Episode 20: Kris Cochrane and how he built a team of over 30 PT’s

[sharethis]

In this episode Brett talks to Industry expert Kris Cochrane.

Kris is the CEO and Founder of Rapid Personal Training where he has a team of over 30 Personal Trainers in over 10 locations.

You will discover:kriscochrane

  • The key stone habits (and a challenge)
  • The best way to hire new personal trainers for you team (this will save you thousands of $$$)
  • How Kris started from a single PT to now running a team of 30 PT’s

and loads more.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes
Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

Episode 20: Kris Cochrane on Building a Team of 30 Trainers

Transcript of EPISODE 20:

Introduction: Podcast background music plays

Host Brett Campbell: Hello and welcome to Fit Professionals Podcast; the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build a fitness business. If you are at the local end, want the knowledge, or have more free time then you come to the right place; visit podcast.fitprofessional.com better you today. Break in between start of interview

Host Brett Campbell: Hello fit professional I am your host Brett Campbell and back today with a very good friend of mine and an extreme genius in his field. Kris Cochrane welcome to the show brother. Break while awaiting interviewee response

Kris Cochrane: Thanks for having me, nice.

Brett Campbell: Excellent, thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule this morning. I know you got a lot of things going on which we are going to talk about today. Opening another location; which is exciting. So what I’ll do is I will give or run a little bit of a brief background on how we met. Feel free to fill in the blanks because a you know my memory can rag me sometimes. But a Kris and I met a little bit over three years ago. We ah we met Kris came to us a business seminar that we were running and we noticed that overtime when you see people and you just get a feeling about the particular person you know that they are going to do something great. You don’t know what it is but you get that feeling that people are going to do something great. And Kris was one of these people so yeah Kris at the time was a one on one personal trainer.

Brett Campbell (Cont): yeah doing well, had, you know had his clients booked up and he was in a bit of a position where he wanted to take the next step and ah someone like myself who definitely has that entrepreneurial feeling as well and saw him, I knew exactly where Kris was at his stage. So I personally worked with Kris for about 12 months here helping him get on track and give him a little bit of extra guidance in the industry and I guess if we fast forward to now Kris is he is a leader in the industry hands down he is the top guy.

Like I said back three years ago when you see someone you know that they are destined for something. This guy would turn up the business days with a bowl of cereal in his front seat of his car and he would have his lunch packed and you could just see the dedication and I would said if he had as much dedication to how good he looks he and he put that into his business and he go go places. So Kris is now up to ten locations nationally around Australia with teams of personal trainers running out of these locations and I’ll get Kris to tell you more about that. But a mate it’s an honor to a to a one be a part of your journey and to see where you are hitting today and also to see above the horizon where you are going to be hitting. So that’s a brief background on how we met, I’d like to a for you to listeners to learn about who is Kris Cochrane and where did this guy come from.

Kris Kochrane: Many thanks to the ah very humbling introduction and I am really glad to be a part of this and a you are obviously killing it at the moment so and a its funny how you are so instrumental into the whole rapid journey. Yet, you were obviously my first business coach working with business coaching and properly tracking me well and there is a time where yea I was just I was just a young lad who was on the gym floor working 50 hours a week personal training and I was almost completely burnt out you know. I got a really bobbly head personality and I love helping people and I really love being a personal trainer and I love sharing with results with as many people as I could and I did work my ass off and I guess I had a fanatic work ethic and not only discipline but I found my focus was really spread and I didn’t know where to put all these work practice into so I guess ultimately it just end up being gain more and more and more wants you know and it got me up to doing stupid amounts of hours in the gym and then my back end stuff, programming, doing your business stuff you sought as your marketing (hear sounds of Cochrane clearing his throat in between interview) uh with uh you know I am not sure if you remember mate but there was a time where I had an idea there is a local 24 hour gym down the road and I was looking at some sort of sign from God as to how to get me off this gym floor. I may have lost a couple months of sessions I had on the gym floor I was in this tug of war in my head it was like I was in that session with that person but I wasn’t there because I was thinking about how the hell did I get so sucked into working for long term and I kind of had this little thought as I was in this 24 hour gym that was happening down the road it was new town fitness and I would say that it was out of business for a couple of months and I hadn’t really taken action on it at the time. I was being coached by you at the time and we were having a chat and I really got into this situation¼.and I didn’t know where I was going and you were just telling me well why don’t you just send them an email and so alright I well alright and so I said wait a minute can I have a talk. So at the end of this talk I send the email to the email address that’s on the website to Anytime Fitness that I was looking into and tried and chat to and boom that was a start to a beautiful and healthy business because you got your personal training out the way now. Because what ended up happening was I got a meeting with the owner who had just been a couple of months left from opening her first gym she was an accountant and if I notice the push now for her was that gyms are not all about making people it’s all about investing. Its fitness people who are all about making money not all about managing personal finance. Know what makes a gym and what works so she was sort of scratching her head and she had problems, she just advertised for a lot for personal trainers. What we care about is people who do not understand anything about management and personal trainers and she didn’t know what to look for, what to charge, and what I want and the name was like a blessing in disguise so a low and behold I found that huge gap in the market and so that’s my wrap and mate thank you for that. Cause I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that little that pep talk up.

Brett Campbell: Yea excellent manager, you know I just got goose bumps because I remember that conversation because there was something that I identified with myself that I actually identified within you might as well was that you are also a great trainer and you know your shit when it comes to training and getting people in shape and like like myself if I could get anyone put them on the gym floor talk them through a killer routine and make sure they are getting their results. But what one thing I identified and rang true to myself and I seen it in you was that you weren’t a personal trainer you were destined to be a business owner, an entrepreneur, a visionary who leads other people and people out there could actually be listening and saying yeah I actually sort of feel the same way. .because if we look at,  I am not sure if you heard of Dan Sullivan but Kris Dan Sullivan world renown entrepreneurial coach who you know coached the most millionaire entrepreneurs in the world. Basically he talks about consequent unique ability and your unique ability that I found was with yourself is that you are a leader and you were destined to be able to lead people to a particular place and that’s what I found within myself well also I love training and I still love training people we would be doing the industry and you would be doing your trainers now which your October 30 trainers you would be doing them a disservice if you weren’t doing what you are doing now so my colleague remember that the good listener I think any one listening is that all it took was for you to take some action and send out an email. What literally and that was the opening of the door that has now started the rapid empire as we call it so, yea my Excellency so a couple of things that I picked up Kris was yeah and because I know you really well was you struggled to gain focus. Your not going to like to that very well myself but someone like yourself who always something going to be there, there is always going to be a new opportunity. What would you say to just tame the base and remain focused on the particular task?

Kris Kochrane: Wow yeah, look really right question. We are in a war somewhat sometimes like myself yeah I am not sure if I am A.D.D. I am just really. You got the always in school I was always distracted easily distracted I was always off playing ping pong and in school I was always trying to actually see yeah always I really found it hard to concentrate and the average time it takes the average person to get into focus  24 minutes, 24 minutes to actually get focused on the task and if you get interrupted you get another 24 minutes to actually get back in that zone and yeah if that’s the average person it will actually take me about 67 minutes to get into my focus zone. So I really found that working with a couple of the my mentors Jason Edge he coached me into a bit of meditation and and on and off I find that when I meditate I practice a bit of mindfulness in which I try to be in the moment without trying to think about the future also with a task I find I can you know get myself focused and throw myself together. I also find case on habits if I’m in around my place on habits such as a 4:30 am wake up and it will happen for a lot and when I am in a bad space I find if I am wake at 4:30 am in the morning and I get sad around work I get bit of my goal setting and my vision and focus on what it is that I want out of life what fortunes I need to have to get that. I at least about as half as much on talk and all of these announcements plus its much as I need to speak and just things that I need to focus on like I am gonna go read a book and go get a goal book and and I look at that every day and yeah trying to get up at the same time 4:30 am in the morning I just know that I am not stopping me from doing that yeah and trying to get all the distorts out of for the day. I am not getting emails I am not getting phone calls, yeah so really it’s a mixture of things but I think it’s just a big thing to capital K your habits, capital K tackle a couple of things tackle a couple of habits that you know you want to do for yourself but yea also focus on your goals and what it is you want and do what you need to do to get fit.

Brett Campbell: Yeah excellent, and you mentioned Jason Edge, Jason is a good friend of the show, great mate of ours he has been on a few episodes here as well where we just about talked about everything so but yeah great great guy. You talked about Keystone habits elaborate a little bit on that for the person who is not really sure what keystone habits is.

Kris Kochrane: yea, well keystone habits is yeah if you are, well let’s just talk about (audio interruption occurs for two seconds and not able to hear the speaker). Ways to motivate yourself about fixing your life but keystone habits is a habit like as if your life is a domino effect. For example someone who is disciplined with a lot of fruitful things kind of like the same as mine but I know my sales manager he makes his bed every morning which he never uses to do. He makes his bed and makes sure he has a clean room. If you are talking about around the clock you know something is a mess. For example if I know that I don’t get up on time and if you don’t have breakfast some days  and  you  have  breakfast  some  days  don’t.  It’s  about  building the habit to ensure they get up at the same time without pressing the snooze button and build the same habit that helps them feel that they are in control. Other things that I will feel more impaired to eat breakfast I may probably feel more motivation to train and eat because the rest of it they set themselves up properly if you just focus on one thing these capital K different of things like for me it’s getting up at 4: 30 am. If I am getting up out of bed at 4: 30 I feel  like I am in more control I feel like I am accomplishing one thing. If I don’t, If I press the snooze button or have a sleep in I feel as though I am starting from behind and everything will seem to fall. Now does that make sense? This whole capital K of habit is really it’s a yeah extremely interesting and it talks a lot about a lot of keystone habits. So I am a huge believer in capital K a few keystone habits can change a shit load in someone else’s life. You don’t have to focus on 20 different things like if you are going drink more protein, if you are going to go train 5 days a week, if you are going to get out of bed same time, if you know what you have to do, and then you just do a couple of those things consistently, you tend to be in a bit of space. Is that make sense?

Brett Campbell: Yeah that makes sense, I guess what I want to do is I want to put out a challenge to anyone listening you probably got something in your life right now that is either holding you back or confusing you a little bit. But what I want to do is I want you to think of a habit that you either want to break or a habit that you want to create and I want you to that and I want you to sit with this task for 14 days, 14 days and maybe it’s make your bid if that’s something that you never done before. Go through the moment and make your bid every morning and see what it actually does to you mentally and how it makes you think what the carry over effect of that is what is the carry over effect for everything that you do. Then once you get proof, you can then keep creating other habits that just becomes easier and easier. This is like generating leads on line, we are generating leads into your business once you get that first client from online you already know that this thing is possible and you can just generate more and more. So set the challenge 14 days I want to hear from you if you’ve a broken a habit or you created a new one. So Kris let’s get into some juicy information here for any personal trainer fitness professional out there who is wanting to be more than just the one on one trainer training where their training own clients and that’s it, I want us to to give a listeners a bit of a background on what were the key things that first of all enabled you to start having trainers working for you and your rapid PT business?

Kris Kochrane: Ok, I guess you gotta be a leader. You know it is a funny thing you don’t want to fully detract from one thing but being a manager I never managed anything and here as I was in my first job interview you know the rapid position which was the first one it was coming up within months when I was getting ready to recruit and when I sat there in front of this person, this new trainer she was just fresh out she was just booking it with me and I didn’t feel like a business owner because I didn’t know what it was like. So obviously I wasn’t quick to be huge leader I found myself asking her and I said its going to be good us she said it’s the money and I said and this is this but a leader is someone who to first lead you must lead yourself I talked about those keystone habits before. You really need to get your shit sorted first and be at ease and confident in yourself and before you can have any influence you must believe in yourself. But as fitness professionals you should be someone who is leading people every day anyway because you are leading many other people to change a life so exceptionally we need leaders in society. So I always say number one always lead yourself to be someone to follow and number two you must also have a vision. Have a dream, have a vision and have someone you know get excited about it. When you tell someone your vision, yeah my visions is am happy with that. If a if we just had a world of fat people with no winning smiles we will all get pissed off about that. I know a lot of people that are overweight and the way that they treat their body they got to be miserable. 80% of people they are going to be wearing frowns and you know just as much as I do that energy is so contagious. So if 80% of the people are going to be miserable than you are going to affect 19% so now 90% of everyone in the world is going to be miserable. So I call it the world of zombie apocalypse. Yea every person we save from being that overweight or obese another person we don’t have to fight against in the zombie world. I guess you better call it you got to have a vision, you got to have a dream you got to have something that inspires others to be more. Because the day they go on to getting up out of bed to try and then training. Trying to just get up out of bed at 430 everyday, just trying that one person. But if you are getting out of bed at 430 every morning because that training that one person is a stick and stone to your way is going to leave a dent and stone in your legacy and that makes you want to get out of bed. So as I said you know November last year I had to google one of the CEO, I actually did. He was kind enough to tell me that. I try to give a common example that you are on the saddle you are giving a speech and you are riding the flag then you are the first in on that horse riding into the sunset and now you got all these people following you because you just helped them bond to that vision. Because most people need something to believe and they need to know that what they are doing to make a difference. If you can show them that path then you got the saddle you are way ahead of the game. Does that make sense? Franchise, I remember speaking about the downfall of franchise because you are working rapid and I said what’s going to help, what is the demographic, are we going to be successful or whatever? A Franchise is really hard it’s hard to have your vision it’s. Franchise it’s hard to have your own vision its kind of like a dent in the universe you have to have that vision and that strain and you have to have a to have 10 million impaired but exhausted smiles by 2030 which is impairing an exhausted as far as money is concerned. and the reasons is that you know, today’s society is on a one way track to adding that the world of people will be overweight or obese by 2025 which is fine I why a strong why, why why? I don’t want a zombie apocalypse and A zombie apocalypse is going to be screwy for everyone.

Brett Campbell: Yea, I love the way you put that and even gained bring some perspective back to me that factor and this why and I, and I really hope you are listening to us to really grasp the power of that because it like you said Kris energy is contagious and if you got someone who is walking around unhappy I mean and you can see it. I was walking into the gym myself I was walking out pumped, happy, and also tried some brand new workout that we have been testing that we are going to bring out real soon. So I was pumped happy walking out of the gym and someone was walking in and she just looked miserable and she looked unhappy and I was like good morning, and instantly by me just going good morning she started to look really happy state she probably thought I was on drugs but I was really happy to see her it changed her state instantly and it put a smile on her face and she carried on. But can you imagine you know one unhappy person walking unhappy and another person is contagious of that and I really love what you just said and I can agree more on having your mission. Mission for Fiit chicks is to kind of motivate one million females by 2020 on how to live a healthy active fulfilled life. The funny thing is most people think is just mission is hoorah hoorah type of thing. The amount of people that actually by into the mission that we create and trying it out there as well we got a franchise business as well. Trainers out there as well now that we got to Franchise and trainers are actually thinking that the vision is stronger so if you don’t have one right now get one. So, Kris I guess because you have a lot of information because you have some experience with hiring and finding trainers to join your team and I like mentioned over 30 trainers where is the best place to start or where would you recommendations be for someone that is just looking for their first trainer.

Kris Kochrane:  Good question. What’s your business overall who are you targeting? So, I would work out who your customer is actually going to be, who you have on sales. And who do we have to try to complete the task. You made the right person do the job and you want to first ensure you get the staff members someone who is a trainer first and go with all the qualifications. Until then I looked qualifications for four and a half years, but I want to say exactly my values embodies in this person so culture is the first one and its someone who I really want to spend time around, is this person going to be reliable and someone who is worthy of me spending enough time to educate them in helping with the longevity of the company first. We go with culture, longevity, and reputation. Be different but always be disciplined, but so we recruit people on those values. And then we go well let’s also have a look at their qualifications and then if they are actually a trainer then you don’t have to spend a lot of time to go to teach that one person. Yeah there is just certain rules we have to make before we you know like basic so we can’t train them from the ground up. Yeah you can train on certain number of things last I am not going to stick around to be someone who is going to help you build your business and let me tell you now. The difference between someone who has been in there one year or one month is going to make a difference so hire people that you know are going to stick around.

Brett Campbell: You mentioned a couple of really good points cause I just want to talk to that for one moment where all of our level trainers where and it’s not hard whether or not you are looking for trainer, an admin, or a manager or a sales team etc. You really need to identify like you mentioned there Kris the culture of what you actually want in your business and what your business values are about and do they fit with that so don’t just go straight to seek put on a 270.00 ad which may I say is another business model that’s another story. $270.00 ad to hire someone and get 100 applications and you are just now finding a needle in a hay stack. so I love that and I get some actionable points on that would be (Kris Kochrane begins to speak).

Kris Kochrane: Just on that line I saw really handy recently in an online job application in a job app I had a candidate where I would go on their application site check out their values and brought it back which one’s been the most and then find out which one would come up and it says these are the reasons because you kind of have to have some specifics or instructions on the job application. When do you plan for them to follow instructions when you expect them to tell them to follow instructions when you expect them or when you tell them and I thought that was pretty cool.

Brett Campbell: Yeah I couldn’t agree more with that and we have admin staff and we always have a three step process where they need to fill out a personality profile, and they need to fill out a cover letter and they need to send in a particular subject headline and if the subject headline is not what we told them to do we just totally just don’t even look at their application. So, there is a heap of things that you can do to like you said to look really good at the person you are looking for….so that’s really cool that , Kris let’s move into a couple of quick questions here and one of them being what.. in your journey what was the biggest moment that you had that you know you finally realized I finally cracked it or made to hit down towards.

Kris Kochrane: Yeah this comes more in the market so we, are our only business. I was a self-trainer and when I was a self-trainer I basically had a trainer and I just do my taxes whenever I can. I never actually thought that I was in business now but the day that I realized I was in business it was a rocky road. Then once I realized I was in a business I thought that maybe I should get some skills and then thought about doing a business course or something like that so when you have the experience in your business you get more and more knowledgeable and I think mine most recently was probably a year or year and half ago was realizing that I am not going to be in T company anymore I realized to achieve my goal and to spread rapid on where I needed to be I seriously bought for the g-minus that we were working for the market. We went from being a big big company to a not so telemetry company for 24 regions we got back into the service that we promote to the community around and then we got so to where we were creating a business triangle so. Probably just the three elements of smart business and how you are made to really segment off on to segment ours. One I had to tie all of my solutions to the gym owner but some emphasis around that and then a value proposition for the business owner to the gym owner and then a personal trainer. Right now you got to market as vigorous as you do today to balance. So what’s the benefits and values of being a rapid trainer and then yeah for the crowd. Well I try to be a rapid trainer what’s the difference now if you want me to work for Walt Disney industry which means trying extraordinarily a good customer experience every time but it’s probably a bit more pay job as profound as it sounds but yeah it’s probably a bit more pay job for you so.

Brett Campbell:  Mate it’s what’s profound for you and that’s all that matters so you know again you touched on three valuable points and you actually got three different markets and I can totally relate to that as well because if it is national we have the market to the personal trainer on the hunt looking for highly motivated personal trainers to become franchises we also got the consumer side to our business like we say our mission is to educate and motivate a million females. So we need to produce product services for that industry so the key to those is that each of those modalities are marketed differently. In essence you actually got three businesses inside if you want to look at it like that so a lot of a lot of things going on. So when there is a lot of things going on, generally there is a lot of a I guess and don’t like using the word values but people can relate to the words failure I like to use the word listen. So there is generally a lot of words learned in business and I know someone like yourself who takes action so fast and so frequently there is generally a lot of lessons we learned so share with us one of your biggest business lessons or that you had along on your journey so far mate.

Kris Kochrane: All I can say is hire the right people because you never settle, never hire across, that can be the biggest business lesson I have learned the hard way every time. I guess you have a spot and you need to fill it and it probably will stringer up your career. You not cannot send or doctor a list also, you can’t send the wrong person, you can’t change a person you need to hire a super human guy who is an eagle and pick people as our product and one right person is equivalent to three people. See I am a really a systems oriented type of guy and I like to hire a 12 year school boy to do the same job as a 40 year old and the physicist who can put the people down and lay down the law you know? Since it does work that way, you have to have the right system for people to be able to run. Never ever ever ever hire anything less than what your mission or position it could be in a district where you got enough back work and you cannot get the work done because you got somebody that doesn’t fit the right spot.

Brett Campbell: And not only that they can end up tarnishing your business credibility and as well you have all the motives to be the best in industry and that type of stuff and when you start expanding you got other people you know utilizing your brand and coming underneath your brand you got to make sure that my ah advocates are good at doing everything they can from their side because it’s fair to say that you can’t manage and look over the shoulders of thirty trainers every day, so tell us a little bit about how you are able to have ten locations and how does that look at the basic running of that work? What’s your set up with that?

Kris Kochrane: It’s kind of a ah community catsmite (both parties exchange laughs) where we got all these 10 locations and got contractors working in them and it’s very easy for them to sort of get off track and then send out the¼. self-manage is really hard to do so we rely on their culture. We rely on hiring a lot of people that stick to our values and then we have a really astringent culture that we try to maintain through get togethers, through our education programs, through our face book programs forum, and also then we got management structures too, that’s management, so each location will have a team leader who is a cultural flag of me basically just an extension of me in that gym to kind of maintain the integrity of that culture which is progressive disciplined and fun; and be very proactive. So as I¼I definitely think, you know, and the best how to motivate someone who survives the expectations you got of them so and we’ve got our management team ready to extradite with a little bit more running and a bit more responsibility. ..and then we got to automate to when they get paid, the percentage of the trainers, and we got a regional manager that looks after all of the managers. I mean any service industry is based on core separation it’s not as easy as writing a book and then selling all your books. You gotta work on your service and do a favor to retain a key element. Any 24 service industry if you want to get into any service industry it’s a huge operation, it’s huge. So there it’s not a real simple way to do it but you just got to break culture, if you are a people person you just got to break culture once. The best advice we have them do we just rely on our people trust them, sit with them, coach them, and manage them¼.break and someone laughing in the background.

Brett Campbell: Excellent…so, Mate I know we are sort of at the end of the episode here you your already at the gym you are going to get to a cranking into some work very shortly but before we do wrap up, a zip. So what ¼ I guess parting advice would you give to the ah¼ fitness professionals out there who are kind of in a bit of a position right now where, you know, they want to make the next step to grow their business but they are not really sure whether or not they want to?

Kris Kochrane: Yea, I would say that business isn’t for everyone and really mate that make the decision if you are prepared to ¼if you are prepared for the ride don’t give up. I had a conversation with I guy at breakfast last week and he is approaching 40 now a school teacher he was just telling me that he is trying the program so that he can go ahead and get in shape and you know I just don’t know how it’s going to take he has got a lot of body fat and he is a little overweight and it doesn’t necessarily say that he made a messy decision but a so I would really sit down and map up your life and whether or not this is the ride you want to take or whether or not you are ready to sacrifice your life I can tell you that my life worked out balance it’s a myth its really myth.

Brett Campbell:  For a work week yes more hours.

Kris Kochrane: You just have to be prepared to grow your body and make a decision but that’s probably advise if you want it bad enough you will find the why. You will always find the why. You will find someone to encourage you, a mentor, someone to coach you, you will do everything you can to make it work, if you fail most businesses fail most fail the second time that’s as good as I can give you mate.

Brett Campbell: You are saying how it is because it is so true there are so many people out there who preach the its easy its easy well it can be made easier but you still need to put out the work you know with our fit chicks transformations franchise we have made it as easy as we possibly can now for a personal trainer to run it run a successful group but you still need to put in the time and effort to actually run in the systems and the procedures and so forth so 100% agree with this mate and if you are listening to this and you are not really sure what you really want to do in the industry sit down and even ask yourself the question. Is this industry for you? Then if it is then find out great, what avenue do you want to go down because we got Kris here who is an expert on building teams of trainers working in a gym fashion working in a one on one and the total flip side of that, the total opposite side of that spectrum also our business model is based on group training. So there is also lots of business opportunities out there you just need to pick the one that you want to master put in the hard work the rewards are far worth the way and the effort that you need to put into it if you just don’t give up. Well Kris before we shew off where can everyone find you stalk you and find out more about Kris Kochrane.

Kris Kochrane: You can look online, its funny every time I look online I have a fitness page and a facebook page but if you want to go to RapidPT.com.au you will find out more about us and go to faceboook.com/rapidpersonaltraining and if you want any advice or tips its Kris@rapidpt.com.au.

Brett Campbell: Thanks Kris for that, if you are interested in personal training and you listen to this podcast I don’t often recommend too many people in the industry but if you are a PT out there and you know you are little bit worried about starting your own business right now and not sure really what to do then you want to be led by a master in the industry go check out rapid PT and you know ask Kris a question, there might be a gym opening around Euro area and you can get in and work for the rapid team and Kris will put through the team I am sure but make sure you make contact with him. By the way mate always and I will catch up to chat with you anyway and all the best with the new gym that you opened up there and have a fantastic day out there.

Kris Kochrane: Thanks and have a good night.

Brett Campbell: Awesome, so we had another fantastic episode with Kris Kochrane from Rapid Personal Training. Now I just want to give you a quick update of what we have up and coming. The 16th of May in Brisbin, The 23rd of May in Sydney, and the 30th of May in Melbourne we have the fitness business blueprint event. Now this event is only for the personal trainer who is looking to set up run their successful six figure group fitness business. If this is of interest to you, hit over to fiitacademy.com.au/events.

 

Episode 19: Rob King Reveals How His 42 Day Programs Are Killing It For His Fitness Business

[sharethis]

In this episode Brett and Rob discuss the following topics:Brett and Rob King

  • How to build a community of raving fans
  • How to create transformation programs and pack them out
  • How Rob generated over 75 consultations from a simple online strategy

and loads more…
Click here for Robs exact landing page he used to generate 75 consultations in 1 week.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes
Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

Episode 19: Rob King Reveals How His 42 Day Programs Are Killing It For His Fitness Business

Transcript of EPISODE 19:

Introduction:

Hello and welcome to another fit profession podcast the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build their fitness business. If your after more clients, more income, and more free time then you have come to the right place visit Podcast.fitprofessional.com.au today.

Brett: Hello and welcome to another fit professional podcast I’m your host today Brett Campbell and today I have a very special guest hailing on the exact polar opposite time line to me I have my good friend from all the way across the world in New Finland Rob King. Now, Rob King you may have seen him on the internet he’s fast becoming a go-to fitness professional in the industry not only from the business side of things, but also in his transformation and contest that he has been running.

Rob is a power lifter and body-builder, and he’s a contributor to publication such as Teen Nation also Arnold Schwarzenegger Fitness blog and he’s also the curator of Ripped In Forty-Two which is a transformation program that is literally taking over his country, and I’m sure it’s going to be taking over the world very shortly. Rob brother thank you so much for taking the time out of your – its evening for you and morning for me so, thanks for spending your time with us today and we are really looking forward in sharing your insights into the industry.

I gave you a little bit of an over view to our listeners about yourself Rob, so I’m sure there is many fill in the blanks so, if you could give us a bit more in depth look who you are and what you do?

Rob: Yeah, sure, well basically my main job is a coach so, I’m a coach first and I own a business called “Heavy Weights Training Center” that is my main facility/gym. I also own a sport supplement store called, “Heavy Weight Supplements” so the background of my business initially I started off as a small little supplement store and that is what I did for basically years. Then through actually a business failure I opened up Heavy Weights Training Center and from there the training and the results and everything we did just started to take off like crazy.

Basically I transitioned from been known as kind of like, the supplement guy and then into the trainer and coach guy. Now, basically I coach about twenty to twenty-five hours a week and I coach everything from bikini competitors, power-lifters, to Olympic weight-lifting. We do body transformations and then on top of that entire…like you said, I write for Teen Nation and Schwarzeneger.com, and I’ve written for Elite pretty much you name the magazine I’ve written for them. All in all I love what I do and I’m pretty passionate about it and I can’t get enough.

Brett: Excellent, and also just another accolade to add to your traffic cabinet there you have just won the PT Power Personal Trainer of the year award as well and you got a Land Rover with that, right?

Rob: No the catch was is if the person who improves there on line marketing business the most gets the Land Rover. Well I thought I got the Land Rover so I was like, “Oh, [expletive]” so they called out, “PT Power Of The Year” which I’m very, very grateful for, but I basically they told beggers and told the people like, “Listen you might as well save that Land Rover for next year” I’m coming back to get that one as well.

Brett: Oh, [expletive] that’s a bummer I thought you had the Land Rover. My first…

Rob: So, did I…

Brett: My first thoughts were how are you going to split…?

Rob: We are going to split one PT Power I’m very big on goal setting and as soon as I won the trainer of the year award I literally texted, and I was like, “Dude that Land Rover is mine next year” I said, “I’m going to screen capture next year’s when I present and win that Land Rover I can talk about this.”

Brett: That’s crazy and I was wondering even how you would get it over to your country anyhow, so. It would have been a long drive.

Rob: It would have been a nice drive.

Brett: So, Rob I know we have touched upon you’re the creator of Ripped and Forty Two and I know you have several other different products and programs based on that methodology, so let’s chat about that, and how that has really transformed your business and how that – I guess has put you on the map in that sort of programming.

Rob: For sure, well what we have is at our gym we have a twenty-one day program which is like, a lead entry program to get people in our doors, but the focus for most of our training is to get people into Forty Two so, Ripped and Forty-Two is basically a forty-two day fat loss transformation program where everything we do is laid out from the training from the nutrition, supplements, the add home work outs, the goal setting, everything is mapped out for forty-two days it’s almost like, a full proof plan to get amazing results.

We have had so many transformations and so many amazing results that are what we are known for so we really get a lot of people that when they want to get in shape they come to us because we are known for results.

Brett:  On the Forty-Two now you say you have a full proof system which is obviously the key in any particular business. I guess a couple of questions for you and that is what is your thought process for the person sitting there now going, “I don’t want to have to sell people in again every six weeks on a new program” what is your thought process behind that?

Rob:  Well, this is a big learning curve for us in our business where everything initially was a Forty-Two day model and it was – what would happen is they would get amazing results for six weeks. We would have a one or two week break then we would have to resign them for another Forty-Two and it’s just kind of like, everybody was always chasing the carry of what’s next.

We built a couple of other Forty-Two day programs and we have one called “Stronger Than Forty-Two” and another one called “Built-In Forty-Two” with different focuses, but still coming in the day we were still always doing the Forty-Two model and constantly having to resell about to be a pain in the [expletive]. What our goal now is when somebody does a Forty-Two day program they then qualify to enter what’s called our “Heavy Weight Elite Program” and in our Elite program we have three levels based on strength.

Level one is no strength test level two we have a strength test and level three we have a  strength and body weight test, so our gym is always based – we get them in for fat loss, but our big focus is always on trying to get strength and performance. When you do that you eat well and the results take care of themselves anywhere, so we get people in for fat loss and then we transition them and teach them how to weight train, and teach them how to strength train, so the elite programs are now becoming the backbone of our membership and also our results.

Brett: Excellent, so what you’re saying is your “Elite” programs are more of an ongoing style commitment to the customer?

Emily:  Yeah, so what will happen a lot of people will come in and just do there Forty-Two and then they are happy that they lost their twenty-five pounds and they feel great, but then kind of pitch to them, “Well guys the Forty-Two is just a step in the right direction you can undo Forty-Two days of results in one bad week if you really lose it” so we always try to say with the Forty-Two it’s designed to show you our results and if you like, weight training and strength training, and the vibe at our gym then you should really think about our Elite program and that’s when we can really take your coaching and take your results and training to another level.

Michael has always pushed people as a coach and makes them uncomfortable and always challenges them to do things they didn’t think they could do. Just this past weekend alone I had  sixteen competitors I believe myself included for a first ever weight lifting competition, so I really encouraged our clients, “You guys should do this competition” and I took basically eight weeks and trained them twice a week. I did this free as a service to our Elite members at no extra charge, and then I had sixteen people enter in the weight lifting competition which looked amazing for our gym and our clients loved it.

Brett:  I guess the backbone of all of that now and creating all of these types of programs, and I see personally, because I know that you get literally thirty, forty, fifty plus people to your particular classes, so let’s talk about that in regards to the person listening going, “Is this all one on one based training or is group based training or small groups, semi-private, etc?”

Rob:  Yeah, well we can have everything in a group anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five people in our group so, “Ripped & Forty-Two” “Stronger Built” we have about fifteen to twenty-five people we try to cap the classes at twenty-five. Then what we do in every group we have a lead coach who kind of does the program design that runs the class and who basically controls it. Then on top of that we have two other coaches who assist, so we always have at least three coaches sometimes four, and then if we have two stations three stations sometimes four stations we always have a coach with the station that is technical. If somebody is doing a squat or leg lift or bench press they always have a coach watching. If somebody is doing like a weighted carry or sled-push we don’t necessarily have to coach them, but we usually have anywhere from two to three coaches for every program that we run.

Brett:  Excellent, and I guess it’s because I guess what you would say a different format of the general standard group and boot camp training things out there, because you do really focus on a  lot of strength based Olympic lifting those style of lifts. What sort of steered you towards that methodology versus getting people in more of a boot camp scenario and running around the park type of thing?

Rob:  Well it’s just basically getting back true to what I believe and I am passionate about which is lifting weights that is my background. The name of myself and the company when I started was “Heavy Weights” funny enough I almost changed the name of business because I thought it was too hard core years ago, and I’m glad that I didn’t. Our gym is based on strength training and lifting and we try to educate and teach people that you can lose body fat and transform your body by lifting.

There is a big myth that if you want to lose fat you have to do cardio and conditioning and while that stuff has its benefits nothing beats weight training you know and increasing muscle and building more strength it just works wonders. For me as a coach I would sit there and coach for four to five hours and teach people how to lift and how to lift weights and get stronger, and then I would put them through a boot camp type of work out. I initially started doing a lot of that stuff, but it just wasn’t my passion and I couldn’t get into it so, we started focusing more on strength training and that is what I became passionate about and everything from there just took off.

Brett:  Excellent, and you did right and anyone out there listening it always does come back to passion because I always tell any personal trainer that I’m speaking to there are dozens of different ways on how to achieve a specific result, but if you have to turn up to a particular training session and train somewhere in a format that you’re not passionate about you are not going to last too long, and it’s going to transfer over to the client and they are going to feel your negative energy towards it and your business just isn’t going to last.

Rob I guess in regards to, I know your really big on just like we are with our Fiit Chick Transformations Programs is it’s all about a community so, let’s talk about building a community for a moment, and if you can give us you know what would be your three tips on how to build a raving community of people who just want to keep coming back?

Rob:  For sure I remember thirty years ago I went to a seminar with a guy I’m sure a lot of people probably know of, but have probably forgotten about over the years and that’s Bill Phillips and he was the number one guy years ago for doing the body transformations with Body For Life transformation. I did a seminar with him and at the seminar he said, “The number one thing for growing your fitness business and getting results is community” and I was like, “What the [expletive] is he talking about” community like, I didn’t really get it.

I thought the nutrition would matter more the training, program everybody looks at the details, and I started to pay more attention to our community our culture at our gym. When I did that everything started to change so, I always so at our gym we are not a gym we are a fitness family, so we have a very tight community at our gym. In building community I really want like, a heavy weight training center to be like this third place so to me number one is make your gym and make your facility the third place.

That is what Starbucks did so well and capitalized on and people have their home and their work and they always want that third place. Our place is basically like a fitness version of Cheers where everybody know your name, so if somebody comes to our place it’s their third place where they come to and they love it. On top of that to the second thing with community is I think building private facebook group is very important, because you always want to extend the conversation of the people who are in your facility.

So, if they are in there for one hour maybe three four days a week the rest of the time they are going to need interaction and  support and that’s where facebook comes in very well. I used to have a message board and I got away from that and just creating a private facebook group really, really works. We always do charity workout so I think another big thing to be number three is to always give back, so last night alone we did a big group workout where I dressed up in a tutu and a power-lifting one-Z to basically get people in for some fun and we raised over a thousand dollars for Children’s Make A Wish so I think you really have to build your community and you really have to be getting your clients to know one another and look forward to coming to your gym, and always be giving back, because I’m a firm believer that to get everything you want in life you have to help others get what they want. We always do fundraisers, and I think last year alone we raised over twenty thousand dollars in charity, so w are always trying to give back as much as we can.

Brett:  Awesome, and it’s actually quite funny that you talk about the tutu I think we may be on the same wave length here so just to give you a bit of an over view…obviously I’m a massive believer in a facebook group. We have our Fiit Chick Transformations and we have over close to fourteen thousand females in that group and they are communicating literally daily and they are daily posting and they are saying how the group has changed their life and the interaction and that type of stuff. We actually ran a bit of a charity fundraiser ourselves and funny enough mate I ended up – I don’t know what it is with us, but I ended up dressing up in a tutu and had to do some burps.

Rob:  That’s awesome.

Brett: I think the takeaway point though there is to be real and people like, people who are real and at the end of the day fitness can be quite a drag for a lot of people. Whilst us personal trainers, fitness professionals love it and we train our ass off every day we need to understand that the general public isn’t like that so if we can add another reason or thing that will just get them into you know what, “I’m going to turn up to training today or I’m going to take that next step” then we certainly are doing our job there.

Rob: You have got to make it fun I firmly believe that people sign up for results, but they stay for the experience and you constantly have to be active for getting results and pushing them and getting their goals, but also by making your stuff fun. If you make it fun people are just going to be drawn to you because, it’s so much fun and everybody thinks of fitness as been, “I got to do twenty minutes on the cardio machine” and there I none of that [expletive] is urgent man everyday you come into our gym and the energy just hits you in the face, so you have to have a lot of fun and always be yourself be unique, make your gym a big quirky, make it really cool and different don’t be like everyone else.

Brett: I guess in regards to your journey Rob you know you’ve done a lot of things and generally what comes along with achieving a lot of success there is always generally a lot of…I don’t like using the word failures, but a lot of people can relate to it there are a lot of lessons that have been learnt along the way. Give us a couple of your biggest business lessons that you’ve had that will help other people out there now to be able to avoid them?

Rob: I’m a firm believer that out of the worst things in life come the best things in life and I really believe that, and I’ve had my struggles and my hardships and it’s been crazy and it still is and that’s life and business. I had a martial arts business called “Fushi-Do & A Nail” and it was me and a business partner we had it going and the business was just failing we just couldn’t get people in and we couldn’t get people to stick. We had almost a full year and it almost bankrupted me and my girlfriend and I we made the decision to pull the plug on this or we have to do something different this isn’t working.

We decided to change Fushi-Do and then opened up “Heavy Weights Training Center” literally like, over Christmas we said, “Okay let’s change it” change the sign I said, “Okay listen to the other guy you’re out” I’m going to start coaching and at the time I had not coached anybody I used to work on myself and then store it and I wasn’t a coach or personal trainer and just basically said [expletive] it and I’m going to do this, but if I’m going to do it I’m going to be the best guy I’m not going to be second best to anybody I’m going to kick-ass.

From there we just made the decision to just make the change and go for it so out of failure came success so, I think failing is a good thing as long as you know that you have to know when to quit and you have to know when to keep moving forward. I think failing is a good teaching opportunity and I think one of the things that made a huge difference and I’m sure you can attest to this as well is getting a mentor and getting a coach. I was in business for years and I thought I knew everything I had this closed minded you know approach you know I’d been in business forever and therefore; I know everything in actuality I didn’t.

I didn’t even know what the word marketing meant and when I got a coach and travelled outside and left New Finland and went somewhere different and meet new people all of a sudden my mind opened up. Once that happened everything from there just – today even know I always say I’m the biggest student as much as my business is successful. Last year at my gym alone I did a million dollars in revenue I’m still the biggest student out there in terms of attending seminars, networking, and learning, but I just think failure can be a great teacher. To not be afraid to fail, but also to get a coach and be constantly learning it’s very important.

Brett: Yeah, definitely again, can testify to that and I’m a big believer in getting a coach in all different areas.

Rob: Sure.

Brett:  Don’t try and just find the one coach who can try and show you everything because, everyone has strengths and for me it’s all about getting that – an example is I’m just going through some things with my fusion-soft at the moment like, really advanced type strategies that we are creating and I hit a road-block and I’m like, okay and I reached out to a particular group of people and all of a sudden there is an expert there now I’m going to pay them for their time to be able to show me what I need to do. It’s definitely that method of you know you need to invest in yourself and your future.

Rob: Yeah, don’t be afraid to ask for help I think once be become entrepreneurs we become like an island and we think we can do everything, but getting help and having on your team and asking for help is a very good thing to do.

Brett: I run some business events over here “Fitness Business Blue Print” so it’s a one day business event where I teach personal trainers and fitness professionals how to run a successful group fitness model. One of the things I say is I say, “How many hours did it take for you to become a personal trainer?” and you know you could spend anywhere on a hundred plus hours on learning how to become a personal trainer. That allows you then to only teach someone how to a squat and take them through an exercise regime, right?

