences between these scenarios and what it might mean for your personal training income.
The Solo Personal Trainer
Ok one of the biggest downfalls of being a personal trainer is the hours. The peak times are 5:00 AM – 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM – 9:00 PM. So be prepared to work a lot of split shifts early in your career. In my opinion if you are personal trainer in Canada you should never charge much less than $1/minute as your base session price. Sure you can offer promotions, packages and discounts but if your rate is much less than $1/min you are likely undervaluing yourself, are undereducated, and hurting the overall market for your services in your area. As a solo trainer you have the lowest amount of additional business expense but most trainers at this point also don’t realize the cost and need for business expenses such as marketing, materials, equipment, insurance, etc. It doesn’t take long to eat up a chunk of that base session rate, but the good news is compared to a trainer working for a gym or studio, or owning a bigger business of your own you should be able to place a much higher percentage of that hourly rate right into your pocket. The solo trainer hands down has the highest per hour earning potential for individual sessions, but of course that comes with a price.
As a solo trainer be prepared to wear a number of hats; you now have to be the chief marketer, salesman, administrator and heaven forbid, debt collector. You trade your higher wage for the support of a team which of course means your ability to attract and train clients may be lessened as you are tied up with other business duties. However if I have made this sound bleak it is my opinion that if you master all the strategies of Profitable Personal Training you can easily earn a six figure income as a solo personal trainer. Does that sound reasonable to you? You will be busy, a high income solo trainer will undoubtedly work 40-60 hours a week, you will maintain a strong point of independence and truly be your own boss. There is only one real drawback of this scenario if you ask me, you will not have the freedom to leave the business the same way if you could simply delegate tasks to others. Your ability to grow will be limited to the time and attention you can dedicate to your business day in and day out for as long as you can avoid burnout. Each time you take an extended absence you will have to come back and work that much harder to make up ground as no one is there to stoke the fire when you are away. For solo trainers with families, I highly recommend disability insurance. This is where most of you will start; the question is where will you go? I think it’s really important to understand the dynamics of all scenarios for proper business/career planning. Next week we’ll discuss what business inside of another business may look like.
Are You a Crappy Trainer? (15 Point Self Assessment)
How many of these things are you already doing well?
June and the summer months are some of the toughest months for many personal trainers. I’ve been receiving all kinds of emails from trainers asking what they need to do differently to survive these difficult months. In the main time we’ve had a near record breaking month at One-to-1 Fitness for new business, the formula is simpler than you think. Below is a 15 point checklist, read each one and then ask yourself if you are doing this effectively, if not spend a few minutes jotting down how you might implement this or do it better, commit to this for the next 60 days and by September you will never believe the summer is bad for personal training again.
- Always Build the List. Your most important marketing task for successful anything (in this case personal training) is the campaigns that build your list. The list is king, the bigger it the easier, and more importantly, the more predictable sales/client attraction is.
- Recognize and reward. Every living being on the face of the earth emotionally thrives on recognition and reward; we are hard wired for it. Recognize your clients and your staff as often as possible. Build a cult following by providing reward, this can be as simple as a thank you card or a big gold star.
- Remember that success likes speed. Don’t wait too long on ideas, develop a plan and take immediate action. As one idea or campaign blends to the next the momentum will carry you to massively grow your business.
- Continually ask for testimonials. Social proof will allow you to sell anything. Results are an incredibly powerful tool, share those results with others and your services will sell themselves.
- Get out of your comfort zone. Volunteer, join social clubs, attend networking functions, book free seminar sessions and lunch and learns. Try to talk to at least 10 new people in your community each day. Get out there and get known.
- Deliver, big time. Call your clients, see how they are doing. Email them or send them text messages. Remember you are building a relationship, strong client relationships will keep them with you forever. These little things provide so much additional value your clients will make you the talk of the town.
- Always be asking for referrals. Find subtle and creative ways to ask for referrals and make sure it’s always on your clients minds.
- Use email marketing for constant contact. Email marketing is one of the most powerful cost effective tools available to you (and why your list building is so important.) Keep your list warm by constantly providing them value through killer content. This maintains and elevates your expert status and ensures business longevity.
