by cabelmcelderry | Aug 16, 2011 | Personal Training Business Tips, Success Mindset
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,
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.
by cabelmcelderry | Jul 6, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips
Tim knows his marketing math, check out his results.
It’s amazing how much has changed in the last 4 years. Going from a struggling solo trainer to owning a 7 figure studio, from training people to training trainers and trying to manage, teach and motivate them to work together to outperform and avoid the pitfalls that seemingly all trainers make.
What I’ve come to realize is that business is continually just one big mathematical equation, today I’m going to try to shed light on this, to share an idea with you that you past, present and future can be evaluated, planned and predicted with simple math.
Eventually if you read enough business books or talk to enough business people you’ll hear the term KPI or Key Performance Indicators. Every business has them, the handful of vital components that statistically and predictably explain your business revenues in the past months or can predict with accuracy what they will be in the future.
Some of the most notable would be the size of our audience, the number of new potential clients each month and the number of actual new clients each month. These are often referred to as prospects, leads and converts. Do you know the number of prospects leads and converts of your own business? If not this should be a top priority for you to learn or track. (Search for sales report, or set, show, close for more information on tracking.)
Based on my own experience I’m going to give you some numbers which you may use as goals and targets or simply at least for a point of illustration. Your audience will vary dependent upon the size of your email list, or the number of pieces for a direct or addressed mail campaign, or the listeners of a radio audience, etc. As for leads you should be striving to generate at least 1-2 per business day or 20-30 people that inquire or ask about your services. From there the question is how many people can you convert to paying customers? If this number is below 50% improving this should be your biggest and top priority as you strive for a benchmark average of 80% conversion.
How big do you want your business to be? How much monthly revenue do you wish to generate? Do the math.
Desired monthly revenue / amount of average monthly purpose = total required # of clients for desired monthly revenue. (Let’s say this works out to 100.)
For easy numbers let’s say you’re closing only 50% of the interested leads or potential clients. This means to reach our desired revenue we need to reach 200 prospects. If we could hit our benchmark of about 1-2 leads per business day we’ll need approximately 6-7 months to reach the required number of leads to achieve our desired income.
So how do we generate the leads?
Well on average most marketing mediums have about a 3-4% response rate. This means if our audience was about 100 people a well designed message and offer should attract on average 3-4 people who will want to know more about our services, or 3-4 leads ultimately becoming 1-2 new clients.
So here’s where we start doing some math. 200 is 4% of 5000, we can safely assume to acquire 100 paying clients at a 50% close ratio we’ll need to reach an audience of approximately 5000-7500 people or about 850-1100 per month to reach our goal in 6-7 months. (Comparatively if we could reach that benchmark average of an 80% close ratio this number drops to 3100-4500 people.)
As we break it down even further we could consider we somehow need to find approximately 200-300 people per week that have any sort of connection to health, wellness, or image consciousness and to somehow get them a message. Does this seem like a daunting task? It doesn’t have to be.
Here are 6 ways you can reach your audience each week:
1) Do you have an email list? A facebook fanpage? If not now is a great time to start, build a mailing list by sharing quality information with people like blog posts, or an email newsletter like FitPro Newsletter, etc. Ask past and present clients to refer their friends and build this list. You shouldn’t be pitching offers to your email list every time you mail them but after providing about 3-4 items of value it’s time to make an offer. So if you send out 4 blog posts per month you’ve certainly earned the opportunity to give them an offer once per month.
2) Where can you find a gathering of people you might talk to? Could you talk to 50 people per week? At the mall, farmers market, park, or a lunch and learn? This could easily add up to another 200 people for your required monthly audience.
3) Those pesky lead boxes. Every 4 names in a lead box you can potentially assume that the equivalent of 100 people of your audience looked at it. How many boxes would you need to get just 4 names per week? This could easily account for almost half of your required monthly audience.
4) Direct mail or addressed mail. Canada Post allows you to pick postal codes of desired neighbourhoods; you can easily dictate how many pieces you send. This can be a great way to top up your audience reach a few times per year.