Now, I say on the flip side, “How many of you actually spent over five hours learning marketing or sales?” and no one can put their hand up and it’s like, no wonder you are expected to come out of a hundred hour fitness course with no sales experience to then try and sell people into your program, unbelievable. If we were to segway onto marketing now, I know you’re a sharp marketer and you have to be to have a business that turns over a million dollars a year. What you say if you had to describe or give us your number one marketing tip right now that is helping you get people through the doors? What would you say that would be?

Rob: The thing with marketing is I love doing it so if I had to get up and market for two to three hours a day I enjoy doing it and therefore; the time does not matter, but first of all if you don’t enjoy it and you’re not good at it outsource it. You are better of trying to get help with the things you’re not good at instead of trying to do it yourself. I didn’t know anything about marketing, but once I started to learn it I really enjoyed it so, for me once I started learning about the whole marketing idea I feel in love with it and even today the first thing I do when I get up and work at home all day is I widen my market and then I coach, so it’s really good.

The one thing I always try and do is I’ve always tried to differentiate my business of what Rob King Heavy Weights is all about compared to everybody else so I show our transformations and strengths, I show that we are very different so I’m always staying true to what I believe in and what my core business and philosophy is for the business. I also believe business wise I use facebook very heavily and I’m a big believer in building my email list so I’m constantly trying to build my facebook following and build my email list.

Those are the two big ones that I really focus on and of course building community results for people that have found you and talk about you, but I’m constantly on facebook and I’m constantly trying to build my email list all the time.

Brett: What would be a couple of ways on how you build your email list if someone is out there going, “Well I want an email list but I’m not really sure how to or where to start what would your advise be?”

Rob: Well, the simple thing is even if you just look at building an email list from local people so every time we do a free workout like, a charity workout I’m constantly building my  local email list from that and I’m also giving away free program. I just did one the other day where I gave away a free fourteen day program online and said, “Here I want to help New Finlanders lose weight it’s my mission to transform New Finlanders here is a fourteen day program you can do at home.” I created a survey page basically where they fill out some information and then at the bottom it basically says, “Would you like to talk to one of our fitness coaches about our free consultation?” and in one day – I’m pretty good at creating these pages, but somebody could easily just model my page and pay a graphic designer person a code person a hundred dollars to do it.

In one day I picked up a hundred and fifty emails and seventy five consultations free it didn’t cost me anything so it’s a fantastic way to do it, but I always give-a-way’s I do surveys, squeeze pages everything like that so just keep testing, but find what works and stick with it.

Brett: I love that model of you know you give first to receive.

Rob: The crossing works then.

Brett:  It does and until you actually witness and see what it can do for example our meal plan has been downloaded by three hundred thousand people in the last two years, so we give first and then – what I love there and would like to talk a little bit more about is about more of the specifics of – They download the free fourteen day program then they get directed to an opportunity to take up a consultation.

Rob: Now, the way I actually do it actually is I have everything on the one page where… on the one page is like, an intro when I talk about my passion to help New Finalanders and help people and how you can get a free fourteen program by doing these four steps. Step one is basically a facebook code where it says they have to like the page and share the page, so immediately then by liking it it builds up the likes, and then by sharing it it goes to facebook virally for free so then it appears in their new feed.

The second step is to have them fill out a little simple survey and the survey is almost like questions where I’m looking for more information about what is troubling them and what is giving them problems. So, it might be, “What is your main goal? Is it fat loss? Building muscle? Feeling better? Do you have a gym membership? Are you currently happy with your fitness levels?” then basically as they go through this – this is giving me pre- qualified information, and the second last thing is, “Would you like a free fitness council that Heavy Weights valued at fifty dollars?” and the dropdown box is yes or no.

They fill out that they want all of this stuff and then they say, “Yes” and it comes to me as an email and my sales consultant then knows this person wants to lose weight and they have a gym membership and they are not happy with their goals. When they go to do the sales meeting which is basically the fitness consultation they already have all this information on the client in order to help them with their needs. Then the final one is basically enter your email to get the fourteen day program, and it all takes under three to five minutes and the amount of leads and traffic I get it’s free and it’s really good qualified information for sales and also that I build my ebox.

Brett: The powerful thing about that is that it’s local email so the local people in your community whether they decide to take up that consultation now you’ve now got their email so you can remarket to them on a continual basis.

Rob: Yes, so they basically like my heavy weight training center page and also get their emails so I’ve been testing this out now till they decide to go bigger with it and give away online programs, so I get it dialed in nice and then my plan is to basically take it bigger and just make it more online so it’s not just local.

Brett: What’s the URL for that Rob if someone wants to check that out?

Rob: Let me take a quick look for you now. Let’s see if I can find it.

Brett: While Rob is looking for that it’s really important to hammer home the fact that there are many different modalities and different ways you can market and this is just one single strategy that Rob has out there.

Rob:  Yeah, I’m always testing different things and this is the one I found recently that is really working. If you go to Heavyweightstrainingcenter.com/Rob-King-fitness-survey, now a couple of weeks ago and it’s already gone to seven likes which also gives me seven hundred more likes on my coaching page and I think from that one alone I got within the first week over two hundred and fifty emails.

Brett: That’s great so let’s just repeat that Heavyweightstrainingcenter.com/Rob-King-fitness-survey and it’s basically called my one minute weight loss survey.

Brett: I’ll put that on the show notes of this episode to so head over to Fiitprofessional.com.au and check out the episode with Rob King and you will be able to check that out. Like Rob said you know I’m sure Rob is not going to matter if you look at this and go, “Great I want to create a similar strategy” because I can tell you this right now I’ll be going to check it out myself and seeing the process. I guess on that Rob the next step from there they enter the details and if they are interested in a consultation what is then, and this I guess is where a lot of people get it wrong that seway from, “What do I actually talk to them about on the phone to get them into the actual fitness center” so what is your main strategy or tips about the phone call?

Rob: Basically by them filling out thing and saying would they like the free fitness consultation they are already inclined, “Yes they want it” so they have agreed to it so I have a very simple honest responder series set up showing our results not really pitching anything else not selling anything just showing them transformations, but I’m very lucky now that recently I have developed a sales staff so that – one of my sales reps basically then talk to the person. I like coaching I don’t necessary like selling some people are very good at it I’m not I can sell like I’m sure if I wanted to. I hate the word close, but if I wanted to close nine out of ten people I could but I’m much happier coaching people and I would spend my four or five hours at my gym coaching than I would selling.

Luckily I have got a really good sales team in place and that is what they do they follow up with the lead and I email every single person personally as well. I still totally respond every time somebody signs up for that free survey I always reply back and just say, “Hey it’s Rob King here thanks so much for your interest my Manager will be in touch with you. Look forward to seeing you at Heavy Weights and if I can help you with anything here is my personal email.” I usually do that every single day for twenty or fifteen minutes and I know a lot of people would say, “It’s a waste of time” but to me behind every lead behind every person that signs up is a real person and I really believe that we have to help people and not look at them in terms of numbers, but we have to look at them in terms of people. My sales staff is really good at that and then my job is when they sign up I get to coach them.

Brett: In regards to the process here and I guess before we do move onto that I just want to really highlight a couple of things you just said there. I would damn near say that ninety-nine percent of people wouldn’t do because you have order respond to setups you still actually personally send them a personal email from your own personal email address.

Rob:  Yep.

Brett: Fantastic, and that’s called going the extra mile and that does not surprise me one bit that you do that so that’s fantastic mate. In regards to the step from your sales staff now ringing up the new prospect what are your steps there do you get them in for a consult and take them through and sell them one of the programs?

Rob: We always try get them in the gym I think it’s much easier to get people to come into our facility and see our vibe and results and culture and they will be just like, “Wow this is really cool” and I’m also okay with people coming in and been, “No this isn’t for me” our gym is very different it’s not for everybody. We try to get them in the door and show them our results and basically make them feel comfortable immediately. We don’t do much actually over the phone ask some people that sign up I would say about half the people that join our gym actually register online without coming in its only recently we have started doing the fitness counsels just to try and get more people involved in personal training.  That is fifty percent of my sales for people doing forty two’s and twenty ones come right over the internet in virtually one shopping cart.

Brett: Great fantastic so in regards to your business Rob you’ve had like we just touched upon you know some of the main lessons that you have had so far in business now there is always advise and yeah, no doubt you would of heard a lot of advise over time and I’m always interested to hear from successful people like yourself. What is the best advise you’ve been given and it does not necessarily have to be business advice, but what is the best piece of advice that has stuck with you?

Rob: I would say man never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever [expletive] give up like, I’ve been hit by some stuff that would kill most people or most people would just fold, and to me I know that sometimes it’s rough and you have to just get through things, and that to me is just always overcome it and persevere because I love what I do and can’t imagine doing anything else. To me if I had to give any advice it’s really just stay true to yourself from when the hard times hit just keep moving forward because on the other side of that is something great and I really believe that most people who fail in business they are probably doing the same thing and expecting different results. When things get hard you have to get better and to me when something gets rough it’s an opportunity to become a better coach, business person, and a better person, so to me I’m grateful for the struggle, but when things got hard don’t give up keep pushing forward and find a way.

Brett: Let’s talk about that for a moment because to the person who could be sitting there going, “It’s easy to say never give up” it’s easy to say that, but when you’re actually in the moment you know that’s when it’s really tough, right?

Rob: Oh, yeah.

Brett:  What are some key things that you do when you know something is not working it’s not feeling right and your feeling that lull what are some key things you do some action steps or strategies that you implement to make sure you can get out of that rut and boost yourself further faster?

Rob: Well one thing I do is I rely a lot more on my team I have a good team of people around me and it’s very easy for me to think I’m always right and have got the best opinion and the best advice, but it’s very easy once you get to a certain level or you have been something so long to sometimes miss the things that are right in front of you. I’m always asking for advice and opinions of the people around me, and I don’t necessarily make my decisions based on that, but I always try to weigh it in. Sometimes people can see things from a different perspective that you can’t as an owner or trainer so it’s always good to build a team. It’s always important to I think business wise to try and build up almost like a base of cash and good credit so, you always want to have like, what I call a “security fund’ or an “in case of [expletive] fund.”

If you’re a business owner and something hits you like, our gym last month we got hit with huge bill for air conditioning it was like a thirty thousand HVAC system we had to put in or we would have been shut down. Like, no joke the building didn’t have it and one of my competitors made a complaint against me for not having it, so then this operations person from OHS shows up and they are like, “You have thirty days to get this in or we have to shut you down” so most people would be like, “Oh, [expletive] we are done” but, to me it’s like, “This sucks but let’s solve this problem” so luckily I saved enough money and I always tried to develop a bit of money in case of [expletive], so we managed to basically pay that off. We didn’t in-occur any debt from it and got over that hump and now our gym is only better. I think that if you’re not thinking long-term for your business you’re going to be [expletive] in the end. You have to think of where you business going to be five, ten, fifteen years from now and not just three years from now.

Brett: Did you send a letter to your competitor thanking them?

Rob: The only thing I need to do for my competitors is keep getting better because the better I get it just pisses them off, so I’m okay with that.

Brett:  Yeah, dead right. I want to move into some quick fire questions and you just rattle off the first things that sort of come into your head there. What is your number one technological resource? There are so many different Apps and things out there that can help you with your business, but what is your go to technical resource?

Rob: Good question, I basically blog a lot and I love to write and social media and facebook so if I do anything it’s basically build my email list I use facebook to build my following and then use my blog to educate, motivate, and to kind of put my personality out there. With video, writing and everything I’ve been spending as much time as possible which has then opened up other doors for me in terms of writing for magazines. I’m working on a couple of books now for this year so I think find a couple of good things you’re good at and just keep going with those things.

Brett: Excellent, where do you think the fitness industry is heading in the next three years?

Rob: I think everybody needs to get away from this cheap model of low cost boot camp, low cost business, and low cost gym memberships because it’s not going to work, right, and it’s going to die. I think the more that you can specialize and create culture, value, and create something unique you’re going to attract in enough people that will pay for your service. I think the sooner that people can get away from cardio machine and ten dollar a month gyms the better.

Brett: What is your best book that you have ever read and you would recommend to our listeners?

Emily: Good question. [Expletive] my library [expletive] huge… The Go-Giver was a really good book I love that book it was just so simple, amazing, really good. What is the other one? I was a big Bruce Lee fan so I used to read a lot of Bruce Lee stuff like, Bruce Lee philosophy stuff way back in the day I really liked that stuff. I wish I was in my office now I just have so many man it’s just like…I actually read so many books before I really read enough of them anymore I only read them when I travel. I just think I you can get through like one book every two or three weeks you’re doing pretty well.

Brett: Where is Rob King heading in the next five years what can we expect to see?

Rob: I have plans to expand my business I want to have a least three to five Heavy Weights facilities across Canada. My goal is to be one of if not the top guy on the internet in terms of coaching, writing and I’m on my way there now kind of like the transformations we are having in New Finland I want to take that bigger and better and hit Canada and hit the United States and wherever with it so I’m just really working hard to build my base in terms of writing and blogging and becoming better at my craft always improving and getting better. I also want to help as many people as possible and stay true to myself.

Brett: Excellent, and what would your last piece of parting advice be to the listeners today who’s wanting to take themselves to the next level and wanting to increase their business, but they are a little bit stuck and they aren’t really sure what path to take. What would your advice be?

Rob: Have faith in yourself and believe you can do it and go [expletive] do it you know at our gym you have to think about the wall as soon as you walk in it says, “Get comfortable been uncomfortable” everyday at my business I’m doing something where it’s like, “Man I don’t want to do this” and then I force myself to do it. I was so nervous when I first started coaching I remember doing my first group of four people and having a severe panic attack driving to work that day because I had to coach four people for a circuit class.

Then last night I coached a hundred people wearing a tutu and it didn’t bother me at all so I really think you have to push your envelope, do the things you don’t want to do, work on your craft, and stop making excuses you have to [expletive] get [expletive] done and keep getting uncomfortable.

Brett: Excellent, so Rob where can our listeners find out more about yourself and follow you?

Rob: Hit me up at facebook.com/RobKingfitness and then my blog as well its RobKingfitness.com and my personal email is RobKingfitness@gamil.com.

Brett: Excellent, so Rob brother thank you once again mate it’s been a pleasure.

Rob:  Thank you.

Brett: Looking forward to you coming over the ditch here and getting out of that snowy minus…freezing.

Rob: Like I told you it’s on the list for this year when I write something on my list it gets done so I’m looking forward to it.

Brett: I hope so tell me when the tickets booked and we will start planning.

Rob: You got it man if you do a business event or something let me know.

Brett: Yeah, a hundred percent you’ll be there.

Rob: Guaranteed.

Brett: All right well thanks a lot Rob and mate we will be speaking very soon.

Rob: Cheers thank you for the opportunity I enjoyed it hopefully this will help people.

Brett: Hundred percent.

Episode 17: Paul Mort (listener discretion advised)

[sharethis]
paul mort

I told you he was CRAZY 🙂

In this episode of the Fiit Professional Podcast Brett Interviews fitness entrepreneur and email marketing expert Paul Mort (aka the boot camp king) or I like to say, “CRAZY Englishman”Email marketing when done right, will have a massive impact on the success of your business.

Listen in as Paul uncovers the secrets to making money every time he sends an email. (which he emails every day)

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

Paul Mort (listener discretion advised)

Transcript of EPISODE 17:

Introduction:

Hello and welcome to the official Podcast the number one Podcast for fitness professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you’re after more clients and more income, and more free time then you have come to the right place visit Podcast.fitprofessionals.com.au today.

Hello and welcome to another fit professional Podcast I’m your host Brett Campbell and today residing form far North East England the other side of the world from myself so he is getting up to start the day and I’m ending my day. I’m very pleased to welcome to the fit professional Podcast Paul Morty Mortimus Maximus. How are you doing buddy?

Paul Mort: I’m doing very well I’m really excited also yeah, you told me I’m the interviewee as you all know, so yeah I’m looking forward to this man.

Brett Campbell: Yeah, excellent, so just a little bit of a background with Paul is I guess you would say is we are probably on to what you would call a third date, second date.

Paul Mort: That means I can go to second date with you right?

Brett Campbell: If you’re lucky you might have been able to get there on the first date mate if you’re good enough.

Paul Mort: I know mate that wasn’t easy.

Brett Campbell: I guess Paul and myself we’ve found each other over Facebook I reached out to Paul long story short. I’ve been on his Podcast which we will mention that I will definitely recommend you check it out as well and now, we have Paul here reining on the professional airwaves, so Paul I would like to hand over to yourself, because you are going to be able to give us a bit of background on how is Paul Mort and what does he do?

Paul Mort: Okay, again, I’m not going to bore your listeners to tears Richard I notice like, on a Podcast if you get a boring guy on its very hard work for not only the interviewer, but also for the listeners. Let’s do this, so I used to be a fat engineer working night shifts, and I lost some weight and everybody asked me how I did it. Looking back now I did it the completely wrong way, because then I stumbled into personal training and got qualified and started personal training people in the gym. I was then almost thrown out because I had to crush all the other personal trainers, because I started to develop a passion for marketing. In, the fact that all the other personal trainers in this gym who were paying rent left because they had no clients at all. It kind of wasn’t my fault and because I almost got thrown out of this gym I ended up been the only mobile personal trainer which I quickly grew to despise and then one day I was driving to a client …I’d bought this brand new sports car a bit of a hairdresser’s car to be quite honest, and I crashed it in a head-on collision. I got injured quite badly and then kind of had to re-access what I wanted to do. So, I stumbled across the old Boot Camp phenomenon, and this is a long time ago now which were the old, “Not pay as you pay Boot Camp” but a pay monthly Boot Camp. I started to see the kind of potential and the kind of almost guaranteed income or almost guaranteed income and not getting paid per the hour which is obviously swapping time for money. That kind of grew this monster and I had my own Boot Camp and I quickly got up to a hundred clients. Everybody asked me how I did it, so I started doing a little bit of mentoring with other trainers and they saw the same success. Then I was like, you know what I’m helping these guys grow their business, but mind has kind of stuck after three or four years. So then I kind of started doing a licensing program which is like, franchising and it ended up in nineteen locations within four different countries and then again, I get bored very easily – I had a trial and moved to Marbella in Spain it was a very nice area, and then I kind of ended up having my Boot Camp business, so I sold it and setup a supplement company, and still did a little bit of mentoring, and won some awards, and got my name on some lists, went to Amazon. Did a tour of the U.K., which basically I went around the U.K., hired by a company called Frapil which is like, the biggest company in England for fitness professionals, basically a tour of the U.K. teaching other trainers how I was getting results in a group training format that were bad the most people got on a one-to-one format.

Now, I run a supplement company which is kind of exploding it’s about to go into two of the biggest gym chains in the U.K., which is huge for me, it’s in a lot of health food stores, in a shop called South Produce which is a very high-end store in the U.K. here. Then I also have an inner circle which is kind of an old school where newsletters are delivered to your home, so rather than everything been online I kind of saw a little opportunity for people to step-away from the laptop learning, and kind of get with these newsletter where they can sit down and read it and action it which is proved to be a bit of a revelation. You know what it’s like Brett I probably got around a hundred grand worth of online program on my laptop, three-quarters of which I haven’t even opened. You know what it’s like when you get distractions, right? So, yeah that’s me I also have bi-polar which is kind of a bit of a pain in the ass, but also a little bit of a blessing in disguise because although I spend probably a week a month in bed and try no to kill myself…no it’s not that bad I don’t get it that badly, yeah I get week where I’m what I call the “Black Dog” where I’m literally just crying and nothing I can really do about that, but the three weeks before that I’m very creative and I earn a lot of money in that time because of the creativity, so yeah, that’s me mate, yeah.

Brett Campbell: Excellent.

Paul Mort: I have more problem telling people about this stuff because I’ m very open and honest, and I’m all of, “Why are you seeing a fit professional podcast” I’m kind of anti-perfectionist.

[Laughing]

Yeah, I might go into that later the whole anti-professional thing. You’ve seen my emails you’ve heard my Podcast…yeah.

Brett Campbell: I guess just talking to that particular point there it is probably something that you know I guess initially caught my eye. I was like, my first reaction was, and “Who the [expletive] is this guy Like, who does he think he is type of thing, but of course understanding marketing and understand relationship building and that type of stuff I guess it was you know my second thought to that was, “He must have his own raving crowd’ so we will talk about that in a minute. Something that I want to guess just get out of you that’s always quite valuable I guess is you have done a lot of things, in your very short bio there. Obviously throughout the time you have made mistakes and you know I guess changed directions, so I’m always big on asking, and finding out what is your biggest lesson that you’re made in business? What would the biggest lesson…?

Paul Mort: That’s a great question. The biggest lesson is actually going to cover the…almost the anti-professional point in that. I was always attracting a lot of people that I didn’t particularly get on with that well, and I was always complaining about – I’d say to my wife, “This person is draining my energy. This person is a little bit sensitive and needs there hand held all the time” I felt like, I was kind of having to blow smoke up people’s butts to make them feel better and then I realized that was my own fault because I wasn’t been myself. Does that make sense?

Brett Campbell: Yeah, one hundred percent.

Paul Mort: I was kind of been the guy that I was expected to be. I was been in this old singing old dancing cheerleader in the fitness industry, and I quickly grew well that I realize you know what it’s my fault I’m putting then energy out there I’m putting myself out there and I’m attracting these people. So, then I kind of switched my – I just got exhausted and it happened when I had my very first melt down when I couldn’t get out of bed for maybe six weeks, and then it became a point of okay you have depression, and then it kept on happening, and I was like, “How can I be depressed I have this magnificent life, and kind of do what I want” at this point I had trial at London, and Spain which is kind of the dream. I sold my business, so I didn’t have to work at all for a very long time, so I couldn’t really get the depression thing. But, then like I said, I was speaking at big events in the U.K., and I was been told what I could say, “Cover your…tie your shoes up, take your ear-rings out. You have to be clean shaven” and I was like you know what, “Screw this” so yeah, it was kind of a melt-down that happened. Then I realized it was my fault and then changed tack, and you know what I’m going to have the courage…I’m going to perk up some courage and have the courage to be myself one-hundred percent of the time and I also realized that not everybody is going to like you, so you have to get over yourself. Not everybody is going to like you can’t help everybody and you shouldn’t try. Yeah, so that is kind of in short, yeah.

Brett Campbell: Makes sense, let’s use that then because I guess the big takeout message from that is to be self evident, and you are going to see that the best results that can happen when you are yourself. I mean you just need to look at yourself and the company now, and where it’s heading and that type of stuff. So, let’s use that as a great segway into, “Explain this, narcotics, vacant, and massive breast-iticals.”

[Laughing]

Paul Mort: Okay, so that was an email I wrote yesterday, that was actually one of the least offensive emails I wrote, and people are always intrigued as to why I write that type of email, and why I put out that type of content. Like I said its’ just, “Me, Me, Me” I talk about – a lot of trainers and everyone in general has a fear of polarizing people. What happened to me is I would attract people now who would gladly spend time with in a pub for free you’d have the privilege of those guys giving me money now. Does that make sense?

Brett Campbell: Yeah, for sure.

Paul Mort: Again, and I have fun with this, I think a lot of fit-pros are kind of scared to break the mold, and for want of a better word they become personal-trainer they cause motivational core’s they think everybody loves training as much as they do whereas; if they did love training as much as they do they wouldn’t be this obesity epidemic. Let’s face it most people hate training – I’m not sure where I am going with that, but yeah again, me been myself having fun attracts a lot of better quality person in my life and not people that are dreamy and need their hands held. Because again, I think the fitness industry has a lot of insecurities or the people in it have a lot of insecurities, and I think this I why there is this much in-fighting. I’ve seen trainers in my home town actually destroying each other, I’m like why it’s not as though there isn’t enough fat people to go around right?

[Laughter]

And I’m been straight up there and again, I get grief in the fitness industry for using the word fat, but you know what sometimes people don’t need to be told the truth. I say this all the time you can’t create change by telling people what they want to hear, and I think fit-pro’s a lot of the time can also be guilt of telling people what they want to hear. That is me that is kind of it in a nut-shell mate…does that make sense?

Brett Campbell: Yeah, one-hundred percent I’m following you.

Paul Mort: I talk about what I’m interested in and the reason the emails have been so successful for me is, because one reason I write like I talk and if you read my emails after you listened this interview you’d be like, yeah that’s Paul Mort and again, if somebody is offended by bad language from my email they are going to be a terrible fit for me. As I’ve grown older and grumpier, and yeah crankier and again, I think it’s to do with having children I became very, very weary of whom I spend my time with now because, I quickly realized that if you spend all of your time with people that complain a lot and always need an armor on their shoulder then you end up just carrying other people’s baggage. I think that happens with trainers as well you almost become like, a counselor, right?

Brett Campbell: Yeah, for sure. Let’s take that and I guess just to recap the narcotics [inaudible 0:12:35.9] Bristol was a subject line of a particular article that Paul wrote there. So, you write articles every day? You send email every day, so it would be fair to say your pretty well up on I guess the best strategies and best practices when it comes to email. Let’s talk about email a bit and give us your overview on what your thoughts on actual email are in the industry, and actually how it can help personal trainers?

Paul Mort: Beautiful, I’m excited about this because I’m so passionate about email and this sounds far-fetched, but email changed my life. I think a lot of the time I was hustling when I didn’t need to hustle. Hustle is all good, but I also think there is a problem when you have to hustle forever. I’m like dude something is clearly wrong here you don’t know your numbers in your marketing. I know we talked about this in other Podcasts right Brad? If people don’t know your numbers and you have to hustle forever and that gets exhausting, because if you take a break somebody will out hustle you, and that is the kind of issue with us then. You are kind of in a race like you can never win, so yeah not myself and I do think that does have to be a period where you hustle. For instance I have to hustle this week because next week I’m doing another tour of James in the U.K., and teaching all the trainers how to kind of sell my product which is very beneficial to me. Yeah, email changed my life maybe because I know now I have to do three things in a day, drive traffic to my website, have a high convert squeeze page or a decent convert squeeze page or site, and I have to send an email and then I have to deliver what I’m selling. Depending on what it is I have to make sure I deliver that to the customer high value, so that’s three things in a day. I know three things are going on I can take the rest of the day off, and this is one of the reasons why I’ve been able to cope with this bi-polar thing and still grow businesses that are multiple six figures because I have kind of figured out the things that have the biggest return on the investment and stopped the other things with the lowest return on investment. Again, it’s classic eight/twenty, eight percent of your results come from twenty percent of your efforts and for me twenty percent of the efforts are the three things I just spoke about. Let me tell you how I discovered email marketing I used to write and I think most people do this I used to write a blog board every week. I’d spend a day and a half up on this blog board and it was like, war and peace and I think you know what this is a bad ass blog post, and then I would get a lot of comments on it. If someone went to my old website which is Bootcampking.com then they would see some of those giant blog boards with hundreds of comments on them. Well, guess what mate comments are made for your ego, but they do jack **** for your bank account and I think in the fitness industry again, we do things that fill our ego’s rather than filling our bank accounts, right? Which is again, the like’s thing been useful about the like’s thing, likes, are great, but they are not leads which again, you can turn them into leads which is beautiful Brett. I hope that the people listening will jump on the program which teaches that, which is pretty bad ass.

So, yeah I used to do that and then I was – my business partner actually my business partner in the supplement company went to an event in Texas I think it was, and there was a guy on stage, and it was Perry Belcher, and Ryan Deiss who were two of the biggest internet marketers in the world two of the most successful right. They were raving about a guy called Andre Chaperon who was an email marketer and he’s been described as the best email, copywriter, in the world. He has a program called “Overrespondtomaddness” his whole business is based on order responder sequences. It turned out that he lived two streets away from me in Malbia, so I hooked up with this guy and he gave me his product for free, and he was just like, “Just run with it” and I ran with it and the results were ridiculous. Then I discovered a guy called Ben Settle – I had both of these guys on my Podcast by the way if you’d like to listen. Ben Settle was a little bit, and again, he writes daily email, but he’s very edgy like, he’s probably a little bit edgier than me, and I kind of feel in love with this guys writing style because I like other people that are edgy. You know what it’s like when you like people who are like you, and this guy was edgy and ran daily emails about all of his products. Again, I kind of blended those two styles together and again, I saw phenomenal and these are the results – I’ve actually got nothing to sell at the moment which is weird to fit-pro’s, so I have that fit pro list. I went for, my record is four months and how many emails is that? It’s a lot of email four months.

Brett Campbell: Yeah.

Paul Mort: I went four months where every time I sent an email I made a sale at least one sale which is beautiful. It also do it with my supplement company as well which sounds weird. This thing can be applied to any business and we will go over the benefits of email marketing hopefully in a second, but it increased sales in my supplement by 40% which is huge. That was to retail buyers, and I also email a list of trainers and it’s only one level it’s not multi-level marketing by any stand, because I’m not a fan of that. I think the business model is okay, but I’m not a fan of the products that become multi-level marketed. We also have a list of personal trainers that also are either are an online affiliate or they would buy in bulk, and I also email those guys probably three times a week as well, so yeah the results for me have been phenomenal.

I think this happens a lot and again, I think you have start of like this…I don’t throw **** at the wall and see what sticks or not I’m not doing different loads of marketing things and thinking, “Okay what’s next what’s next” I’m not structuring around looking for things to do.

Brett Campbell: A, hum.

Paul Mort: What I have now is a lot of focus that brings a high end investment which I’m big on because I have two kids. They are not in school yet and I want to spend as much time as possible with them because time is the one thing we don’t get back. Once those kids are in school I will probably do a little bit more work or take up golf or something.

[Laughing]

Brett Campbell: I could just imagine you on a golf course.

[Laughing]

Paul Mort: Sure, we almost got kicked off from there ever because my intentions were to buy span as a rip; that’s why they all go off on tangents.

Brett Campbell: Maybe you might last around a mini-putt.

Paul Mort: I don’t know what I’m going to do when I go to school I literally have no idea. I’m a thirty-three old guy who wants to play play-station all day, although I have discovered Netflix which takes up a lot of time.

Brett Campbell: Let’s keep on the track of email then and let’s break down what you believe are the key components’ that actually make a good email. Everyone I guess I want to make sure here in preface to the fact like, you said, “You don’t want to throw **** to the wall” and hope it sticks, so someone could be writing an email everyday and not getting any results, no replays, and there is obviously reasons for that. What are the key fundamentals that make a good email?

Paul Mort: Can I spend two minutes convincing people why they should email again?

Brett Campbell: Let’s go the sale starts now.

Paul Mort: Just simply because I’ve been delivering every minute and a half doing this because I think we have to convince people to do email first which is fine let’s do it. So, why email? It’s because I think it’s intimate and personal as in having somebody’s attention, Facebook is great, but everything thirty seconds something new will pop up. When email was a little bit more personal I think it builds-up no light and trust very quickly and it positions you as a leader very quickly especially when you do it daily. Most people email when they have something to say, but if you’re a real expert and have something to say on the subject every single day. You have permission to market these people, and familiar to weed out people that I don’t want to work with, and this is something I want to be clear on. If you don’t want to work with a certain type of person be very clear about it, because what will happen is the people that you want to work with will be drawn even closer near, so that is kind of why I like email. It’s all different things, it’s visible, people check it, and for me I don’t worry about competition at all, but I look for things they are doing and I will do it. Most people are too lazy to send out daily email because put in a state of something I’m saying, “Buy my ****” is so much easier, okay good email Brett. Most people have a problem getting their emails open, so a couple of ticks for that. Your subject line should be curiosity based as in most people’s emails are like, poor weight loss tapes and the problem with that is it makes me make a decision of whether I’m going to read it or not, so I’m going to say, “Yes I want to read that” or “No I don’t want to read that” whereas; what you want me saying again, I’m not going to sway it because I don’t know how peaceful you are, and what the hell that is what I should think when I see the subject line, “What the hell” and Obama does this very well his email marketing whoever he has hired is very good. I saw a subject line for him that was, “They are wrong” and as soon as you see that you’re thinking, “Who is wrong?” I am going to open out and then find out. Then other thing to get your email opened is the from line, so when you see from should never be a company, because as soon as I see that I’m thinking these guys are trying to sell something to me. There is no useful content in there whatsoever, so it should be from you personally. The last thing on that is frequency the more you emails you send the more audience you will get. Now, that sounds crazy, because people are like, everyday that’s a bit of spamy, now it’s not spam if it is info entertainment. This is the big take-away that I’d like to get we are drowning in a sea of information let’s face it the stuff that personal trainers are selling I can get for free on the internet, and all of that content is been done over and over again. Whereas people really want is entertainment this is why Apps and games on a phone are so big now this is why Facebook is too big, and you know what Brett you’ll see it in a restaurant – this makes me really sad people can’t hold conversations anymore. If you see a family in a restaurant, both the parent’s will be on their phones, and sometimes the kids are on an iPad and I’m like that is bad. What I’m saying is people want entertainment, so the email you write should be entertaining, so things that are great for this are stories, something that has happened in your life. Yes, that email from me was based on a movie that I went to see which is Wolf of Wall Street which has a million lessons in it and it also has some funny things in there. You might write about something that happened on the weekend or you might write about something you did when you were a kid or a story about a client some client almost like, a testimonial, but it’s story-based. And this is why again; people want entertainment and people like reading stories because this sounds like me. Yes, I’ve seen that movie, yeah I’ve seen that celebrity, so yeah all good.

Brett Campbell: Awesome.

Paul Mort: That is kind of my tip for that and here is another one. Don’t be scared to sell in every email, people don’t mind been sold to it’s just the way you sell, so this is the way I do it. Honestly if you don’t give people the opportunity to see what you have for sale then you’re doing them a disservice. That is all you do you give them the opportunity to see what else you have, so this is the way that I do it, I will teach somebody in an email in a story-based format I’ll teach them why they should or should not do something and I’ll also teach them what to do, but if they want to know how to do it then they buy. Does that make sense?

Brett Campbell: One hundred percent.

Paul Mort: I will teach them want and the why, but if they want to know how they will have to buy that is a nice little rhyme there. I’m kind of giving them advice that is useful so they can use it, but if they want to know the workings of it to make it really work for them then they have to invest probably in a circle. Does that make sense?

Brett Campbell: Yep, I am with you.

Paul Mort: For me that is email. Another one is keep it to five hundred words an email can never be too long or too boring, but if you keep it to five hundred words what happens is people can consume it in a couple of minutes. Again, with the blog boards what I do and you have probably done this Brett is I change is I take; I bookmark a big blog board because this is going to take maybe ten or twenty minute sot read. And guess what? I’ve got bookmarks on my Internet Explorer on my…actually Chrome that I use, I’ve got bookmarks that have been there for three years.

Brett Campbell: Yeah.

Paul Mort: I’ve never got around to reading that, people’s attention spans are horrific that is why they always hit refresh on their screen the hit and send receive on their email all of the time. That is why they are on Facebook checking the news feed because their attentions spans are horrific.

Brett Campbell: Let’s talk about something that you have brought up now. For the person of who is not familiar with email marketing and writing blog posts etc, what is your opinion of sending a raw email versus sending an email with a link to a blog post?

Paul Mort: That is a wonderful question and you notice that I do that right? Here are the things about raw email in plain text. Your email should look like it’s from a friend simply because if I see graphics, if I see pretty pictures, if I see logos I’m thinking straight away this guy is going to try and sell me something I don’t want to buy anything. I’m kind of making a yes or no decision as soon as I see the email, so plain text looks like it’s from a friend. Let’s look at what your trying to do here your trying to become this persons trusted advisor, so that the more emails you send them that are useful they will then trust you which means – not everybody is ready to train with you right now, so who do you think when they’re ready to train with you right now, and take some action into getting into shape who do you think they are going to contact. The person who is sending them useful entertaining content everyday…that’s only five-hundred words, so they will read it which is the whole point of an email you need to get it read, or do you think they are going to be sending the person that is constantly patient, or shouting their loudest on social-media, because that’s what social media is….it’s shouting normally you try to shout louder than the competition. That’s kind of it on plain text it gets read.

Brett Campbell: What is your opinion based around with actually just sending email without any links to a blog post or writing a quick snap shot and directing them to the blog post to read the rest. What are your thoughts on that?

Paul Mort: That’s a wonderful question and again, something that I used to do was send them the blog post I don’t know people like, Ryan Lee who do that as well. Ryan is one of my favorite marketers and a friend of mine get upon the Podcast and he sends people back to the blog. My idea is this; I have your attention in your inbox why do I then send you somewhere else? Yeah, because as soon as I send you back to my blog, and if you look on peoples blogs there is a lot of stuff, blogs are kind of….there is loads of stuff on there. There are articles I can read, I’ve got links to your aboutness, I’ve got links to your bio, I’ve got links to your product. It’s almost like I’m standing at the check-out and I’m ready to pay, and then you send me somewhere else. I don’t want that I want you full attention, so you are reading my email, but there should be a link in there or a link to your sales page to fill in a questionnaire, so you contact me and get me on the phone whatever, but that’s my opinion anyway. Yeah, you have my attention, so why would you then send me somewhere else where there is kind of, “Oh that thing’s well driven” and here is the way I look at email Brett. Imagine you’re in a busy nightclub when you see a girl or a guy you like, and you think they are hot I wouldn’t mind…I’m not even going to go into that, but you know what I mean. The nightclub is loud and you can’t hear yourself think you’re trying to have a conversation and you have to shout in this person’s ear, and there is also the fact that there is also a lot of competition in that night club. Other guys have seen this girl, or other girls have seen this guy and having them in that… I guess that’s quite rude, but been in their inbox is like, seeing or like, taking them to somewhere a little bit more quiet. Do you want to go somewhere quiet your place or mine?

Taking them back somewhere else in my opinion or part of a sales page at the end of the email where you show them what else you have. It sounds so bad, but so right, and taking them back to somewhere where there is some noise and distraction is like, taking them back to a busy nightclub, yeah?

Brett Campbell: Yeah.

Paul Mort: And again, my opinion is based on the results I’ve had with it and again, I would also say it’s changed my life.

Brett Campbell: I guess right there the take home message is, because I guess if I was playing the devil’s advocate, and this is the great thing about the industry and the market is that there is many different ways to skin the cat, so to speak. I don’t actually take the approach as much in regards to specific emails, so we will send people to our blogs etc. I guess from our perspective with the amount of traffic we get the amount of readers who read our email we’d pick up several sales every time we send out an email.

Paul Mort: The last two emails that I’ve sent out I’ve sent them the videos actually a hilarious video. The reason I can make people laugh – John Kennedy said this, “People buy more when they are in good humor. People will buy more when they are in good humor” so I can make people laugh, so I will send them the funny videos.

Brett Campbell: I actually watched that video.

Paul Mort: That is a great point Brett actually, every email should have a link and this is the simple reason you’re conditioning people to click links. If they are clicking a link that has a high return maximum, and regardless of whether it’s a blog post, video or whatever or a sales page it means that when you do send them something even just a PayPal link then they are, so used to clicking on a link that has a high return investment then they have no problem clicking that link. Again, that is kind of the point of an email or even email get it open, get it read, get a link clicked and get a sale that is the whole point of email marketing otherwise you just kind of….again there is no point in doing it if you’re not making sales from it.

Brett Campbell: Hundred percent agree with you. Let’s change tactic for a second I have just got a quick pattern to interrupt this session here, and it’s a segment that I call, “Shoot Shag Mary” now I’m going to say a females name and you’re either going to say, “Shoot, Shag, or Mary” okay, you understand?

Paul Mort: Yeah.

Brett Campbell: Oprah Winfrey?

Paul Mort: Shoot.

Brett Campbell: That took a few seconds I need you to be quick on the buzzer, okay?

Paul Mort: Okay.

Brett Campbell: I won’t as why; Miley Cyrus.

Paul Mort: Shag.

Brett Campbell: Queen Elizabeth?

[Laughing]

Paul Mort: Mary, maybe, because I won’t have to work another day in my life screw email Margaret when you married to Queen Elizabeth.

Brett Campbell: You probably wouldn’t have to work either if you didn’t shoot Oprah. She’s actually…

[Laughing]

Paul Mort: She’s annoying, the Queen hardly ever talks.

Brett Campbell: Or you could actually swing on a wrecking ball it’s up to you, but that looks like it’s up to you. So, go back to the question I like to ask every professional that we get on the Podcast here is where do you see the industry heading in the next five year? What do you think is something that personal trainers must do to stay along?

