by cabelmcelderry | Apr 23, 2013 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Success Mindset
Do you use Facebook to grow your business?
Facebook, in my opinion, is one of the most robust marketing channels to quickly grow your business, and to automatically access a massive audience.
If you don’t have a fanpage for your business start one.
Once you start a fanpage it’s important you complete all areas. If you really want to set it up right I would really urge you to have a look at the Facebook Funnel by my good friend Josh Carter. (Josh is a highly trusted facebook expert in our industry and beyond.)
Once you have all areas complete it’s time to start your content stream. It’s critical you create a continual flow of interaction on your fanpage. It’s a real living, breathing community for your business.
Each day I’d commit to the following:
- At least one positive status update or point of interest to your community.
- At least one tip or piece of value for your audience.
- At least one positive comment or recent success about a client or someone you know relating to your business.
When you’re making posts on your fanpage it’s been proven time and time again that posting an image with your update provides a much greater amount of interaction.
The more interaction you can stimulate the more people who will visit your page and the greater potential you’ll have to use it as an automatic lead attraction source.
Now every few weeks I’d suggest you also post an optin, if you don’t know what an optin is this is something of value you’re offering your audience for free in exchange for their email address. Free reports, videos and ebooks are very common.
In addition to optins every few weeks you might also post short term offers in an effort to stimulate immediate contac with new prospects and of course sales. (Afterall there should be a purpose to our facebook time.)
Ok now here’s something really cool I finally learned (thank you Shawna Kaminski and maybe many of you already know this.)
Batch process your facebook. Seriously facebook is all about interruption, and they are so good at it. I know I need to do all this stuff I’ve mentioned on facebook but I’ve went through periods where I’ve been really consistent and not so consistent because I know I’m going to be distracted while I’m there and it saps my productivity.
You can now cue facebook posts in advance, at the bottom of your status box is a little (easily missed) link that will allow you to choose the year, month, day, hour, and minute you’d like your post to appear.
Eliminate one of the ultimate distractions by chunking this task and preparing days in advance so you don’t need to spend much time on facebook.
by cabelmcelderry | Apr 16, 2013 | Success Mindset
The summary of my success in the fitness industry as a trainer, entrepreneur and now a mentor is really a result of my failures. That’s not to say that we should dwell or focus on our failures but rather be able to acknowledge and accept them.
I can only speak for myself but I find it important to sometimes on a tough day list off some of my proudest moments, the shinning victories, or the milestones of what I’ve created. The need to do this usually comes when faced with a big challenge, one that may be plaguing me with a certain level of dissension, pain, or fear. When I do this I’m often marveled, finding it almost unbelievable and full of curiosity as to how things came to be. This reflection provides a measure of character reinforcement and a source of inspiration to face the fear.
Once that warm fuzzy feeling of invulnerability is achieved you may often notice the dark clouds on the horizon; attracted by the fear you may be feeling at present challenges. Within those dark clouds reside the marks of previous monumental disasters, your mistakes, your missteps, your failures.
If I can give one piece of advice today it’s to face your failures, review them in detail, and acknowledge and use them immediately as the powerful lessons they are. My biggest failures are my biggest lessons. Once I accept the failure I realize that if I break it down the resulting information allows me to leap forward farther than I ever could have if I hadn’t failed to begin with.
Here’s how I do it.
1) Identify the big ass problem. Usually this has strong emotional ties, it makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe embarrassed, frustrated, angry or all of the above.
2) Try to strip away the emotion, and much like a fire, try to determine the point of ignition. For example one of the biggest mistakes I ever made was trusting a client “friend” to give us a verbal estimate and offer to organize a renovation. This mistake found me in a position where tens of thousands of dollars were wasted and I was now facing expenditure three times the original amount to complete the project, and the need to find all new people to do it.
3) Review any available information related to the problem. As time goes on you get smarter, you track more things, you keep better records, generally as a result of previous failure.
4) Review any information you have, if you have none make a list of things that would be helpful to have now that the situation has occurred. This way should a similar thing occur you’d have an idea what may help.
5) Formulate a plan for next time or update current systems to influence a future outcome.
Don’t’ beat yourself up, or really try to solve a problem that already happened, just have a plan to avoid the same outcome in the future.
That’s, in many ways, one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned. If you’re solving problems you’re already one step behind. Work on altering future outcomes knowing you’ll face new situations.