5) Endorsed letters. Who loves you? Would your accountant, lawyer, real estate agent send a letter on your behalf telling their clients how great they think you are? Maybe you should ask them, and here’s a tip, write the letter for them.
6) Referrals. Your clients love you, when people find good value they like to tell others, encourage them with incentives and deadlines this can easily add up and bolster your audience reach.
My point is when you think about it it’s not that hard to find people to talk to, most of us are just generally way too sensitive to the people that say no leading us to not pursue enough people. Maybe now that you understand the math you will be more resilient and persistent.
The application of this will have a staggering result, I know this because it’s one of the key KPIs in our business, it’s one of the primary ways we do all of our planning and have maintained steady growth through all four of the previous years. With cashflow planning you can see how you can even calculate months in advance how much money you may need to spend on marketing to reach your goals and exactly what you need the results to be.
by cabelmcelderry | Jun 7, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training
An amazing reason to continue to help other trainers.
Yesterday afternoon I received the text I’ve attached to this post. My coaching client Sean out in Vancouver crossed the $100,000 threshold, what an amazing feeling this must be for him. In just 5 months Sean went from 3 personal training clients buying a handful of sessions at a time to building a real business boasting reoccurring contract revenue to the tune of over $100,000 annually. He’s quickly outgrown his schedule to the point where he has had to hire trainers and become more focused on systems, marketing and handling the rigours of continual growth. Not bad what he did in 5 months only took me years by comparison, yet if you moved him to a brand new city tomorrow with no connections I bet he would agree that he could duplicate the same or greater success in the same or less time.
So how did he do it, some kind of magic? A whole bunch of luck? Is he a superior trainer? Truth is he’s just learned some of the simple secrets that allowed him to avoid the common pitfalls most trainers make.
If I was to move somewhere else and start brand new here’s what I would do (and in fact it is what I’m doing as I’m planning my next facility in a new market right now.)
1) I’d do some keyword research using the Google external keyword tool. Then based on search volumes, the number of results, and the consistency of those search results I’d get a general idea of some of the competition in my desired market.
2) I’d use wordpress with an optimized link structure and optimized content and setup a website and see how quickly I could rank in that new market.
3) I’d use FitPro Newsletter to create some high value low barrier opt-ins to begin building a list in that market.
4) I’d use Facebook advertising to drive more targeted traffic to my website as well as a Facebook fanpage with a customized optin to build my list even faster with the smallest budget possible.
5) Next I’d head there and setup a bootcamp which I’d fill with human billboards from free online classified ads.
6) At the same time I’d visit many local businesses and offer free lunch seminars to establish myself as the local expert, at the same time I’d offer them a trial of my bootcamp.
7) Once I had 20 human billboards I’d begin an email referral contest and build my list even faster.
8) Then I’d start an email marketing program using high value low dollar promotions to enrol a large volume of people.
9) At first contact I’d begin using my 3 Point Conversion strategy to convert them to paying EFT clients.
10) Now with an immediate base of revenue to offset some operating costs I’d be looking for a brick and mortar building to setup shop in so I was no longer restricted by weather, time or anything else.
11) Once setup in the building I’d begin using resources like www.infocanada.ca to run addressed mail campaigns or selecting the wealthiest communities and run direct mail campaigns.
Maybe this sounds easier than it is or more likely we make it more difficult by letting our own fears or the ideas of “waiting for the right moment” get in the way.
The truth is it’s far easier to succeed than you think and the two biggest factors are:
- How fast can you implement and execute?
- Stick to the simple things they are always the better ones in the long run.
Today Erik at www.FitnessBusinessInterviews.com published an interview we did a while back, it pretty leaves no stone unturned about how I built my business and how you can too.
Click here to watch the interview.
by cabelmcelderry | May 10, 2011 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training
No I’m not confused trying to explain the inner workings of either basketball or football but rather going to provide you a whole simple system that can fuel your personal trainer marketing engine.
As you know Bedros Keuilian has been my mentor for a number of years, recently he was in Calgary and we put on a business building workshop together for fitness professionals. In his usual fashion he left inspired and came up with something cool to give back to the fitness industry.
On his way home he crafted an awesome new client getting email series, the 28 Day Flat Belly Formula.