Paul Mort: Next five years is going to get very competitive every year we are seeing more and more personal trainers coming to the industry. Here is what you have to think about it’s not a problem. Competition is not a problem unless you’re trying to train everybody with a wallet, a post, and a few pounds to lose. The more you polarize all the types of your niches’ the more money you will make and the less, the more irrelevant competition comes that’s it. That’s it and I think as in kind of trends and the way you do this I think smaller group training will be the thing that, I think there is always a market for high-end personal trainers. I wouldn’t go budget because budget is based on volume and I think kind of semi-private six to ten people in a group is the way to go, because people love that social side the community, the kind of support for me that is where I would go.

Brett Campbell: Excellent.

Paul Mort: I think there are a couple of things that people want, faster results and this is a big thing it’s called, “convenience” people are impatient, and they want convenience this is why people do Speedy Boarding, people also want to experience. If people didn’t want to experience there wouldn’t be any first class everybody would go economy class, right? People want to experience and they want convenience. What I mean by that is you should be bundling supplements into your personal training programs, because sending people to go and buy stuff and go to health food stores and all that stuff online it’s a big inconvenience for them, so make it easy for people to pay, but also bundle things in. I know personal trainers that bundle food in, so I’m talking mules here. I’m good friends with a guy that owns a huge company here in the U.K. which you go to his website put in your weight and your height again, it’s not the best calculation, and plotting your goals and from there his team will cook your food and they will deliver it to your door for the week.

Brett Campbell: Yeah.

Paul Mort: And I’m bundling things like that is huge and again, the more money you charge for these sorts of things and the higher end you go the better clients you get, because those guys are the least maintenance, and they are also the highest adherence, because if they are investable in something the adherence is higher.

Brett Campbell: And, I think a good point for there for listeners listening in is that it just does not come down to the specific of training there are multiple steams of incomes there to be earned, and I guess with all our fit-check locations as an example Paul, all our location owners get the opportunity to sell our fit supplement brand that we have got. I did the hard yards in the years of carrying around supplements in the boot of my car, trading cash.

[Laughing]

Paul Mort: Do you remember this right, can you remember the tall gym at LAX? Can you remember that?

Brett Campbell: Yes.

Paul Mort: It looked like an ironing board or it was like a police system. I used to carry that in my car it was super heavy and super old, but I used to go to motels, and I would have to pull it out and set it up, I was like, “Dude this is” yeah that is one of the things that made the decision this is not for me anymore.

Brett Campbell: Yeah, it’s crazy.

Paul Mort: Get the dumbbells out of your car while…I’m getting a sweat-on just thinking about those days.

Brett Campbell: I guess the take on there is the industry is always evolving and there are so many opportunities out there. The bigger it gets the more opportunities there are going to be there for you because there are going to be more room to adapt.

Paul Mort: Dude, absolutely yeah.

Brett Campbell: I guess Paul we are getting to the end of the episode here and like, last time we could speak all day I believe.

Paul Mort: Absolutely you’re right, you’re talking about it right yeah.

Brett Campbell: I didn’t even realize we have gone past thirty minutes already. What I always like to do is I like to leave the episode first on some parting words from yourself, any extra advice, anything that you feel would be valuable for someone to take away?

Paul Mort: I always get asked, “What should I read to get better writing? What should read to get better at emails? What are some products that you recommend to get better at emails?” I’m like dude, just start of as a bad writer and write yourself better, so just start writing and write yourself better. You don’t lose weight by reading books about it; it’s the same with writing you don’t get better by reading books about it and doing product shooting. You can get some pointers like this, but you should start writing that’s it, and in my opinion is this on writing…how can you be considered an expert if you don’t put out content you can’t be considered an expert if you’re not putting out content. If you look at any expert in our industry they put out and they are rent-less with content that’s my opinion, so there is where I’m going with my point start writing now.

Brett

Campbell: I must say you’ve actually inspired me to throw another email or two each week.

Paul Mort: Oh, beautiful, yeah and it’s like this is you get paid every time you write an email why wouldn’t you write more.

Brett Campbell: That’s dead right I guess it comes back to that thing once again of organizing and realizing the importance as well, and again, even if you’re sitting there listening and you only have fifty people on your email list the same rule applies even if you have fifty for a hundred thousand and half a million people. The same rule applies you have to start somewhere, and you know if you don’t start you are never going to start, right?

Paul Mort: There is a guy called Darren Hardy who wrote a great book…do you know Darren Hardy form Success Magazine?

Brett Campbell: I haven’t heard of him, no I haven’t.

Paul Mort: He wrote a book and it’s called the …Something Effect I can’t remember what it’s called, but he describes this like, I don’t know if it’s a merry-go-round you know the thing that you have to push.

Brett Campbell: Yep.

Paul Mort: Once you get “Big Maude” going, so once you start the momentum build up, and suddenly you’re cracking out content, content, content, so you just have to start writing yeah, that’s it.

Brett Campbell: So, Paul where can all our listeners find out more about yourself and…?

Paul Mort: I’m going to lay down a word of warning you know already how it is Brett if you are easily offended, and what I call a sensitive snowflake don’t come over here, because I will offend you at some point. My website is IamPaulMoult.com you can find me in the iTunes store by typing in my name.

Brett Campbell: Excellent, so there you go head over to IamPaulMoult.com, so Paul brother thanks so much for taking your morning out of busy day no doubt.

Paul Mort: I’ve got an inseam, but it’s my fault.

Brett Campbell: It’s definitely not my fault so don’t take…

Paul Mort: This is why I have to have somebody organize maybe, because I just say yes to everybody and I end up quadrupled booked.

Brett Campbell: Excellent.

Paul Mort: Thank you for that I appreciate it.

Brett Campbell: Till the next time mate have a great day.

Paul Mort: Cheers, bye.

Episode 16: Planning

[sharethis]

In this Fiit Professional Episode Brett Talks about Planning.

You will learn:

  • Where to actually start in the planning process.
  • Why this skill is imperative to learn if you want to be successful.
  • The #1 Tip you need when it comes to planning.

and loads more…

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes
Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

Planning

Transcript of EPISODE 16:

Hello and welcome to Fiit Professional Pod cast the number 1 Pod cast for Fitness professional looking to build in fitness business. If you are after more clients, more income and more free time then you’ve come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au today.

Welcome to another FiiT Professional Podcast I’m your host Brett Campbell. Today I’m bringing you a different addition to the FiiT podcast here. I’m actually in the car and I’m driving to pick up my other car. So my car is actually getting a seamster at the moment. So I’m on the road and I thought what to get away to kill some time by talking about some different stuff… So I really don’t have a topic where I’m really heading on this call. But what I can tell you is it is going to be beneficial on some way or another. So first of all I’d like to discuss the topic of Planning because it is quite ironic. I got on to this call with no plan at all and now I’m here trying to treat you and talk to you about planning. Look we would totally get there. So we are gonna talk about planning and the reason why is because again I selected time and date these podcast and it is January and we just had Christmas and you know most businesses there should be back to the old seem of things, generating new leads, creating new programs etc.

Now the issue that I see with many many personal trainers when it comes to planning is that they do not have a plan and an example of this will be if I was to ask you, ‘did you have a pre-Christmas program or did you have a program that was ready to launch directly after the Christmas and the New year holiday?’ etc.

For majority of people the answer would be “No” and the reason being was they didn’t plan. It would’ve occurred to saying before failed to plan, Into planning to fail and that is so true in many ways and what we wanna do is just I guess strike a few concepts out there to you while I’m stuck in traffic that you would be able to hope there is a reason and be able to implement and make sure that you don’t fall into the same track with fellow business owners and what I did myself when I first started out.

So, I just want to go through and raddled up a few key time straight view when you need to have thinking plan and place in regards to your fitness. So Easter is a good one, Australia day is also a good one as well. So what you wanna do is you want to set up a calendar, get 12 months calendar and circle off particular date that again that will have some resemblance. Again, hey you don’t have to run a program or run a sale, or do a promotion for every specific holiday or event, annual event that pops up. But always be open to possibilities of it. So for example Easter, Easter falls in the end of March fairly April generally and what you want to do is you want to plan backwards from that right. So let’s say you want to run Easter promotion or Easter egg promotion where you’re going to utilize to get people into it, or even let’s just say a free Easter egg hunt for a boot camp Easter Egg Hunt. Something along that line right. Let’s just say you gonna run some form of promotion.

Now you need to actually start marketing that at least you know 4 or 5 weeks prior. I guess you need to start and prepare at least 4 or 5 weeks prior. You want to give yourself at least 3 weeks’ worth of marketing, putting it out there I suppose. You know Pinterest; or your website and all those marketing avenues. Hey you may even want to do a local flyers drop them on a local businesses, on board etc.

So you want to have that time. But the issue is you don’t want to become a shot gun personal trainer. But what I mean by shot gun personal trainer is someone that just continuously pulling the triggers all over the place. I used to be a shot gun personal trainer as business owner. So I got a new idea every 10 minutes I think and what I’ll used to do is used to pull triggers on those ideas and then all of a sudden my team won’t be even known that I’m running a special or doing a promotion because I would’ve just pulled the trigger on it and made it happen.

Now why can it be beneficial, it can also be very very tough sort of business. Especially if you are looking into grow larger than yourself. Now you need to have things in place. You need to have plan, you need to have systems back in able you to track the progress of the particular event that you are running.

So for example we are starting off this year. We are going to be running an event, so we are running what we call Fitness Business Program which is a 1 day workshop training intended where we get personal trainers from all over Australia to come along and I teach them the method of how to build a super successful 6 figured fitness business. Now our first event is in Brisbane on the 28th of February and today is the 29th of January. So we have launched that yesterday.

So we’ve actually got now 4 weeks of preparation phase to get people into the event , just fill it up to you know do your buns and on tea . Now in order for that actually started when we first came back from a holiday break which I believe January the 13th. So there’s 2 weeks there of preparation phase and what we needed to do is we needed to get a website built and we needed to get the copy on the website. Even more or so we intended to come up with a plan of what we are planning of doing.

Now most people what they would do is they would go, ‘Oh Cool! I’m going to be running a seminar in February 28th. I better write seminar.’ Now that’s the furthest thing you need to be doing because I can tell you right now. I haven’t look into the exact content that we will be talking about that I got a good idea about it becauseI’ve submerged myself in this topic and you know for the last few years. I can get up and talk about anything but I haven’t set a complete structure for that yet, because it’s not the task that need to be done in order of planning.

We obviously have a set procedure that we need to follow when whether it’s creating an information product planning an event, planning a seminar etc. So let me just talk about a few little fundamentals that we needed to have prior to the launch since yesterday.

So we need to make sure we had a payment gateway through that because if the event is going to be a $97 event they’ll leave at $497 ticket but obviously the first official event that we are going to be running so you know we are really excited and wanted to make sure that we get as many people as we can. So we are offering a ridiculously low cost. Now in order for that what we’ll also need is we need a system that comes into play after that. So what will happen is if you actually register for this event, what will happen is you will get an email sent to you afterwards with all the information etc. So that needed to be created. So we needed an email template for it to be created. We also what will happen is you will get a call from our BDM and he will give you a call and he will invite you and welcome you to I guess what we call out FiiT Family . Welcome you to our family and looking forward to having along to the event.

So again another procedure what we need from that of course is you know we need to know what to say. We are just not gonna get on the phone and just have a random call and hopefully it takes us somewhere we need to have plan behind that. So then again just a few little things that you know we didn’t plan it out we will just be pulling triggers all over the shop.

Now I have gone on a fair bit of in tangent. But I really hope that makes better sense there I do and this is rather unorthodox you know way of presenting a podcast. But I really want to get this information out to you I mean I do have few minutes just to turn at the end of the roads that is getting hectic. But I do want to promote safe driving.

I don’t want to promote dangerous driving; people keep looking at me talking in the car, ‘God, that guy is crazy!’ So what I would leave you is with a few little tips. Number 1 is when it comes to planning; you need to have a set system behind the plan itself, okay?  It makes planning so much easier. So for an example whenever we create a new information product we know that the exact things that needs to happen we know that we need to contact our designer we know who we need to contact out IT specialist to  get our website up and running .

I know that we need to film and create the actual product. Yeah I know that we need to and I don’t want to get on a bit of… but I have a set system that we follow each time almost just like a simple check book. Then you need to tick off and then what it does is it also gives you the satisfaction of completion. So you are not standing around with your finger at your back, Have I done everything that I need to do. If you got a running sheet, you got a check list whatever you want to call it. What you need to do when you create something new you will be far better off than you could and you would be if you didn’t have that obviously, right? Of course, Brett I’m just saying… But I guess the point I’m really trying my home here is that.

In order to have the plan you need to have a set plan or system in order to make that happen. I’ve been rambling enough now but I will leave you with this final thing. Like I said we are running our event over Australia. We are currently doing Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne; there is Adelaide and everywhere else around Australia. We will be visiting your shores very soon as well. Just leave us a message actually and comments, If you have a particular area that you think you like to have us run more Fiitnes Business Blooper, I like travelling…  I’m happy to be on the phone come over and present to you all but Ill leave you with that go and register take advantage of this I’m gonna be revealing everything that has enabled me to be able to go on Australia’s parts Fitness businesses and able to generate 300,000 leads in relatively short time for 18 months and also how we’ve been able to large community and etc. Yeah, so really close to be able to share this information so I know a lot of people listening are overseas got a few emails and look if you have a topic or anything you would like me to cover, whether it’s in a short format or longer format, let me hear about it. I’d love to know but other than that Brett Campbell is out and he is about to turn off the highway and you have a fantastic day and remember ‘Drive Safe.’

If you like more information on the events that I’ve talked about visit- fiit.academy.com.au/events; that’s fiit.academy.com.au/events and take advantage for our 2 for 1 special.

Episode 15: How To Run Successful JV Partnerships

[sharethis]

In this episode Brett interviews Rana Saini.

Rana is the CO Director of WFBOS, which is the largest online fitness business event for fitness business owners.

In this episode you will learn:

  • How to set up the most profitable Joint Ventures
  • How to increase your revenue and have an abundance of new clients
  • How Rana generated over 70 new clients via 1 JV partner
  • Why you need to create JV relationships in your business
  • What types of JV relationships are there and how do you choose which one to use?

and loads more.
Free Gifts from Rana
Video Presentation from Jeffrey Gitomer – Closing the sale (use password ws121) WFBOS – Summit recordings
WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

How To Run Successful JV Partnerships

Transcript of EPISODE 15:

Hello and welcome to the Fiit edition of podcast, the number one podcast for Fiit Professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you’re after more clients, more income and more free time then you’ve come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessionals.com.au today.

Intro: Hello and welcome to the Fiit Professional Podcast. The number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you are after more clients, more income and more free time, then you have come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au today.

Brett: Hello and welcome to another Episode of the Fiit Professional podcast, the podcast for fitness professionals looking to grow their fitness business. I am your host Brett Campbell back again with another fantastic expert within the fitness industry. His name is Rana. Rana and I, met. We probably crossed paths a couple of years ago on Facebook to start with and then we both seen each other now with what we are doing and then things led to another and we ended up having a coffee date and chatting and now here is Rana right now ready to reveal to us all his top secret strategies on how to change your life. No pressure at all Rana, but…”

Rana: “Yeah, yeah! How about that.”

Brett: I’ll give you a brief run down, a little bit about Rana’s history then he can fill you in. So, Rana has been involved in the fitness industry for over 10 years. So, he is an early bird in that aspect. He set up his own personal training studio back in Brisbane which performs now, it performs over 380 stations a week. Through proper chain of 8 personal trainers and it’s virtually touched lives of thousands of people since becoming a personal trainer.

He is also the founder of PT Mastery which consults personal trainers, small business facilities since years. And he is now the co-owner and co-founder of WFBOS which is the World Fitness Business Owners Summit. You may have heard about that, if you have been out there in the inter-webs. If you haven’t, you definitely want to check that out next year. But basically, WFBOS brings together the world’s best in the fitness industry and connects them to thousands of personal trainers just like yourself there and they teach strategy and education with obviously the main goal of adding to you and improving the global fitness industry as a whole.

So, “Rana, what did I miss out there?” “Tell us a little bit more about yourself buddy”

Rana: I like long walks on the beach and listen to classical music, “No!” I, to be honest, that is pretty much like me in a nutshell. I guess; you know; I started off in the fitness industry as a personal; you know; guy looking, just getting into personal training because I thought; you know. To be honest at the start I thought I am going to make good money doing it and obviously same things; you know; you hear with a lot of people. “I was interested in fitness and I like going to the gym and obviously I like helping people and see them get results.”

So; you know; for me it seemed like a bit of a lifestyle job too, so obviously started the course. Started off as a pretty green personal trainer and; you know; I enjoyed doing my Cert 3 and Cert 4 here. Actually I did it in Sydney and; you know; it was just like after, after I graduated it was kind of a little bit of a black hole. I didn’t know, “Ok, what’s next? What do I do? Get a job? Start yourself?” So long story short; you know; it was just fumbling around and I mean I wish I had resources like these and also I knew of other people who were specialists in helping fitness business owners because; you know; it would have definitely fast tracked my growth, for sure.

So, but; you know; obviously long story short we; you know; start as a… I started working at a studio and one of my philosophies to everybody is like, “If you ever going to work for someone else, just work to learn and once you feel like you have learned what you need to, like in terms of running a business or learning how to handle stuff or; you know; you should rise to the top of that business as if it was your own. And when you feel you have outgrown it or you have learned what you need to, you can either step out on your own or go work for a bigger business and bite off more than you can chew.”
Like I started off like a Fitness First sale consultant when I got out. And; you know; I don’t know any of you guys who have been out there or have the experience with it. As much as like Fitness First goes back; you know; I feel like that was an integral part of me learning how to sell. And I, and as a personal trainer; you know; that’s one thing that I sucked at for a long time. Asking people for money and actually knowing what I was worth because it was hard for me to communicate the value that I could give to people. I didn’t really know what my assets were and standing out of the crowd and all that sort of stuff.

So working for someone else was a good, good thing to build my confidence up. And then shortly after that, I stepped out and I thought, “Well, it’s time for me to do this on my own. I feel like am ready and I just started my own studio here in Brisbane and yeah, the rest is kind of history until I; you know; I again found that I had an opportunity to sell part of my business. Which so I did and that makes me some ongoing income, now monthly and I am able to go and do the things I consult and run these great events like WFBOS.

Which means that I can connect with some of the best fitness business owners in the world that are earning; you know; six or seven figures and actually talk to them about; you know; their journeys’ and kind of, “How are you, you know; “actually making money and,” you know; “cutting through the hype of the industry?” And am sure people are listening now and; you know; there’s so much that goes on about six figure blueprints and stuff like that but hopefully that answers your question. “Brett.”

Brett: “Yeah mate! That’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing that.” I guess a couple of things; you know; we always went over and you want to speak about…I always try and take some valuable points out of it and there is a couple of really key things that I really want to touch on and just for everyone to listen up and hopefully they can get that message that I got from it was, the first thing was your honesty. Like your honesty in regards to…. Whenever I ask most people, most personal trainers, I would say 80% of the time the reply I would get to the question, “Why are you in the fitness industry?” 80% of the time people would say, “To help people.” That’s their first initial response.

Rana: “Yeah, yeah”

Brett: Where; you know; I like to pull out the word ‘bullshit’ sometimes and what can the case be to still want to help people. That’s not the core reason. Cause if you wanted to help, you could go down to the local Salvation Army and stand there and give out food and look after people that way. Now the real reason why a lot of people get into the industry and I guess I could probably relate to it a lot more as well because; you know; this is the main reason why I got into the fitness industry was for the lost gold and the opportunity to earn a lot of money.

That’s what; you know; back in the day I was like working in a donut factory myself earning 20 dollars and hour and I was managing the place on 20 dollars an hour for those 20… you know;

Rana: “Yeah, yeah”

Brett: There is a concept of how you can earn 60, 80; you know; 100 dollars an hour; you know; doing fitness. I was like, “Holy shit. I’ve got to get me a piece of that. You know…

Rana: “Yeah, yeah”

Brett: Your honesty there is amazing and; you know; that’s the question that I always task to everyone listening to this is. Actually ask yourself, write down on a piece of paper. Say, “Why did I get into the fitness industry?” Write your answer down and write out the question again. Keep going until you find the real reason because if you keep putting up that blank wall; you know; that could be something that’s hindering you from actually earning the money that you really want to earn because you are not being open to it. “Right?”

Rana: You know; like it’s a funny thing; you know; like people feel really guilty about asking… to say that am doing it for money. They feel like, “Ooh; you know; that’s a really selfish thing to do.” And; you know; I’ve learned really clearly our business in fitness is not about actually fitness. It’s about service and it’s serving people and it’s like you are a servant to; you know; your client. You need to serve them. But, in order to service you have to be selfish. And I know people go on about it and not agree with the word ‘selfish’. Let me explain.

You know; if I have to feed a bunch of hungry people but am starving, am I going to be able to do the best I can at feeding those people? Will I have the strength to; you know; to continue to help feed them or would I burn out before I can actually feed more people? So with fitness, for example, with our industry if am poor I don’t have the resources to grow my business, to expand my business, to improve my business. Then am capped at how many people I can serve. So I think people need really to look at… and the best thing to do is that… money is just energy that allows you to do more things. So rather than attach it to; you know; greed or feeling guilty about it, it’s just fuel.

You know. Like I look at money as fuel. If I need to drive or go a long distance in my business or I ambitious to get to this new peak, I am going to need more fuel. Like if you are going to drive to; you know; a 100 Km you just need to fuel. You don’t feel guilty when you go to the petrol station and go, “Jeez,” you know; “I have to put more petrol in my car. So I want to drive further.” Like you need to just understand that when you have a vision for what your business is, there is going to be a level of fuel required to get there. And that means that you just got to be selfish in doing it.

That means saying no to some opportunities as we were taking before this podcast. It means sometimes saying no to people who might need your help because if your mission is to; you know; help people lose weight and that’s what you are passionate about. Sometimes you have to say no to other at certain times because the priority of reaching that vision requires certain amount of resources and energy. And that’s what I feel like when we do things; you know; we really have to plan out.

Like if I know we are going to do a worldwide event, I know we are going to need a lot of money and that means in order to get that money we need to be really clear about how we are going to earn money from the event, leading up to the event and after the event. And if we are providing enough value and serving people in a way that has integrity, gets results, it’s honest and people will get enough to; you know; alter or improve their lives then I don’t feel guilty about that at all. I think I have a responsibility to do that and charge for it because it allows me to do it even better next year and the year after.

So that’s how I look at it anyway. Long ended way of saying, “Don’t feel guilty about earning money. “Go and make money.”

Brett: We can do a future podcast and we can just talk about the concept of; you know; is money good or evil. I think there’s some a really, really good things out of that. So let’s go back to, you made a nice sleek way into what we are talking about prior to this podcast. Is; you know; it’s that thing; you know; “What have you been up to lately?” “I have been doing a lot. I’ve got this, I’ve got that, I’ve got this…” And being in the positions that we are in the industry, like it’s, we get faced with opportunities on a daily basis from other people and; you know; sometimes it’s that whole thing of the greed button wants to go off and go, “Yeah, that’s a great idea. I’ll take you up on that.”

So let’s just quickly touch on the topic of how you deal with, I guess you would say, overwhelming and not taking on too much at a time. And then after we cover that, I want to get into marketing because I know you love the art of marketing and I could talk about marketing for weeks and I want to…, I have got some really cool things to share with that. So let’s firstly, first question, “How do you deal with overwhelm and having so much to do?”

Rana: I guess with overwhelm; you know; you can relate to stress. Like I think stress is just something that you focus on, that; you know; you feel you can’t control. So it’s really easy to go back and I still find the best way to do it is, write down on a piece of paper everything, everything that you’ve got to do when it’s on your mind. Just like a bit of a brain dump. I just dump everything on to a piece of paper. That will make you feel a lot less overwhelmed automatically and then you just go through and rate them from one to three; you know. One being the number one priority and two being the second runner up and three being the ones that aren’t as important. And then I just start working on the ones.

And; you know; often overwhelm is just procrastination or some sort of resistance that comes in because; you know; we don’t feel like confident enough or we don’t feel we have enough resources or enough time or enough money. So then you just look at how, “How can I make that happen?” If you come up against that and just start working on those things. So for me, like overwhelm and managing what I have to do on a daily basis. It just comes back to what am I out to create? What’s the number one priority of my business right now? What do I need to do and as long as everything that I do adds and links back to adding value to that purpose or that priority, then I don’t feel; you know; I feel like I need to do it.

So; you know; a good example would be like with WFBOS leading up to our event. Everything had to do with; you know; networking and we are going to get into marketing and joint ventures and; you know; connecting with people. And if I was doing those things like; you know; the five key things that I need to do. If I was doing one of those five things which is; you know; Communicating, Networking, Talking; you know; reaching out. Doing like working on the website, working on the copy. Then I felt like, “Ok. Well, I am productive and I am busy.” But it’s still helping move forward.

Whereas if I just started thinking, “Ok. Well, I just got to read this book and then I have got to just go out and go shopping and just get enough food for the house and make sure I’ve got all that or I might actually go out to see a friend, to talk to him; you know; about something that’s not to do with WFBOS. It might be to do with; you know; his business or I might just go out and watch a movie or; you know; there are points where I am like, “Not now.” you know; People get what I call busyness; you know; like I’m sure we’ve all heard this before right; you know. It has to do with am I busy or am I just going through, you know, busyness.
So, busy is actually getting shit done. Busyness is just feeling like you are busy by doing things and a lot of the biggest ones that I find is like Facebook or researching stuff that is just irrelevant. Like there is a point where research has to stop, learning has to stop and action has to happen. And I think that when you go beyond that point, that’s when; you know; you just really just busyness for the sake of it.

“Do you have enough right now in your head and in your wallet to get shit done?” That’s the big [over talk]. If it’s ‘Yes’, go and do it. Put the books down. When you hit a road block and you go, “Shit; you know; actually I am going to need more money or I need to learn more about it,” then go and research enough to go, “Ok, I now know what to do and implement.” And implementation is busy and I feel like sometimes busyness is everything else.

Brett: It’s funny that you say that too because everything you pretty much talked about there, it’s am going through I guess a bit of a patch of that at the moment and it starts from that I had this feeling of overwhelm. So we are actually creating a product, a online Fiit’s product that we are bring out in December and; you know; the last four or five products it was created. It’s been; you know; if each one just gets easier and easier enough to do it with my eyes closed now. But…

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: This particular product is, I decided to change tactic with delivering it in a different way and it’s a totally different product to what we have done in the past. Now, this product has taken longer than any other product has for the reason being is I have faced a few roadblocks of overwhelming regards to, and this is where I think overwhelm starts, it’s due lack of education. Because I didn’t know how to actually tackle this particular project that I put it to the back burner or always got something else to cover it up and the funny thing is, is once I actually sat down and the only way I actually sat down was the last three days and this will tie into joking about Facebook.

Actually the last four days, I have been into hibernation and I haven’t been active on Facebook and I have been checking my emails once a day and I have been so productive it’s un-bloody-believable and I have been getting up at, you know, 4:00 am and in the office at 4:30, 5:00 am in the morning. I get four hours done  before anyone else gets in here and this morning I basically whipped up a whole sales page for the product and you know, I get a massive sense of achievement when that happens.

But if I rewind to only five days ago, I was feeling massive overwhelm, you know, and it’s just that thing that just, your education up here. If you don’t have your education on it then you are not going to move forward. And what I had to do was, I sat there and literally watched some videos and played around with some things and then I learnt it, you know.

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: If you are there and you are sitting there and go, “Oh, I don’t know how to do marketing or I don’t know how to get joint ventures, I hear everyone taking about getting joint ventures but they don’t even know the first way to go and approach someone to get one. What…

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: you are got to do, is just going to remain standing idle and you are not going to be moving forward.

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: So on that let’s talk about, I know you talk about Joint Ventures and joint ventures is; you know; it’s one of your major strengths and you definitely made it that to get the events that you run. Let’s go through some of your top tips in regards to creating joint ventures for our listeners out there and how they can use that and how it can help their fitness business.

Rana: Yeah, like ok. For me; you know; a joint venture is identifying a mutual win, win, Right? So that’s what, that’s the first thing right. So, with the joint venture essentially guys; you know; for those of you who are familiar you will know but for those who aren’t, it is basically setting up a relationship where you can offer as much value to that person as they can offer to you. And it’s agreeing on some; you know; I guess some next steps and just doing that for each other. And that’s great to build relationships, trust and rapport as well.
So, from an online stand point it’s a little bit different from an offline stand point. So but I guess the underlying philosophy is the same; you know. So you; to grow your fitness business the easiest way and I just, I have not known a quicker, cheaper, more rewarding marketing technique than joint ventures. And basically that just means building relationships. So you find somebody out there, offline/ online, that has something that will benefit your business. So whether it is; you know; an email list, a product, a service or something that will benefit you, your business or your customers.

And then you look at their business and you think, well how can what you do and your product and your service and your emails can that benefit their customers. Because at the end of the day, we all need to add value to our customers, to make them brave and dashing/smart. So, a great example was I went to a really popular day spa here in Brisbane and they had been around like for 5 or so years. And I know they had a doubt about it. So when I started building relationships with the owner. So you know, you invite him for a coffee and just chat about business and it’s very innocent.

There is no hidden agenda. You just tell him, “I would like to just do some ongoing work and share some of our clients with you and see if we can do something together.” Turns out, she had a list of nearly 6,000people on her email list. And the good thing is they were all local. So I knew that they could make it to her business therefore am only down the road they could make it to my business. And I would set up a, the thing is she had been around a lot longer than me so this is the big thing.

And I said to her like, “What I would like to do is set up something where I can send all my clients who join up to your day spa, so I just give you leads. I will put an advert of yours into every single new client pack and then come use them. I’d have a free 30 dollars, free half an hour session or something.” She was really wrapped because no one had actually even approached her for that before and I didn’t ask her for anything at that point. So, what you do

Brett: “Just, just on that Rana. Rana can you repeat that just so everyone really gets that message right there what you just did because that’s invaluable.”

Rana: Yeah, I didn’t ask her.“You meant I didn’t ask for anything at that point?”

Brett: “Yeah, that’s right.”

Rana: “Yeah, no. I don’t.” In a joint venture everyone is used to being asked for something and if you as a person are just hell bent on adding value the law of reciprocity states that, “if you give enough, you will get back.” And you know what, there was a point where you might just be putting energy into a black hole and you go, “Ok. Well at least I tried and something good will come out of it.” So think about that law of reciprocity just give, give, give but I guess there’s a strategy to it. Not an agenda but a strategy because obviously in order to keep giving you do need to get energy from somewhere else as we said before; you know.

You need to obviously, you need to have fuel yourself to keep going. So I sent her five of these clients and then I caught up with her and said, “Hey.” And she goes like, “I just want to say thank you so much for sending me clients, sending me Julia.” She mentioned them by name at that point. I said, “She loved it. She had a great session,” and then we were just talking and then I said look, “I was wondering if maybe you could do me a favor.” And she was more than happy at that point to help. So, I just said to her, “Can I write up an email to send to your database and say that it comes from you.”

So this is critical with a joint venture. Don’t make it ever make it about you. So I said, “Just make it out to your customers that you have arranged for them a 250 dollar voucher to come up and try this new personal training studio that you really highly recommend.” And I said to her, “Look, I will train you for nine weeks. I’ll make it as part of it too; you know; I want to get you results. You know how good we are and so it really backed what I did. And which she obviously should do. And so, she was wrapped so she sent out this email and for the next like three months I would get a steady flow of traffic.

In fact I think she just was so wrapped she might have sent out the email again. Now I, it didn’t cost me anything but a couple of cups of coffee and I was able to generate, I think it was like 70 new clients over three months. And…

Brett: “Wow”

Rana: especially because my pricing point was a minimum of 100 dollar a week, 100 dollars a week per personal training; you know; you do the math and over three months my business grew. So now it was about scaling that model and going and building relationships with people and the local community. Now online; you know when you look at it, you know I don’t know if anyone out there has fitness business mentors. Obviously Brett you are one of them. This podcast is something you guys should follow.

There are other people too that you might look up to, respect, I think it’s really important that everyone does have good mentors and does learn from people in their niche, in the area of business. And the cool thing about this is I went to do WFBOS, I had to call some people that I’d never, they had never heard of me, I had never spoken to them but obviously heard of them by reputation. These guys were killing it, they were big names, they were kind of, right. Ok. They had that status of being almost famous in the industry and to approach them and to get them to be part of my venture, was just something that I was absolutely like, “Will I be able to get this?” I was so scared because; you know; I was asking them for something.

So for me it was about how can I offer them enough value, that they would be more than happy to do this event, be part of this event. And then it’s about delivering that value and reciprocating that to them; you know; over and over again. So I used the same strategy Brett to be honest; you know. I just, I rang them up and I spoke to them. Not everyone said yes, which is fine, but the second year round it just gets better and better.

So you find that the more success you have and the more people that you approach and the more you bring on, you could start referring to those brands, those people, ‘X X’is part of this event or these local business, whose a big business, is part of the… Coffee Club is on board. And you know…

Brett: “Yeap”

Rana: what you start doing, is you build up reputation. “Oh my God! They are sponsored by the Coffee Club. Alright. Jesus!” you know; like they have got Todd Durkin part of the event or ElliotHulse is part of the event and from that point it just becomes a cascading flow. Like you start talking to people and then you can reference. You say, “Ooh. By the way, such and such is part of the event or by the way we are working with a couple of local businesses,” you know; you name drop. And that person obviously feels then like, “Oh, well if they are a part of it, then I should be part of it too.”

And so it is almost like crack the first one, add value, get a rating from someone in your community or someone on line that; you know; obviously has more of a reputation, more of a profile than you at that point and align with them and add value to them and that in itself will push your business up past your competition quicker and earn you more, sort of more respect and long term it will earn you more income and more leads than anything else that I have ever come across.

Brett: Yeah mate, thanks.  Thanks for sharing all of that. It’s like a, I mean, it’s a heap of great take-always in there and; you know; I think the big one to me is that thing with JVs is probably a couple of key points I took from it. One is; you know; you were willing to give away free trainings for nine weeks to this particular lady. You were offering her 250 dollar vouchers with nothing asked in return initially to end up having 70 new sessions a week at a minimum of 100 bucks. So if you do the maths; you know; that’s like an extra 7,000 dollars into your business per week.

Providing they are all there at the same time. Whether they were or they weren’t that is still a substantial amount of return on investment for building a relationship and if we look at that I think the biggest in, and if someone’s there going “Wow”; you know; “What’s the number one key to building JVs?” What I take away is, and I will get your number. But I think that, you just need to ask. You simply just need to ask.

Rana: “Man, yeah.”

Brett: “You agree?”

Rana: “100%.” Like people are so scared to ask and it is why everyone is scared of sales. Everyone is scared of… I know. But you know the thing about that too, I didn’t even say this, but that lady that joined the day spa she actually said to me that when she sent out that email, alright this will blow you away. I didn’t even think it of this at the time. But, she sent out that email and the fact that she just sent that email out to her list saying, “I arranged a 250 dollar gift for you for being my loyal customer and I know we haven’t touched base; I wrote a really good email out for them; she actually got business from old clients.

They came back. So out of that alone, she actually got people who said, “Oh, I’ve been mean to come back.” And that comes back to her business. They might have not even have come to my business but they came to her business. And I thought that was massive. So she saw value from that perspective as well. So she was really grateful that I had even made her email her database. This is something that she hadn’t done for a while.

Brett: “Yeah”

Rana: Like, it’s crazy.

Brett: That’s a perfect example of reciprocity right there in action; you know.

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: I guess; you know; if we co-relate… Let’s stick to the JV thing for a moment. If we stick to… Most people think when there is a JV that there needs to be something exchanged in regards to monetary. So I just want to talk to the point that, and definitely in my opinion and I’ll get you view on this. But I believe that there is different types of joint ventures. So there is joint ventures that you would have where; you know; I work for this person. You will get a 50 dollar or a 100 dollar referral fee or you bring someone into my business and I’ll give XYZ for that. Where there is the, I guess if we want to call it the law of reciprocity JV where you actually go out there and just do something for free for someone; you know.

So for an example, I am not paying you to be on this podcast. Yes I am not paying anyone to be on this podcast because I don’t get paid to be on this podcast. So at the end of the day, we are doing this here for free. I do it, one: because I absolutely love it and I have said in past episodes; you know; if the greatest people on podcasts learned to sit here and talk to people because; you know; the amount of wisdom you get and every session I do, I jump up and I am pumped to my ear and “That’s right. I took that out of today. Yeah.” Because I am learning; you know; and so are our guests.

I think if we look at it down the track; you know. So I got an email the other day from someone. Now we are up to Episode 15, I think. So that’s close to 15hours worth of solid content that’s been shared by; you know; over probably a dozen people and these people have made literally millions in this fitness industry; you know. And the information is virtually gold. And; you know; I feel like the particular podcast; you know; and put dollar value on it. 15 hours’ worth of information, I could easily ask 500 dollars, 1000 dollars for it right. But this is where that whole reciprocity comes in.

And one day down the track, whether someone listens to this episode, whether it’s year 2013 or 2014. What can happen is they may find out about you and they may jump on the next WFBOS next year when it’s coming around. They may hear about something that I offer or a product or service that we may offer them; you know. It’s that thing about, “Don’t be afraid to do something for free to possibly capitalize down the end; you know; down the track.” So, I went a bit on a rant there. So, “Did I ask a question or was…?”

Rana: “No, no. I mean you were just” Look, I think the other thing is to; you know; when you look at it guys everything is about creating; you know; a channel for what you’re out to create. Like so, some channels you get paid straight away and some channels you get paid down the track and some of it is long term investment.

Like right now, I have no idea but this for me again, like, but this is free. But I have a relationship with Brett and I’m happy to help and he is happy to help me and that, you just build onto that. And then down the track I might say, “Hey Brett, can you help me with, I am doing something; you know; I am doing WFBOS would you mind letting some people know about it?”  He says yeah and then he has a product in December. He says, “Hey Rana, would you mind letting some people know about it?” I say yeah and then you build a relationship.

But where joint ventures go wrong, this is the big, this is the thing that you need to know. Where joint ventures go wrong is that one person does more than the other person. And actually the worst thing you can do at that point is call it a joint venture because what it is, it’s a hidden agenda. And I know a lot of people… you know I have learnt the hard way with WFBOS you put in the effort on marketing materials and putting things together for a particular presenter and you have made an agreement and then one person doesn’t hold up their end of the bargain and then you feel like, it’s kind of like you’re being ripped off.

It’s like saying if I give you a 100 dollars’ worth of value and you give me 100 dollars’ worth of value, we are both happy. But what tends to happen is one person doesn’t give the 100 dollars’ worth of value back and then you can actually burn bridges and kill relationships really quickly. So; you know; I’m a big believer in making sure when you set up a joint venture you are very clear about what each person has to do. Don’t make any assumptions and ask. And sometimes if they say “look, I’m not willing to do it”, no worries at all, look its fine, it’s great just to catch up.

Because I think you both need to know that what you’re giving and what you’re getting back you’re happy with. And that’s ok. So like, to go back to today the podcast, for me it’s great because one the things I love to do is to educate and learn and so this sits in with my values. So I’m happy to do it. Where you say, “But, Oh, Rana, you want to come and talk about speed fishing for half an hour on a podcast, I would be like “mate I’m just totally not interested at all.” It’s not part of my values, it doesn’t add value to my core business. I’m not doing it.  And that’s the big difference I guess.

So with your businesses guys, treat your businesses like the number one priority. If you’re not making a call or sending an email or replying to an email or talking to a client or talking to a new customer or talking to a new prospect about growing your business or improving your business, then what’s the point of why you’re in business? So that’s the big thing, everything you can do if you can link it back to your business in an active way.  So probably go back to one point, a good distinction to make is, in your business there are active ways to grow it and there passive ways to grow it. An active way is asking for a ‘yes or no sale’ or ‘yes or a no action’.

So, how many yes or no’s did you ask for this week will determine how quickly your business grows. The passive stuff is all great. It’s the stuff we all love to do because it’s non-confrontational. Its putting a Facebook post out there, putting a flier out there, stuff you put money into and time into but you don’t necessarily get paid for quite a while and if you can afford to do that, that’s great otherwise get out there and get into action and make it active, so for another good point to add in.

Brett: Well, I guess on that whole active side of it, you’re talking about the active and the passive side. The active is obviously; you know; taking that action right and making something happen and something that pops up to me is that; you know;  personal trainers they genuinely; you know; you got your busy period from 5 to 9am or 10am and then you go back and you got clients at 4 till 9pm; you know. And what happens is, this is where I see trainers fall into the trap. That they haven’t allowed enough time to build their business.