No one likes to fail but it can be a valuable asset.
by cabelmcelderry | Mar 21, 2013 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Success Mindset
Why are you a fitness professional? I’m sure it’s because you want to change peoples lives, to help people feel better about themselves and to make a difference in one person or the world as we know it.
If your clients came to you with similar weight loss goals would that be good enough? I suspect it wouldn’t. If that puzzles you re-read the statement above and acknowledge now how general that statement really is.
Get passionate and declare a mission to grow your business.
Over the last few years we’ve had a huge push to establish strong team culture at One-to-1 Fitness. Not only is culture important for managing internal relationships that hold our team together but has also lead to the vision of our public mission that keeps all of us focused each day on growing the business and making a difference.
Our public mission is: Inspire more than 10,000 local individuals to reach their fitness and weight loss goals by 2015.
Now this is no easy task given that our whole city is just 86,000 people, but then who says all of these people have to be local? I don’t know how we will track this goal or if it’s something we can truly achieve, but we’ll try.
This message proves as a powerful descriptor for our marketing and more. For one there is no way we can train 10,000 people at One-to-1 Fitness. It forces us to go beyond our customer and ramp up our efforts to ensure the knowledge of what we do is available to our community. Things like our “3 Week Home Fat Loss Course” have become powerful opt-ins increasing our list and helping many in our community in their efforts to get in better shape.
On our marketing materials it leaves the impression of greater purpose to our prospects rather than just a sale.
A scientific study tested an idea of human behavior. Every day for a period a college student attempted to cut in a long line with no reason given. The reactions to this were very negative and even quite hostile. By comparison over the same length of time another student was asked to cut into the same line but prior to doing so asked the individuals providing the reason that they were really late and letting them in was going to save them grief or personal pain. By comparison the individual that provided the reason was allowed to cut in line more often than not.
Our basic behavior is to accept a reason, our acceptance helps to breakdown some of the natural walls associated with sales or promotion.
by cabelmcelderry | Mar 6, 2013 | Personal Training Business Tips, Success Mindset
Do you ever feel overwhelmed in your business? Do you ever feel like maybe it’s just not worth it? Or that it just isn’t going to work?
I’d be shocked and question whether you were really being honest with yourself if you said no the above. The truth is as an entrepreneur you are going to feel all of those things, and probably more often than you want.
I think because, as trainers, we’re such analytical people; so detail oriented that we really get hung up on trying to make sure each step we take is perfect. When things are less than perfect it seems to send many of us into a downward spiral of in-action, it’s like we become paralyzed with fear or so discouraged it’s hard to continually put one foot in front of the other.
Maybe this is a little dramatic, but then for a newer trainer it might not be at all. I remember how I felt, and still do some days. Being in business isn’t easy, and what we do as fitness professionals requires massive amounts of emotional energy. When things don’t quite turn out the way you expect it saps that energy.
At the core of it all the only way you can ever fail is if you fail to act.
Unfortunately burnout and in-action is inevitable so what do you do about it?
1) Make sure you make lists, and don’t overwhelm yourself. Only choose 3-4 things each day as “critical to get done.” Expecting to much of yourself each day sure leads to burnout.
2) Slash and burn. Truth is we all do too much shit that doesn’t move our business forward, saps emotional energy and wastes time. Get over your scarcity mindset and slash and burn what doesn’t matter or find ways to delegate it to others.
3) Every single one of you has someone in your network who would be willing to take on a few tasks to help you out. Ask them, service trades are a great place to start but never be afraid to pay people to do stuff that isn’t directly making you money. Your greater focus on growing your business will easily replace the money.
4) Each month review your list, streamline tasks to stay focused on what your good at and pass off or get rid of the rest.
5) Be careful of passion projects, the things that might lead to something, the things that are really fun to work on, the reality is they aren’t contributing immediate value best to set them aside and focus on what matters. Now everyone needs a hobby so I suggest adopt the Google philosophy allow yourself that 10-20% of your time to work on passion projects or those labours of love.
6) Discover your “magic time.” What hours of the day are you the most productive? Everyone seems to have that time where you can accomplish in minutes what might otherwise take hours, focus dials in and you just get it done. What are you doing to protect this time? Don’t let anything get in the way, be sure to delegate or eliminate responsibilities that take up this time and may otherwise hold you back.