To compliment that program and his others that many of us have used with great success (The 14 Day Fat Flush and the 21 Day Rapid Fat Loss Program) I wanted to share with you the sales and conversion strategy we use with massive success at One-to-1 Fitness. (HINT: Bookmark the links above and this post so you can refer back to them any time you need to run a massive revenue generating promo.)
Personal trainers are often afraid to give away an extended period of service for a deep discount or no cost but if you truly understand and have a clear path to conversion than you will realize high value offers are not really discounted or free but rather are a deferred payment plan which can make consistent aggressive personal trainer marketing very cost effective.
Any time you sell or provide a high value discounted trial offer, before you even run the campaign you should develop your 3 Point Conversion strategy. This will work for pretty much any campaign in any medium. By now you better know what EFT is, and you realize that growing your EFT is the gateway to greatness, so naturally every campaign really has one final business objective: a larger EFT. (Of course service, value to the customer, etc should go without saying.)
In a 3 Point Conversion strategy the goal is to aggressively convert upon the first meeting and if that’s not possible to set the foundation and rapport with the prospect that conversion is practically assumed. This is not a pushy sales tactic, it is always win-win in an effort to be the assistant buyer that ensures people feel comfortable enough with you, know that you have their best interests at heart all in the name of being able to make a difficult decision or avoid procrastination any longer.
Conversion Point 1: The Consult Offer – We have achieved about 80% or more of our conversion on any promotion before our clients have even completed a workout in any trial program. If your offer has attracted prospects to inquire about your service it obviously provided enough value to overcome their fears of whether they trust you or not. Through the use of a meeting that helps the prospect become more aware of their emotional connection to their goals it likely won’t take them long to realize that the trial offer is not going to allow them to reach their goals. At this point you’ve also spent the least amount of time or investment on the prospect, if they are to make a long term commitment to you today you have the greatest amount of profitability. There is a strong win-win for you and the prospect to form a long term relationship at this point; the missing ingredient is trust. In a effort to make up for the missing trust this is where you should be providing the largest amount of additional value and the most emphasis on risk reversal to simply overcome the trust barrier with a “deal they can’t refuse.”
If this at all seems more difficult than it seems think about the last major items you bought as a consumer and the time it took you to make that decision. At some point we’ve all been sold faster than usual by a salesperson that was genuine, sincere and just helped us realize if we wanted to reach our goals we needed to act now.
So here is the premise of the consult deal:
Trade your whatever deal you came in today for this better deal. (ex. 10 class for 10 bucks, trade for first month at $14 then auto billing at 10-15% off normal rates) and you really want to add any bonus you can provide at no cost to you. Strategic business alliances work really well for this, tanning programs, haircuts, dollar value discounts on complimentary services, gift cards, trades, etc. The goal is to add about 2-3X the value of the desired monthly commitment. For example if I want them to pay $200/month I would try to provide a total value of $400-600 of extra value in this first offer.
Conversion Point 2: The Feedback call – If they don’t convert at the consult don’t worry, it simply means in spite of the extra value they still don’t know you or trust that you and your services are the answer and the extra value wasn’t enough to overcome that to the point that they were comfortable to take a chance that day. This is not uncommon in our consumerist society because we are all faced but so much advertising in an attempt to relieve us of our precious disposable dollars, once bitten twice shy.
Those that don’t convert at consult should start right into the trial program, and you should make every effort to provide your best possible service to build as much rapport with them as possible. At a little over half way through the trial you (better yet an assistant) should call them and ask what they love the program. You should always be happy to receive either positive or negative feedback, though negative may not help with converting that client to a long term EFT program it will provide even more valuable information to improve your product.
When the client gives you their positive feedback they’ve now put themselves in a positive state of mind in relation to thinking of your services this is your chance to remind them that they are not likely to reach their goals or experience the full benefits of the program during the trial.
At this point you ask them if they’d like to get on board, explain that many others jumped on board at the beginning of the program (which will be true based on our results) and as a result they can still get an amazing deal but spots are filling up. This offer should be similar to the first one but with about 1/3 less additional value. I recommend keeping any price point reductions the same as the initial offer but decrease the amount of the additional value offered accordingly. When met with resistance, see the TOP SECRET close at the end.