Now, if you are a personal trainer and you’re listening to this and you’re like, “It’s all good. I have got 30 sessions a week. Am happy with that” That’s fantastic. This message is not meant for you. This message is meant for the person who really wants to grow a business and not just be a solo personal trainer. And what you need to do is you need to allocate the time throughout the day to sit down and just book in the time as if you’re booking a client, call your client ‘joint venture.’ So, you’ve got to train joint venture at; you know; midday to 2pm.

And put it down as an appointment. And if you don’t turn up for the appointment, well you are going to have to pay a cancellation fee yourself. You know; the unfortunate thing is that with the cancellation fee your business is not going to move forward.

Rana: “Yeah.”

Brett: It’s about taking action, but making sure that you’ve allowed time to take the action but don’t just go. Finish at 9 o’clock and get home and go, “Oh shoot. When am I going to get some time to do my sales strategy.” Or “I’ll do my joint venture today.”  You need to book in this stuff guys; you need to book it in.

Rana: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so like the big thing here is, for me it is how active are you. Here is the best marketing strategy you can ever have, right. The best tool for marketing is your telephone. So; you know; I know there’s all these ninja strategies and all these stuff that people would just bog you down with and it’s all great but it’s all passive stuff unless you do it. And if, Ok. Here’s the big thing, let me know. Write back to Brett and tell me the results you get because I bet you probably won’t do it because it’s scary.

Make anywhere from 5 to 10 phone calls to existing or current clients every day, and ask for either a referral or ask for an invitation to come into your business to show them around the studio or your gym. Do that. If you do that, for 30 days, call it a 30 day challenge and I’m talking about 30 days, 6 days a week not 7 you can have a day off on Sunday, and you don’t grow your business by 50%, then I’ll give you a 100 dollar voucher on PayPal or something.

You show me the stats of what you do because I swear to God, I have not coached, mentored, been around, done myself that strategy and not grown my business or doubled my business for the month. You know; it is such an underutilized and it’s something that no one is doing and that’s why the strategy is going to work. Because everyone is hell bent on, “Oh, just talk to people on Facebook.” So it’s not as confrontational. Get on the phone and talk to people about…

Brett: “Yeah”

Rana: Don’t sell to them, just invite them to come in and talk to you at the studio. And with referrals ask clients, “How are your results going?” Just touch base with your customers. “It’s great seeing you in the studio today Rob. I really enjoyed; you know; our session and look, I just had a favor to ask if you don’t mind. Do you have anyone else I could show the studio to and just introduce them to what we are doing here?” That’s it. And like my business, like when I did those things, it grew really quickly. When my team was doing those things, it grew really quickly. When we stopped you could see the difference. 5 to 10 calls per day; you know; so if you do the math on that or put down in your list. You could say it’s almost 300 calls, 30 days say about 250 calls a month. So; you know; tell me.

Brett: And that’s the thing though really and the issue with that is that, I guarantee you maybe one person; two people listening to this will actually act upon it. Probably there will be dozens, maybe a couple of dozens who will listen to this out of the thousands listening to it; you know; start it, they’ll do the course for the first day, second day. Maybe they might not get the results they want and they’ll stop.

Rana: “Let’s do that thing. No Brett, let me know mate. Like email Brett.” If you have done it guys and talk about the results so we can tell other trainers about it. Seriously, like don’t just listen to this and go, “Yeah; you know; I’m good”. If you do, do it we want to hear from you so I can give you a virtual hi five because that is the thing. People who take action are leaders. People who don’t, are followers so if you’re one of the people taking action and doing this stuff, then you’re going to lead and inspire the people who are thinking about doing or not doing it. And that’s the difference between a leader and a follower.

So like; you know; I am a massive advocate for action; you know. If I don’t make phone calls like internationally at 2am in the morning, to presenters on the other side of the world, I’m not going to have an event. So it is such pretty black and white for me, either make the call or I’m ok with not having an event, or just being mediocre like everyone else and just; you know; wishing that I had a big ass better business. You know;

Brett: I think that’s what it is. I think it is that, the thing of being ok and because we are in Australia we will always be ok; you know. You will never going to be into the streets, begging for food. If you; you know; if you adapt any of these parts of; you know; strategy that we talk about; you know; I think the big thing if I look at, I have got a philosophy now. I guess something I made up and it is cool. The EF Principle and it is actually ‘E’, ‘F’. So, put the silent ‘E’. Anyhow, EF stands for The Emotion and The Fact.

Now, if we take the emotion out of this current situation which is someone sitting here, if even hearing you talk about, “Get on your phone, ring people.” They are already starting to have butterflies in their stomach. Now, if you take the emotion out of it or rather actually address the emotion first and go, “Why am I starting to feel like this?”

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: What you generally find is people don’t want to get on the phone for fear of rejection or fear of feeling needy. Because; you know; many… dozens and dozens of people that I have coached on this, that strategy. It is like, “Why don’t you want to ring them up.” “I don’t want to look like am begging or I am not doing well.” you know; And I said, “Well, you are not going to do well if you don’t do this.” It is a double edged sword. You know; and if you just look at the fact of it, alright.

If you had a friend who had a friend who is in business and they said; you know; “I am doing personal training now. I am just trying to build up my client base. Do you know anyone, any friends, any past people that you know that may be interested in training?” What would you say to them? “Fuck. You are a loser; you know; why do you want my help? You should be doing alright.” You are not going to say that are you?

Rana: Yeah, no.

Brett: You are going to help them. And listen, that’s the fact of the matter; you know. People are… It is you putting these preconceived ideas into your own head that it is stopping you from taking action in the first place.

Rana: Yeah mate. That’s it. That’s the thing. There’s worst things that will happen if some would say no to you and; you know; that’s ok. Like I had a sales coach because I was so scared of sales when I first started my business. Like I went and got sales coaching and one thing; you know; they always… everyone has their own saying to help you through it or whatever. He used to say to me; you know; “What is a client worth to you.” And I said, “Oh well for me, a client spends around about 2000 bucks. He says, “Great. So basically for every; you know; say your conversion rate is really bad Rana.” And I go, “Ok. Probably it is.”

“You can say one in ten people you talk to is going to say ‘yes’.” I said, “Ok.” He goes, “Every time you make a call you can put 200 bucks in your pocket.” And when I thought about it and I was like, “Oh. That’s a good point. Right?” Because am actually, that is making me money. Like, ok I said, “It doesn’t matter. I have just earned 200 bucks because I know on the tenth one, alright, even if it’s the twentieth one; one in twenty you go, “Well do you want to earn 100 dollars right now? Well pick up the phone. Do you not want to earn 100 dollars? That’s cool. Don’t pick up the phone. It is a choice.” There is no judgment. It’s just you either want to grow and you want to earn money or you don’t and you want to talk about why business is going bad.

And so; you know; although that was a nice way to put it, it gave me a good reference point but I still had resistance. And I often find there’s that hold, what do they call it? The one minute rule. Like if ever you procrastinating about doing something, do it for one minute and then stop. And what you find is that procrastination goes away because it’s just really this getting started. It’s like saying to someone in the morning; you know; “You want to get up and you want to exercise.” “No. Am too tired,” excuse, excuse, story, story, story. Now we just do it for a minute, literally, do it for 60 seconds. Go get joggers on, get outside and go for a one minute run.

Bet you they don’t do it just for a minute. I bet you they go for 10 minutes. It’s just starting…

Brett: It is the momentum.

Rana: Yeah. And that’s the thing alright just pick up the phone and make the first phone call. You know; worst case scenario you make one phone call a day which is; you know; six phone calls a week. Six phone calls a week is 24 phone calls a month. You are still going to get amazing results. It’s; you know; marketing is just creativity and mathematics. Guys that’s really what it is. It’s just how creative are you to present and position what you do and who you are. And then scaling it and getting it out to a many people as possible and understanding what the numbers are on it. That’s it.

I know it really sounds unsexy and boring. So; you know; sorry that I bamboozled you with; you know; like a bunch of; you know; ninja tactics. I mean, I can definitely give you those tactics too but if your business isn’t earning you the money that you need just to be happy, why would you even want to go to those tactics.

Brett: That’s right.

Rana: Because getting a lead from some I-friend, dark post-social media strategy. You still got to meet the person. You know what I mean; you still can generate a lead but you still got to meet the person. You still going to talk to them. So, some point you have to be comfortable with taking the action to call a human being and talking to him. We are in the people business for Christ’s sake. We are personal trainers; you know. We are not Facebook trainers like we just don’t get them in and talk to them and then all of a sudden they jump of Facebook and they are like, “Here is my credit card.” It’s just a bunch of crap. Just get on the phone and talk to people.

Be proud of what you do, be proud of your business, be proud of who you are and your message and your mission and just be proud and it’s actually your mission to let people know about it because you are the best at being you and what you doing. The more people you can expose to you and how good you are. You know Jeffrey Gitomer. I met Jeffrey Gitomer, he was on 55G. He said, he put it really straight. Everyone should listen to Jeffrey Gitomer if you are talking about sales. He’s best in the world. He’s phenomenal. So funny as well. And he said to me, “Rana, you know why people don’t like sales and they don’t…

Brett: “Can you do it in the accent for us?”

Rana: Laughs

Brett: You said it was funny. So let’s

Rana: No… I mean, I don’t even know… “New York!” “You know Rana, you know what it is,” you know; I don’t know. I can’t even do it properly.  But he is just so funny. He goes, “Because people don’t believe in their business or their product enough to want to tell people about it.” And he goes, “You know what?” He goes, “Tell me you haven’t seen an amazing film and not told everyone about it. Tell me you haven’t done that.” I said, “No, no. I do it all the time.” If I love something or I am passionate about it, I’ll tell everyone about it. I’ll tell everyone.

He goes, “Yeap! And the reason people don’t do it, is because they think what they do is average and they don’t like it enough.” And I go, “You know what, it’s so true. “Tell me Brett, right now. Between you and me and everyone else listening, between you and me; if I was to give you right now a strategy that would earn you 2000 dollars, right, 2000 dollars in the next, let’s say 30 days. Just 2000 bucks. I guarantee I will give you 2000 dollars if you do this. Would you do it?” Just an extra two grand.

Brett: “Yeah. Sure. Why not?”

Rana: “Of course you would. So pick up the phone.” You know and…

Brett: It freaks me out; you know. People are going to judge me if I picked up the phone.

Rana: But the other thing is, is like, if I gave you something that enhanced your life and you came back to me and you said, “Rana, mate. You helped me, like I am so happy. Thank you so much.” Tell me that you wouldn’t tell people about it and I mean I would have the confidence then to tell more people about it that I was helping people like you and that’s how the ball starts. So marketing really, just love your business and love who you are and what you do and tell many people as possible because you should; you know; The world’s best kept secret. You are the world’s best kept secret. I mean, you deserve to tell everyone about it.

Brett: I think that the major point that you brought there is and… “So what was that German’s name again? The New York?”

Rana: “Jeffrey Gitomer.”

Brett: “Jeffrey.” So Jeffrey how he said, “You think your product is average,” you know; I cannot agree with that more because when I was producing work and I literally thought; you know; “This is a bit average. I don’t know if someone will like it.” you know; I even started to feel, for about two seconds and then I got over it quickly. But…

Rana: Laugh and overtalk

Brett: Even though this is still a free podcast and I don’t feel the pressure of having to deliver this amazing ninja; you know; episode with all these sound effects and all that type of stuff. And originally at the start, before I started this podcast I was like, “Mmmh, I don’t really know because I don’t know if anyone would really want to listen and I don’t know if I’ll have enough stuff to talk about,” you know; All those roadblocks that pop up and like I said though after a few seconds, and I just pulled the trigger and I did it. And now, it is my mission to get this podcast into every personal trainer’s ears if possible; you know. And we even go to the extent we approach fitness colleges, we approach personal trainers and we say, “Hey look! Would you like a free podcast? It’s free.”

Rana: Yeah. Yeah.

Brett: You know, and the reason being is because conversations like this; you know. We are having this conversation; someone’s going to be listening to it. They are going to go, “Shit, that’s going to get me pumped. I am going to go and do XYZ now.”You know; because what I learned was I was listening to audios and I was reading books and what I found was the same thing every time and now I listen to it, “Have you heard of a guy Eric Thomas, ET? Hip Hop Preacher.”

Rana: “Yeah, I’ve heard of that dude.”

Brett: Get onto his podcast. You know his youtube video. It’s the one where he, the black guy, he is talking to a group of students and he is talking about how you go the extra mile to achieve your goals and he has got that, the American football player in it and when he talks he almost yells at you but you…

Rana: Laughs

Brett: You listen to this guy and you cannot, like anyone who listens to it, I’ll give you a 100 bucks if you can’t listen, if you listen to him bloody three minutes and he does not inspire you in some way then; you know. It’s that thing again of learning. He knows his message, he’s not…, he’s articulate as a lot of speakers. He talks gangster [Laughs]; you know.

Rana: “Yeah”

Brett: But he gets his message across and for me, the last; you know; I would say week. Every single morning I’ve been getting up, listen to two minutes of that dude and I am pumped for the day; you know. He’s got me up every morning this week; you know; 4 am every morning to come and talk to on this project.

Rana: “Is that Eric Thomas, right?”

Brett: “Yeap. Yeap. ET the Hip Hop Preacher.” If you Google him you’ll see his youtube video. It literally went viral and this is a guy who literally, and this is an example right now, I’ve just sent; you know; probably a couple of thousands listeners to ET’s website or podcast or what he has got out there. People are going to purchase his stuff because they are going to go, “Wow! This dude is awesome.” And am going to buy the audio book as well and I guarantee someone like yourself, you’ll go and buy his audio book. Because you’ll listen and go, “I’ve got to get this.” And that is a perfect example of, I guess you’ll put it to tie into JVs. That’s almost like a hidden JV. Alright. So, if people out there who will be promoting it who you don’t even know; you know;

Rana:  “Yeah”

Brett: So think about it like that because what it could mean is someone on your personal, like your training someone right. They go out that weekend, they sit down with their friends over coffee saying that, “Rana is a amazing personal trainer. Gets great results.” Their friend then goes and talks to someone else and their friend goes, “I am looking for a personal trainer.” Next thing, “Oh. My friend, Zoe is using Rana. You should go and use him.” It’s a hidden JV and it works by delivering great content and being true to yourself. That’s what I think.

Rana: “Yeah, yeah. “ Yeah. Spot on.” You know. So yeah; you know; like marketing, all this stuff; you know; you just got to love what you do and find creative ways to get that message out there. But I honestly feel like Joint ventures is one of those easy ways to just start building relationships, getting out there. Because it’s kind of like, rather than selling one to one you actually selling one to like a hundred or one to a thousand and that’s a really powerful way to grow a business.

So; you know; I am not saying one to one is not a good strategy, it is. Like you can definitely talk to 10 people a week and that will build your business and make 10 phone calls but imagine just visiting two business owners every week and talking to them and keeping in touch, putting them on the calendar every month, you touch base with them and invite them for coffee, invite them to your studio. Don’t ask them for anything, just build the relationship.

Guarantee you over six months; you know; two or three of those business owners will be fans and be sending people to you because people will go into their business and say, “Oh; you know; I am looking for a trainer,” as Brett said and they go, “Yeah; you know; the guy down the road, Rana, he is an absolute legend. Just check him out.” You know; because… and that’s the beauty of it. That’s the beauty of marketing so, yeah!

Brett: I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it a lot. So Rana, I guess… I am just checking time here and we are coming up to the end of our time and no doubt you’ve got a heap of stuff to go onto today like you said earlier but look, we didn’t even really get to specifically talk about marketing as a whole but in saying that JVs is definitely a marketing strategy and look we are going to get you on a future meet  and we are going to talk specifically about; you know; you pick a couple of marketing strategies and we will really go deep on those.

But look,“I guess Rana,” but before we go what I am going to do as well is that I want to put a link on our website here under the show notes; you know; to your WFBOS and so forth but look, “where can someone find us or find out any more information about yourself mate?”

Rana: Yeah. What I’ll do is like I’ve got a page, I don’t… like I said to someone the other day when we did an interview, I don’t… there is no ‘opt-in’ there is no nothing it is just a total resource that I’ve kept. I just keep hidden and; you know; give value to people. It’s a…

Brett: “.com page is it?”

Rana: “Actually that’s another thing I was going to add to this but, for now…”

Bret: Laughs

Rana: “Just keep that one under wraps thanks. Now everyone knows about it. Unbelievable!”

Brett: “Sorry mate. Oops.”

Rana: I’ll give the Jeffrey Gitomer link to the Jeffrey Gitomer video, for sure. So you guys should need to watch that. That is phenomenal. That’s worth like, I’d pay like 500 bucks for that video alone cause Jeffrey Gitomer, “Go and check out his product Thursday. Pretty expensive world number one sale’s guy.” So, “I’ll give you that to just give to everyone.”

Brett: “Alright.”

Rana: WFBOS is a page of like four pre-summit sessions that are free. No opt-in required so just check it out. And also there is a 30 day challenge that I put together when I was doing PT Mastery multiple times. No opt-ins required. Just go over, check it out. Learn, grow and just get massive value guys and at the end of the day if you have found any value just hit me up on Facebook and say, “Thanks.” That’s all I need. That’s fine.

Brett: It is so easy.

Rana: “Excellent.”

Brett: “That’s easy. Thanks man.”

Rana: “No worries.”

Brett: So, I will get those and I will put them on the site and I guess I will leave you with the last words and mate, “What’s one of your favorite quotes and why?” “Put you on the spot there.”

Rana: “Favorite quotes and why?” You know, “Oh mate, I can’t…” “This is crazy.”

Brett: “Got you on the spot, didn’t I?”

Rana: But; you know; I think it’s not so much a quote. It is just more of a strategy. It’s; you know; ‘Take massive action’ you know; I think it’s a Tony Robbins’ thing. It is ‘Take massive action’ and; you know; if you want an extraordinary business and an extraordinary life, you need to take extraordinary action. And bottom line is, that’s what I tell myself everyday. “If I want extraordinary result today, what are the things I have to do that are extraordinary?”I guarantee, if you just follow those things, take massive action. I don’t see how you can’t kick ass. So, go and have a crack and if you need anything, yeah, hit Brett up or definitely reach out to me and am happy to; you know; to chat. But yeah, that’s great. “Thanks for listening guys”

Brett: “Mate look, Thanks again for jumping on board and we will be talking to you very soon and till then mate, “you go and have a fantastic and reaping and have an extraordinary day.”

Rana: “Will do mate. You too! Cheers Brett.”

Brett: “See you Rana. Bye”

Rana: “See you mate.”

 

Episode 14: Brett Interviews Industry Expert Justin Tamsett (Trends)

[sharethis]

In this episode of the Fiit Professional Podcast Brett & Justin discuss the following:justin tamsett

  • Where is the fitness industry heading and how this will effect every Personal Trainer and how you can take ADVANTAGE of these trends
  • The concept of NEWISM and how this applies to your Fitness Business
  • Virgin consumers (no this has nothing to do with Richard Branson
  • A logical way on how to decide whether or not the Health & Fitness Industry is for YOU or not.

Justin owns and runs Active Management, and has 24 years experience within the Fitness Industry.

You can check out his website here.

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

Brett Interviews Industry Expert Justin Tamsett (Trends)

Transcript of EPISODE 14:

Hello and welcome to the Fiit edition of podcast, the number one podcast for Fiit Professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you’re after more clients, more income and more free time then you’ve come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessionals.com.au today.

Brett: Hello and welcome to another fit edition on podcast. I’m your host Brett Campbell and today I have another special guest with me, another industry leading expert, buy the name Justin Tamsett. Now you may have heard of him if you’re in the fitness industry. You should of have heard of him, if you haven’t heard of him, you will have right now, and you will go and investigate more about this gentleman when we’ve finished the call no doubt.

Let me give you a quick little introduction as to who Justin is and we will let him come on in and see what else he has to say about himself. So why Justin Tamsett is recognised worldwide. Forth leader who challenges the status quo for his fitness industry. He is a highly sort after speaker. He’s quickly going to share how his strategies can be implemented immediately. He has presented in over 15 countries and has hundreds of clubs who have members of active management that receive monthly education that will improve their business. So Justin, thank you very much for taking time out of your busy schedule and welcome to the Fiit Professional podcast.

Justin:   Thanks for inviting me Brett. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Brett:    Excellent mate. So I guess a couple of things here Justin. Now, you’ve probably got some many interesting things about yourself that obviously I didn’t pull out of the sky there. Firstly Justin give us a bit of a background about who you are and also a little bit about productive management and how does that help the fitness industry.

Justin:   Yes, okay, let’s start with my background. Probably like 99.9% of the people listening to these podcasts, I was once a personal trainer. Where that be a good thing or bad thing Brett, I’m not sure. But I was one and eventually….’

Brett: I have a question for you, sorry to interrupt, but did you, where you a personal trainer in the bum bag era?

Justin: what era?

Brett: The bum bag, called the fanny pack. Whatever they’re called.

Justin: Oh Yes. Was I? No, I was before the bum bag. I was…

Brett: Oh Jeez.

Justin: I was in the parachute material, tracksuit pants, where you’d tuck your tracksuit pants into your socks

Brett: Ah nice, we need to bring that back

Justin: Yes, yeah, no we don’t

Brett: Right go ahead, go ahead. I’m interrupting you,

Justin: So I actually started as a gym floor instructor while I was at uni. And I read a book which I recommend most personal trainers to read. This is called: ‘Going Solo’ by Dr Douglas Brookes. And it was a great book. It sort of inspired me to become a personal trainer. It didn’t tell me a couple of things like cancellation fees and coming up with a good name for your business and that sort of stuff. But I launched a PT business and pretty quickly worked out that personal training really wasn’t my bag. it didn’t gel with my personality style and I worked out that I love the fitness industry but yeah, not as a PT. cause the thing is it takes a, and I don’t mean things disrespectfully, a special person to be a personal trainer and a very special person to be a great persona trainer and it just, it wasn’t what I wanted to do. SO I needed up moving back to gym floor, and from gym floor into sales, sales into club management and then from club management to owning one club, and then owning two clubs, then owning one club and  now currently owning no clubs. Now, I like to say I was, well I’d like to think anyway. The things I say, whether people believe me or not is another thing. But I as an exceptional one club owner, and a shithead two club owner. When I was growing up, and maybe for a lot of the people listening today. It was, it was almost a unsaid truth that the bigger you were the better you were, the more locations you had then more successful you were, So I was under the believe that I need to have thousands and thousands of members and I needed to have multiple locations, and this is back in the early 1990’s. Looking back at it now, it was probably one of my biggest mistakes in doing that, because, you can be just one club, or one PT studio or a personal trainer and be highly successful. I look back on it now and I go, we were all ego based, ego driven. owning tow businesses what probably the biggest mistake I ever made, or it was the best thing I ever did because it taught me that I didn’t need to have multiple locations, and I didn’t’ need to do all this to be happy and to be successful.

Brett: excellent mate, some really good points out of there and I’m going to touch on those in a moment. If you could try and just give us a little bit of background about what happened from that, I guess that moment when you decided that PT was no longer for you  to now doing what you’re doing and now educating thousands of personal trainers. So where was that, where did you peak away from.  Where was that?

Justin: Well I guess I was at uni learning to be a PE teacher, and I kind of, I really enjoyed teaching. I loved teaching. And the difference for me was, when I was a PT in a gym as a gym instructor or working as a personal trainer, people wanted to be there. And they’d pay me money to be there, as when I was learning to be a school teacher I was these kids don’t always want to be there or not all of them want to be here. Certainly the abuse you got from the crowd or someone on the gym floorislovely abuse as appose to the abuse as you sometimes got as a school teacher,. And I take my hat off to school teachers, and nurses because I think these are the toughest jobs in the world. At that point I think I kind of went, no, I want to work in the fitness industry because it’s more a positive environment, and then it took me 15 years before I worked out, actually I really enjoy teaching. I like learning, I like teaching myself and then  parting the knowledge that I’ve learnt to others so it was about 10 years ago now, that I started working part-time as a consultant and presenting,. The last 5 years I’ve been doing it full time. So my job now basically is to study consumer trends, business trends outside the fitness industry and tends like that information, the business of the consumer translates that so it’s relevant to our industry and then impart that knowledge to personal trainers, club owners and staffers of health clubs. Does that make sense?

Brett: Excellent. Yeah, totally. Basically what you’re doing is, you’re being the Warren Buffett of shares and you’re trying to forecast what’s going to happen and you’re letting some of the trainers and all the business owners of this industry know where I guess the industry is heading. Is that what you’re meaning?

Justin: Pretty much, that’s pretty close to it. I don’t necessarily like some times where the industry is heading and that’s why I try to challenge the status quo, I want were currently doing in the industry. I see a lot of, which I don’t have a problem with by the way. But I see a lot of copying of businesses and I kind of think, well if I’ve got a fitness business, and I’m looking at another personal trainer in my area and I see that they’re successful and I try to copy what they do. I only get as good as that personal trainer.

So my job that I like to look at is what’s happening outside the industry, and can our businesses subscribe to those strategies or techniques that other businesses outside the industry are using. Because my idea, if we look outside the industry we actually will grow the industry, if we keep looking within the industry we only get as good as the industry.

Brett: Couldn’t agree with you more on that point. Let’s talk about consumer trending because I am actually really interested in that myself. It’s a question I always ask if a guest on the Fiit Professional podcast where they see the fitness industry heading. But I guess your someone who’s front line of that and would have the most up-to-date information, and let’s get a world exclusive right now, and give us your understanding of where you feel the fitness industry is heading in the next 12 months or a couple of years or whatever your  projections are.

Justin: Well I think, with the upmost respect to the fitness industry. I think if you’re, we’ve got our fitness business. It could be a fitness business, it could be a studio, it could be a club and let’s call that a round whole. And then we’ve got our portion of clients, the consumers out there who are not using our products at the moment and they’re a square peg. Then we’ve got our business which is the hammer. It could be our marketing, but it is our hammer. So that hammer hits away at our square peg until we get that square peg in the round hole. Does that make sense? In order to get the square peg into the round hole, we’ve had to chip bits away from that square peg but simply with brute force of hammering it in. Now the problem with that is that, that’s no longer a square peg and there is bits of it now that’s left on the table from getting that square peg in that round hole. And those bits that are around the table, those bits are critical to keeping our customer, out client. If we had a square peg and put a square peg in that hole, then we’ve got a complete solution for our consumer. The challenge that I really see in our industry at the moment, we don’t actually meet all the needs of the customer, today’s consumer. We meet about 90% of the needs, but that’s why we don’t have 100% retention because we’ve actually made them mould into what our business is, whatever our business may be. It could be anything from the condition of membership, the conditions of PT, the terms and conditions, and they’re like. ‘What, I don’t like that’. Let’s give an example, there are a chain of gyms in Australia and they only offer monthly debits. That’s the only thing they offer. So if the consumer came in and say we, I’d like to do it fortnightly, they can’t join the team And they only debit on the first of the month. So, it’s like, what if I only wanted my debits done on my pay day which is the first Thursday of the month. ‘Naah can’t do it’. So that is an example where I think our industry is, we’ve got our rules, we’ve got our conditions and I absolutely respect that  you have rules and conditions around your business. We are not flexible and I understand that. But I think that we are too rigid and the consumers are saying, ‘well this is too hard’ .So they either don’t do anything or they go to a competitor. But I would take it as guess that most of the time they don’t go anywhere.

Brett: really good point there, that you make around the whole thing there of not really willing to budge and I guess, like you say, that thin line. For someone who is starting out in that industry can be like, what do I do? Should I do a monthly debit? Do I do a weekly debit? Etcetera.Or do I have so many options and I spread myself thin?’ If you were to give someone advise on that. What you, your main points be in regards to finding that line of too many conditions versus not enough?

Justin: Well one of the consumer treads that is worldwide, not so much relevant in the fitness industry to a certain degree but it is certainly outside the industry is a term we call ‘made for one’. With the increasing number of consumers that are trying to get through tired marketing, trying to get through brand led customisation of our product and they want to arrive at something new, something unique. What they want is a truly individualised program. They want to feel that the personal training package has been made for them. It is not something we take off the shelf.

So that’s often the way that we explain it, and the way we price  present that, and the way that we go through the process to get things started. So that they walk away thinking, ‘Wow! Brett has just made me an individualised program that no one else has’. If I feel that, if the consumer feels that, price doesn’t become relevant and neither does that fact that you may have chipped away the corners of that square peg. Because, the consumer, they’re walking away going, ‘You’ve tailored this specifically for me’. So for me, these days, you should be able to debit any day of the week, day of the month. You should be able to do it weekly, fortnightly, monthly. It doesn’t matter. It is what suits the customer. Your systems should mould around to the customer as opposed to the customer moulding around your system.  That just means that you’ve got to have a billing company. You’ve got to have a good CRM, you’ve got to take time out of being on the tools as it were, training clients and being able to work on your business around the admin side of things. The better the software, the better billing company, the less admin you’re going to have to do. So you’ve got to pay for that, but that’s an investment into your business.

Brett: Sure, so let’s, I guess look for another example because I’m curious to see how this is trend is going to fit into the industry. Now taking away the direct debits and examples, what are some other examples that you’re aware of that  personal trainers or fitness business owners may fall into a trap of?

Justin: Well I think one of the trends that is very apparent in the world at the moment, is what we call ‘virgin consumers’.

Brett: What? Richard Branson’s company?

Justin: (Laughs) No, no. you’ve got to be really careful these days when you say that because, you’re kind of waiting for someone to go; ‘That will be $100 000 because you used the word ‘virgin”.

Brett: That’s right.

Justin: So what a virgin consumer is, is someone who has never used our products before. There’s two scopes here. The first one is the concept that they’ve never trained in a gym before, they’ve never trained with a personal trainer before, so they’re total virgins. Or we’ve got this other concept called ‘youism’ and this is basically, and you would know, especially, it is every day, pretty much every hour if not every minute, there is something new being developed in the world. And what that means is it’s no longer a marketing ploy to say something is new or something is new and improved. When someone says something now it’s new and improved that’s very genuine and that’s a really exciting proposition for consumers. Because we’ve got so much new stuff, new programs, new opportunities, we have a lot of virgin consumers. So with a virgin consumer we have got to really go back to what the basics of what our product is all about. We’ve got to sell the vision around what that product is going to deliver. We’ve really got to peel everything right back to the virgin consumer and what I don’t see now in our industry at the moment is that. I see what we’re doing is actually not peeling anything back and we’re progressing further and further, which means in our marketing we’re doing, is we’re saying a lot of jargon and a lot of industry technical words used, which the consumers says ‘I don’t understand a thing you’re talking about, so this is too hard for me. I’m not interested’. Does that make sense?

Brett: Yeah, it looks, 100%. I mean, I’ve got many examples on that and one of them is, you know, back, probably about three years ago when I ran a seminar to a whole heap of gym members and the actual product itself. So what I was delivering was my self-myofascial release, so SMR. Which I know a lot of trainers who don’t even know what that is, so how’s the general public going to know what SMR is? But, how I named my seminar was ‘how to increase your flexibility without stretching’. So self-myofascial release, that’s what I thought too when I wrote it was, it took me a while but, the thing is, that is exactly what you’re going to get, what you’re going to embark on. No one wants to know that they can increase their fascia or stretch their fascia by rolling on a blue roller, or a foam roller. They want to know the results. I couldn’t agree with you more on that…and that’s, if was tough when I was there, speaking on stage talking about marketing, trying to break it down into its simplest form. That’s basically what it is. You need to be able to find the single sole benefit that this person is actually after. I was just listening to your podcasts earlier and they were talking about purchasing a nice sports car. People don’t buy the sports car to actually have the sports car. They buy it to actually have the feeling of what they’ll feel like when they’re driving in a sports car. Put their mate in it and go for a nice drive and go ‘Hey, what do you think about that?’. You’ve got to market to the benefit of that. You’ll see a TV. ad where they’re driving a nice sports car and they’ll have it focusing to what their main benefit is. They might see a hot chick walk past down the street while you’re in your hot sports car. While you’re watching the ad you don’t actually click on that woman in the ad is there for a particular reason, because of the excitement.

Justin: I agree to that 100% and I think as an industry we probably in our marketing try to make our self sound really smart, really qualified. At the same time, in the effort to give ourselves credibility, but that just disenfranchises some of our virgin consumers because they’re sitting there going ‘What the hell is an integrated nutrition and exercise program that boosts my metabolism’. We know what it means but the average person doesn’t. there’s a great example is this concept it was in Brazil in 2012 and a cruise company released an online game to consumers to win, to have a chance to winning a trip abroad on one of their big cruise liners. Massivecruiseliners. If you talk to anybody who has been on a cruise ship they go ‘Love it! Its great!’ but if you’ve never been on a cruise ship. Have you ever been on a cruise ship?

Brett: No I haven’t actually. I was supposed to go on one last year, but it was the one that caught fire.

Justin: Good reason not to.

Brett: Yeah, luckily then and not when I was on it.

Justin: well if you took anybody that has never been on one they kinda go ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse being on a ship for 8, 9, 10 days, seeing the same people. So what the company said was these people are virgin consumers and they’re uneducated. They’re making a decision not to go on a cruise ship from an uneducated perspective. So what they did they put together these online games. had 7 levels and they put these challenges on every level and the consumer, the uneducated consumer, would go on  and play this online game and by the time they got to level 7 they were then in the draw to win a trip. But now they became completely educated on what it was like to be on a cruise ship. So then they could then decide whether they did or didn’t want to go. I think that is a great example of our industry. Sometimes we do this very well, and sometimes we don’t. With trial memberships and trial exercises with a personal trainer. People say they need to get fit before they go to a gym first. What? That doesn’t make any sense, but that is what they say. They have this uneducated perspective of what happens with a personal trainer or what happens in a gym. so this online game would be perfect, or a video for people to watch the video of what actually happens in a gym, and somebody sits there and goes ‘ I could do that, I could do that  with a personal trainer. that could be me.’ and that kind of makes that virgin consumer pull back a bit, back to the basics and go ‘I could do that, I’m interested now, because I’m a bit more educated than now 5 minutes ago when I started watching that video’.

Brett: I think that the biggest issue that I’ve seen with many personal trainers is, not, the fact that they’re not good trainers. They can certainly deliver on the services, and I’m sure if we use the cruise ship. Once you get on it’s amazing. Once you’ve watched a TV. Program recommended by a mate, you’re like ‘Wow, that TV. program is great!’. Your initial thing of I’m not sure, I don’t know if I want to watch it or not. What we need to do as personal trainers in the fitness industry is how we can lead these virgin consumers through the front door. What we need, and I know through a fact in our business, that if we can get someone through our front door. we have them got them into our market funnel or the client journey, because we know that all we need to do is get in front of someone and our product and service will sell themselves. We don’t even need to sell or products or services. That’s what I think most personal trainers struggle with, is how to get people through your front door? Let’s ask you and what’s your opinion on that? How would you, what are you best methods that you’ve seen in the fitness industry that worked that can get this virgin consumers through the front door so you can then construct things that deliver a fantastic client service.

Justin: Well I think the biggest problem with marketing in the fitness industry is we are marketing like we use to market 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. certainly probably 5 years ago, which is we put a message out, a brochure out, whatever marketing piece we want, we put it out there. And we say, ‘Who is this talking about?’ and the club or the personal trainer will say, ‘everybody’. That to be is the biggest mistake you can make these days. That was 5 years ago you did put a marketing piece out, you put it in a letterbox and you could have no specific market. However things these days, the consumers are far more savvy and they want a message directed to them. They want the business that they are about to spend their money with to understand that they have an issue or they have a problem and that that business can solve their problems. so 5 years ago we used to be able to say how grand we were, now we’ve got to say how grand we are prepared to understand what your problems are and that we have a solution it your problems. The example I often use is, and this is not meant to be sexist at all, but I use women as a classic example. A working woman and a nonworking woman of the same age have 2 completely different needs. A working woman, who has children in day care, has completely different needs to a working woman who has children in high school or in primary school. A working woman who doesn’t have kids has completely different needs to the other 4 different types of women. so there are some core needs, sure, each one of those has different needs so if we were marketing we would really need to decide which one of those target markets we are after because if we just say we are after women in general, then the women in general are going to say ‘you’re not really talking to me, you must be talking to some other woman’. I think in our marketing, we need to be more specific. We need to really nail down our target market in a marketing piece. To me that is well instead of getting 5000 flyers printed we only need 200 printed and if we are going after 5 different markets, we get 200 printed of the 5 different markets we are going after and we are still 4000 flyers that are off, because we only got 1000 printed. In essence we can actually do, we can spend less on our marketing, but we can be far more targeted and I think that probably where our biggest problem is. We are too generic in our marketing, let’s hope everybody responds, and then nobody does.

Brett: I mean I’ve touched on that we’ve talked about this in several Fitt Professional episodes. It’s that thing that you can never talk about enough, that thing about target market, and what you’ve just touched on there, I think was a very valid point in regards to even break it down your target market and get even further, instead of getting male and female, whilst it is getting better than just having one target market of males and females. It really enables you to become specialists in your particular areas. For example, you wanted to target corporate, high level corporate females who are stressed out, overworked and not in the best shape of their lives. You would then be able to construct a copy written piece of marketing using their type of terminally, using their jargon, appealing to their main points. A lot of travel, they may do a lot of travel being in that type of industry. so one of your main points may be ‘you’re sick and tired of travelling, or living out of a suitcase?’ became that is what is going on in their heads, in their heads they’re like man I’m sick of being in every hotel, living out of a suitcase. You need to appeal to them like you’re having a conversation with them. What I mean is whenever they see your form marketing, whether it’s a Facebook ad, a google ad, a flyer, and posters. Whatever it may be. When they see that they need to be able to go ‘aah that’s me. That is exactly what I don’t like’. What it then does, it allows you obviously like you said to, hyper tag this people and you know exactly where to put these pieces of marketing. I guess on that particular point, because I know what will happen because there is going to be trainers there going ‘well I’m only getting started and I want to train everyone’. Sowhat’s your reply to that? A trainer who goes, ‘I don’t really have a target market now, I just want to train people’.

Justin: I’d say, rip in, you want to get your hands in, get your hands dirty. I’ve seen, from a brand new trainer you want to train everybody, because you might initially think, and I’m sure you’ve met trainers like this and there may be Fiit Professionals out there who were like these, that as soon as they become qualified and they have an interest in bodybuilding, then they want to train other body builders and then they quickly work out body builders aren’t really interested in personal training, aren’t really great reliable personal training clients, or they want to spend their money on supplements and not on trainers. All of a sudden they go ‘oh, geez, this isn’t the market I want’, and then they change. I don’t have a problem with them changing, I think that is actually really good, when you first start out, you train  everybody because that will help you workout who you really want to train, who you really want to help, what your niche market is. I would suggest that 12 weeks, you’re training people regularly, you know the type of client that you like to train, and then you got to make sure that that is viable for you to run your business training those people. If it’s not viable to train people who have had a knee replacement in rehab and you go, ‘well actually that’s too hard for me’, then you’ve got to say, okay well ‘I need to broaden my scope’. Sometimes that is a tough decision because if there is not even people, there’s not enough people. You can’t make them up. So you might have to make that tough decision and go ‘well I’d like to train people who have had a knee replaced, there’s not enough of them so I better get out of the industry or find a bigger niche’. I think you just go to a bigger niche.

Brett: I use the terminology, it’s the thing of being a jack of all trades, a master of man and I’ve actually, I’ve been a victim of that. Many years, my entrepreneurial years, even as a kid actually. I’d always place a lot of sports, I’d be good at a lot of sports but I was never, never had that edge to be the best at it. Because I wanted to spread myself thin and I found that that type of behaviour when I first started in business. I wanted to train everyone. I trained an 18 year old female, all the way up to a 67 year old man. It was that thing that I just wanted some clients at that time. What I, the biggest, and I will use the world cataclysmicshift thatI have ever had and if you had to look and pinpoint where in my business journey did it really start to gain attraction and go to being a solo personal trainer to a business owner. It was when I defined, and clearly defined my niche market. It was quite funny because you still have to go through all that and when I started as a personal trainer I was always told, and always read that you’ve got to find your niche market. At the time I was like that sounds all good and well, but what’s the process? I think if we were to look at some, lets I guess, look at this a little deeper and give the person out there listening to this going ‘yeah, I’m in that exact same boat now, but I don’t really know what to do’. So I will start with your first, and I will put you on the spot. What would your advice before someone who, they have an idea of the niche market but they’re not too sure which way to take it. What would you say there?