Feel so fortunate to live so close to a place like Banff, the Rimrock hotel is one of my wife and I’s favourite “burnout recovery” getaways.
7) Last but not least, go have fun. There’s only one reason to work so hard and become successful. To enjoy the things you do outside of work. Recently I went to Peru on a whim for this very reason, it was time to step away from civilization in an effort to refresh, re-charge and become inspired.
Inspiration drives action; burnout is a sign that inspiration is fizzled. A job is something you might like, a career is a job where you continue to invest in yourself and a business allows you to love the process of earning your financial freedom. Lacking motivation shows you that you’ve pushed it too far or your handcuffed by things you shouldn’t be doing, recognize and act upon this and you will e continually propelled forward.
by cabelmcelderry | Jan 29, 2013 | Personal Training Business Tips, Success Mindset
You know I’ve learned so much from my mentors over the year’s, this again comes from my association to Bedros.
Just before Christmas I received a small package in the mail, a gift from my coach. A simple Christmas card and a new iPod shuffle. I didn’t think much of it at first other than it was a nice sentiment.
As you know recently I just returned from an adventure in Peru. While packing for that trip I decided I was going to take this new iPod with me to listen to some music and audio programs during the trek to Machu Picchu. When I unplugged it from my macbook I noticed it was actually engraved on the back, “GSD is how we roll!”
GSD has become the motto of the group; it stands for Get Shit Done! How do you do this in your business? And do you really, or are you just constantly busy doing things that aren’t propelling your business forward?
I gotta be honest there’s still too much I do in my business that I shouldn’t be doing, and I know the same is true for you. I guarantee there are things you do each day that, for one, you don’t like doing. They might be essential tasks but it doesn’t mean you should be doing them. The masterminds always remind me how important it is to delegate and outsource.
I’ve always thought I was weird (ok let’s face it not thought, I know I’m weird), I’m really not capable of working efficiently for long hours the way some people are. When I work too long on one thing I become diluted, distracted, frustrated and when I am frustrated the engine stops; nothing get’s done.
I’m also a product of scarcity, I grew up with nothing, I had a belief that the world was cruel and it was unlikely I’d succeed. Somewhere along the way I overcame some of that through perseverance and determination but my scarcity mindset still sometimes prevents me from being “wasteful” and paying others to do things that I shouldn’t be doing.
Do you truly want to be successful? If you do you must overcome this scarcity mindset, you must kick your own ass, you must be ruthless.
I insist at the beginning of every month you consider what you do each day. Make a list of all the things that are your responsibility. If you’re like me and still get fearful about giving things to others; force yourself every month to pick a task to pass off to someone else. Narrow down what you do to just a handful of things grow your business. The truth is all of us only have a few good hours a day, a few precious hours we can really focus and really Get Shit Done. Maximize those hours and maximize your desire to succeed by passing off all the things that take away from that. If you don’t enjoy it someone else should be doing it. If it stresses you out because it takes longer than you expect (like uploading videos and posting these posts on my blog) pay someone else to do it. If you feel like you can’t afford to pay someone to do it then look at my previous posts and create a goal to offset the cost and give yourself a deadline.
It’s so funny and takes way too long to realize but the more stuff you pass off that distracts you from what you’re good the more money you will make.
This has to be done every month because we’ll always have things that will creep their way in to and start to take up our precious magic time. Focus, refocus, slash, burn, eliminate and conquer! GSD is how we roll!
by cabelmcelderry | Aug 18, 2012 | Personal Trainer Marketing, Personal Training Business Tips, Selling Personal Training, Success Mindset
There are too many struggling personal trainers! It breaks my heart to know how many trainers leave the industry each year because they can’t make enough money to support themselves or their families. I’ve been their, I can relate, and maybe that’s why it makes me so sad.
This week I have video for you that details the exact personal trainer marketing strategy I would use if I was just freshly certified, struggling to get my business off the ground, or if I was starting over from scratch. It’s immediate, easy, and requires little preparation just ACTION!
I know it works as I’ve had coaching clients use this exact strategy recently and add thousands of dollars of reoccurring revenue in just 7 days an in no more than 10-20 hours. If you’re serious about making it as a fitness professional and becoming efficient at selling personal training I know this can help you. Check it out. 🙂
[youtube]http://youtu.be/gILLivK4eH0 [/youtube]