Conversion Point 3: The End of the Road – Anyone who didn’t yet convert at conversion point 2 should continue in the program of course, continue to do everything you can to provide them the best possible service. The last offer will place them in a position of a fear of loss, from which if they still don’t convert you should use any information you’ve gathered during the trial to overcome possible objections for time, price, or services. The final conversion process is best handled in a “near end of program results consultation.”
Again begin by asking what they loved about the program, once they have affirmed they have enjoyed and found value in the program create the fear of loss with the following scarcity type of script:
“Well you’re almost done, my promo spots have really filled up, I have only 2 spots left, I know you’ve been doing awesome, you should stay. I can save you $50 off your next month and give you 10% off my regular rates but only if you commit today as I can only promo these 2 more spots.” The deal is now not quite as strong as Conversion Point 1 or 2, the point is to get them a little remorseful that they should have committed sooner when all the extra value was provided as they now realize they do trust you and have seen value in your service first hand.
And here is the TOP SECRET CLOSE that you should be ready to use at any of the 3 conversion points that almost guarantees conversion.
If met with resistance bust out the good guy deal, Conversion Point 1, though it contains the highest value it should also be an offer you can live with at any point during this process. If it’s not I highly suggest adjusting your rates or building more strategic relationships to ensure you can provide all that additional value without sacrificing profitability.
“Well I am not supposed to do this, but I’ll tell you want, because your awesome I will give you the first offer today (Conversion Point 1() but you must get on board today, is that cool?”
Suddenly the relief from fear of loss that they should have jumped sooner puts the prospect at total ease and you both win. They reward you with their business and a bigger EFT and you reward them with an awesome experience, great value and dynamite results.
That’s it, the super simplified system for 3 Point Conversion, just rinse and repeat with all your promos and you’ll see why there are no free programs just powerful deferred payment plans.
by cabelmcelderry | May 3, 2011 | Personal Trainer Certification, Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training, Success Mindset
What a weekend!
Well if you missed out on Saturday’s Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop I wanted to give you a recap.
Bedros Keuilian is one of the world's leading fitness marketing experts and has been my personal coach for over 3 years.
We were very fortunate to have North America’s top fitness business coach Bedros Keuilian in Calgary; not only an extreme privilege but the guy barely made it, for some reason Canadian Immigration seemed to think the information he was bringing was so valuable that it was barely legal! (Well no not really but he always has some rather amusing experience at the border and secondary inspection. 🙂
So here’s how it went…
We started off with something critically important to you, your business and your clients…recognition.
Throughout the day 4 of my superstar coaching clients were recognized for their successes over these last months. Humairah & Faraz have learned so much about sales and client attraction it’s crazy, Chas has continued to streamline her facility from the depths of a monthly burn rate to reaching profitability, Tim has paid of 10s of thousands of dollars in debt in just month and Sean basically went from zero to nearly $100,000 in program sales in just 4 months, talk about action takers! (And silly me forgot to make sure we got pictures to save the moment, perhaps the individuals mentioned will proudly provide some with their award. J)
Bedros Keuilian killing it at Cabel's Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop
On to content…I started off by sharing the 5 key things that trainers need to understand and do in order to quickly reach the 6 figure mark and beyond, this applies whether you’ve been in the industry for years or were certified last weekend.
1) Don’t be afraid to fail, simply keep taking action!
- This means imperfect action is better than waiting too long to make it perfect.
- This means don’t screw around because you are afraid which leads you to being “busy” and kills action and all momentum.
- This means be 110% committed to your business but any new idea only needs to be 70% ready to put it into action, the best place to see and fix the problems is when they arise not sitting around guessing what they might be.
- This means success loves speed, outsource where possible so you can be doing more things
2) Identify “Your Most Likely Customer”
- This means completely describe them with a word picture as completely detailed as possible. And by that I mean try to explain exactly what you seen to your best friend if you drove by your customer standing in their own backyard watering their lawn. What type of clothing, what they enjoy, and every possible detail. Your marketing, promotions, everything needs to appear where your prospects frequent and in language that will both appeal and make sense to them. This is the basis of grassroots marketing and how you make a limited to no marketing dollars maximize their efforts.