Justin: Well, my view is, you’re going to get nowhere sitting on the fence. so, if you think you know your niche, then you’re just got to jump in and put all your heart and soul into that and I think you used the phrases ‘be known as the expert in your community, in that area’. Then beautiful thing about social media and Facebook, twitter, those sorts or components of social media, it does allow you to sort of position yourself as an expert pretty quickly. You’ve just got to blog, put your Facebook status updates and focus on that niche, and that allows you that positioning pretty quickly and the more it will spread. So I think that is the first thing for me, if you want to do rehab, that’s fine, that’s great. Put your heart and soul into it. If you’re sitting on the fence and you’re not quite sure whether that’s what you wanted to do, then you’ll get clients who are not quite sure whether they want to train with you or not.

Brett: I guess just on that, on that point as well. going back to my story of being a    jack of all trades, a master of man, what it does as well on another underlying level is that when you are spread over many different areas, you can’t become the expert because you physically can’t sit there and learn as much material as you can about every single part of the industry. an example from myself, now I love business, business is my thing, but inside business there is many different levels that obviously makes up a business as you know, and you know consumer trends being one of them, which I have to say I spend no time basically looking at. However, that’s why there’s people like yourself that has been able to carve out a niche that has been able to fill the void that I have when it comes to that. I would rather spend my time learning about marketing, systems and strategy. That’s where I am an expert at.

Justin: And that’s your level of interest, that’s’ the thing that interests you the most. So when you get out of bed in the morning it’s like ‘you know what, I’m driven about learning about marketing’. So again with trainers, the first thing we’ve got to think about is ‘what am I driven by?’ because if I’m driven by taking people through rehab, if that’s what really drives me then I’m going to be depressed if I go to work with overweight people or vice versa. You know, I think carving out a niche is one thing, but the niche has to be something that pushes your buttons.

Brett: Great point because, this is a question I ask myself and I ask people to ask themselves to find their level of passion with what we’re doing. now the question I ask, ‘would you get up at 3am to go and do your thing, whatever it is you’re wanting to go and learn?’ an example is this morning, I got up at 3am , and I don’t do this every morning but we are in the middle of creating a product that we will be releasing before Christmas. I know there is a lot of extra work that needs to go into this. So I was up 3am straight to the office, and I was able to put in 5 solid hours before anyone could get into the office. SoI pretty much had done a day’s work and this is the thing…

Justin: Isn’t it amazing how much work you get done when there’s no one around?

Brett: Honestly I’m really looking at the thing of changing that because before 9 o’clock no one tries to reach out to you anyway. So you basically get the whole trap of emails that we find ourselves in and Facebook and that. Yesterday I put up a post about me on Facebook and it was basically about me going into hibernation for 3 days.

Justin: Yeah, I saw that. I did see that.

Brett: so I made a decision that I’m going into hibernation for 3 days and I will check my emails once a day and I check my Facebook once a day. And I tell you I got more work done yesterday that I probably have the whole week. This call right now is something that we had planned so this is, you know, a good break for me because I don’t see this as work at all. I could talk about business and strategies all day, every day. Hence the reason why I started this podcast because I love talking about it and sharing the knowledge that I’ve been able to learn and the knowledge of others as well but it goes back to that question, ‘would you get up at 3am to do it?’. Now I hated and I use the word because I literally started waking up feeling ill when I was still doing 5:30 personal training session. Even when I got my charging rate up and I was earning good money for the time spent. It just was, on an emotional level wasn’t making me feel complete. I couldn’t enjoy it and the reason why I couldn’t, in the fitness industry, to be to enjoy what I do and live the lifestyle that I want to live. Now the funny thing was my excuse back then was I’m sick of getting up early, that these early mornings are killing me, then all of a sudden I’d book a trip to Bali and we’d be up till 4 o’clock and heading to the airport I’d be bright as rain. Then I realised it had nothing to do with the early morning and getting up and its cold, or it’s not to bad up in Queensland being hot every day, but you know, I discovered that I was doing something that I wasn’t enjoying. For the people listening in full time jobs, and I’ve coached many of those and I’m sure you have too. People who are in a fulltime roll right now doing their 9-5 and they’re’ just sick of it and wanting to get out the industry. Ask yourself the question, ‘Would you get up at 3am to do your job?’ and the answer is ‘yes’, then you’re doing the right thing.

Justin: That’s exactly right and I think you’ve just nailed it, then and there, and that’s a great message for everybody on the podcast and that’s: ‘Would you get up at 3am to do it?’ And if you would then you’re in the right job or you’re training the right clientele. But if you still thinking ‘oh I’m not sure’, yip it’s a tough one.

Brett: Yeah, I think that lesson right there like you said can be encapsulated to many different areas of your life. You know, are you getting up at 3am? Do you love seeing your partner next to you in bed? If not get rid of them.

Justin: I won’t get into dating advice but you can take this over into every aspect of your life. So even if you’re getting trained by a PT and you’re going ‘aah, I’m not really looking forward to it’, then don’t do it. Find something that you do enjoy. Go and do aqua aerobics or go and do poke dancing. There’s something out there that will fit your needs.

Brett: alright so…

Justin: there’s a great book by Simon Sinek and if anybody has heard me speak, I’m a really fan of him. his written a book  called ‘Start with why’, and I would encourage every, all the Fiit Professionals on the podcast to read the book and if they’re not interested in reading the book then go to google and google him. There’s a video that goes for 18 minutes and watch the video because what he talks about there is what we are talking about now, and that is having a clear understanding of why you went into the fitness industry. Why you choose to do what you do. what Simon Sinek says which I think is, well I think is absolute spot on is people don’t follow you like they want to be your client because of what you do, people like you , follow you and want to be your client because of why you do it. It’s not because of what we do, it’s because of why we do it. So I would encourage everybody listening to the podcast, read the book or watch the DVD and sit down themselves and analyse why they chose to be a personal trainer. If they can clearly articulate why they chose to be a personal trainer, that will be a magnet to their business. That will attract customers and clients like they’ve never seen before. Did they say ‘I chose to be a personal trainer because I’m passionate about health and fitness’, which is what most personal trainers say. I challenge myself and say ‘okay, well why are you passionate?’. It’s a deep reason on why, and I think if you’re the guys listening are created to do that they will a: Be a super successful personal trainer and B: They won’t have any problems about getting up at 3 o’clock in the morning to go to work.

Brett: Yeah, couldn’t agree with you more there. So that for beginners from Simon Sinek ‘Start with why’ so I will certainly be checking that out and if he has got an audio book I will be getting that first.

Justin: Yeah, no there’s definitely an audio book and there’s a video. The video goes for 18 minutes and it will, it tells everything that is in the book as well.

Brett: Excellent, perfect. So let’s change tack there a little bit and get into a little bit more about, you know, I guess things that you’ve learnt in the industry and big lessons that you’ve taken away that you think would save the Fiit Professionals and business owners listening now the heartache of having to go through it. OS what was one of you biggest business decisions? I know you mentioned it at the start of the episode it was not having 2 gyms or 1 gym was better than 2 etcetera for yourself. What sort of other business lessons do you have there? Or did you want to elaborate on that one a little bit more?’

Justin: might need to leave it at that. Probably the biggest lesson that I’ve learnt around business is to have a work/life balance. I worked similar to you, entrepreneur, if you asked me if I was working I’d say ‘no, working is like, you don’t like doing what you’re doing. That’s work. I love what I do, I don’t consider it work’. But your body doesn’t quite think like that, and it’s imperative that you take time out, its imperative that you turn off, and it’s imperative that you recharge your batteries for your own health’s sake. I learnt the hard way, I’ve got, I now have a chronic self-stress induced illness and that is because ii loved doing what I was doing and I didn’t consider  it work but my body was telling me something completely different. so my real lesson around work and around, particularly in our industry because we just love what we do so much, is that you’ve got to take time out, you’ve got to take time out. You’ve got celebrate success, smell the roses when you’ve had success, when you’ve finished off at the end of the day, you finish off at the end of the day. for personal trainers I think, a really important course to do is like a counselling course, not to learn how to console clients because I don’t think we need to know that, but you need to go to a counselling course to learn how to leave all the things that you’ve been told by your clients today behind and not carry all that baggage into your own life. If that makes sense?

Brett: That actually makes a lot of sense and it’s to be perfectly honest, I think that it’s probably that time I myself have actually heard that as a recommendation, but the more I think about it, the more I think it should almost be a necessity and actually a part of what everyone going through a qualification, because you’re so right. There is so many times that you be like ‘Oh no I’ve got Mary tonight at 7 o’clock and she’s going to tell me another life story and whilst I still care for her and I want to make sure that she is okay, I’m just sick to death hearing about it. It does, you know, there has to be a way for you to be able to express that side of it. So I think that they, that I just had a ‘ah hah’ moment there myself mate, so.

Justin: Ah, excellent. But I think, I do, I think it’s really important. We are not counsellors so I don’t think we need, I don’t think we need to know how to counsel. we need for our own health, because if Mary has told us about all of the horrible things that’s happened in her life and told us her life story for an hour or half an hour, or how every long that session is, at the end of that session, she walks away feeling bloodly marvellous because she has taken all the monkeys off her back and plonked them all on Brett’s back, and Brett’s walking now with his knuckles dragging on the ground because he has got all Marys monkeys plus Dave and John’s and Peter’s from the half an hours before. Then you go home to your wife, your girlfriend or your flatmate and they’re all like ‘how was your day?’ and you grunt and you groan and your partner says to you ‘since you’ve become a personal trainer you’ve changed, you’re not the person you use to be’ and you are, it’s just that your got all these monkeys on your back and the last thing you want to do is have a conversation with your partner at home. You just want to veg out, watch TV. And whatever and that’s, I think it’s really important we taught the skill of leaving work at work, in the park, at the studio or in the gym. I think that would add to the longevity of our personal trainers, they’d be out, they wouldn’t suffer burn out. Maybe it has to be part of the course, I don’t know. To me, that was my biggest lesson, is that work really is work no matter how you look at it, work is work. Your body will, needs to recharge.

Brett: Yeah, and tapping onto that thing. Whether you do a counselling course, obviously for the learning (stuttering) perspective. Jeez I got there. Crops. There’s no editing there so I sound like a complete douche. So it really comes down to that whole emotional challenge and how much time you actually spend on working on yourself. Now we’ve talked about marketing, we’ve talked about business, we’ve talked about how you can be a good trainer, you can go and do courses and learn all that type of stuff but there’s the thing that a lot of personal trainers lack and business owners lack that I see is the emotional intelligence side of it. Being able to connect, because what will happen when Mary tells you the story about what is going on in her life, what that will do is emotionally trigger, it will trigger something within yourself and it could bring back a memory that you’ve had in your past or you know, bring out a memory that you just thought that wasn’t there anymore and it is there. So it is about being able to actually clean out our closet as Eminem sang. So you need to clean out your closet and you need to keep it clean because whether you, and it goes back to the whole thing of emotional vampires. I’ve stacked so many clients over my time because I literally would wake up, this is how bad it got for me, on a Sunday morning, I woke up one day and I was like ‘Oh no I have to train this person tomorrow night at 7pm’ and I was like, I started letting myself feel ill from that Sunday morning…

Justin: 30 Hours before you were going to train them, yeah.

Brett: Correct and T was like, what am I doing to myself. That’s were I guess you take from that journey of personal development and you grow and A: you can become a better person and that type of thing. It was just quite amazing as we as human beings sabotage ourselves before something has happened or we even know a certain outcome.

Justin: Well that’s absolutely right, that’s a very very important point that you make and I think as personal trainers we love exercise, we love changing people’s life through exercise, but I think, maybe you know the step, but there was a step that came out of an idea in the U.S. but I think it was like 75% of personal trainers, once they became a personal trainer worked out less than before they were a personal trainer.

Brett: I’m definitely in that. I lost my passion for training when I became a trainer. And I was in the best shape of my life leading up to training and when I become one, I’m supposed to be a role model and I start letting myself go a little bit. It’s that same thing, I guess it was more, for me, I started working in a gym and I just got sick of seeing the inside of the wall, so every time I had a free moment I’d just get out of the place and I think it was actually 83.4%, don’t quote me on that. At least it sounds like I know what I’m talking about right.

Justin: But I think, you know, that’s part of recharging your batteries so we just get so busy and when you’re a new personal trainer you don’t want to say no to new potential clients so you say yes to everybody, you’re completely overworked and those first 3 months are really difficult so if you’re not recharging your batteries, you not use to people pouring their heart and soul out in 30 minutes to you, and you’re trying to market and you’re trying to keep up with the latest trends. It’s a bloody hard job. You’ve really got to take that time out, take out your batteries, turn off your phone, don’t look at Facebook. Doesn’t matter what screen you’re looking at, that screen drains energy from you and sucks it out. I love your description ’emotional vampire’. The screen will do that to you, so you’ve got to get out, go for a run, work out, recharge the battery and get ready for the next day or later that day, whatever you’re going to do. Yeah, my biggest business lesson is creating balance and focus on that balance and when you’ve got that balance the rest of the business will prosper. If you haven’t got that balance, there’s a big difference between being productive and being busy. And I will take being productive over being busy any day.

Brett: Yeah, that’s right. So, just somewhere, we are nearly at the end of our, of the episode today and I know you’ve got to go on and…

Justin: Do stuff.

Brett: Be productive. You’ve got productive things to go and do, but I just want to end with one of your favourite quotes and what it means to you. I know you probably got a dozen there but what comes to mind first?

Justin: well, my favourite one that I finish all my presentations with is ‘What you leave behind, is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others’- Pericles.

Brett: Alright, and what does that mean to you bud?

Justin: Basically say, it doesn’t matter what my resume says, my resume is irrelevant. It’s what impact have I had on people’s lives and what learns have I given. People can sit back and go ‘you know what, I got this from Justin, I learnt this from JT’ or something along those lines and ‘it really influenced me’. So, I’m not too worried about what people want to write on my tombstone. I’m more worried I’ve created some change an balance in people’s lives so that they’re happier at home with their partners,  they’re happier with their kids,  they’re happier in their business, whatever is important to them, that they’re happy because of something I’ve taught them, worked with them on or something along those lines.

Brett: Excellent. And…

Justin: That was pretty deep way to finish.

Brett: Yeah, I know, it’s good actually, it’s got people thinking. Emotion is the driver to taking action and I guess what your said there you’ve definitely had an impact on people listening today and again, with every episode, I suggest you go back and listen to it 10 times or at least twice because there’s going to be a whole lot of things that you actually missed out on today’s episode that you probably didn’t resonate with whilst we were going through. But I guarantee if you go through it, it’s like watching a movie for the second time. You go back through and you get the new pieces. I didn’t really know that happened. Look, lets finish on that Justin and how can our listeners here find out more information about you?

Justin: Look, probably the easiest place to go is our website which is activemgmt.com.au, activemgmt.com.au.  When they go there they can become a freemium member, a premium member obviously they pay from the premium but the freemium is free, they get information. So we really focus on…

Brett: You don’t mind if I steal that ‘freemium’?

Justin: No, you can use freemium if you like. If fact, anybody, anybody who is a Fiit Professional can steal ‘freemium’.

Brett: Okay, I’m using that. It’s cool. Sorry buddy.

Justin: So, yeah, they can go on there and get a whole heap of free information. I mean really what we do is, we’re sharing business briefing, we’re sharing consumer trends and other stuff that we’ve got to help businesses run better. But I guess there is the two main things we look at. How we can manage our business better? How can we run them better? And how does that relate to what the consumer is looking for?

Brett: Excellent. One last thing popped into my mind. I want to test how good you are. Let’s get your prediction for the fitness industry in the next 6 months and we are going to get you back on in a future episode. So what’s going to happen in the next 6 months that we are going to be able to talk about in 6 months? You know, JT you’re the man.

Justin: Okay. Here’s my prediction. In the next 6 months. Not much is going to change. But the next 12-18 months, there’s going to be some changes in our industry. We are going to see Les Mills bring out their programs, that will be all video. So it will be, for example in anytime fitness currently you can’t do Les Mills. You will be able to do classes on demand, and there will be Les Mills classes on demand. so that opens up, that  then makes up that 24 hour model more competitive with a big box gym for one of a better description. So that will be really interesting to see. Because Les Mills is already doing this in the U.S, if and when they bring that to Australia, which I suggest will be in the next 12-18 months that they will do that. So that will be interesting. I think the proliferation of 24 hour gyms is going to be really interesting to see what happens. There are a lot that are opening, there are multiple brands that are out there. I’m not sure that they can all exist.

Brett: No.

Justin: I think it’s all the brands that can exist, but I’m not sure that in one town or in one suburb, you can have 4 brands of 24 hour clubs, plus one or two independent clubs. So I, look I’ve got a client who in Western Australia and in her town three years ago it was her and a counsel facility. Now there is 3 24 hours brands, 2 cross fit clubs, plus her, and the counsel facilities still. That has completely changed the dynamics. And I’m not completely sure that the penetration of people in that community has increased. She’s got one of the better gyms so she is the last let’s say 10% of her membership base has gone to these other gyms. So we are not growing the number of people exercising sufficiently enough to make all these viable. So I do think there will be some rationalisation. A bit of a shake down over the next 20, let’s say 24 months, and that concerns me because it is never good when businesses close up. so I really think, for me, if I was running a fitness business at the moment I’d be really buckling down , making sure I’ve got my expenses at a bare minimum. That I can run my business. I know my numbers really well in my business. My finances, my financials, I understand that. I’ve got to work harder on my referrals because external marketing generally is tougher these days, so word-of-mouth, and marketing and referral is going to be key. And there will be some. So I want to have a plan B in my back pocket if a competitor goes broke. Well what does that do in the community? Well, you might pick a couple of members. But then everybody doesn’t join a gym because, or, of these 3 smaller clubs, do they now become for sale? And as the personal trainer I go ‘well actually I could afford to buy one of them and bring all my clients in. So, it brings up a lot of interesting things. I don’t think in the next three months there will be a lot of change, because we are going to go through Christmas, and we know we’ve got a peak time from now pretty much through to April.  But I think next winter we’re just going to have to see where our industry sits.

Brett: That certainly will be. So, look, thanks for the prediction, we’re definitely going to check in with that and I want, thanks again for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be a part of the Fiit Professional podcast. I know everyone, especially myself, got a lot out of it today. But, mate, I wish you the best for the rest of the day and we will be seeing each other in New Zealand at the end of the month actually. We both speaking at the New Zealand FitX conference. So if you’re a New Zealand personal trainer and you’re listening to this, make sure you come in and listen to our presentation because it is no fun talking to an empty room is it?

Justin: That’s spot on. Yeah it will be great. I look forward to catching up to you there too Brett, that will be unreal.

Brett: Yeah, likewise. Alright Justin, you have a fantastic day.

Justin: No worries, cheers mate.

Brett: Alright take care!

Justin: Bye!

Brett: Bye!

Episode 13: Brett Interviews Norman Alpeche About His VERY Successful Group Training Business

[sharethis]

In this episode Brett Interviews Norman Alpeche from Norms Maximum Fitness and Fiit Chick Transformations Penrith.

Norm has over 60 members in his Group Training and Pt Business. And has only been running his Fiit Chick Location for 4 months.

Norm shares:

  • What his biggest ah ha moment was that literally changed his business over night.
  • His #1 method on how to fill up his client list.
  • We also discuss what it takes to reach the 6 figure income as a Personal Trainer

and loads more…

See what Norman has to say about his Fiit Chick Location

40 New clients in 5 weeks

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

Brett Interviews Marketing Expert Richard Marc

Transcript of EPISODE 12:

Intro: [Music playing in the background] Hello and welcome to the Fiit Professional Podcast. The number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you are after more clients, more income and more free time, then you have come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au today.

Brett: Hello and welcome to another Fiit Professional podcast. Today we have another special guest joining us. This special guest, I will introduce you to him in a moment. But first of all I wanted to do a quick check in just to see if you have been listening to the past episode. Last week we had Richard Marc on from COM Marketing. Where he revealed some really cool and some interesting methods on how you can get clients with literally no money down. So go back, check out that episode.

And just a bit of a teaser, I guess in the coming future, in the coming weeks… I would say future sounds like a long time away but in the coming weeks we are going to have some really cool special guests on the calls. We got a couple of my American friends that I have been hounding for weeks since we actually started this podcast and they have agreed to jump on so they are going to be revealing some really cool information especially when it comes to web based, online type of regeneration. So we will be having that in the coming episodes but today we have got a special guest.

And this person’s name is Norman, Norm Alpeche. Norm owns Norms Maximum Fitness and he’s also a Licensee and owns the Fiit Chick Transformation Penrith Location. Norm is reaching about, what is it, 60 clients on his books at the moment and he is a kick-ass dude. So I came across Norm, it would have been probably or maybe 3 months now. Dropped us, Norm submitted some interest in regards to a Fiit Chick Location. We checked him out, seeing if he was all good , did a background check; he didn’t know that though; Did a background check .

Norm picked all the boxes and I guess the reason why I have got Norm on the pod today is for a few reasons: one is, this guy is someone that I really see and I would describe as an action packer. Now if you have listened to past episodes you will know that I am really big on action taking because at the end of the day, action taking is what leads you to results. And this guy just takes onboard anything and we are not saying ‘anything’. I mean anything in a logical way. He just implements and the results of his particular business at the moment is staying true to the fact that he just pulls the trigger and that’s what it’s all about in the Fitness Industry and in any business.

But, look, am going to pass this over to Norm now and just welcome Norm to the call. “Mate, Thanks for taking the time out today and to jump on the line and share some really cool things with our listeners.”

Norm: “No worries mate.”

Brett: “Sure.” So Norm, let’s get a brief introduction about yourself their and am sure there’s ethical things that I missed out. But I am going to hand over to you just quickly and you just give us, the listeners a brief background on how long you have been a trainer, why did you get into the industry and just a bit of a brief background there mate.

Norm: Well I have been a trainer for about three, three and a half years now. Got into the industry because I like fitness. There’s not really ‘weight loss story’ or ‘weight gain story’ for me it’s just I like doing what I do. So I turned it into some sort of income. But, what else is background? I have done all sorts of jobs and all of them were pretty shit so… but after, yeah, I did something. I really enjoy. I don’t drag myself like up out of bed and even though I do sometimes after some late nights I still enjoy it. There is nothing that I dislike about the job. So that’s; yeah; apart from that, I am me. Yeah…

Brett: “Cool mate.” So no drama there. “Great abs there by the way, you are doing really well.” So

Norm: “I’ve noticed mate.”

Brett: Just talking to Norm before the call and doing a bit of a brief rundown on what we’ll chat about and just to everyone listening out there, this is another thing that when I started out being an action takerI asked Norm if he wanted to jump on an episode and he said yes straight away and part of the call he said he was feeling nervous, but this what it’s all about, jumping in and having a go.

So Norm, I guess I have got a few questions here for you that I am interested in but let’s start with,“What’s one of your biggest lessons that you have learnt in the industry so far?” So you have been a trainer for 3 years, now give us a bit of a background on a big lesson that you have learnt along the way.

Norm: Well, when I first started I just pretty much thought I’d get in there, train people, earn lots of money, have fun. But that’s what a lot of personal trainers do these days. But I never really thought about where I wanted to be during the time which is, probably, the last only about a year. I started focusing on where I wanted to be in let’s say 12 months, 2 years and 5 years and even the regal  of retirement part of time that… So, now by doing that I have sort of moved forward in towards my business. Started working on my business rather than in ita lot more.So pretty much I got out of the crappy loophole where a lot of personal trainers end up being if they don’t sort of think forward.  “Does that make sense?”

Brett: “Yeah, like 100%.” And I totally agree with you because I guess I can put my hand up in Sunday group and go, “Well, man I do as well.” I think everyone goes through that phase sometime and the big thing that I have picked up out of that is that it took you about 2 years before you even started setting goals which is a really big insight to anyone out there listening now. If you’re listening and you are going, “Oh yeah, I actually don’t know where I want to be in 12 months or 2 years or 5 years,” then you really need to sit down and actually access where you are at because the whole thing is, “Are you going to be training clients until your 60?”

You need to…

Norm: “Hell no!”

Brett: “Yeah, that’s right!” And what can happen is you probably said to your mate or your palor something and go, “Geez hasn’t this year gone fast?”and in the moment you again then go, “Geez hasn’t the last 10 years gone fast?” If you’ve got no directionyou’ve got nowhere to head towards. So in regards to that you’ve got some goals moving forward. What sort of things are you looking to do in the industry?

Norm: Well, everyone sort of, I think a lot of personal trainers like myself, the first landmark was the whole 6 figure income. By me setting goals and sort of pushing myself forward to where I want to be that 6 figure income isn’t actually that hard to do. So now, obviously, I want to be able to sort of go on holiday even. Do what I need to do without my income stopping. So that’s where I sort of want to be. And eventually teach others how I got to where I am. So why not share the knowledge that I have learnt and they can then do good as well. As you’ve done. I know you feel good with what you do. And it’s, for a personal trainer I think it’s fun to help others so I guess it is fun to help others in other ways as well.

Brett: Yeah, totally agree again and look you’re right. I do. I do love what I do. Obviously, I am sitting here taking time out of my days, and so are you of course, but to try and instill anything that someone could be listening, they could be walking on a treadmill right now, they could be doing some pushups or you could just be sitting on the couch. Actually funny, the person will know who they are when they hear this, but I was told someone dozed off to sleep the other day with me in their ear and the first thing they woke up and thought about was something that was talked about on the podcast so that’s pretty interesting.

Norm: They reckon about your mind absorbs the last thing you hear and the first thing you hear in a day, when you wake up and you sleep

Brett: So that could be the trick but people say that they don’t have time to listen. Just put them on while you’re sleeping and that’s all done. I don’t even know where I was actually heading with that but…I think where it started was I love what am doing. You love what you’re doing and that’s what makes it easy and if you ask people, “Why do you currently love what you’re doing?”

And for me, for an example and I’ll ask you the same question, but for me it’s like I love what am doing because I’ve got a focus, I’ve got a clear goal of what we want to do. So our first goal here at Fiit International for one part of it our company is, we want to have 100 Fiit Chick Locations aroundAustralia within the first 12 months and that’s a goal we’ve got and we work to on a daily basis. We’ve got targets that we have to, each day that we know in order to achieve that goal. And it’s just really exciting being able to, like you said, to be able to help other people.

And for me I know an analogy that I have heard, I can’t even remember the person who said it. Luckily I remember the analogy though. It was, “Learn to teach.” learn it in a way that you’re going to teach it to someone. So that’s a really valuable thing that how I am able to obtain a lot of information is because anytime I see it or I am watching someone on the stage or am listening to an audio or I am seeing a video or something. I am actually watching it with the intention that I need to teach this to someone.

Whether I teach it to someone or not, it’s the fact that if am going into it with that mind set of learning it to teach, you’re going to retain so much more information. So that’s another little tip there on how you can actually retain information.

But Norm I guess the question that I have for you is, “What do you think, let’s say, two key things that every personal trainer must have in their business in order for it to be successful?”

Norm: “Two things.”  You need to have direction. Without direction you are in a loophole like I said before. And drive, you need to be a doer not just a sayer. If you don’t do anything you going to… nothing’s going to happen really. You’re going to be stuck and just thinking about all these crazy ideas and not doing anything.

Brett: So give us an example of where you get the ‘do’ versus the ‘say’, if that makes sense.

Norm: “Ok. Let’s see.” One of my greatest things ok, I hate… I did flier deliveries in the local shops. That was really out of my comfort zone because it was walking in to random shops, random people by doing it so the amount of leads and the amount of sign-ups I got within that one day was just ridiculous. I am just a normal guy walking into some random shop saying, “Hey, do you want to get fit?” pretty much and if I didn’t do that I wouldn’t have gotten X amount of clients from it. So, that’s one about doing, so yeah.

Brett: Yeah and that’s just, again another lesson to everyone out there, I mean I don’t know too many people to be honest that are actually comfortable with doing that. It’s more of a…, this will probably be a shock for some people. Personally I don’t really feel that comfortable about doing that either like when I had to back in the day of going into the shops and delivering the fliers and asking if they’d like to form a joint venture relationship with us it was actually quite confronting for me as well but like you said, you just got to pull the trigger and you just got to do it.

Because you can sit there and you can complain about not having clients or there is not enough clients around so I am just going to go back and get a full time job. Or you can actually get out thereand make yourself feel uncomfortable and then go and make it happen. So, let’s talk about getting clients in, let’s talk about a method that would be able to help our listeners out there. A method on how you’ve been able to generate so many people into your Fiit Chick Location and also your personal training business.

Norm: Well, one of the methods other than the flier drop I went to the places where sport or fitness or health was the big thing. For instance say like Boost juice, full of sugar and what-not is still sort of a health orientated place also like Lauder James who has a lot of girls there. The best one will be beauticians dock, ahhh… the beautician faces and hairdressers. Once girls get things done they love to talk so if one person’s doing training then they’ll talk about it because they are getting their little sexy body or whatever and then so forth and so on. They’ll tell their sisters, brothers, uncles, grandmothers and then before you know it everyone’s on there.

And that’s what I’ve found really rewarding for me actually. Like I saidwalking into that business was a bit height and walking into a girl beautician place being a guy was awkward enough and then walking in there and saying, “Hey, do you guys want to get fit?” But that was probably one of the best things I’ve done and competitions really but the main thing is fliers for me actually.

Brett: Yeap! And give us a couple of key things that are on your fliers that obviously would have attracted their attention. Just a couple of other points on there.

Norm: Well I sort of veered away from the fact that, about the whole “we are going to be doing crunches, pushups, boxing,” that kind of stuff because they don’t want to hear that. They want to hear what they can get as in the results. Obviously they want to hear bikini body or beach body or stuff like that and toned and like words that’s really going to appeal to them more. Because they don’t want to hear boxing, “What’s boxing to them? What’s pushups to them?” They hate that kind of crap. But they love the body. So I found that that’s one of the key things.

Guarantees! Guarantees are like, “You know what, if this guy’s guaranteed they must work.” At the end of the day it’s up to them if they… you can’t control what they do outside the training session but you can try do the best you can. But to put in a guarantee does help.

Brett: “Cool.” So, couple of key points from that I just want to touch on and this is, I see this so often. Whether you have been a trainer for years or you are just new to the industry and you don’t really understand marketing so much, it really comes back to a couple of things that Norm pointed out. There is what you would call benefits versus features. So a feature of personal training or a boot camp training there’s cardio it is high intensity interval training. People don’t want to know about high intense interval training, they want to know that it burns 9 times more fat; ok. That’s a proven fact so you want to be putting the benefit of burning 9 times more fat than boring cardio.

Boxing training. People don’t want to know about boxing training. They want to know what does boxing training deliver. It’s increased energy, its lean toned muscles, that type of stuff and you really touched on that and I can’t express enough. In fact there are so many people I see and we still get fliers in our mail box quite regularly and I look at them and I just cringe because they are doing the same old, seeing someone else’s flier in the mail box and I am going to go do my own. And that’s why I hear so much from people that fliers don’t work, fliers don’t do this. It’s that whole thing of, “it’s not going to work if it’s shit; ok.” If you designed right then it’s going to be crap.

And so an example, like we put some our Fiit Chick fliers, we got them out around; and I talked about it in our last episode; we got them around some like businesses just like you were talking about. We went to the juice shop. We went to some girls’ clothes shop as well, hairdressers and all those ones you mentioned and we went giving the opportunity to come along for free and obviously in return I would be able to get their clients and customers.

We just had people just come through from that already and you just need to look at that, are you willing to get a little bit uncomfortable for putting a bit of time and investment; a little bit of money to get some fliers printed up for the overall return of getting a client. I guess in regard to that it’s never, this is another point actually in regards to fliers I’ll just touch on before we move forward is, don’t just rely on the one drop of a flier as well. It’s really important they get that continuous circle people are being confronted with. So for example imagine like you were just doing Facebook ads or google ads right, and that person only saw your ad once. They only seen it once so when they put on the screen and seen it once and that was the only time that they ever see it.

Then they do a flier, of course there’s some differences in there but the Facebook ad is repetitive. You click on there, they go and see another friend’s page, they scroll down, “Oh, that ad is here again.” Similar thing with fliers, you want to have different kinds of contact. Don’t just rely on one flier drop  and what I would say is if you put up a set of fliers and you don’t get any result back I would be looking at changing something on the flier because you should be able to get at least one or two people reaching out to you from it. So Norm, “Do you have anything else to say on fliers? That you would like to share?”

Norm: Obviously depending on which market you are going for, the picture you use. If you are going say for the older ladies you don’t want to put the bikini body, you want to put long living, like healthy living stuff like that. If you are going for the bikini body then you want more toned girls and the body they want. And for men if you want to get older men you want to say healthy living, longer living and if you aim for the younger group then you got to put some sort of boxing image or something like that. Something really grabbing, to help them reach the body they want. That kind of image.

Some people put in big logos on them. Like, at the end of the day the logos look good to us. Not to the people that are interested in doing what they want to do.

Brett: I couldn’t agree with you more there and I guess, especially if you are starting out and you are not building a massive brand or you don’t have a big brand that people would know about most definitely don’t have the logo over power your advertising cause it’s a real mistake that you are missing out on some awesome points there mate. So question for you is, I am always interested in regards to seeing what personal trainers think about the industry and so forth. “Where do you feel the industry is heading?” Let’s say, “Wave the magic wand 2 years’ time, what do you think is going to be different if anything in the industry?”

Norm: Well, I don’t know because there’s people trying to get pumped out left, right and center and it could go online. Like I have seen a lot of online training growth. Which is such a thing as all around the world what-not or people don’t have much time so that and group training. Group training is growing massively especially in my area. First thing the client picks up, the leverage of time so if you get out there and do it know and you shine above the rest, you’d be better than the rest so therefore you will get majority of the business.I can only see two ways there. The one on one’s are still there but not as big as it used to be. I don’t think.

Brett: You are definitely going to be supplying a different market. There will always be the one on ones but at the end of the day if you are someone who wants to actually build a business versus just being a one on one personal trainer then you need to look at those other avenues that you are definitely talking about and I couldn’t agree more with the with the fact that group training is growing. It’s an amazing way to leverage your time instead of getting one person in front of you can have 20 people in front of you at the same time all paying fees but of course the time exchange for the effort put in is far greater and you can leverage yourself massively on that area.

So, let’s talk about group training for a moment. What sort of tips out there do you have for someone looking to start, I guess like yourself; you were looking to start a group training business etc.“What sort of tips do you have for anyone out there?”

Norm: Well to be honest I’ve always tried to keep it up. It’s been up and down like I couldn’t get the leverage behind it. You know, what I mean? But, “I am going to talk you up here a little bit Brett.”

Brett: “I’ll call you later.”

Norm: Ofcourse, that’s nice. Well, first of all I joined Fiit Chick and the other stuff I learnt from it was beneficiary and I mean even from your podcast and stuff like. But joining your Fiit Chick the amount of reach out you have is just phenomenal. And it was a good kick start for me for where I wanted to go towards my business. I’ll give that and it was really good so if anyone wants to save money, save time and time is a big thing, straight up speak to you.

Honestly like the reach out you’ve got is massive compared to me, 4 million times the amount or if you’re trying to grow something small, advertise the shit out of it. Put that money and all that advertising and all that time. And that’s all I can say. You can choose one or the other.

Brett: “Thanks a lot for that. I do appreciate a lot.”

Norm: “No worries mate.”

Brett: It wasn’t actually a question to try and get you to say that but am glad you did.

Norm:“No.”

Brett: Let’s say someone is listening to this and like they don’t want to take up a location with Fiit Chicks but they still want to run some group training. What do you think that a couple of key things that you feel you need to have in order to have a group training business, like yourself that’s running successfully?

Norm: Niche market. Once you do that you can target a lot better because obviously a lot of girls don’t like training with guys because they find them intimidating and there’s just  a lot of guys going, “Oh my God, check her ass out.” Chicks don’t like that. And sometimes guys go, “I don’t want to seem so soft,” so they want to do their own thing. That was probably one of the best things I have done.

“What else?” That’s my main thing to be honest. Like I told myself from the start. I did the whole shop and approach and tried marketing to everyone which it didn’t sort of grow.I saw once I sort of did the Fiit Chicks with all the girls I thought, “Holy shit this actually really works.”

Brett: It’s amazing when you have that light bulb, it goes off doesn’t it and it’s like, “Wow, your right.”And it’s like the niche market thing does work and it works because it’s proven to work time and time again and any marketer that you go to that’s good will tell you the first thing you need to do is curve out a niche market. Because I guess where we started as well many years ago, we were doing male and female boot camps and personally for me like I didn’t see that big bang that I wanted to have happened in that area so that was when we went to niche market and go, “Oh! This thing does work.”

But the great thing about that is it doesn’t mean you can only train females or you can only train males. So you just have many different categories of it. And like you said at the start it is all in the way you communicate with these people. So, again the word toned and lean and slim you are going to know that appeals to females. Where you say ripped, bulging and jacked.

Norm: “Jacked.”“Jacked bird.”

But, having a niche market let’s go into the running of the actual business here and obviously having to deal with more people but obviously you not having to work as, and I will say the word carefully, but having to work as much. Actually that is also hard. What you’re actually doing is in the time you’re not with clients you are actually working on the business, right?

Norm: Exactly right.

Brett: So let’s give us, listeners one of the key things that you feel keeps your girls coming back to train with you. Other than the extremely good looks.

Norm: Well that’s the thing you know. I like to..

Brett: “You’ll have to tell your wife.”

Norm: “She is listening to this I think. No!”

Brett: “She will listen to the recording.”“Just a shout out.”

Norm: Let’s see, well there’s two different types of ways to train people. You can be the whole grueling and yelling and smashing and what-not, and a lot of girls would feel that’s intimidating. You can motivate a lot in a different level which will push them to their maximum limit. That’s what I do. I do the whole you can step out above your roleand sort of text them and obviously the whole be their friend and not just their trainer. “How else would you be?” and I keep it fun. I am not boring and I like to mack around during the session and doing jokes as well. Obviously they do their training what-not but I make them laugh and stuff like that.

They love that kind of stuff. It makes them feel like they are not training even though they are getting a really good work out and they are all pumped up at the end. If you can veer them away from the pain and what-not but they are still getting a good training session then you are doing a good job I reckon. And hold games. Games are one of the biggest things. It keeps them on the high when they leave and that’s the last thing they remember. Getting smashed from a game. And then they will talk about that and so they keep coming.

Brett: And as all that seeps in I want to take once again, I couldn’t agree more with you in regards to, I guess looking at delivering a wild session. But a big tip that I know a lot of trainers don’t do is like you said the whole thing with, become their friend/ trainer. You don’t have to be pally and go hang out with them obviously all the time but have those extra things that if you were being trained by someone what things would you really like to have happened.

For example if you received a text midweek from your trainer and it says, “Hey, how’s it going? How are you feeling? If there’s anything I could do, just shout-out,” type of thing. That’s going to put a lot of good will into your clients’ bank account. And when I say bank account, I am talking about an emotional bank account there and it seems like that day when you’re like, “Aaw, look I just feel…” Sorry, a client might be sitting there going, “Aha, we have had enough of training.” That extra text or that extra thing could be the thing that keeps them on and keeps them continually coming back to train with you. All great things there.

I guess I may have covered this already but I want to put it to you in a different angle. What was your light bulb ‘Aha’ type of moment to go, “The fitness industry is an industry where I know I can now get settled in and do business that I want to which will then obviously give you and your wife and your family the lifestyle that you really want? So, what was your “Aha, yeah! This is the one?”

Norm: To be honest like I said before, the niche market part. The Fiit Chicks thing right, I saw that, “wait a minute when did I see that?” Right before I got married and then I sent you an email while I was on my honeymoon actually so that was my ‘Aha’ moment.

Brett: “Yeah, that’s right.”

Norm: Literally I was on my honeymoon and I thought, “I want to go back to this.” So, there is dedication to fitness right there mate, in my honeymoon.

Brett: I feel privileged to be a part of it.

Norm: But honestly that was my ‘Aha’ moment because I thought I need to fast forward, fast track my success and I need to do it now. And back then I was like, “let’s do it” and I am at where I am at now. And it fast tracked where I am today.

Brett: “Excellent!” So I guess, a couple more questions just to finish off and then I will let you back to your busy lifestyle there. Give us, I guess one lesson you have learned in regards to…, I know we’ve talked about your biggest lesson, but something you could have done differently, “Would you have and if so what was that one thing be?”

Norm: “It implies to my career?” To be honest I would have started off doing group training because I started working out of the gym and you enjoy the job.You don’t train one on one. I was like, I will go mad… ouuhhh hooo!!!. The other thing is I said I never looked forward so I wish at the start of it, 3 years I am at where I am at now. But then again, everything happens for a reason. I learn from my past. I learnt how to come back and make relations and stuff like that. And had to speak to people and how to market myself and how to sell myself. But if I could redo it over again I would really focus on group training when I first started.