- Sell the lifestyle not the session. Selling packages of sessions is dead, automated monthly billing (EFT) is the key to success, get it in action immediately, and at first even as simple as post-dated cheques while you work through the steps with your bank.
- Use high value free programs and special repackage offers to quickly attract tonnes of new customers.
- Develop win-win relationships with local businesses and develop a large scale bonus program for clients and prospects. Use these bonuses and special offers to convert new prospects to new EFT agreements.
- Write specific goals. Just like you tell your clients set your own goals and then work backwards week by week to develop your plan to achieve that goal and hold yourself accountable.
- Don’t re-invent the wheel. Use the tools of others, attend conferences, get a coach, look at a franchise.
- Systemize everything. Think of each process like you are going to have to complete it a 100 times or more, develop a system around each action, process, or marketing campaign. Soon situations are just a repeat process and planning becomes what system to engage next. You will soon be able to see weeks and months ahead.
- Most importantly, never give up!
10 Ways to Get More Clients Right Now!
Based on the emails I’ve been getting I know I have a lot of brand new trainers reading my blog each week. That’s awesome because I still remember just how tough it was to get going with my personal training business and all the basic mistakes I made then. If you need more clients here are my top 10 ways as a new or experienced trainer that you can get more clients right now:
1) Be the trainer that everyone wants to hire. This may sound silly but to be honest one of the biggest problems we’ve had hiring trainers in our facility is they don’t come with the energetic personality you need to be super successful on your own. Each day has to be fun, your primary job is to be uplifting to the people around you and inspire them to commit to the practical magic you teach them.
2) Consistently ask for referrals, and offer referral rewards. This business is based on service and good service produces great word of mouth advertising. Be sure to subtly remind your clients that you really appreciate referrals or offer a referral contest 2-3 times per year.
3) Run real value free trial programs. Make people an offer they can’t refuse, commit to giving them 2 weeks for free or for $1. Show people really value and over deliver your enthusiasm and personality to build a raving fan base. These people become paying customers and bring others.
4) Use the Human Billboard program I learned from my good friend Steve Hochman. Offer people a free trial program and ask them to invite their friends, for each paying customer they refer give them more free training time. What could be better than free personal training after all?
5) Repackage your programs into short term rapid solutions for immediate problems. Ie. The 21 day Summer Tummy Solution. Use Kijiji and Facebook advertising to attract new targeted leads to these short term programs.
6) If you are currently training clients, call your old clients and create a special offer just for them. Don’t wait for them to call you, show genuine interest and get in touch. We’ve signed up over 30 clients in the last 30 days with 2 special packages just for previous clients.
7) Get out in the community schedule at least 1-2 speaker sessions a month for any office with more than 10 employees, a service club, a charitable organization, or anywhere you can find 10 or more people.
8) Immediately position yourself as a community expert, contact at least 2-3 complimentary type businesses each week. Offer to add the manager or key employee into one of your group programs. Provide a nice discount for remaining employees and over deliver. Hairstylists talk to 10-20 people a day wouldn’t you like them to be talking about you?
9) Use list builders on Kijiji and Facebook every week to grow your list and apply 2-step marketing methods to your list 1-2 times per month.
10) Use lead boxes in high traffic areas to increase your list even faster and improve response to 2-step marketing emails.
If you made it a priority to totally commit to applying even 4-6 of these points on an ongoing basis there is absolutely no reason you can’t be booked solid as a personal trainer in the next 30-60 days.
Basics of SEO Content
If you are a personal trainer your website is a key piece of fitness marketing strategy. But I’ve said that a million times. How you develop your website is also critical for effective personal trainer marketing. But then I’ve also said that numerous times. What I have not shown you so specifically yet is exactly how to optimize your content for your website.
Below is a sample of basic keyword optimization for each new article you post. Each new article should provide quality information and value as this is what attracts your readers. Now by ensuring you use your strong keywords strategically placed each new piece of value added content becomes another spoke in your fitness marketing wheel. Remember people come looking for answers, not prices, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help ensure they find your answers. If you are looking for a first page Google listing adding multiple optimized pages for each keyword will be a big step in the right direction.
The above is a headline and opening paragraph of an article written by one of my coaching clients for his developing website. I modified it by added and highlighting the keywords in the format I recommend.