3) Build a list and they will come.
- Seminars and strategic alliances with local businesses work amazingly well to quickly build a list and a reputation offline.
- Kijiji, Craigslist, Facebook and Adwords dominate for cost effectively finding new customers in your area, experimenting with these mediums can lead to quick and massive success.
- Leverage technology, use email software and the ability to schedule content delivery in advance to chunk tasks and make your day more efficient.
4) The More you give the more you get.
- This was the biggest take away in the 5 basics. After many years I didn’t get it either but there is one thing that has proved true over and over again, the most profitable and successful fitness professionals are the ones that get busy the fastest. The easiest way to get busy is to train people for free. Think about it your biggest immediate obstacle is no one knows you or your ability (and you may even doubt yourself) but even with that if you offerred 5-10 sessions free most people are likely to accept. You now have 5-10 opportunities to show them how great you are and why they should pay to continue, I think there is a far better chance in communicating this message in a free session than there is in a printed ad, a radio campaign or other generic marketing medium, don’t you agree? The bonus is that the people around you that suddenly see that you are really busy naturally assume you must be good at what you do because you suddenly were busy over night.
5) Nothing matters if you don’t take action.
- I know sounds repetitive but most people leave a seminar like this so inspired to wind up the next day feeling so overwelmed they don’t know where to begin, this point of fear (essentially or old same limiting mindset) prevents them from taking any action at all. So here’s what you need to do, go through your notes if you were there or pick 1-2 things from this article if you weren’t and write it on a small piece of paper. Make that your top tasks to start tomorrow, it’s only 2 things not much you can procrastinate on or avoid you must begin with one or the other. If you simply did this every day just imagine how many great things you could accomplish.
Next Bedros took over and really knocked it out of the park with helping you to understand and shift your mindset. Even though him and I have spent a great deal of time talking about these things and I’d even heard this content before for some reason this time it really hit me differently. The underlying message is that we will at some point always revert to our “scarcity mindset” or whatever that starting point is that proves to be the toughest obstacle when it comes to reaching our goals and dreams. It’s important to find away to continually develop your mindset of “abundance” by surrounding yourself with people you wish to emulate while limiting your exposure to people and situations that would have you return to your “scarcity mindset.”
If this all sounds like gibberish to you, you need to check out the audio/book Bedros highly recommended; Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. (Trust me it is captivatingly interesting and will change your life.
Once afternoon hit we took things in a more serious direction, I gave everyone a look at the in depth systems behind our million dollar training studio. How we manage everything from recruitment to compensation, automatic billing, planned and controlled growth, client retention, trainer retention evaluation, sales, marketing and so much more. The best part I explained how we can analyze the performance of our business in 10 minutes or less from anywhere in the world and then coach our team as needed.
I noticed a number of people experiencing the signs of mass writing cramp as they tried to document each detail, though for some this lead to confusion it illustrated the importance of defined systems as you grow and that the ceiling of your growth will only be dictated by the systems you apply.
To wrap up the day Bedros took everyone through his specialty, the path of ascension and how we go about attracting prospects and leads and the exact steps to convert them to paying clients. Not just scripts, tactics and ideas were shared but the exact breakdown and mechanics of building a full sales format system
I think all attendees would agree that it was impossible to have been at the Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop and NOT taken at least one thing away that could potential double, triple or massively blow up their business.
You guys are so awesome, what an amazing day I appreciate you all so much! Look forward to more, I’m currently looking to schedule 1-2 more live workshops before the end of 2011.
by cabelmcelderry | May 2, 2011 | Personal Trainer Certification, Personal Training Business Tips
Bedros Keuilian killing it at Cabel's Profitable Personal Trainer Workshop
Ok it’s Monday, it’s where the rubber hit th road. Everyone in attendance last Saturday was challenged with “Taking Massive Action” with renewed confidence, enthusiasim, knowledge and power. Now I’d like to know what was the first thing you did Monday morning? Where has your vision stretched? What do you see on the road before you and the future of your business?
Please post your comments below.
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.