Brett: Cool. And it’s quite funny and it’s because I would be feeling somewhere as well in that regard. I started off with doing one on one training, for about 40 hours a week and I was just burning the candle at both ends. I was just exhausted and thought, “Jesus, this is not why I moved to the Gold Coast for.” I wanted to have more of a lifestyle. But what I actually found was that it actually wasn’t the lifestyle that I originally thought I wanted because I actually probably work more now. I work more hours now than I would doing personal training but the difference about it is that it’s not a chore to me.

Norm: That’s right. Yeah.

Brett: The more I work doing the things that I love it actually gets me more energized by the end of the day. So when I go home at the end of the day, I won’t be stuffed, I would be like “Fuck, I just want to keep going. I am just pumped.” I know you get more active and you do, you leverage yourself by doing a group training and a bi-product of being able to leverage yourself is one you train more people, you help more people and two obviously you make more money and that’s why you are in business.

Norm: “That’s right.”
Brett: Yeah or else you’re just be running free boot camps all the time. So let’s just finish off there and go, “Where can we expect to see Norm in 12 months? What’s your action plan moving forward? Like what are the key things that you want to happen in the next 12 months to you? Just put it out to the universe”

Norm: “What’s up Universe! Alright” I just recently moved to a new location…

Brett “Ok. Sorry about that. I think you just deafened 3000 listeners.”

Norm: “Sorry guys.” I just recently moved to new suburb in my area. It’s a growing place so my aim is to be the go-to-guy of fitness and boot camps and personal training in this area. Also, I want to be able to step out of my business a lot more so I will be able to just be behind, be manager and do the marketing side of things a lot more rather than be the trainer. But in 12 months’ time I want to be…

Brett: “What would your business look like? What would it feel like?”

Norm: Well, it would feel like, I reckon I would be working a lot less on the tools i.e. personal training myself and be on the business side of things. That’s where I want to be in 12 months. I want to be able to have my own locations within Maximum Fitness or whatever and just pretty much manage people rather than train people.

Brett: And what do you think the number one thing that you need to do in order for that to have happened?

Norm: Action! A lot of it. Just keep going. But literally for me to be able to do that I need to advertise to get clients. I can’t hire 10 trainers and not have any clients for them. So mine is to build that up and that’s what I am trying to do building my area. It’s a pretty big suburb. They have got their own gym happening and if I can hit it hard now and I am pretty confident that I might even take over the area.

Brett: Excellent. Well look man, I love it and I will definitely obviously be keeping a close eye on what’s happening to yourself and moving forward and seeing where that all takes you. No doubt, I have got no doubt that you’ll make that happen of course. So I guess mate I’m probably just looking at the time here. I know we both have to jump off but is there any final words or any bit of motivation that you would give to anyone listening out there?

Norm: “Don’t think about it, just do it! Don’t fuck around.” If you’re trying to make things perfect before you try putting it out there, it’s just not going to get done. If you go out and you do what you do with what you’ve got, you’ll be a lot more better off than you waiting around to make it perfect. But that’s my best thing.

Brett: Excellent. Love it. So just to sum up then, it’s don’t fuck around. Get you shit out there.

Norm: Laughs…..

Brett: So we’ll finish on that. I love it. I’ll put it up on a billboard I think… But once again Norm, mate look appreciate you taking your time out and we will be talking very soon anyhow but to everyone else out there listening, I hope you’ve taken some good insights out of todays’ pod and once again if you are new to this podcast and you haven’t heard any other episode, head over to podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au. So that’s fiitprofessional with two ‘i’s’ so f.i.i.t. It’s a bit of a mouthful. It wasn’t a misspelling either. So head over to podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au and you get a rich stuff of the series and every time there is a new episode we will give it, send it out to you.

This is Brett Campbell signing off. Norm, thank you again buddy and I’ll talk to you very soon.

Norm: Thank you.

Brett: Bye.

Norm: Bye.

Episode 12: Brett Interviews Marketing Expert Richard Marc

[sharethis]

In this episode Brett asks Richard Marc about his Journey from PT to successful Multiple business owner.

You will also discover:

  • How becoming a local celebrity will catapult your fitness business.
  • An amazing story that happened to Richard at a Tony Robins event.
  • Richards Key tips to get clients now and forever.

And loads more…

AS A BONUS Gift, Richard has kindly offered all the Fiit Professional Podcast Listeners 1 month FREE on his amazingly successful Personal Trainer listing website. (great way to get clients. There is no c/c needed.

Check it out here – To receive your 1 month free profile simply email Nick at admin@meetyour.com.au and say you heard about this from Brett and the Fiit Pro Podcast.

SERIOUSLY take this FREE offer up – you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Enjoy 🙂

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

Brett Interviews Marketing Expert Richard Marc

Transcript of EPISODE 12:

Hello and welcome to the Fiit Edition of Podcast, the number one Podcast for Fiit Professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you’re after more clients, more income and more free time then you’ve come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessionals.com.au today.

Brett: Hello Fiit Professionals and welcome to another episode of the Fiit Professional Business Podcast. I’m your host Brett Campbell and today I’ve got another special guest with me and I have been waiting to get this gentlemen on the call for some time we’ve been trying a bit of e-mail, Phone Tag, like you do. That’s what happens when you’re a busy man and before I introduce you to this particular gentleman, I just want to give you a bit of a heads up if you haven’t listened to any past episodes. The episode prior to this I talked to Michael Parella from United States you had 320 fitness franchises. He revealed some amazing marketing strategies. So make sure you give that…listen to that episode as well and leading on from that particular episode we are going to be talking to another marketing genius today. This gentleman, his name is Richard Marc Toutounji. Hope I said that right. You’ll correct me in a moment if I’m wrong.

Basically Richard Marc is an expert in creating high business growth for small to medium size businesses basically through lead generation marketing platforms. So Richard, an online marketing strategist has been for about 15 years and has a lot of experience in starting, building and selling those companies. his product and services include a bestselling book, it’s been featured on hundreds of media streams, including ‘Current Affairs’, ‘TODAY show’, 6pm Nightly News. also Richard is the executive producer of a Travel & Wellness show called ‘Feel good TV’ so that’s being aired in Australia here. You may remember Richard possibly in 2011 he was on ‘The Amazing Race Australia’ and fast forward to today, Richard is the CEO of COM Marketing Group, which has over 100 unique online lead generation platforms, including one of his first lead generation platforms which we may know him from called ‘Meet Your Personal Trainer’. Which is one of Australia’s largest professional trainer directories. So it’s a bit of a mouthful there, there’s a whole lot of awesome insight into this particular gentleman so I’m going to hand straight over and say Richard welcome to the Fiit Professional Podcast mate, thanks for taking the time to be on here.

Richard: Yeah, thanks a lot Brett. I appreciate the interview as well. Thank you!

Brett: Yeah, not a problem. So Richard, I’ve told all our guests and listeners a little about yourself here, but we want to get to know you a little better so give us a bit of a background of where Richard Marcs came from and how you got to where you are today.

Richard: Sure I can do that. I guess there’s obviously a lot of fitness professionals and business leaders listening to a Podcast like this. Obviously they’re following yourself Brett so I guess I’ll put on my hat to the fitness professionals as well. You mentioned before, my focus is about lead generation and lead strategies and so forth. I guess that all comes from the fitness industry. I started a fitness industry and I remember doing my first case course and there was no RCO’s and you did easy advertising about personal training courses on the news, on the radio and so forth, and TV. So I did my course and I left Year 6…I left Year 10 sorry. Year 10 and I went straight there and did a one year crash course. I guess I started really early in the industry and I loved the marketing side of things. I read a little personal training and it was about personal training business for a few months there and then I purchased the young age of about 17. I purchased Strays first private fitness studio down at Mitchell’s bay there, next to Network Office down there. I ran it for about 2 years and the thing that I loved about that was…it really gave me some good insight into mark…be coming into the business at 17. People working there 10 years your senior, it’s really tough way to get involved into business, and learning some responsibility. So I love the marketing side on how to growing…just growing your studio back then, when after dating, learning about those factors and what it takes to run a business early. SoI spent sometime in the industry, I worked on cruise liners for a year, about a year or 2 after that. That was a heap of fun and I loved, I was very proud about that. In around the Caribbean, Alaska, and a lot of that was actually in the Caribbean so it was good. When I got back, when I was over there I saw an obesity epidemic happening more than it was happening in Australia and heavily large people would go on cruise liners. The entire family would just come and come to the food places and Brett, and that’s really what they paid for all day.

Brett: Buffet all day.

Richard: We’ll going to eat buffet all day and so, when I was there I started having this ideas for this book I wanted to write. It was something that I wrote while I was overseas and I came back, I just had to get this book out of me and I wrote about a year or 2. You flip the page a bit, I guess it was learning as well. It was all about childhood obesity and family health and it was called ‘Please Mom, Don’t Supersize me’. It got a lot of press and media coverage on TV being the name and we put a lot of work into it. It sold quite well, Bestseller in Australia and it was a lot of fun, getting a book out and doing the publicity for it and moving through it. That actually pulled me back into marketing. It taught me a lot about marketing, marketing online, marketing offline. Knowing if you’re going to do it bigger, do it TV interview prime time and then you can actually get the sales online and it sort of showed me a TV interview is sometimes a branding aspect versus an online sale. So I looked at the 2 aspects and I said “Hey I’ve been on all these prime time, thousands and hundred thousand dollars’ worth of media, let’s see how the online sales went. If I used that, the value of that PR, what could that have been used for an online thing?” So I learnt a lot of tactics about marketing while fellows actually doing it, so I guess I never went to a marketing course per say. I learned on the job quite a lot in regards to…so I guess in the same time I stood up, being an entrepreneur I sort of, I had a…my mom actually had a problem me being a personal trainer as a company going from that, and then she said, “Aah geez, it would be great to have a massage at work, the workplace”, and that sort of got me thinking. I was thinking they’re paying…they’re looking for a, she was the HR co-ordinator in the company and had about 200 people in the company. I mean they were looking for a massage, a person doing a massage company to do that at their office so it was sort of like, I said “aah, I think I can do that”. So I sort of out looked and tried to find massage therapists to go to the office and do a whole day of massaging chairs, things like that around the work place. From that moment I guess I kicked on, what it was my next business which we called our ‘Corporate Wellness’, which is one of Australia’s largest Corporate Wellness providers. We provided seminars. We had doctors, we did health checks we did personal training we did nutritional courses. We did a heap of things around a lot of blue chip companies around Australia and I owned and runned that for quite a few years. I sold that a few years ago to someone else who continues the growth in that. So, again, unless I’m like that Brett, it taught me a lot of…it taught me how to go online pretty much. We had 80 contractors working for us around Australia. 97% of our leads came from online, and I’m talking about online, back let’s say 2003 or 4, when internet wasn’t what it was today. We didn’t have Facebook and social media and things like that so learning the internet game is was an experiment, you know what I mean? It was new, so that sort of where I started this whole process, you know what I mean? That’s where I had more interest for the online game. Being the example of offline, its older studio and things like that. I remember my first year, we didn’t have, didn’t even have a website address for goodness sake or an e-mail address or business cards. So its come a different way and the marketing in it changed through that period.

Brett: Yeah, look mate. There’s…I couldn’t agree with you more in regards to changes in marketing, especially in online and offline and I look forward to talking about all these strategies in a moment but just to recap on what you’ve just said there. There’s a heap of gold little nuggets that I took out of it personally and I just want to recap just for the listeners there that, you started back in the industry wearing your spandex and belt bags basically when personal trainers first started right.

Brett: I’ve got an image of you wearing your spandex and walking around the gym with a belt bag.

Richard: I did have to do the aerobics, you have to do the aerobic to actually pass the course and do the classes…I did all that.

Brett: Excellent, and you know, another really key thing that I see out of that is at the age of 17 you bought your business and what I did take out of that is you didn’t know anything about business back then but you jumped in and had a crack at it. You realised a book, again, you took a lot of lessons out of that. But again the reoccurring thing I’m seeing out of here is just you just had a crack at it. I guess a question I’ve got for you buddy, in regards to all your marketing knowledge that you know so far, what would you say your biggest lesson, or business lesson that you’ve learnt over the time?

Richard: Umm, that’s a good question. It’s a hard question as well. I think you keep learning business lessons all the time. Constantly all the time, every single day and you think you’ve learnt it, and you haven’t learnt it. I guess the biggest lesson I’ve learnt is, I’ve done a lot of business with myself, partnerships and all sorts of way, and I think in the end of the day, you can’t run a business by yourself. Well I can’t anyway. And all great businesses have great people. you know, a lot of people listening to this call, could be more businesses, could be start-ups, could be large businesses but the same time, it doesn’t matter what that stage is. As soon as you grow in business, you need good people around you. I think that it is really important to make sure that you set up a business know that you could have a business, and you could have a business that you’re the business. If you want to get bigger than that, and have more freedom, then freedom is one of my biggest values, you need to start making sure you get the right people around you and don’t just get people that are there because they just happened to be in the same room in the time that you needed. In administration or a business partner, makes sure you find the people that you need who are actually going to help you to grow the business. Not grow, not for the simplicity that you just ask your mate down the road or you know that person. It’s who’s going to help you grow your business to the next level, and grow the business the way you can’t grow the business. We are only one person, we only have generally a limited thinking. Imagine how big the world is and all the people in it like… There is so many different variations you can take and there’s so many different wrong roads you can take. That is probably why people don’t start their business. If you know that you’re a personal trainer and you want, for example, take a lesson of corporate world. I now want to expand on Corporate Wellness, so a lot of that time is going to be administration and organisation skills and things like that. Well I know that I’m not good that that, but you know, for the sake it that my brother needs a job at a time. I say “Hey, can you help me out for a couple of days?” That’s not really going to be the right track because he might not have those skills too so I guess make sure that you find the people with those skills and I think also too…another lesson here is don’t limited yourself to think “I’m just starting out in business and nobody is going to want to go and come to work for me”. “I can’t pay them enough’ or “I don’t have the right skill”, ‘So I don’t have a system manual put into place”, or “don’t have an office” or “I don’t have the right computer system to get things started”. “I have to do it myself’. I think that the big thing I see with the fitness industry, and the thing is, in the defence about it…people are there at the right time that you need them to be and for example…you could find the best administration assistant that has work for the best company for the last 20 years. Maybe she is on maternity leave and she just wants to work 3 day s a week for you. She wants to put her system in, because that’s what she loves to do into your business. Don’t think that you have to go and create every system yourself. Get someone to help you where you’re not really good at, because that’s when I get business it’s going to go slow growth if you just think, ‘You know what, I’ve got to write a system manual myself for the next 6 months, then I can employ somebody’.  If you do that then your business is not going to continue to grow. Don’t think that you have to do everything yourself, also have the confidence to ask the right people in the business and I think that’s the biggest lesson I’ve learnt over time. I’ve tried to take a lot on and I’ve tried to do a lot of things myself, but there’s things that you can’t and you need to get people sooner than you probably think you’re going to get it firstly. Think the first person you find to employ.

Brett: Look that’s absolutely, it’s definite wisdom right there. Man thins is like the third time this has happened in interview actually. What you’re talking about right now is I’m actually going through a bit of a process like that with our team at the moment. Before this Podcast recording we just had a team meeting. So we just sit down, we spend an hour together going through our board meeting structure etcetera and there was about 5 different systems that we created, well I created in my brain, then passed it onto our team members who are now out there creating this for me. Like, I put my ideas out there because I’m an ideas man. You’re an ideas man yourself, so anyone out there listening who thinks they’re an ideas person and they lack a little bit of the structural follow through. Man, like Richard just said, get out there and find someone who can do it for you because it is just going to fast track your success. Another key point that I took out of that is, I agreed with everything you said there but I think one of the main things is that you don’t need to start paying someone $50 000 a year salary. You can start possibly someone taking over your basic admin duties for 5 hours a week or 10 hours a week. Pay them 20 bucks an hour or something like that. There are people out there looking for it. So look, thanks for sharing that. I guess, moving on to it, I’ve got another question for you and I really like to hear the answers to these is, what was your ‘ah hah’ light bulb moment that you knew that the online marketing was an avenue that you knew that you needed to take? What was it that made you do that?

Richard: Umm, I think for me when you are online…I guess its 2 things in this question. I guess I go back to the time, when I answer these questions, I go back to the journey and you sort of go look at it and think ‘well, it hasn’t been a journey to get to where you’re getting to, and you continue to get to’. So I guess the journey for me…when I was in the White Falls Cooper Warner’s Company, so when I had my corporate wellness company I had just had myself, my wife caught me out. I had 2 admin people at the time as we said; we generate a lot of leads online. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I know probably more than most people, why I was ranking number 1 in terms of corporate wellness and things like that. I knew the insides of it. I did a lot of bits and pieces, courses online if you want to call it that.

But there was a moment when I went to an Anthony Robbins event, it was a ‘Date with Destiny’ event in Gold Coast and the week, it was a 5 day, 6 day event and you had to partner up, not with your partner, so I had to partner up with people I didn’t know for the whole event. I ended up sort of, I think I was in the bathroom at that time and I missed out and there was sort of, it just seemed to me like everybody was just taken in a second and I walk around trying to find who was left and I bumped into this, the only guy that was left in the entire room of 1000 people and it happened to be an American gentleman. He stood out like the ace of spades. He was black as could be. I said “Hey mate, how you going? You got a partner?” he said “No”, “Okay, I will go with you for the week”. I ended up going with this guy and a lot of the week you had to stick with your partner for most of the week. You had to stick with him. You had to do activities and things like that. His name was Steve, Steven and a lot of the time he would just disappear Brett. Whenever we had to do group activities, he just disappeared and I could never find him. So I was just by myself most of the week. The end of the week, we all got our certificates and so forth, had a great week either way, and I said “Hey listen, we didn’t get to know each other, what do you do?” we didn’t have much time either to sort of talk about what we actually did because it was all about self-development, not exactly about what job you did. He says “Listen Richard, I live in America, why don’t you just come visit me. I’m going to the States soon, why don’t you just come and visit me. I’ve got a big party happening over there soon”.  And I go, “what’s your details?”. He goes “Just google me Richard” and I go “Who do you think you are…just google you. Who are you?”. And it was like he was this guy and so anyway I googled him and he happens to be a guy named Steven Pierce. At the time he was heavily, quite a massive guru online, one of the best internet marketers at that stage and he was over here actually prepping for his interview he’s going to put on a week later. He was going to put a massive event online in Australia and the organisers doing Robbins event where the organisers of his event as well. The thing that, because he was away most of the week, he was actually organising his event and he just got a free ticket from Tony Robbins to the event to come and hang out with him. It was interesting because in that moment, and it was quite embarrassing too Brett because I said “Aah yeah, I do a bit of things online”.

Richard: And I go “Oh yeah, I’ve used typestyle and I’ve used this” and he says “Aah yeah, that’s good, that’s good”. And here am I sitting with a guy making millions of dollars online every month. So he was a good insider and he gave me a lot of his tools and his resources and his programs, all for free. He simply said “Hey Richard, my lack of time man, these are the programs I’m going to give you, you know and you’re [inaudible] quite a few times we met with some of the best online marketers at the time was J Abraham, there was a heap of other people there. There was Tim Ferriss walked in the door actually, when we had the party, and opened the door and Tim Ferriss walked in. This is before, this was the week he was launching his first book. For our work week, he opened the door and he said “Hey, how’s it going? I’m Tim”, and I said “Hey, how you going, you’re in a book.” And it was sort of that week when he was launching it. He was such a cool, laidback guy and I was thought, “Jeez, this is what internet marketing is all about. These are the people that we’re surrounding our self with”.

Pretty much from then Brett, that was my first ‘ah hah’ moment. I guess my second one was, I came back and I was still in Lifestyle & Wellness and it sort of made me think about this online marketing. From that event, I went to the next one and I said I had Lifestyle there, proper wellness and a lady called up on the phone and said “Hey can I see your…can I…you know, have a bio of your personal trainers?”. She was in Perth, I was just staying in Perth as well. I said “Aah I don’t, but let me take a picture” and she goes “Aah that will be great” and I said “Hang on, I’m getting a question asked quite a few times. Why don’t I take a video?” so what I did Brett, I started doing more videos on my innovative people and I thought, hang on, if I can do this for them, why don’t I do this for the whole of the industry. In that time, we didn’t have any YouTube smashing out, people weren’t’ recording videos so I came up with the idea of having a video directory of personal trainers. So I guess, that in itself, when they ask for personal trainers with videos, nobody had videos Brett. It is impossible to find videos on YouTube on personal trainers. It was sort of like, you know what, I’m, because of the first moment of Steven Pierce and meeting people like that, and actually seeing people succeeding like that I had the confidence to say, you know what I can help every single personal trainer here, because I think that I know more than 98% of them at that time about online marketing. It’s moments like that, I think they’re my 2 ‘ah hah’ moments that got me on online marketing and from there, just really having that self-belief Brett, to actually go and do something that’s probably way out of your comfort zone but it’s way out of everybody’s comfort zone isn’t it. So somebody’s got to do it, don’t they? So I think they are my main 2 moments getting on the online space.

Brett: Yeah, well thanks for sharing that. I was actually really captivated to that first story. It it’s quite funny when you look at it, you went to a seminar called ‘A Date with Destiny’ and mate that’s exactly what it was, wasn’t it?

Richard: Yeah true, it’s exactly like that.

Brett: So it’s always funny when those types of things happen and I’m a massive believer in things happen for a reason and it’s really exciting for you to share those ‘ah hah’ moments with us mate. The question for you in regards to marketing, so, the personal trainer out there, put their hat on for a minute and think, if they just wanting to, if they just were getting started in the industry, or even if they’ve been in the industry for a while and they’re just trying to get more leads into their fitness business. What would be your top 1 or 2 strategies that you would implement to get leads coming through your e-mail inbox or calling?

Richard: Well I guess the first strategy I would, if you’re just a single trainer. You just started. You deciding, maybe you’re out of your course and you deicide do I hit business first, or do I do it myself? You’re going to deicide to do it yourself. I would think that the best strategy you could do is branding. You need to brad yourself because most people probably won’t know you’ve been a trainer, or you did your course. You may have come from a different role, and they think you’re still a legal sectorial or something. I think the first thing to do is brand yourself and one; Get a logo. I think it’s the biggest thing. I think I’m very big into branding and I think get a logo first of all because that’s going to define who you are. If your logo is red, you need to know why it’s been red before. If it is an energy colour. Think about what…who you are as a person and that can go into a logo. Now once you’ve got a logo, I think then you have a business. You have something you can browse. So for 100 bucks or something or even cheaper, you have your identity. You’ve got an identity now and that identity then, you can use that logo and put it on a Facebook page. You can use that logo to put on your Facebook page with your closet friends and family and say share this, I’m a personal trainer. This is what we do. So I think actually telling the world that this is what I do now and putting it out there to the universe and seeing what’s going to come back is probably the first and the cheapest option, number one I’d say.

Obviously online marketing is something I have a big bias towards clearly, so my next sort of thing I’d tell trainers is quite frankly I would, and this is what I’ve done when I had my personal train industry is pretty much get on every single directory you just possibly can. That’s going to skyrocket you faster than you could ever skyrocket yourself and what I mean by that is…if I said to trainers out there “Go get a website first” the problem you’re go into have is, the website costs money, and doing it costs money, and you’re going to showcase it and make sure people find it, costs money, and it costs time. Not only that, it actually costs a lot of research doing these things and you shouldn’t be doing that. If you’re looking at a very early, start-up personal trainer, I’d go and join directories that cost you $2 a month, and they’ll put you into places where people are already searching for personal trainers. Well of course I’m bias, I’ve got a trainer directory, but at the same time too, I believe in my product and I believe that this is how I do them and if you’ve got…of there’s a free personal trainer directory, then get onto that for goodness sakes, but if you’re on 5 directories that already have thousands of visitors and you’re branding yourself correctly with your right logo and a really nice picture of yourself, a fitness picture, no a blurred picture coming out of a pub on a Saturday or something. If it’sthe right picture. The right target market is going to find you, and they’re going to give you a call and you’re going to get an e-mail into your inbox. That’s probably the 2 strategies I’d go with, and that’s the strategies that I’ve used in every single business I’ve run if its fitness or another industry. I’ve always basically…go and find the top players that are already up there and how do I get my brand, my logo, my Facebook link, my web link, on their  page. That’s what I want to know. That’s what I will pay for because I think that that s got value to it versus building those things yourself and wasting your time which should be focused on actually becoming a good personal trainer initially and you can get more referrals that way.

Brett: Again, great insight there mate. I think another one just to take home, just to talk to one of the points you brought up there in regards to directories etcetera. Again if it’s like every single marketing strategy we talk about on this Podcast and we ever will talk about. You need to look at what’s the return on investments. Do if you’re paying 10, 20, 30, 40 even 100 dollars a month to be on a certain directory, but if you’re getting a return on investment each month on that then its’ a no brainer. So you need to calculate how many clients do I need to receive to make this a positive return on investment. Always keep that in the back of your mind before you go “Ah it’s just another $20 here, another $30 here”. You need to look at it and go “am I going to get a return on it this month?” or “How long am I willing to invest in this thing to see if it works?”. So for example if you’re paying $20 a month for a directory. You look at that over 12 months it’s $240. So let’s say over that 12 month period you’ve got one client in the first month, who is worth…if you look at $50 a week over the year, that’s over $2500. You’ve definitely got a return on investment. So keep an eye on that. I think another key part that you said there was, don’t just choose one. Don’t just go and register with True Local and leave it at that. Go and register with every single directory out there, and we’ve touched on a point that in a past episode…you’re not the first person to say that they’re a very great resource to start with. And of course there are free ones out there, so get out there and google it. Google personal trainer directories and no doubt Richards will pop up there and I highly recommend jump on that as well. I’ll give you a link to that so that you can check it out. I’m going to put Richard on the spot and I’m going to say his going to give us all a discount. If anyone goes through and clicks the link…

Richard: Yeah, definitely, we’ll get a discount. Let me just think about the next…the rest of the part of the interview and see what we can do and get you at the end of the call. Get you a…we’ll get a good deal for everybody because honestly I really think, exactly what you said Brett.  This industry really is the right industry to showcase our skills into, cause what other industry and there is every few other industries that people actually want to watch you on a video or they want to read your article about how to get into shape. It’s a pretty exciting industry when you’re first getting into fitness or someone wants to lose weight. People are looking for answers out there, there’s so much messages. If you brand yourself, and that’s what I was saying, if you brand yourself as the local expert in your area. Let’s say you’ve got so much competition out there, I hear it all the time, but really there’s not. If you’ve got 10 personal trainers in your local part you trainer for, for example, you’ve got to then google the area and figure out what the 10 people are doing. You probably got I’d say more than half of those people who probably don’t have an online presence, or if they do, you can’t find it. Then you might have 4 people who do have an online presence. Then you might have 1 person who has a website and are in directories and things like that. The question I have for you, I’d be very highly surprised that out of the people in your area, who’s really taking action as the leader and the expert online.

So put yourself in someone who doesn’t know you as a trainer, yet every trainer out there is great. I hear all the stories. I know that they’re fantastic. They can do the best high kick skills. They can do the best sit up. They’re the best, right. They know they’re the best; they get the best results with their clients. I hear it all. The problem Brett is that I don’t’ know that if I’m coming to the business and they don’t have a showcase of that. If they haven’t written a blog about the best squat and they haven’t, if they’ve just gone and ask their clients and printed it out and said “Here it is”. If you haven’t put it online on a blog, well if you haven’t recorded a video saying ‘this is how we do the best push up’ and ‘this is  how I get a 6 pack and ripped abs in a week in my clients’ or ‘this is how, this is the story that…10 of my clients testimonials’. If only the clients know that and the personal trainer and no other person, well then you’re actually not the best trainer in your area, because nobody knows who you are, and you’re not building an online presence up. You’re not building a brand identity up. So if you look in your local area and see who is doing that. You’d be surprised and that’s where you say “I can be the leader in this area and I can be the biggest and the best, and the most busiest trainer possible because nobody else is probably doing it”. Honestly Brett this is the biggest thing I see, that there is so much opportunity, especially in this industry. People and personal trainers coming in and saying that is absolute rubbish, because I can count on probably one hand some really good people putting out some really good consistent content every single week. There’s very few people doing it, and if you do it, that’s where the leads are going to come from. I can guarantee you that.

Brett: Yeah, totally agree with you there and it’s a bit of a pet peeve for me when I hear people go “There’s just too many trainers out there”, “There’s too many of this”, or “That’s a hard market, that’s a flooded market”, “It’s hard to make money in that market”. I just say that’s a lot of bullshit myself. Our company has had extreme growth in the last 18 months, and if we look at it, and let’s just talk to your couple of points again. The whole thing of branding. We’ve created and Fitness National, we’ve created a very, very prominent brand now. Our brand ‘FitChicks’ for example is…its very rare now that we’ll talk to our target market, someone aged 19-45 and they wouldn’t have heard about us, or heard of us, or seen something from us.

We were down in, and I may have mentioned this is a past episode, but we were down in Sydney, Emily and I. We went down for our 5 year anniversary, and we were down there and we were sitting at the Opera House. We were sitting there having a nice bottle of red and this couple came over and sat down with us and we started talking and this man went they’re from actually Brisbane, and we say what we do, and she’s like “Ah I know that, I’m on your emails,. I’ve been receiving your emails for a few months now”. She’s actually bought one of our products and it’s an amazing thing. It just goes to show you the power of the internet, not only that, the power of being able to have a brand. That’s why we’ve been able to grow the fastest fitness licensed program for professional trainers in Australia because we have a great brand and people want to be a part of it. We’ve got a forum with thousands of girls going we want to be trained here, or we want a location here. The demand of the brand is where it’s at. I totally agree with you in regards to people sending out great content, and doing it continuously. Just in example, we’ve just conducted a survey through our lists. Now we’ve got quite a large list and so far we’ve had over 5000 people fill out our survey. It was 13 questions that we asked and some of the information, I’ve got to tell you, was actually, I’m sitting here slapping myself in the head because…and that’s the power of it. If you haven’t done a survey, anyone out there. This is a gold nugget. Survey your lists, even if you’ve got 100 people on it, survey them. Now, like I said, some of the information we got out of it is just actually staggering. Something I want to share with everyone, I’ll share some of it now because I think it’s really vital and this is something that I know a lot of pole missed out on. I’m just going to find the question here. One of the questions was ‘How do you cope when you use our products or services?’ I just looked here, a second…’so how do you view our current content?’ so when we send out an email, how do they view it. And we can tell you that 46% currently based on what we’ve got here. View it from mainly from their iPhones, their phone devices.

Richard: There you go hey.

Brett: Which is an amazing statistic and what we can actually tell you, out google analytics tell us that there’s actually over 50% of people visit our website from a mobile device which…when you look at a desktop, there’s only 28% of people actually view our content from desktops. So, this is where people fall into that trap of ‘ah I need to have a beautiful looking website. It needs to have beautiful graphics’. It needs to have this and that and all of the bloody jazz that people think they need to have. It’s falling on deaf ears, because if you have a beautiful looking website, you’re not going to be able to view it on a mobile. A mobile just sees it as a single strip, which is why I feel, and in my marketing, I’ll get you to give your opinion on it, it may be different. But, that’s why sales page format is so popular when it comes to getting someone to take some form of action, whether it’s the need to take up a free trial, free offer or purchase a product. Because of the way technology is changing now, in the next 5 years, we’re going to have 70%, 80% of people viewing podcasts on their phone. So what’s your thought on that one mate?

Richard: I know we are on a bit of a tangent but…

Brett: It’s an interesting…the results are in the pudding. You put out a survey and 46% have said that they’re viewing on a mobile and I have to also believe that as well because I look at my analytics on a lot of peoples personal trainer’s websites and they’re all around the same anywhere from 20 to 40, 50% on mobiles. So it doesn’t beg the question that, and I know a lot of people, we all do it. We look at a site on a desktop and we say “Oh that’s great”.

Richard: It is a big point because if your client viewing your mobile platform, you’ve got to make sure obviously, you look good ‘mobilely’… mobilised. If the mobile site or a mobile responsive site, you know, I’m very much in point of it as well. Because I mean otherwise, what’s the point? And maybe that’s why you’re getting the leading that you thought. You should have got in with a nice site, I’ve got another company, and we build websites and we do Facebook and social media strategies as well and the thing is, what we do with a lot of our sites too Brett, is what we do. We keep it looking nice but we keep it looking simple as well. It’s simple with every site, every page, we have one message and one purpose to a page. If you have more than one purpose per page, you may think that you’re getting your message out. But not really, because people are only on your site generally for between a minute, maybe 2 or 3 minutes and people are coming there for a purpose. Not 2 purposes. You generally don’t google for 2 purposes. You 1 question in there, not 2. So its’ the same thing with every page and this is where I go to another site, this is where google has to come up with another algorithm change, and this will sort of put your point across as well Brett is that, to rank highly in google now, you have to have a responsive website. You get more points; you get more google juice basically if you have a responsive website. When I say responsive, meaning that it’s mobile browser friendly. They’re making sure that it’s a WordPress website or something similar like that. And making sure that the load and the speed time, so if you have, Flash, and video files and all these sort of stuff. Google is going to penalise you and not show your results on mobile. So the results you see on your desktop versus mobile in regards to ranking as well can also be different. People are going to rank on the mobiles because they’re mobile responsive. Because google doesn’t want to show any unnecessary results and the same with the searches. They’re not going to show a page with 3 or 4 different situations. They’re going to show a page that just has 1 message and 1 message only and that’s the new algorithm that just came out last week with Hummingbird if anyone is interested in that stuff.

Brett: Probably just us mate it’s the geek come out I think. It’s quite funny if you asked me this 10 years ago I’d go “geez, computer type things” but what I find really interesting about it, I’m a Nazi now on percentages and statistics and this and that and that’s why I did the survey. Not only was the survey conducted to get information. There was an underlying offer that we were able to produce, which in turn has turned out to be a very good financial move from our perspective. Not only that, it’s the millions of dollars of information that you’re going to receive from people. Like questions here, I’ve got ‘How would you like to view our content? Is it more articles, videos, interactive online webinars, podcasts etcetera’. There’s a whole heap of information over here that if you’re not surveying the list and you’re not asking the questions then you’re going to be doing what you feel like you want to do. And that’s the key. For me, part of that is a bit of a struggle because I write here in one of my questions is ‘How often would you like to receive educational content from us?’ and I’d love to send it out every day, and I know a lot of online marketers who do. However, our feedback from this, and it has come around 50% one time a week. Which is great because we are currently doing it about once a week. Sometimes a couple of time a week. But our second on that, ‘every 2 to 3 days’ as well. So it’s really important because if I just decide to once all of a sudden email daily to our contacts. We’re stilling giving away content, what can happen because everyone is so busy in everyday life. You don’t get a chance to read every email. Sometimes it can become such an overwhelming things because I’ve got 20 emails for them to listen to, or for them to read. They’ll probably go ‘ahh I’m just going to unsubscribe because I can’t keep up’. I guess if I relate this to an example of work is to interview podcasts every day. I know for a fact there would be people not listening to it and then they’d just give up because they’d be just too far behind. You know how I get that information is because one of our questions again is ‘Do you listen to our free podcasts?’ and 45% of people say ‘I’ve been meaning to but I just haven’t found the time’. Very interesting they, they’ve been meaning to but they just haven’t found the time yet.

Richard: Yeah, you’ve got to listen to your customers that are for sure.

Brett: So thanks for letting me go on that tangent there. Let’s talk about a little bit about marketing and I guess any insights, anything you feel would be useful for our trainers and listeners out there. Any insights that you’ve learnt in regards to marketing, any strategies that you think is really cool. Maybe you’ve done some promotion of some sorts that’s worked well. Any juicy information that you could help us out with.

Richard: I could…probably the best is…I’ll try and got the easiest option. There’s so many options out there, you know if you look at trainers, I think the best piece of marketing you could probably do and the cheapest and easiest would probably be, as you just mentioned Brett, is put something out to the audience really fast. I’ll give you an example, after I had my book out, I released an audio it was called ‘The fit and healthy family’ and we went to interview seven of the leading experts in the world on healthy families we didn’t know any of these guys at all but we picked up the phone and we asked them and most of them said ‘yes’ pretty much. These are people that have been on Oprah shows and things like that, picked up the phone and asked and they generally said yes and it’s a personal trainer’s lesson is that the easiest way to do it and to get to your market. First example, if you’re trying to market the best MA instructors…I mean, sorry…let’s say you have MA classes right. What you’d want to do if I was that trainer trying to attract hat audience. I’d go interview the best MMA trainers or instructors out there and just have a bit of a question to them and basically ask what does a great MMA session include etcetera, etcetera. And it’s not for the saying that the trainers, the clients are going to go to them. These are the clients that might be overseas, or wherever they may be. If you go interview 10 or 20 people in your industry, in your speciality I should say not industry, regarding that. You know cross fit. Why don’t you go to the cross fit games and go interview all the cross fit experts and the world champs and that sort of stuff. It means that, when you come back and you put that as a video or an article or things like that. I do think that the right people and the good client is going to consistently come to you and I think that’s really an easy way of marketing and also makes you again the expert out there. I keep coming back because when you are on TV, I guess from my example, as soon as you’re on TV, that TV set or that YouTube which people can now view on their TV in their lounge room, you’ve actually become the expert. Even If you don’t think you’re the expert, you’ll naturally become the expert. So I think, and when we look at our lifestyle out there and our senses, whenever you’re in that…when you look and go ”aah there’s a celebrity” and so forth, inside they’re still human beings and at the end of the day they’re celebrities because they’ve done well for themselves, if that’s from the movies or on TV. It comes down to, because they’re in a box, a TV, and people watch them. That’s what it comes down to. So, it’s not saying that they go and get on the highest rating TV show, it’s basically saying to your speciality, when people are searching for you. Make sure that you come up and make sure that you are that person. I know it’s very similar to the point I made before, but to be honest with you that’s probably the simplest way to do it and the free way to do it as well. It doesn’t cost you much money at all. That’s a good tactic. Another tactic again is, give something away. I’m sure you do this if your internet marketing…you’re always giving something away. People are going to give you their e-mails if you’re going to give something away…that are an eBook for goodness sake. I think as trainers we’re pretty smart and we know a lot but the thing is we may not think that a lot to a person. So you know, it could be a 10 page book about ‘how to lose weight’ but the thing is people who are searching for that will find that really valuable and then you’ll be becoming the expert and the thing is, you’ve got their e-mail address and their name, their phone number and then you can contact them and ask them how they went. I think another good way that…we did it obviously; I got my book out and from there a lot of different opportunities come because you meet a lot of different people and you can instantly move things. So getting your book out is a great concept to get the publicity that you need and the free publicity as well. And I guess another great marketing feature is always have a backend Brett, because I think people get stuck here, they say “I want to do this and I want to make sure I advertise to $20 000” and yada yada yada. The thing is, if you just…it’s like a funnel, it’s like going into a store. Let’s say you’re on holiday and you’re wondering through, shopping. You’re in a shopping mall, Westfield, and you go past the store and you’re not really out to shop for anything, but you do see your favourite pair of jeans there and it has a big sign that says ‘95% off’ and outside the shop it has a rack of jeans there. Right. And it’s all the cheap jeans that are of course 95% and what happens is it’s actually getting you to stop and getting you to look through the doors, and even though you may not want to go through, you see your favourite pair of jeans for 95% you’ve got to find them. Even they might be an XXXL but you’re still going to the store knowing that there may be something for them. It’s the same sort of thing with online, if you can give you something that stops people at your website for 2 seconds to fill in a form and don’t talk about the prices and your products, and give something away. I think that’s really the best thing because you can’t really expect people just to pay for products they don’t have any incentive in that. There’s got to be an incentive to get people into your door and it comes down to having good content on your site. They’ve got to stop by. You’ve got to give them something. You can’t expect them to pay for nothing other than the product. I think what you give out, you get back. If you expect them to make a sale with your first phone call well you need to make sure that people have researched you and they’ve seen you and they trust you. It’s a trust factor when it comes to online marketing and any marketing regardless.

Brett: Yeah 100% agree with you as well. It reminds me, it brings up the thing of reciprocity and no doubt you’ve read the book ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini?

Richard: I have read that a long time ago, yeah.