The basics of optimizing your article:
- Include primary keywords in your title.
- Use your keywords again in the first sentence and again before the end of the first paragraph.
- Ideal density would be 3-6% for your keywords in the entire article. (I personally don’t worry about writing my articles this way as I will outsource this kind of optimization for my studio website.)
Your Marketing Calendar
People are interesting creatures, like cats and children we all have an innate curiosity and the need to wonder and celebrate. In a previous coaching group I had a chance to meet with ultra successful Canadian Fitness Internet Marketer Craig Ballantyne. I didn’t know what to make of Craig at first; he comes across as a pretty ultra serious guy. It didn’t take me long though to realize though he’s not only a great guy he’s super passionate about business and totally brilliant. One of the things he talked about that afternoon was your Marketing Calendar.
If you haven’t caught on by now a contact list is critically important for your fitness business, or any business for that matter. The second thing is you need to be in regular contact with them, well that’s all fine but what the heck do you talk about this week?
Craig had a brilliant idea, pick yourself up a calendar today and start to write all the birthdays for you, your family, colleagues, friends, favourite superstars, your pets, your anniversaries etc. Its funny these all become great reasons to unveil your next crazy hair brained idea to your list.
It sounds ridiculous, but remember that innate curiosity, as people we all live vicariously through each other. You don’t need to look any further than Facebook to see how wrapped up we are in each others lives.
The marketing calendar becomes a fun way to bridge the gap between content, sincerity and offer to the prospects on your mailing list.
How to get your old clients back
After over 19 years in the fitness industry personally I’ve had somewhere around 3000 one-on-one personal training clients. Sadly you will learn as I have that for most of your clients, even the ones that are really successful with the best of intentions, they will one day need you again. Now if you’ve provided a great experience they may remember you again, that is if a savy marketer doesn’t get to them first.
Your current and previous clients are what are known in sales as your “lowest hanging fruit.” Whether it’s now or in the past you have earned their trust and hopefully have a much stronger rapport than you would a complete stranger. Because of that rapport they are twice as likely to repeat buy from you than a brand new customer will be.
If you want a sure fire high conversion method of filling your training schedule today, call your old clients. However you need to have a solid high value offer to go with your call.
This is just one of many strategies my elite coaching clients use. Could a mentor help your business?
Here’s what we did that netted us a 75-85% conversion bringing our old clients back.
Our three year anniversary at One-to-1 Fitness was May 27; we used the idea of this celebratory day to encourage our old clients to come see us again. Rather than the normal celebratory drivel that costs you lot’s of money and gets you nothing we decided to instead invest in great people. I had my sales manager go through our old client files and pick out a whole pile of people he remembered, the ones he had the strongest rapport with. After looking at their previous goals we called them to “check up” on how they were doing maintaining their goals. Since most people slowly slip back we offered a solution, we gave them 2 weeks of training on us in our spiffy new small group training program. What’s important is we showed we genuinely cared because we contacted them and took the time to see what was important to them, we offered them something of high value, and created the appeal of a different experience than they previously had with us.
All of these people only previously knew us for our great one-on-one services. Now they had a select and limited opportunity to be part of a program that was a pile of fun in a small group setting and totally obligation free, they couldn’t lose; why not come and see some familiar faces? Of course we hyped all the new renos and such to, that never hurts. The best part is if you just provide the same killer service all the time, this program sells itself!
Bonus: The Insurance Policy
As always marketing is really about customer value, how you can provide over the top value and still find a way to make a little profit. For our conversion of this program we just sweetened the deal, gave everyone a nice short term price break (call it a signing bonus) and we used all the value adds from our partner businesses. (Each client received something like $500 in free bonuses, so much so it becomes a no brainer.)
Provide value, everyone wins! In summary remember these components:
- Always genuinely care, call and see how people are doing.
- Offer them something high value and have a reason for you offer, ours was our anniversary.
- Make the offer limited and provide scarcity, in our case we only had so many spots to fill and they were starting on a certain date. Push people to take immediate action.
- Don’t blow it by trying to convert too soon, provide real value.
- Have a high value conversion offer, make it a no brainer.
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