Brett: So in that book, and I think it will be good to share it with everyone, and if you haven’t got it, go out and get it, it’s called ‘Influence’ by Robert Cialdini. You get it on Amazon, you can pick it up for probably 10, 12 bucks. In the book they, he follows one human, I guess one law of psychology and one of those is reciprocity. They did this big study and they basically had these high school students and, well university students in a big library and they’re sitting down and doing some work and filling out some test papers etcetera and none of the guys gets up and walks out the room and he comes back with 2 cans of coke and he give the can of coke to the guy sitting next to him. Now the other guy didn’t ask for the can of coke. He just…the guy actually said “look I went out there and I was told I wasn’t allowed to bring it back in so I thought I’d get you one”. So he is building up massive value with this person right now. And he says “well geez, I don’t really even know you and you gave me a can of coke” and what they did was, and this was just their way and how simple this is. If you can adapt this to your business, to your life, to your friendships. Anything. At the end of the test, the guy who bought the can of coke, he asked, he then asked the other gentleman, he said “Hey look mate”, he probably didn’t use the word mate because he was in America, he probably said “Hey bro, would you be interested in buying some raffle tickets because I’ve got some raffle tickets that we’re selling and it’s for a good cause etcetera”. What they found was, they found that there was a 3 times higher up take rate of people buying more raffle tickets if they were given the can of coke first. You look at that and you go it’s that law of ‘give first to receive’ and that is exactly what you’re taking about there in regards to giving away something online. Have you heard that story before Rich?

Richard: Yeah, I’ve heard some really similar stories as well. I hear it time and time again, and everything, I think it comes down to being grateful and giving and receiving and it’s a universe law. Everybody has read this, the power of The Secret, it’s really universal and it does work. It really does work in the smallest of ways. You’ve got to give and you will get, basically,

Brett: And I think something else important to touch on as well is to not go into it expecting something in return as well. That’s the key thing is not to have to expect that…

Richard: Aah, I think that the hard things as well, that most people, you know, consistently have got to always slap our self and say “look, I don’t expect anything in return” that’s the hard thing that most people are…probably get their head around. That’s the tough thing, you’ve got to give, and you’ve got to give.

Brett: An example that I’d use there is you go out with a bunch of friends and “I’ll get dinner” or, “No I’ll get breakfast this time, no worries”, and it almost…and I’ll put my hand up…sometimes it’s almost like “aah it must be their turn” or its an ever evolving thing and guys out there and a lot of girls as well be out there, relate to this one. You go out at night, you go out to town and you go and buy a drink and then someone buys you a drink and you feel obliged that you need to buy them a drink back. That’s the law working there. And I guess I want to just touch upon there quickly the point that you made about becoming a celebrity almost and that’s exactly what it is about. When you’re on Youtube, whether you like it or not, if you’re on YouTube and you put a video up of yourself if someone walks down the street and they see you, they will see you as a…whether it be a D-grade celebrity or whatever. They’ll see you as a higher person than they would have if they had never seen you in a video. Now how I relate to that is example, I worked down this year at a fitness convention in Sydney and we had hundreds of girls come up to us and wanting to meet us because they’d seen us online and they’d been receiving our e-mails, e-mail videos, an d a lot of it you could say, it feels like ‘m meeting a celebrity. Now, the purpose behind that, that I’m just a normal dude. We’re just normal people. We’re out there having a go, and that’s exactly how you create raving fans, just like that. Just wanted to touch on…

Richard: Oh yeah, people who will find you anywhere, you know the thing is most won’t come up and say “Hello” but they’ll definitely will know that, that’s for sure.

Brett: Well let’s look at your example back at ‘The date with destiny’ with Steven. You didn’t know Steven from a bar of soap but I’d almost guarantee and I’d bet my left nut on it, if you’d been watching him online for the past 2 or 3 years videos, this and that. When you met him you would have felt star struck.

Richard: Ya, 100%, of course. It’s like that. It’s even like that when people are watching TV and they see that person, you know one person watches it, they adore, or they go “ah, that’s that person” and the other person goes “ah, whatever”. He doesn’t necessarily mean anything to him. So yeah, definitely.

Brett: It’s always that way and I think it’s always going to continue to be that way and you can…the good thing about it is you can put yourself out there in any sort of show, reality show and it’s like that opening door. It gives you a chance, at the same time you’ve got to have a backing product, and that’s what I was getting to as well. Make sure, if you’re going to get out there have a backend product, to make sure that when you do go out there and people see you and you’re giving away free stuff. You’re eventually going to have a product that can bring you revenue when people do want to come back and connect with you then.

Richard: Exactly. It’s like going through the client journey and basically what you’re doing, is you’re having, if you imagine the client journey as a chain, if you’ve got a front end where you’re offering something for free and then all of a sudden you don’t have another offer. What you’re doing is you’ve got a broken link in the chain but in reality what you’re doing is you’re actually causing a disservice to this customer because at the end of the day we all want to be sold on something that we feel is  going to be good for us. We like to be taken on journeys and if…whenever you see a great marketing strategy and for some reason you’re online and you’re checking something out. I’ll use the example, the other night I was about 22:15 and I was lying in bed and I just for some reason I clicked into my e-mail because I was excepting an e-mail for someone and I looked at it and I actually got distracted by this other e-mail. I was looking through it, read the other e-mail, going through, and then I watched a 15 minute video and then I was taken to another video and the next thing I know; I spent $200 on a product. It was an amazing journey. You know if that product wasn’t available that person would have been doing me a disservice because I wanted more. I was left wanting more and it’s just like it when I say a prospect actually expresses interest in your fitness business. With our ‘Fit Chick’ locations for example, we have a 24 hour policy. You need to call that person within 24 hours, because what’ they’ve done is put their head on for a minute. You know, you’re…they’re sitting there. They’ve expressed interest in coming and trying out your area or your business. They want to know what the next step is now. They don’t want to wait 2 to 3 days for the broken link in the chain. So like I said, it’s very important to have that backend strategy. So I couldn’t agree more with that.

Brett: so let’s change back here a little bit. I just want to ask you a question being a leader of the fitness industry. “Where do you see the fitness industry heading in the next 5 years?’

Richard: I think the fitness industry is going…I think it’s’ going different places and I think this…you know, I don’t know about, I think this, if anybody has ever travelled to places I think Australia has, the Australian fitness industry probably has so much fitness opportunities; gyms, personal trainers on every street corner I see here. Where I go to their places in different countries is not really like that. I think that this industry in Australia is very strong. People are becoming aware and it’s becoming more of a norm to be fit. Most definitely. So I think that it is going from strength to strength. Obviously there is going to be some changes. Still a very new industry remember. So it’s 30 years old possibly, if that. It’s a new industry so there’s going to be new growth to anybody who is in the fitness industry now. There’s only a few key players out there, I mean we are still very small. I do think there’s a lot of room for growth being a new industry. I think that obviously the trainers that are coming through, yeah there’s going to be a heap of trainers going through and yeah there’s going to be the good ones and the bad ones. But eventually the good ones will rise because when more people get educated, they would have continued to go those good ones. I think that we are getting more regulated all the time and it’s a good think. I think the fitness industry has strength, but I also think that people become smarter. These are things that we’ve got to now get a bit more serious as being business owners and making sure that you can’t just be a sloppy trainer expecting to keep a client for live. You have got to get a result and you’ve got to deliver…you’ve got have a really good result and service as well. I think there’s a lot of people out there listening to podcasts like this and that’s learning and has business place, and they’re the one that is going to be getting more and more spaces and more presence out there so you’ve got to remember there is going to be competition, but competition is a good think. As long as the trainers stay strong and actually stay educated I think it’s very different.

Brett: excellent, so excellent. Thanks for sharing that buddy. So I guess to just touch on that as well with regards to, like you said, the good ones will prevail, or the good trainers will rise about the rest. I guess if we just want to add that, the good trainers who understand marketing will rise above the rest.

[Laughter]

Richard: Yeah 100%.100% and I think, you can have the best, biggest biceps and triceps, but as I said before people need to know how you made those biceps and triceps. How that marketing has come about. Most definitely.

Brett: Yeah, great. So look we’re coming up to the end of our time. I’ve got one more question for you. It’s something that I’m a real big fan of these types of things and Id like to ask you, what’s one of your favourite analogies?

Richard: My favourite analogy. I guess my favourite analogy is, aah there’s a few quotes and analogies out there.  I think it would be…

Brett; Tough question to think about there isn’t it?

Richard: I think it’s like, people say ‘the grass is greener on the other side’ and it’s always been…I’ve used that analogy for a lot of times over the years. The problem is I think that it’s the wrong analogy a little bit. I think the right one is ‘the grass is greener where you water it’ and I’ve been in many situations where you think this guy is doing it better or that company is bigger or this and that. You know, comparing yourself to places that you should be at the moment or other people that’s doing it. You’re actually doing a disheart to yourself and your pride and who you are. I think everybody is on their own journey and it’s important to realise that nobody is on that journey except you. Yeah that person may take that journey efficiently but your journey is very personal and it’s important to make sure that if you are taking the journey. If you’re here and not there, well, be the best you can be right here and give this love and give this care and give yourself self-love where you’re at the moment because otherwise you’re not going to get or experience being on the other side of the grass because you’re never going to get there if you don’t actually give it an effort, and give it some work. If you sort of want to get…if you’re in the phase and want to get…you see the grass over there and you want to get over. Well you’ve got to first water and make effort on this grass so that you can get over there. Otherwise you’ll never get over there and you think about it…the analogy of the moment I’d say.

Richard: I love it. I love it.

Richard: but I think to add to that, there’s this really cool website called ‘the universe’ don’t know if anybody has heard of it but I haven’t joined it, my wife has joined it. What happens is you put your name in there, your name ‘Richard’ what time and day you want to see me, that thing. What happens then, like I’m not joined as I said but every time it comes it goes  “Dear Joey, you are magical. You’re going into amazing times ahead” and the way its written it’s sort of talking about…its really individualised obviously, with auto-responders, but I always like to read it out if we’re at home at night or something and I’ll see mostly updates, but it’s just the way that’s its written I’m like ah, it always means something at that time in your life because analogy it has more meaning at a certain time if you’re going through something and it’s called ‘The Universe’ google it. It’s a simple thing…

Brett: I’m going to google it now, you say ‘The Universe’ isn’t it?

Richard: It’s not…you can check it online…it’s not selling you things. It’s coming up with the actual universe, as you would expect. I’ll make sure I get the link and then you can put it on the Podcast….

Brett: yeah, we’ll do that.

Richard: I’ll definitely get a link and I will ask what it is. It’s got quotes and something. It’s just a really cool way to give yourself a bit of…get a bit of goodness. Because I think that everybody needs a bit of goodness all the time. At the moment that’s what it is. But it always changes, same as the quotes, they always change don’t they all the time, your favourite quotes and things like that.

Brett: actually I love that analogy ‘the grass is always greener’. The thing is we all start off with a seed and the more you water it, the more grass you have. The more grass you have the more land you have. The more land you have, the more ability to build on that land and reach more people etcetera.  Love it. I’ve written that one down, and I’ll be keeping that and using that. Thank you very much.

Richard: Yeah, so you get that.

Brett: Well I guess we’re at that time mate where you have to go and water your grass and I’ve got to go and water my grass now. But, for all our listeners, I know that I put you on the spot a little bit earlier about looking g at a good deal for our trainers here to get registered on your personal trainer database, that can help them get some clients and so forth. So, what we will do, we will put a link on this particular podcast. So I’d, if you’re listening on iTunes, you’ll need to go to fiitprofessional.com.au and click on podcasts, and you’ll be able to see the episode that says ‘Richard Marc’. But, if anyone else wants to find out anything about you, follow you etcetera. Where can they find out more about you?

Richard: I guess the best place they can follow is, they can get me on Facebook. I’m not active at the moment because I’ve got my head down, but I’m always on Facebook, I’m always checking it. It’s just Richard Marc, or Richard Marc. Find me there and I’ve actually, I’ve got to tell you, each show I do, I got you last time in it, and it cause getting more they can check out some episodes there and you can always sort of see my personality there. Connect through Facebook is probably the best way I’d say. If you want to get direct, it’s probably the easiest way I’ll take action if you want to chat and do something like that. That’s probably the best way. I’ve got websites, obviously you can go to you can go to…I’ve got an online marketing company as well which is completeonlinemarketing.com.au and they’re probably he best places to go so we deal with different things and different strategies and things like that. You can check out that, but yeah, probably getting the best one you can check out a whole heap of people and check out me and got some contact information there as well, Facebook and things like that. As I said Brett, just google me, I’m all over the web. I’ve left my footprints everywhere.

Brett: I hope there’s no photos of you back in the day in your spandex and belt bag, that’s all I can say.

Brett: well thank you once again Richard. Thanks again for taking the time out. I know you’re a terribly busy man. Got a lot on. But I know there’s a heap of gross information you shared here today and I know you’ll get a lot of listeners going to take action right now and go…

Richard: About that offer you said, back to that offer you said Brett. What I can do for your listeners, these personal trainers, what we can do is we can do a 30 day free offer for everybody. Not that you can do that on the website, so I’ll put a link in there so basically you just want to send an e-mail to admin@meetyour.com.au just basically if you could put your name, Fiit Professionals and Brett Campbell in the header and we will know that it’s come from this and Nick, who looks after that division can make sure that he sign you up and get you on the site, and make you look good online. You can actually see the benefits of having a good profile. 1 for branding, 2 for SEO and 3 obviously getting leads for 30 days for free, no credit card required. Just pretty much you can see, you know, be good to yourself and actually try the methods out that we are talking about which honestly, the ones who do try are the ones that get the results. So I would love to do that as a gift to you guys.

Brett: Excellent, look, very much appreciated and if you’re a listener and you haven’t already written down that e-mail…rewind that and get it. You need to take action on this, this is the guy who has had massive amounts of experience in the industry now offering you something for free to go jump on onboard and go and see, try it out and see if you like it. See if you get a response. I know past coaching clients of mine who have tired this before and using it and have got clients from it, so definitely got my backing there. So I’ll put information underneath this podcast with the direct link so you can take action on that. So once again, thank you Richard again for your time mate. Go on and enjoy your weekend, and we’ll be talking very soon!

Richard: Great. Thanks guys, thank you Brett. I appreciate the time and I appreciate the listening.

Brett: Take care, bye!

 

Episode 11: How To Run A Successful Group Training Business (live presentation)

[sharethis]

NOTE: THIS episode in LONGER THAN USUAL – Which means you get MORE Kick Ass Info. burleigh girls

In this episode you will hear the exact audio recording that Brett presented to a SOLD OUT (it was free) bunch of 100 Personal Trainers.

  • You will discover the 12 key areas you NEED to have a successful business
  • What a successful group training business model should look like and what your next steps are
  • How to generate an abundance of leads into your location
  • Generate continual passive income streams
  • His #1 FREE Strategy to pick up 5-10 new clients in the next day
  • The #1 thing every fitness business owner must have if you want your business to be around in the next 12 months

Enjoy

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

 

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

How To Run A Successful Group Training Business (live presentation)

Transcript of EPISODE 11:

Hello and welcome to the FiiT Professional podcast, the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build their fitness business. If you’re after more clients, more income and more free time, then you’ve come to the right place. Visit www.podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au today.

Hello FiiT Professional. Welcome to another episode of the Fiit Professional podcast. In today’s episode we have something a little bit different than usual. What you are going to be hearing, is you are going to be hearing a live recording of a webinar I just ran. We had a hundred personal trainers on the line. It was a sold out event. Sold out for free of course, just like this podcast. And you are going to hear me talk about how to run a successful group business. Now we go into so many different things, so many different avenues of business etc. We reveal a heap of great information and the feedback we got from it was absolutely amazing. The trainers loved it. We had a lot of interaction. We were interacting with each other and answering questions, and it was just an all-round kickass, badass presentation.

I want to give you the opportunity now, if you are unable to see it, we are not giving away the live presentation, but you get the next best thing which is the audio recording. So you can listen to it and enjoy. So I am going to now hand over to the host of the webinar, the wonderful Brett Campbell a.k.a. Brett and I am going to, actually in the first part of the episode just listen to how much of a goose I make myself and you will be able to get a bit of a giggle out of it so enjoy! Right, there you go, so thank you everyone. I was looking in the wrong area, so thank you very much Lee for that. We are all good to go, so everyone can hear me, that’s great. And just to give me a heads up in regards to the sound quality, is it good quality, is it echoing, what’s the feedback there. Because we want to make sure that you can stand it. Sounds fine, thank you Amanda. Sounds fine. Okay. So like I said, in a couple of minutes we are going to get started.

I am someone who likes to be on time all the time so for the hundred people that are registered today, we have a sold out event, sold out for free and look, I am really looking forward to sharing the information that I have today with you all, and I know that a lot of you will get a lot of stuff out of this. So, here we go, people are starting to come on board now. Isn’t it interesting, when you look at time management, and so forth, you know there’s the people who are always, you know, five minutes early, doesn’t matter what’s happening. The people who are always just on time, and then the people who are always just a couple of minutes late. And then of course, you get the people who just don’t show up at all! That can be the issue sometimes of having a product or service that is absolutely free, because, you know when you’ve got something, a message to deliver to people sometimes it harder to actually sell a free product than an actual product that people purchase of you.

So, look everyone who is on here today is going to get more than their value that they paid to get on here I can guarantee you that. Just a couple of things as well, today’s webinar, before I press, before I start recording this. Can everyone see my screen as well? I just want to know that everyone can see my screen. Alright, thank you Raymond you’re nice and active, I love it. Okay, and Sarah and Amanda and Nick and everyone else, excellent and Michelle. Today as you notice I want to make this a very active, a very active webinar where the more you ask, the information I am going to be able to provide and I guess almost steer this presentation in a certain direction. So I am just going to begin a recording here.

Alright, welcome everybody to the first Fiit Professional webinar that we’ll be presenting here today and if you see the screen right there, and you would have already read it and it says ‘How to set up and run a kickass group training business’. Now, just you know, again when I say show of hands here, what I’m going to get you to do it just to put a comment in the comment box. So who here wants to know how to run a kickass group training business? Yip, so there is a heap of yes’s coming through there that’s fantastic because you are definitely on the right webinar. If you weren’t, you know, if you said not to that then you definitely, it’s like waking into University. I remember when I went to University, I will tell you a little more about that but I walked into a lecture and I went to sit down and it wasn’t until five minutes, when I realised I was in the wrong room. It was a subject I had not signed up for that’s for sure. So give me just a couple of seconds here. Alright, there we go so we’ve got a fair few amount of people on here today. Like I said there was only a hundred spots open today and that was because the service that we’ve used basically only allows a hundred people. So for this particular membership we’ve got. So congratulations for being one of those one hundred. We’ve got about 60% of you on here, so that’s not a bad turn out actually. You know, I was predicting that about 50% of people wouldn’t turn up, so this is going to be very interactive and very cool if I do say so myself. So, let’s get started. So in today’s session what we’re going to cover is:

Number one. We are going to look at what a successful group training business model should look like and what your next step should be. Now I’m not here to tell you to go and do this, go and do that. All I can do is sit here and offer you I guess you’d say advice on what has worked for myself and many, many of my coaching clients of the past. Now of course, oh, we just had a bit of a technical nightmare there. So when I say when a successful group training business model. Now, success can mean many different things to different people. That is something we need to really, really make note of as well. So always keep an eye out and when I refer to certain things through this presentation, I just want to make sure that it’s congruent of where you are currently at and what you want to achieve in the industry.

So I am also going to look at how to generate an abundance of leads into your location. Now who really wants to know about that? How to generate leads coming to your e-mail inbox, this is what I’m meaning. I’m talking about reconverted leads that have gone through a process and then you receive their e-mail, you receive their phone number, you give them a call and then get them into your particular location. Now it is also important to note that I am not just talking about group personal training here or group fitness or boot camp business. You can take all of these methods that I’m about to show you, and you can implement them into your one on one training process as well, so that is very exciting.

Thirdly, what we are going to do is, we are going to look at how you can generate continually passive income streams. Now, passive income streams, to me is basically passive income that you can generate without having to turn up and deliver a service. So an example may be an information product or a work out system etc. Now, just a show of hands, who here is really interested or who feels they’ve got a good idea on a particular work out product that they can release?

Yup, so there is, there’s a few people there. ‘Not sure, but I want one’. Excellent you’re at the right place. You’ll be able to get a lot of ideas out of this one. Anyone else who feels that they’ve got an idea that could if put out there in the industry could make a massive difference to people? ‘Getting there’. Good, so we’ve got a wide range of answers there which is very exciting because when I first got on to my first passive income stream, I didn’t really know what I was doing either. I was basically having a step in the dark, and I will tell you a little more about that in a moment. But the key thing is ‘You’re here to learn, excellent’. Just another heads up, if, please understand that if I cut off and I pause for a second or two, it’s not because I’m making a mistake or I’ve walked out the room. It’s basically I’m just, I love reading the comments that people put through and, again, the reason being that is, the reason, you’re live and the great thing about being here live, and you know, hundreds of trainers actually e-mail in and ask are we going to record this? Well we are recording it but we aren’t recording it for purposes to give out. It is mainly just for training purposes. The luxury being on here live is to interact.

We are going to look at generating passive income streams. And I say continue income passive streams because you don’t want it to be a once off sale and that’s it. I’m also going to give you my number one free strategy that will literally help you pick up five new clients in the next day. Who wants to know that one? Yup, a fair few, excellent. Of course you do, who wouldn’t want to know that I am also going to show you the number one thing that I believe every single fitness business owner must have if you want your business to be around in the next twelve months. The way that the industry is changing and the way that technology is changing, you really need to keep up with the times. It’s like your grandparents who don’t have a mobile phone, they’re basically living in a whole other world almost. Which is I guess for them they’ve been brought up a certain way, but you can certainly see some of the elder generation who have adapted to the whole social media thing, and your mobile phones and so forth. It definitely gives them another spark in life.

Also we are going to, well I’m going to take you through and just give you a bit of an overhead on how I was able to generate 12,564 leads in only 24 hours. Has anyone heard that story before, okay, so that’s exciting, cool. Just to show. What I’d like to do is just put in the comment box, out of those six things that we are going to cover, what one generates or resonates the most with you right now? What one do you feel is the most important to you? Let’s see those answers come through. So yup, one and two, abundance of leads, passive income, passive income, number three, generate passive income, five new clients, what a success group training business should look like. Yup you’d hope that one as well, because that’s the main tag line for today. So that’s great. So again, we’ve got a wide variety of people with different answers so that’s fantastic. What I’d say is just keep your ears open for whatever resonates with you the most today. Basically what I’m also going to do, at the end of this presentation I’m going to reveal to you exactly how you can receive two months free premium coaching. So that’s coaching with me, how you can get into my mind and my strategies and my networks etc, on how you can really accelerate the growth in your fitness business. So that is really exciting and I look forward to giving that out to you all.

We just get stuck straight into it, and before I reveal to you those strategies I think it’s really important just so I can give you a bit of a background of me and where I’ve come from. Would that be okay? Yes? Type a yes if you’re cool with that. If not, unfortunately it’s too bad because I’m going to do it anyway. I really feel if you can understand where I’ve come from and how I’ve been able to do want I’ve been able to do in this short amount of time I think it might be able to hit home with you. Now the key, I’m not going to tell you a story here of how I was dead broke and I went to be a millionaire over night because that is definitely not my story. I guess you’d say my story started when I was sixteen and I left school. I got kicked out of high school because I talked too much. Instead of harnessing my talking abilities back when I was at school, they use to try and stop me from talking, which is quite interesting because for me a lot of my job involves speaking, so I’m sitting here speaking to you right now. Imagine if they had harnessed that back at school and I was able to become a better speaker than what I am today. I think I’m over that. School curriculum is not my favourite thing.

I left school and became an apprentice. I became an apprentice joiner, cabinet maker. I was building kitchens and so forth. Basically because I was really good at woodwork at school so I was like, yup, it seemed like the logical thing and of course my parents, back in the day course my parents back in the day basically said to me look, go get a trade because if anything happens in the economy you can always fall back on it. I can tell you this right now, to the day I will never go back and build another kitchen, but I appreciate my parents for thinking about my future. Now what I did was I basically got sick of being a cabinet maker and I decided that I wanted to be a personal trainer. So I became a personal trainer. I actually went to University to do a degree. Now, if you’re sitting there are you’re ever thinking about becoming a personal trainer, my opinion on that, don’t go do a degree. It’s such a waste of time. University for me, my experience of course was going and working from 50, 60 hours a week as a cabinet maker to then doing 4 hours, 5 hours, 6 hours a week, University, it was  I could of crammed a lot more in that time. I left University after a year.

I’m originally from New Zealand, and then I hopped on the plane and I basically moved to the Gold Coast. So I moved to the Gold Coast and I didn’t know any one, I just moved in with a guy and it just quite happened, it was quite funny, because this particular guy knew my network of friends back in New Zealand, and I knew his, but we never knew each other. So it was an interesting path. So I became a personal trainer and then I had a passion for business coaching, for coaching people. I always, and this is something that I would get you to write this down, is I would always learn to teach. Whenever you are wanting to learn anything always think of it in the mind set of ‘I’m learning this so that I can teach someone’. So every single thing that I’ve done from when I was a cabinet makers and I was learning to screw a kitchen together a cut it out and use a router, and that type of stuff. I was learning it so that I could teach someone and you know, I had an apprentice and I had a couple of apprentices who I took through cabinet making etc, because I learnt to teach. Same thing with personal training. I am sitting here on this webinar now, because it is my passion, so I’ve got a simple passion to be able to teach. And it just so happens that business is the number one thing that I like to teach. So I no longer personally get out there and train clients and trade my time for money, what I do, is I have a team of people who do that and in the same token my passion is business coaching and I could sit here all day, and I could sit here literally, you know, all day and present to you guys because it really excites me. And there more and more I talk about I t the more and more energy I get from it. So that is something that really excites me if you can’t tell.

So I became a business coach and help other personal trainers grow their fitness business. But basically, this is where the big shift happened, and where I went from being a personal trainer to a business coach. Now I realise I am actually a marketer. Can I just, anyone know who that guy is there in the picture? Not the handsome fellow on your right, the guy on your left? Does anyone know who that person is?

If you can just put their name in there, or just ‘no’. So no, okay, so this guy’s name, he is Frank Kern, and if you’re in the marketing realm, I guess he would be like the Billy Slater of rugby league, the Greg Inglis of rugby league, or the Garry Ablett of AFL. He is the guy when you want to look at marketing. So, he is responsible for the first ever, he made the first ever one million dollars online in a particular launch period and he is also responsible of making 4.3 million dollars of sales in only 63 minutes.

So this guy is a genius when it comes to marketing. Now the reason why I show this, is so, not so we get all upset about and jealous that he made 4.3 million dollars. It’s to show the fact that I did not superimpose that photo. I am not that good at photoshop. The purpose behind that is because I flew to America, I’ve flown to America several times to learn from the best people in the world. So, you know, the big thing for me, and the thing that I say to everyone that any one that I coach or mentor is, you know, surround yourself with the people who you feel, or not who you want to be, more like surround yourself with people who you would like to have achievements similar to them or better than them of course. So, Adam, its Frank Kin, K-I-N. So I became a marketer and that was the biggest cataclysmic shift that I could of had because my thought process had now turned from trainer to business owner. And look, if you guys need a reality check right now, I’m here to tell you you’re not personally trainers, you are marketers. Every single business owner or someone who calls themselves a business owner is a marketer because without getting your product out into the industry you’re not going to have sales. And if you don’t have sales you’re going to have no money. And if you don’t have money you’re going to be upset and you’re going to change industries again.

Now with the lifespan of the personal trainer only being 13 months, it’s a very scary thing, so just remember we are all marketers. So, that slide is not supposed to show like that but, look I’m also the Director of Fit International, which is the one of the, of the fastest fitness license program for personal trainers where we have over 32 current FiiT Chick licenses and locations and we have over 16 different products and services that cater to the fitness industry. You’ll see there we’ve got transformation supplements, we treat professionals, foundation equipment online, products, clothing etc. So we’ve got a whole heap of products. The reason why I show you this is because, I don’t want to be one of those people who are doing webinars and they’ve just got a great strategy on how to present information to you. Using the examples back at University, one of the tutors he literally, no one ever turned up to the classes because he would simply read from the Power Points. He had no experience, he had no results that he could prove or show anyone that basically you know and again, I guess he was doing the best he could, because he needed a job, but, I want to prove to everyone that you need to have real life results before you can share this type of stuff. It is just my opinion.

Now that there is the map of the location, like I said, that black image there has really done me a good one. But can you see here right now that this is not perfect, I’m not perfect. I use stuff that just slides up but you know what, it doesn’t really matter in the overall scheme of things. I am having a go at it, and this is something that I really want to instil and this is to really have a go, you know, see how you go with it. So, a couple of fan pages just quickly that we have which is you’ll see that we’ve got ‘Fit Chicks’ which is our largest growing brand, and the ‘I Love Being a Personal Trainer’ page. Now that’s a passion page for me to help out person trainers and you can see it’s growing slowly, well actually fast in comparison to many fan pages but in regards to our growth we’ve had with ‘Fit Chicks’ that’s only a 16 month old page and we have got 160 000 real likes, so we don’t buy likes. It is really important that we’re building our fan base and it’s really exciting. Because we are able to help a lot more people, that’s the key thing. What I would like you to type in quickly, what is your biggest frustration in the industry? What’s the biggest frustrations as a personal trainer? Who is the fastest typer?

‘Accountability’. So that was fast. Unreliable income yup, money, unreliable income, retention, misconceptions of nutrition. Great. So again, it’s the whole thing of unreliable income. What if I could teach you a strategy today that you’re not going to have to worry about the unreliable income because there’s things that you can implement into your fitness business that can really have a positive effect. And, you know, cancellations there and money so it really I guess the biggest frustration obviously fall around money. I’m not going to be someone to say, I’ve never had one of those frustrations because I certainly have a little bit of background. When I first started personal training, I got up to my clients, I had gone 40 PT hours a week and then I wanted to slowly cave, drop off cause I wanted to get into marketing and I had ended up with, I sat around 20 hours per week. I was earning pretty good money there and then all of a sudden one week I literally lost 50% of my business. That’s as you can imagine, if you lost 50% of it, it’s a real click up. So that’s where I really had to take some drastic measures and we are going to share these today. And if we have time at the end of this I really want to be able to answer your question and help you out further. So this right here, now you may not be able to see this clearly, don’t worry about it. Don’t stress out about it. It’s basically a basic mind map. NowI’ve got a far more in depth one, but this is the basic mind map of what a successful group training business should look like.

You’ll see basically in the centre it’s got the business here and it’s got heaps of other I guess you’d say the veins of what the business should look like. And this is regarding, even if you’re a one-on-one personal trainer and you’re working for yourself, or you’ve got a business or a company, you need to have a structure like this.  It’s like having a body without veins, it’s like having a car without wheels, glasses without lenses. You need to have a mind map like this. Now, let’s look at the 12 key areas that were on that map there. These are 12 key areas that I believe you must have in your fitness business and this is basically accumulated over personally coaching 100 trainers myself and hearing all the feedback hundreds and hundreds of other trainers as well. You must have goals, right, we all know that. You need to have a goal and if what I see in the questions box there is a lot of people who talk about money. Now, for me, it’s like you need to have a financial goal. What’s your first goal? Do you want 1000 dollars a week, 2000 dollars a week or do you just want 500 dollars a week? You need to have a goal on that because that all really determines how hard you really work in all the other areas.

You need to have systems. Systems are key, and we will talk about those in a moment. Every single thing is a system, if you look at Mc Donald’s, Mc Donald’s is the number one business for systems. You drive to one window, or the box, whatever it is now, and you put your order in. You drive to the next one, you pay and then you got the next window and you’re out of there. And you’re done. It’s a system. It smooth, it works the same way every time. So you need a system when you clients submit their interest for you. You need to give them a call you need to follow the same script, you need to say the same things, because you need to find out what really works. If you’re on this webinar and you’ve had a phone call from our location manager and our Head of Sales, here, Ken. He would have rang you and offered and to see if you would like our free podcasts. That’s a free podcast that I deliver every week or two, I’ll do an episode and I’ll put it out there. There is over eleven hours’ worth of content that I provide for free, and one of them I talked to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s head fitness advisor, the other week I talked to a mate who has over 320 franchises so I give this for free right, so you would have got a call from Ken. Now the purpose why I’m telling you all this is because we have been able to change the conversion from  42% of people that we call to now 81%  of people who will take it up. What I’m saying if we ring 100 people, if we get hold of 100 people, 81 of them will take it up versus 42. Can you see that as an astronomical change, the reason why that changed is because we changed their system slightly, we refined and we got it better. But now we use the same thing time and time again.

Administration. You need to have administration. You need to have client payments etc all set up the same way. It needs to be a smooth transition. If you’re an administration nightmare, hire someone to do it. Hire someone for two, three, four, five, however many hours a week it’ll take you to get those jobs done. You can find people of there who will do it. I would even say, ask your clients if any of them want to have some extra hours. Thank you very much for that Sarah. Sarah just said that she has got a heap of ideas already. What I will encourage everyone actually if you do get some ‘ah huh’ moments or anything that is great, just feed my ego a bit, just so I know that this stuffs good and that you’re really interested in it. Just pop in there and say ‘Yeah, great stuff’ or whatever it is you want to say.

So, back to sales. You need to have a sales system like I talked about. You need to have price points, different type of price points. Don’t just have one option where you buy 10 pack of sessions for 60 dollars and you can use them whenever you want. That’s not how you run a business. That’s not how Mc Donald’s works so that’s not how you should work. You need to have up sales, down sales and cross sales, okay, now up sales, down sales and cross sales can really I guess not too many people know what they are. But an up sale is, an example is, let’s say that they’ve just joined with you and they’ve taken up one session per week, then you can up sale them into ‘Hey look, how would you now like to get this special, we can do three sessions per week and this discounted rate etc. A down sale is where they say that they can’t do one hour worth of personal training, but I can do thirty minutes. So it’s a take away type of selling. Cross sales is promoting other products that we’ll talk about in another moment.

Now you can actually see how each one of these key areas could be its own day spent on, and that is exactly what it generally is. I’ve spent four days working on one of these particular topics, because once you can implement it, it’s amazing what it can have in returns of effects and so forth for your business.

Marketing. You need to look at online and offline and we will look at a few of those strategies in a moment.  But marketing, like I said earlier, if you’re not in the head space that you are a marketer, you need to get into it. Because, again marketing, if you have a great marketing plan and you have a great marketing strategy, followed by great systems. The sales are going to be easy because your product and service will create themselves. It will generate sales for you. Now I don’t know about you, but that just gets me really excited because I never used to like selling. Whilst I was fairly good at it, I just never really liked asking for money and, cheers Adam. So it really is important to make sure that you’re really switched on with your marketing because again, the better it is, the less sales you do. I know for a lot of people, sales suck. People don’t like asking for money. So it’s a win-win. And customer care, look at the end of the day, if you don’t have a customer care system set in place where you’re looking after your current clients, where you’re treating them like gold, then you need to really reassess that because I can’t remember the term, but I’m going to through it out there. I think it’s seven times more, seven times harder to sell to  a brand new client than to keep your  existing one. So you really need to look at that. With regards to customer care, the number one strategy that I suggest you send out right now and you do it, is send out a thank you card. Go and get a dollar card, right. Dollar card from the post office and hand write a letter saying thank you so much for being a part of our business and we look forward to helping you further in the future. Something simple like that. Sign it off, chuck in a dollar scratchy if you want to and personally mail it to their house. Do no give it to the (meonicsession?) that’s just suicide for this particular process because, the whole process behind it is for them to receive it in their mail box. And you may be sitting there going you know I see them four times a week anyway, so why don’t I give it to them then? No. Stop. Stop. Stop. You need to start thinking like a marketer and not a personal trainer. That’s what a personal trainer would do, they’d give it to the people at the session/ But we are not doing that. We want to make sure that they get the experience because that’s what’s it’s about. It’s all about an experience. In a future webinar what I’m going to do, because this is something that really excites me is the fact that you need to look at the customers journey, you need to take them from point A to Z, and if you can create a map of that, man, the potential of your business is going to be massive.

Building a strong reliable team. At the end of the day, I can’t remember, and I’m probably committing webinar suicide trying to recall something I don’t fully understand. I can’t remember who said it, you might be able to help me out, it’s ‘Give me a leaver long enough and I’ll be able to shift the world’ now that particular saying is amazing because you can only grow so much as an individual and that’s where you need to get key people on your team to help you grow your vision. Now our goals here at Fit International is firstly, help one million females change their life by 20-20, and we do that by an application and education in health and fitness.  In order for one person to be able to achieve that is just not going to happen so fast, so we need to create a team of people who believe in our passion, believe in our passion. So we’ve just put a job application out there for another senior administration person and what I’ve seen, a common thread that comes back through is that they’re really excited about our mission. So, get people to buy into your business. That’s the exciting part. Alright, so we’ve also got personal development and growth. You’ll see here that I didn’t put the gradually buttons coming out there, it’s all there at once, so you’re probably reading ahead of me. Don’t do that, it’s naughty.

So personal development and growth. You need to, this is honestly key. Now we spent a day here at the headquarters the other week, with some of our VIP coaching members. This was one of the biggest ones that I found popped up. Because at the end of the day, you can have the best strategies, the best sales process, but if you are not there every day, and when I mean there, I mean head space. And if you can’t be there every day, if you have up and downs. You really need to look at your personal development and growth. What I mean by that is that you need to be able to, I was just about to say, to remain focused, just like I didn’t. Someone asked a question and I got distracted. Again, personal development and growth, you need to continually grow. What I mean by that, when you reach the next monetary bracket. For example say your goal is a thousand dollars. Once you’ve reached that, it’s another total mind set shift to go to the next level of two thousand or two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, until you, if you do not believe that you can earn a million dollars, I am afraid you’re not going to do it. That’s it hands down. So let’s leave personal development and growth on that one at the moment.

Passive income, you need to create passive income streams. Like I said, we’ve got multiple passive income streams which we’ve created over time. Its taken time. But you know the exciting thing is that you can generate money when you’re not actually working. You know the old saying ‘ You can make money while you sleep’. Whilst I’m not a big fan of that one now, you can literally do that, you can literally make money while you are sleeping. Passive income could mean, you’ve got supplements, let’s say you’re offering supplements you can then pass on to your clients. What we offer all our fit licenses is an opportunity to generate 25% commission on all supplements. So, they no longer have to drive around with supplements in the boots of their car like I did. They can simply use an affiliated link run by an e-commerce website that will literally be able to generate passive income. Now that is just one avenue. Now if you had clothing there as well and you had equipment and a heap of other products and service, heart rate monitors, etc, the sky is the limit. The only limitation like I said is your own self.

So, let’s have a look at creating a product sweep. You need to create product sweeps to service different areas for example we’ve got ‘Fit Chicks’, so ‘Fit Chicks’ is one of our programs that we bring in our ‘Fit Mums’, ‘Fit Kids’ etcetera. We are creating a product sweep. Now think about it for a moment, how could you do that in your business? There all it is literally, at the end of the day, the delivery method is the same right? So it’s based around, you’re going to be doing fitness training. Now, you can be sitting there saying well I do one-on-one training, well that’s fine. Just create different levels, different products, all of the different things. So we’ve got ones, the total transformation. We’ve got one that is the bikini body shape up, the bikini body kick-starter etc, so create cool names for these because it is a product sweep. You also need to look at your facility, your facility you need to make sure that you have got a good area I guess you could say, whether you’re indoor or outdoor, you need to make sure that whatever it is, if you’ve got a mat, you’ve got a facility, then you really want to pimp it out. Seriously, pimp that thing out, so when people walk in there, they seriously want to be there.

Even if they’re not training, they just go, ‘I want to go to training today because I really like the place’. You look at all these big gyms that have all these cool things and equipment. A lot of people just go in there because they like, they like the music, and they stand next to a machine and don’t bloody do anything for the session. Create a facility that is going to pimp it. If you’re in just the park, which a lot of outdoor boot camps are, create the environment that just makes the facility great. Like, I guess you’re not going to train on a busy highway next to the traffic. You’re not going to train where there are 50 other boot camps next to each other. Just create that segregated environment. If you’ve got your outdoor facility, have things like I-frames, and flags out so that everyone knows it’s you training.

Feedback. Now this is massive, so to give you a bit of a case study on something that today we’ve implemented. Basically we’ve sent out a survey today, we’ve sent out a survey to over 160 000 people. In the first half now, I just want to look at the stats there. In the first half now we had 980 people fill out the survey. Not only number one, did that thing give us an amazing feedback that we were not actually even aware of. But more importantly, we actually had a product there that we’re offering. Now this product is an awesome product. It’s helped thousand ladies all over Australia, even around the world, now we were able to generate sales from that. It was a win win. So we had passive income coming in whilst we were creating feedback. Now if you can combine any of these together it just turns it and puts it on steroids. That what I can say.

I just want to stop for a second, people are asking questions but I can’t seem to see the whole question thing, so if you give me two seconds. I need the screen made flash or something, just give me a second here. Okay, so that’s interesting. Someone wrote a really long question and it doesn’t seem to wrap under. So someone said ‘If you’re in a community hall’. Well great, if you’re in a community hall. Look we actually started working in an old fishing hall. The fishing hall had trophies up, it had dust everywhere. We just brought our own iPod’s and sounds and we used inside outside. Ask the facilities; ‘Can I put up some cool things here?’ Even ask the community if you’re that prepared take certain things with you prior to the training. If you’ve got big testimonials printed out take them with you. Stick them on the wall whilst everyone is training and simply take them off when you leave. It’s just thinking outside that box in those type areas that will really help you out there.

If we looked at time management… now time management is a massive one, because I guess it, when I stay time management I am talking about when you are spending time on your business. Planning your day, making sure you can get the most amount of things out of the day etc. An example of time management for myself, I’ve got this webinar and we finish up and just over 25 minutes or so. I’ve still got some really cool stuff still to share with you so I’m going to speed through it a little bit but after this, then I know I’ve allowed myself half-an-hour window to do what I need to do etcetera after and then I’ve got another call. I’ve given myself a deadline. I’m creating time management if I left myself an hour or an hour and a half after this particular presentation. I would find a way to milk out an hour, hour and a half. So be very diligent with your time and I’m going share with you, even in the following podcasts how to maximise your time and I actually think probably three episodes ago I did one on time management so I really recommend you get  on a listen to that.

Let’s move forward. Here is when I was talking about marketing, now again I can talk about this all day and that’s what we did, we went through a whole process of this with our VIP client’s etc. You can see here, let’s just go through some online marketing. You’ve got Facebook and there’s a heap of different offers there that you can use. There’s Google, add website optimization, there’s Pinterest, SCO which is the cheapest most readily available; process, but it is also one of the hardest. You’ve got paid ads, Youtube, Gumtree, you need to look with your marketing. You need to have a budget. It’s all about return on investment so for every one dollar you spend you need to make sure you know what you’re getting back in return.

Referrals, so you need to make sure you’re utilizing referrals in an offline strategy. Use of flyers. People who say flyers don’t work, it’s a load of crap because we use flyers and our locations use flyers and they’re getting in clients. The results work. We just put to print today 10 000 fliers, actually 20 000, so two runs on 10 000. Why? Because we know that it works. We get a return on investment on it. You know your postcards, lead boxes, news paper editorials if you’re not contacting the newspaper you are missing out/ Local schools, magazines, letterbox drops. Sign up with a friend. You can see that this is just the start of all the different avenues you can utilise. My key feedback on this thing is that you need to make sure that you’re utilising at least one of them to start off with to its strongest ability. What I mean by that, don’t do Facebook ads, and Google ads and everything else together, if you’re not using one of them proper to start off with…it’s the whole thing of jack-of-all-trades, master of none. You don’t want to fall into that trap. Let’s look at passive income streams and continuity etc here. I’ve got someone who’s typed ‘mothers groups’ I’m not too sure what you mean by that. If you could just elaborate on that.

Let’s look at passive income streams that I believe every fitness business needs to be utilising. I use the word there, continuity because continuity is key. It is recurring monthly or weekly or daily. Nutrition plans. If you’re not currently doing nutrition plans look that’s a great way, you can do it.  You can literally get people on a monthly program, they can pay you whatever the money you want to generate from it. If you’re doing a designed nutrition plan for someone on a monthly basis, you could easily charge $99 a month for it. Every four weeks you asses their nutrition, you assess their results and you sign them up for a six month program. Say, look this is a six month program, it’s not going to change overnight. It’s $99 dollars a month, it’s less than $25 a week, and can you afford $25 a week for your health and fitness? You’ll find many people can. I used to do nutrition plans, but now I don’t have the time for it. Even though like I said I was charging $199 a month for a nutrition plan and evaluation because it involved my time. If you get 10 clients on that a month, there’s $200 a month. So it is just an area that shows that you can maximise you’re earning potential.

Work out programs.  Same things as nutrition. You can create work our programs that can change on a reoccurring basis. This could be fortnightly, monthly, depending were the client is at of course. You want to make sure it meets their goals. Supplementation, is something that uses, it’s an interesting topic in the industry. Personally I don’t believe in overuse of supplementations. We have basic supplements that we recommend. That we would recommend that our clients or trains should take. No fat pills. Note of that stuff. We do protein and a couple of other key areas. You’re looking at it, for example if you’re generating 25% commission and you’re dealing with $500, $1000 worth of sales each month. When you look at it, if you’ve got 20 clients in your program and let’s say they’re all taking a basic supplement. Let’s say you’re earning $50 a month from them. There is $2000, 25% of 2000 is, that’s about, I’ve gone blank, 500 bucks. SO you can generate 500 bucks passive income reoccurring because you can get them on a ‘hey look every month I’m going to bring this in for you’. Get a set-up, direct debit and I’ll make surer that you’re taking it. There are heaps of different areas you can follow there.

Next, there are seminars you can run, seminars. That is a great way, seminars, or webinars. You can get people on a webinar. For example if I had a product today that was all about creating passive income and all that, I could offer it at the end of this presentation. Which I don’t’ have products created. But you can do that, get people on edge, educate them on a particular topic. For example right now, and I will get everyone to see it they’re all away there. Who’s seeing value so far for this presentation? Who’s thinking that they’ve got heap of good ideas that they can implement right now. Yip, cool, thank you, thank you, HELL YEAH, in caps even, that’s a good one. Better direction. Perfect and that’s what it is basically all about, being able to give great advice for nothing. In one day if we ever do business together, whether it is or it isn’t, then that’s the case, but this is another great way to get out into the community because I personally don’t know all of you. Now there are a few people on the other end that I do know personally, but what a great avenue to be able to talk and share your message with other people. Imagine being able to run a webinar and having a thousand people on it and you’re actually talking about, let’s say you’re talking about nutrition, and at the end of it you could sell a nutrition plan. That’s the real exciting thing about this, Imagine 50 people in the room. What you’re going to do is build credibility, build relationships with people because that’s exactly what it is about.

We’ve also got building your team. Sorry, I’ve just got a question here. I don’t’ feel after four years I’d be qualified to give any more information to clients. I can’t see the rest of that question unfortunately. So I can’t really make an answer. Basically it comes down to sometimes it’s the most basic information that people need, or are looking for. So if you’re sitting there thinking I could not provide a nutrition program or plan, if you’re not feeling qualified for that, then don’t do it. But you’re feeling that you’ve got enough knowledge or more knowledge than the person, clients outside of our workouts, okay, yeah. And again, talking to that question, just to reiterate ‘I don’t think that after four years that I’d be qualified enough to give others information to clients outside of workouts’. Look, you’re not the first person who has said that or has been presented that roadblock. But what I’d challenge you to say is ‘Do you know more than the person you’re trying to help”‘. If you do know more, in my opinion you could be doing them a disservice by not being about to deliver them the message. Thank you very much Adam, you’re a legend. So I’d really challenge why you’re actually coming to this answer. And this is where we go back to the personal development side right. Would it be fair to say that you know more about nutrition and supplementation than the average person out there? If you do, than that’s fantastic. Alright cool. Fantastic. I think I’ve got the right thing there. Yip, so Norman, how you doing Norman? Alright so I’m going to save that question to the end there. So we’ve got building a team. I’ve got so much here to share. I can tell you what if we had two hours for the webinar I’d roll out with it. But I know all of you are busy and you have stuff to do so we’re going to switch through it. So building a team, like I said, this couple be a team of trainers that run clients for you. You could be getting people running your groups, you could be building a team of online coaches who are taking over the online program, so if you don’t’ know much about nutrition, is there someone that you could utilise out there who you could use. Because I am sure there are people out there who are nutritional masters who are looking for work. So again, it’s about thinking outside the box.

Now this one right here is my number one strategy on how you can go get clients now and I’ll give you the real short version of the story. This is a picture here of gentlemen digging for gold. Again, don’t quote me on the exact precise story being told, but the story is about a guy back many years ago, in the gold rush days. Basically what happened he heard about the gold rush and so many people where making money. There was money everywhere, so he packed up. He had a little farm on the North side, West side of America and he moved over to the other side. Which would be the East side. It wasn’t with Snoop Dog around t that time. He moved up to the other side of the country, he sold up his farm, he bought machinery and he tried to dig for gold. He dug for years and years and years and he found hardly any gold. He didn’t strike it rich. What happened was, about 20 years later. This guy who bought this guy’s farm he walked down to the creek and he saw this sparkling thing in the lake there. He walked up to it and he picked it up and it was this little piece of gold. Now what had happened was that farm ended up being the next biggest gold mine in the United States. Now the moral of that story is that the guy sold up his own farm to move somewhere else before he dug up in his own backyard. Now on that, which I think is a pretty bloody darn good story, but on that note. You need to start with your own people. You need to start off with people you know. Start off with your friends, start off with your family members, start with your friends’ friends, your family friends. Everyone you know, you should put it out there. This is the service you provide and would they be interested in it? If they’re not, you need to say, do you know anyone else who would be interested in this. I don’t know about you but that to me is such profound thing that I know personally through the hundred clients that I’ve trained or coached do not do this. Why? Because they’re too emotionally connected that they don’t want to feel like they are begging or asking their friends or family members.

I can tell you right now. If you got back to the personal development and growth slide, you can really understand that, you’re going to be so surprised, I would be surprised if you couldn’t pick up clients tomorrow. If after this webinar you got on a phone call and rang every person you know and said this is what we’re doing and would you be interested, I guarantee it. I use to have coaching clients who I’d get on the call with and they’d go ‘Ahhh I just need some leads’, and I would go, have you dug in your own backyard yet? ‘Aah yeah, I called a few people or I Facebook a few people’. I said, no, have you actually dug up your whole backyard? Dig up your whole backyard first because you’d be surprised.

Now this is the number one thing I believe that you need to have as a personal trainer, if you want to be around the next twelve months. Why? Because like I said, technology is changing and I’m going to show you right now some really key things you’re going to need to have on a lead converting website. Now that is the key word there team, ‘lead converting’. Not a website that is a brochure that does not generate leads, that does not generate any interest at all. So very important, a lead converting website. Here is an example of one of ours. So for your ‘Fit Chick’ locations we’ve got a lead converted website. This is a proven website. This isn’t an, aah, this looks pretty I’ll put it here. At video, there is a 5 minute video. It’s an animated video that sells people on the great benefits that sells people on coming to the location. It’s got a great header up there that’s got awesome testimonials of some people. It’s got a great headline to the left there. The indoor, outdoor female only group training system, not only burns fat, makes you fitter, increases your confidence but more importantly but changing the lives of thousands of Australians, just like you. Obviously you can read that, but, just by looking at that headline. If we had to break this down and I were to do an analysis on it. I could literally spend half-an-hour on the psychology of this particular headline. But of course we don’t have half-an-hour to spend on it. But the key important take away for this guys, is that you need to have a big attention grabber headline that’s going to get them to take the next step. That’s what it is all about.

When I’m trying to sell someone on our programs here we are literally getting them to take the next step and come through and try out our program. This is an option, so we have options. You’ve got a free optional, you’ve got a $20 option. We get about a 10% conversion of people who take up the paid one. Every dollar we earn from that we just put back into our marketing, you’re going to want to create a system that’s going to funnel it. They click on the button, they then go to a web forum. Now this is something we use which is just an e-mail marketing system. There are so many out there. What I will do, is I will send everyone a link of some things that I use. You can check it out. You have the information there, the information clicks, and boom! They’re in your e-mail. Now imagine having a system working on autopilot and everything is done for you. It is just such a powerful thing. And this isn’t all done by chance. These questions are all being tested and that is the key for you. You need to test what works, and you do that by testing it against another version of it. So I’m testing, split testing one of our squeeze pages which is one of our lead generating pages and I’ve found drastic changes actually. So we, over, six different spilt tests we then went from 19% conversion rate to 42%. Now that is massive when you are talking for every hundred leads, for every hundred people hit your site, instead of having 19, you have 42. It is a pretty big conversion. So you need to test that.

Now, let’s look at the ingredients of a successful web platform okay. I apologise if the screen keeps popping out there because I am trying to move this question box. Whilst I love the questions they are sort of in my way there. The ingredients, so look, you need to have a layout, you need to have a clear distinct layout. You see there we have a header, we’ve got a video and we’ve got a big headline. Copywriting, now this is massive! Words, imagine, and this is where I say, if you have great marketing, your sales system is fairly straight forward. So if you’ve got cop words that can sell people on whatever it is that you are trying to produce or offer to them, it just makes the process so much easier. It will just increase your sales, increase your clients and you’ll be away. An easy flow through the journey needs to be easy. It can’t be too hard where they click on this and go to another page and its just all of a sudden, it’s just a nightmare. We want to make sure that the flow is really easy and they follow through on the journey. In our marketing set up, you need to have some e-mail set up so when some people come to your program and they don’t for some reason turn up or show up or they don’t take up your product at that time, that’s cool. Have some pre-constructed e-mails that will hopefully get them to take action along the line, along the way. Again, this is a whole other day on this, but this is not the purpose of this particular presentation. This particular presentation is to open your eyes to some really key things that you need.

You’ll probably look at it then, man we are running on time here, I know that a few of you probably have to go on the hour mark, and we’ve got about four minutes or so on that. You’re probably sitting going, well where to from here?  There’s so much information that you’ve shared today Brett. Thanks to everyone for their comments there, it makes my job a lot more easier when I know that people are really liking it and that they’re getting some great stuff. So where to from here for you? Well. You can do two things really. You can stay stuck doing the same thing or you can make a change for the better. Well again, like I said, if you start implementing what we’ve discussed today even sitting down and working at your own mind map, your own plan of where your particular business is and where you’d like it to go. You’re going to be a hundred times further ahead of every other personal trainer out there. With 10 000 new graduates each year, it’s only going to get busier and busier in the market and you need to know how to stand out from every other trainer. You need to create a structure, you need to create a structure, build your web platform. I’ve got another business called: myfitnesswebsite.com.au you can check out, but we are actually on the time that we’re not taking on anymore website clients at this particular time, but, that’s an option down the track if sometime in the next couple of months or so, you’re thinking about creating a web platform. Go visit that.

You also want to create passive income products, every time you get a lead through, you’ve got a low cost entry point. So let’s say you’ve got a product that was $19, when someone first found out about you it was only a $19 product. An example could be for me, if I had a $19 e-book on this particular webinar, if it was broken down into an e-book I’m sure everyone would pay $19 for it. They would pay that because it would be marketed very well and it would deliver amazing results. That is exactly what it needs to be. You need to market your business well and then you need outstanding service for people. Or basically you can check out our Fiit Chickopportunity we have for you, you may or may not already know that we are one of Australia’s fastest growing fitness license program for personal trainers. So we are the most affordable licensed fitness training program out there. I say that because I know all the other guys in the industry, and I won’t say their names, but I know the other programs out there, the franchises and the licenses etc, and there is no one who is as cost effective as us. You can join our ready established internationally recognised brand, we’ve over 160 000 Fit Chicks out there that we have in our fan base, and of course e-mails etc, we’ve got more than that. Basically you can take advantage now, take advantage of the summer rush. With the time now and the two, three weeks, next couple of months, it’s going to be definitely an opportunity for you to take advantage of it. You can have access to our numerous passive income opportunities. You can literarily sell some of the information products that we’ve have for 75% commission. You can make a lot of passive income with you having to create it yourself. You can let us build your web platform. With My Fitness Website Business, we have websites, but it is going to cost you about $4000 to get done, but imagine having that all set up for you and ready to go. It’s an exciting opportunity for people there who don’t want to sit and do all that stuff, and simply to find out more just visit the URL there. fiitprofessional.com.au we’ve got an introductory video on there which literally is 10 minutes. Check it out. If you like it, we like to take things slowly. If you like it submit your interest to find out more. All you need to do is click on the button and what will happen is you’ll fill out a bit of a form and then we will get in contact with you and answer any questions that we need to.

At the end of the day it’s a step-by-step process, but, you know what, this is what I said at the start of this presentation. I want to give you the opportunity to receive two months’ worth of free coaching. That’s how you will get into my head, into our private VIP Facebook group that you can ask me any question that you want. We want to give that to you absolutely free! Now, obviously, you’re probably saying now, ‘what’s the catch?’ The only catch is, if you submit your interest, which is obviously totally free and no obligations, and you like what you see and you go through the process and possibly take up a location, and run your very own Fiit Chick location. We will give you, and we will check it off, make sure we know where you come from. We will give you two months of free coaching to give you a kick-start, to get your location going. This is the most low cost, most effective program out there, you won’t get, and you won’t see anything like it in the industry at the moment, until someone comes in and tries to duplicate what we have done. The only catch is that, this is, this two months free coaching, plus there is a heaps of things, loads of things that we are going to give, but I just didn’t have space on this slide to honest to right about it. But that’s where you’ll get to spend time with not only myself, but with a whole group of entrepreneurs who want the same thing, to grow a great fitness business. To earn an income that they really want. And more importantly, to live the lifestyle, that’s what it is all about. You’ve got to 7pm tonight, basically just to fill out your interest form. That’s the first step, check it out, fill out your form and just say you’re from this webinar, because it is an exclusive invitation to this webinar only. If you want to take the heartache out of building your own fitness business, just head over to the website. Head over to thefiitprofessional.com.au, and take the opportunity that is there for you to just find out more.

I want to leave you, for first of all. I think I am going to stick around for a few questions here, but I want to leave you with this. It is a little quote that I just made up and I think that it is really true, and you’ve probably read it but: ‘Success comes to those who don’t wait’. You heard the saying ‘success comes to those who wait’ or ‘good things come to those who wait’. That’s a load of shit. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen. Success comes to people who don’t wait. You need to go now, don’t wait, take action! Take as much action as you need, hey, this may not be for you but when I say ‘take action’ you need to take action on some level. Whether it is going to implement your own strategy, maybe you want to go can build your own website. Whatever it is take action and do it, take action and take action. Team, that’s all I’ve got today in regards to this presentation. I know it is great to see you all sticking around to the end, that’s fantastic and thanks so much for the questions. What I will do now. I am happy to take questions. I will stick around for 10 minutes or so. If anyone has got any questions, before you shoot off to your busy schedule. Fire them out at me and I will do my very best to answer them for you. For you who don’t and have to go back to work, go visit fiitprofessional.com.au now and fill out your interest form. I guarantee you won’t find anything like this. There is obviously now obligations, an interest form is simple an interest form where you can find out more information. From there we actually send you another video that tells you more about the program and how it can really benefit it. So take up that opportunity! Anyone got any questions for me there? I’m eager to take them.

‘What’s your best strategy to keep income flying over Christmas?’ fantastic Norm. And Norm, seeing that you’re one of our fantastic location owners and various success at that actually. For those who are actually listening, Norm and his first two weeks, I believe it was, he had 32 girls in his location, he is now up to about 50 girls there in Pan Drift. He is killing it, loving it. Man, I’m going to share with you a far deeper strategy, bit for a quick question, in regards to keeping flow over Christmas. It’s about the set up into Christmas, its’ the lead into Christmas. So, we just put an advertisement out, just today that is in print that is for Christmas. So if you’re sitting there and you haven’t even thought about Christmas yet, you need to get your A into G and you need to get something in the next week or two. You want to get a new flow of people prior to Christmas which will basically continue to over Christmas. So that is the short answer Norm. Then again, we will be able to provide you with the whole strategy and exact thought to do there in the member’s area.

Thank you, Lou, so ‘How many people run…’ I’m having trouble here with these questions. Sorry, ‘How many people are in one location and how…’ Saying technical errors, technical errors everywhere. I will get there. Sorry. Get back into that one.  ‘How many people are in one location?’ well basically you can run as many locations as you want Luo, for example, we’ve got someone just up the North, North Queensland just talking up another location. We’ve got  many of our licensees look at this as an opportunity to run multitude locations and I guess you can have as many as you feel necessary. If this was me and I looked at this form a business opportunity, I would be looking at it as finding people running it for me, but you’d need to get one going first. Get it up and running, use the strategies that we have and teach, and show you. You can have as many as you like. You can have 10 of them, 20 of them. It all comes down to looking after the first one. Making sure it is up and going and making sure it’s running from there.

‘What would you say would be your equivalent to this question if you are just a sole trader?’ So, again, a lot of our licensees are sole traders. Now I’m going to presume here that you are talking about the Fiit Chick locations. If you are a sole trader you need to start somewhere. When I was a sole trader I used to have my clients and then I had a group training business on the side as well. The next progression from there would be to find a trainer to run your location whilst you can open another. Or find a trainer who can run certain sessions for you whilst you run the sessions that you want to do.

‘Do pay as you go for group training work?’ – Maureen. No it doesn’t, in my opinion I think it’s the Achilles heel for so many personal trainers because they feel that they need to give a pay as you go option. We don’t utilise that option, we use a far better option with our Fiit Chick locations that is guaranteed to have you income for a minimum of twelve weeks. Now that is what you want. You don’t want cancellations, you don’t want none of that crap. Because at the end of the day you’re running a business right. You are not running a coffee shop on the corner and you’re getting paid for as many coffees you’re selling a day. If I had a coffee shop, or if I had a coffee cart from the corner, what I would do, and I know I’m on a tangent, but there is a purpose behind it. What I’d do, I’d literally do, is I’d have a, maybe they’d purchase in a month in advance and they’d purchase a certain amount of coffees for that month and let’s say you worked it out one or two a day and they pay a certain amount. And you could give them unlimited coffee for a month. How great would that be? I know for example. Myself and a friend of mine, we go for walks early in the morning and it is a good time for us to talk business to talk anything, and we get a coffee, so we spend like $8 a day on coffee. Imagine if they gave us the opportunity if there was one coffee day each at the end of the month, let’s say we missed out a couple they’d still be up. What they are doing, they are guaranteeing income. And that is what you need to do. Pay as you go is a no for me. I don’t like that at all.

Any other questions there team? I’ve still got a fair few of you on the line which is fantastic, which means you’re obviously getting value. Just again provide some feedback if you’re still three and you’re listening in on this and its value. Because I am happy to keep on answering some questions for you.

Not seeing questions here so, oh. ‘How many sessions for group training should you run?’ That is again, another fantastic question. Well how many you should run basically comes down to you, I guess you could look at how the locations for example, there would be anywhere from three up to probably fifteen. It depends on what you want to do with your business and how many clients you want to get to. It really comes down to, again, if you go back to the first slide that we had on goals. You need to have your goal. If you want a hundred people in your program paying $50 a week. Which would give you $5000 a week. Then you really need to look at, well if I ran three sessions, would a hundred people be able to fit in there, and the answer would probably be no. So again, it is based on your goals there. That is the easier answer.

Question with group training. I’m not sure if that is a question or maybe it didn’t type through properly. Any other questions there team? I know there is a heap of you still on there. Even if it’s in the background of your computer there or you haven’t switched off yet, or maybe you are on Facebook searching some stuff. Alright here we go. ‘I live in the country, New South Wales, would the Fiit Chick still get the support from you out…’ I really need to sort this question thing out because it is only delivering me half the question which is quite frustrating for me really. I’m going to leave it up to my intuition and try and guess it. Would you get support if you were in New South Wales?Look, we are one big family, and that is how we’ve created Fiit Chick. We don’t want to leave anyone on their own. We all work together and try help each other all achieve on result. Ultimately that one result is to help one million females firstly. and even if in the country New South Wales you had 10, 20, 30 people out there that you’re still helping, you’re return of course, is still going to be massive in regards to your business. Could you dominate your whole particular area and I’d say most definitely. You just need to look at how many people actually living in your area and are they for the demographic that you are trying for. For example, jump in Google, say how many people age this to this live in, actually just do, Google, how many people live in and put your town and it will bring it up and it will give you a census of there is 50 something percent of females. It then gives you a graphic breakdown of income, and that type of stuff. Obviously those types are results are a few years old but it gives you a good overview. We’ve got a great little location down in Foster, which is a town, a country town, and there is going to be one up in North Queensland, which is a country town. So definitely it can certainly work. I think that the best thing is to have a chat and we base everything around if it’s a good fit or not. Pardon the pun.

Next one, ‘I give protein and various supplements after workouts for free’. It’s a great idea Dale. Unfortunately cut out after that. So again I have to make up the rest of the question. I provide protein and various supplements rafter workouts or free. I’d like to give you some. Is that what you said? Basically again, it could be a built in thing for your packages as well. Instead of paying $69 a week make it $79 a week and they’ll get a protein shake after the session. Again, that’s agreat idea. Good to see that you’re on the ball there. Always good to hear new ideas, thanks.

‘Can we get links to new businesses?’ what I will do, I will highly suggest that you head over to the fiit professional page and actually go /podcasts and you’ll be able to go and see some other links but I will create a document with some of the things I’ve talked about today that you are going to get access to.

Anna so 45 000 people listen to MPT so you could definitely dominate. I dare say, in a city of 45 000, there would be half of those if not a little bit more females and only 10 PT’s. That’s the power of being part of a brand being pretty well known. The reason why I believe that Fiit Chicks is extremely successful. Because it is a community and we’ve followed all the methods that you need to, to generate a successful brand so to speak. So you look at Apple, Apple people buy stuff and they don’t even know what it is. So the next iPhone sold out in pre-order before people even know it changes, because you are creating a good brand. I think that is imperative. I’m not saying that you should use our brand at all; it’s just a great leg up and assistant in that area. I definitely encourage you if you want to create your own, get out there and do it. Because once you’ve created a great brand you’ll be able to help so many more people. But the only thing that I would say on that, if you’re not prepared to put in hours and hours of work, have many failures, many successes then don’t go and do it. I only say that from my own experience and if you are not willing to invest your time and energy and course money into it. It is going to be hard to build your brand.

Excuse me. So okay, good on you Dale, you’ve written it in two questions so can read the whole thing. This is smart. ‘With the $10 class rate, would it work better the other way around. Free sessions with $10 supplement afterwards?’ I wouldn’t do that because you need to position something as the bonus. You need to make them feel like they’re getting a supplement for free. Personally in  my perspective, because if you’re giving away free sessions then they’ll probably be like I’m not going to turn up to this session or I’m not going to worry about getting it. So definitely position things as a bonus. The more bonuses you can give away to people the more value there you are going to perceive in the product. For example the webinar, if anyone who takes up the opportunity and submits interest in regards to a location and takes the next step. I’ve put out there that you’ll get two months of free coaching. Now if you had to pay for that you’d be paying $ 1680 I think it was. That is almost the initial investment you would need to become a part of it and you’re getting it for free. The reason why you do that is because you want to position something with value. So, example you could, when they sign up you could also give them a singlet or something, and maybe a pair of boxing gloves etcetera. You could just provide value that way. I hope that answered your question.

Alright team. I’m going to take three more question, as like I said I can sit here and talk all day and I know that you’ve probably got a swirling question, and I’m hoping that many of you have already gone over and submitted your interest in look at what we can provide and really assist you with, and basically take the heartache out of the back-end of building a structure for your group training program. So three more questions if anyone wants to jump in. Don’t all jump in at once. See how I always go for the big thing, normally you say I’ve got one more question, I’ll take one more. But I like three because I actually like answering questions but it looks like all the questions are out. Doesn’t look like anyone has any… Oh we’ve got one more. There we go, this is the last one. ‘Would you attach workout programs to a Facebook page or website?’ I’m not too sure how to take that question, but, excuse me, would you attach workout programs? I would definitely recommend by providing value if that makes sense. We have workout programs on our website, on our flagship website. We have articles etc. Use Facebook as a generation tool to send people to your website. That is the whole point of having a website. You need to use Facebook as the engine, and then your website would be the vehicle to help them get from A to Z. So really hope that answered the question there.

So team, like I said now I’m down to 13 minutes to do what I set in my 30 minute window. I’ve got an appointment coming up very shortly. Got a lot. Thank you very much for taking the time out and sticking around for the questions. To those people who do thank you very much, you’re great too. For those people who do want to look at the opportunity that we have I really suggest you do jump over there. Hit over to the Fiit Professional website anyhow and you will be able to see how you can get more hours of free business content absolutely free. Go and do that, I’d take it up, chuck it in your ears, listen to it and what I want to know, is send me through any achievements you have. I like sharing information, but I really like hearing about it even more when people have wins. Now that is something that is really exciting to me. So this is Brett Campbell signing off. Have a fantastic day and I will talk to you very shortly, thank you and goodbye.

Episode 10 – The Exclusive Interview With Michael Parella

[sharethis]

Michael Parella is what you would call, a Fitness Marketing NINJA.

A little over 4 years ago, Michael was literally sleeping on his friends couch eating EXPIRED tv microwave dinners.Brett & Michael

Fast forward 4 years and he owns the largest Martial Arts fitness franchise in the world.

With over 320 franchises in 5 different countries, Michael knows a thing or two about how to generate business, and lots of it.

In 4 years he went from being dead broke to now turning over 5 million dollars this year with his Martial Arts Franchise http://ilovekickboxing.com (click to see what Michael has to offer)

In this episode you will discover:

  • Kick arse strategies on how Michael generates thousands of new member a year
  • More analogies than you can poke a stick at (all really profound as well)
  • How Michael discovered his 15x formula (15x higher conversion rates by implementing this one change)
  • Marketing strategies that you can simply take and implement today
  • How Michael made 2 million dollars last year using a group buying system

And loads more.

The interview was literally scheduled for only 35 minutes. One hour later we were still talking.

Do yourself and your business a favour and listen to this episode now.

WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR WHAT YOU THINK – Please leave a comment below.

WARNING: the strategies you are about to learn, WILL change YOUR Business and YOUR life.

 

DO YOU USE FACEBOOK IN YOUR BUSINESS?

Here is how you can listen to this podcast on your iPod or iPhone.
Follow these steps:


– Once this is downloaded on your device, click podcasts then search for
FiiT Professional.

– Every time a new podcast is ready it will now automatically load to your device.

Enjoy.

We would love to hear what you thought of this episode? so be so kind and leave a message below.

If you think this episode will benefit anyone you know – please share this page with them.

Do NOT Miss Out On ANY Future Episodes

Enter Your Details Below To Stay Up To Date
and To Also Receive EXTRA Business Building TOOLS

 

The Exclusive Interview With Michael Parella

Transcript of EPISODE 10:

Hello, and welcome to the FiiT Professional podcast, the number one podcast for fitness professionals looking to build a fitness business.  If you’re after more clients, more income, and more free time, then you’ve come to the right place. Visit podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au today.

Hello FiiT professionals and welcome to another fit podcast, I’m your host Brett Campbell and today, well actually it’s not today, it could be today when you’re listening, but for me currently it’s ten fourty-one P.M.  You’re probably thinking I’m crazy sitting up, calling a podcast at this time, but the reason for that is I have a very special gust today I’ve been trying to get this bloke on the call for a long time now and of course, both of us having busy schedules. We just always couldn’t clash. But this gentleman I’ve got on the air today, I met this guy about probably three years ago and I met him in San Diego.  We were at a mastermind group together and basically we just kicked it off on a few nice cold drinks later and we began chatting and we found some real good synergy there and this guy I’m going to introduce you to in a moment, he’s someone I actually look up to in the fitness industry and regards to how he’s been able to build what he’s been able to build and we’re going to talk a little more about that, but this guy’s name is Michael Parella or Master P as I call him and this guy here when he was telling us his story in San Diego, I just thought it was absolutely inspirational and I wanted to be able to share it with everyone, especially on this podcast, so Michael, well his background is in the martial arts area. You know a few years ago he created his own martial arts studio and then he found out all about the internet and the world wide web and you know he started creating websites for the martial arts and fast forward four years and Michael now has one of the fastest and largest growing fitness franchises in the United States and in the world with three-hundred and twenty franchises in four different countries and we’re just talking before the podcast is going to be going in to six countries; they are going to Germany.

Brett: Michael, mate where do we start here?  Tell us a little bit about your background Michael, because I really like your story from where you came from and how things erupted. So handing it over to you mate.

Michael: Cool, well listen I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk to all my buddies in Australia. So like you said before we had met a few years ago and I always think it’s kind of a humble story, but it does seem to get people a little excited because I was in such a low point and if I could do it anyone can do it.  I’ve been in the martial arts industry for about thirty years as far as training myself. I’m forty-six years old and up to about 2007, I had a very, very successful martial arts school, had several at different times, I did manage to sell a few successfully.

So through a series of really just bad decisions and some, I don’t know I don’t want to say bad luck because I think you make your own luck, but some bad decisions and I got a divorce and at the time my wife was very entrenched in the facility, I also got kind of like hoodwinked by this like phony investor guy that was coming in and I was really interested in chasing the money, you know, he promised all these things and I through judgment out the window and got a little greedy I think, and I made a series of bad decisions and I drove a facility that was doing probably about fifty-thousand dollars U.S. a month within a year I drove it down to ten grand a month. Which was no easy feat, I actually ditch it off every day, so it was just awful and it was the worst of the worst and you know, if anyone knows the story like I was the guy that my one of my employees was staying with me, his mother fortunately was a hoarder. I don’t know if you have any of those hoarding shows in Australia, but they have those awful shows here. People just keep every bit of things they’ve ever purchased in their life, just the house is a mess and it’s unlivable, so his mom is a hoarder, but she hoarded food amongst all things and she had some basement freezers that you were actually expecting like “Silence of the Lambs” with all the freezers having body parts in them, but they were frozen TV dinners, expired Microwave TV dinners, that kind of thing, so you know he would bring them and that’s what we’d eat every day, so I had a rule, you know, I’d only eat them if they were two years old or less.  So 2005 was the cutoff for what I would be willing to eat, but I was just broker than broke, you know, and I don’t know the way of explaining it, but like my house was in foreclosure, my car was in risk of being repossessed, I used to park in blocks away from the house and walk four or five blocks home every night, so the repo guy wouldn’t find it and I was actually stealing electricity from neighboring businesses to keep my facility open, and it was just the most awful thing ever, I never want to go back to it, so the only successful part in that is that I have such a great fear of going back to that position that it just drives me to move forward, so.  Fast-forwarding a bit, I was going to get out of the industry and I don’t know if most people have felt this way at some point, but I was just like so beaten, I was like, “I’m done”.  I’ve been doing this for twenty something years, it was like “I can’t do it anymore”.  And I decided to research internet marketing and direct response marketing and I wasn’t satisfied with the way that, for me, the way the martial arts industry had taught me how to market, you know how to acquire and leads or build relationships with clients and, but I thought I was really smart and I was going to go out in the internet marketing space and I was going to write an e-book and become a millionaire.  Not. You know, just didn’t happen that way.  So, but in the time that I did that and I kind of being like a hermit for a few months where I was working like fourteen to sixteen hours a day no joke, in my underwear, growing a beard, not showering for two days, I was just so engulfed in internet marketing and I was so enthralled by what I was learning, I was like “there’s got to be a good way to do this”.  And what I emerged from, like hanging out in a cave for a few months, I came up with the idea to build a great direct response website that would get me leads, you know I wasn’t satisfied with what my online marketing presence was doing before and I knew this was the way that we were going to market in the future, and I know that we know that now, but I still think that this is like you have to become a wizard at marketing your brand and yourself online, so I started doing that early on, about four years ago, and it worked amazingly.

I mean, I was stuck in a business where I wasn’t getting seven or eight prospects a month within my facility and now it was within the first months of launching a new website I made I was getting nineteen to twenty, like in the first month, I got nineteen paid introductory enrollments.  So I went away from the free thirty-day type offers that so many martial arts schools and fitness centers are doing still, and you know what, it doesn’t work, there’s a myriad of reasons why that relationship is kind of tricky, you know, people don’t believe you get something for nothing, and they’re very suspect and we all know it’s a trick, you know, you try and get them in for the free thirty-days and then you kind of present them with a hopefully irresistible offer to get them started, and I just didn’t like it.  So I went with the paid introductory enrollment and it was the same time kind of like the group-on as a deal site emerged, you know about four years ago and it was widely successful, so I did that the same time, not even knowing that group-on existed or any of the deal sites at the time and it worked really well and I got more prospects in one month than I had seen in probably three months, and I think we closed sixteen of the nineteen people, like they were the last humans on earth that were going to come in to the facility.

So that worked well, it was like next month twenty six people we closed,  then it was twenty two, then it was seven people we closed, twenty nine, and we were doing great and in a few months I kind of got my facility back on its feet again were I went back from like ten grand I think we were doing the high twenties and thirties and you know, I could pay my car off and save my house and things like that, so from there I started marketing a fitness kickboxing program that I was doing for years but I just didn’t know how to brand it and market it right, and that program proved so well that I decided to license a website app. That was creating a website service where I was going to help generate online enrollment for locations throughout the country. The trick was that I decided to offer the very inexpensively but I was going to do the online marketing  and I was going to collect the introductory fee, it was like a twenty-dollar fee, you got 3 classes and it worked really well, so you know, fast forwarding we’d probably do three to four thousand of those a month right now, at the same time I started reaching out to every contact I had and everyone I knew and tell them about this wonderful service that I would guarantee for ninety days if you didn’t get at least ten online registrations I’d give you all your money back no questions asked. I think maybe I had to do that 5 times over 3 years, it worked so well, but fast forwarding now, I took a business that didn’t exist four years ago with no money and a home office and with no debt and I think that this year at the end of four years will crack the 5 million dollar mark.  So that was a big, you know, big jump from expired microwave TV dinners, and worried about my car being repossessed, so now we converted from a kickboxing license, we converted to a franchise which was the next logical step and we packed the entire system up, I currently own 3 franchises myself, so I’m the franchiser but I’m also a franchise-e of three locations, soon to be a fourth, that was I was there yesterday to close on a few leases that should be done within the next few weeks.  So I should have 6 before the year ends.  But I have 3 of them that are operational now that have been open for my original one for several years and one I opened 20 months ago and one I opened 9 months ago. We’re currently doing three-hundred new memberships a month, collectively, and that is consistently for the last seven or eight months I have one of them that I opened up not exactly cheap, they cost me about 180,000$ to open, no debt on those, I hit the breakeven points at somewhere between six and eight months and I got my entire investment month in about eighteen months, but I have one facility that’s not very big, it’s got nineteen hundred sq. feet up and down stairs, it’s currently doing about eighty five to ninety-two thousand a month, and it only cost me maybe forty-eight grand a month to run. Another one I opened up about eight months ago, it just broke seventy thousand dollars a month, it costs me somewhere in the low forties to run. So they’re doing really great and my plan is to really open up about 100 corporate units throughout this country along with building a franchise as well, and you know I had told you we’re all going to go to Germany next month. We’re going to be doing about ten locations there, we have two locations in Australia currently we’re hoping to get more there in Perth area and we’re in Canada, we’re about to go into Argentina. So it’s really exciting and almost a bit surreal, but that’s kind of like the whole story in a nutshell, what we still do is my company provides website marketing services for the martial arts industry and we really have a kind of out of the box approach of teaching people the importance of a different type of customer service experience, how we market and brand a business and the way we connect with clients or perspective clients, and there’s just so much difference, I feel like everything I learned in the first twenty years of my business was just wrong,  I literally, on like a personal level I purged every marketing book I had ever purchased prior to three years ago, I threw everything out because I thought it was just, you know, there were marketing tricks and techniques but it wasn’t like a global perspective of how I want my brand to be perceived, it was like, oh, turn your business card into a marketing tool or use a long sign, it just really wasn’t what I was looking for, it wasn’t really what the big brands, look at Nike, Harley Davidson and these brands and I wasn’t doing that and that’s kind of what every day I’m working to become more of and learn more about, does that make sense?

Brett: Yeah, mate look, 100%, and I mean I could, I could just let you keep talking and like I said earlier for hours and questions just pop up from that and I guess what I always look to is when I hear people like yourself talking about new beginnings and where it comes from and something I really took out of that was when you said you closed these people like they were the last humans on earth, so that right there is lesson, and if you’re a regular listener, that we really preach that whole thing where you treat every single customer like they’re your last one and because you know while someone like yourself, you’re doing so many memberships per month and I think you said 300 memberships per month for one of your locations.

Michael: Well that’s 300 total, so it’s about 100 per month on average at each of them.  The funny thing is, you know, and I hope this is in line with where you’re going with this, so I have 3 locations averaging 300 memberships per month and I look back like 5 or 6 years ago at the customer service experience (CSE) I would sit at the front desk and if members came in, they weren’t even important enough for me a lot of the time for me to even avert my eyes from the computer screen to them or stop whatever I was doing, I wouldn’t even acknowledge them, that’s how bad it was. I learned how to service members and I didn’t even acknowledge them when they walked in. I didn’t thank them for coming in, I didn’t thank them when they left, it was awful, the worst thing possible.

Brett: What’s the turning point, what was it that when you said you didn’t acknowledge your members, etc; what made that change for you? And what are you doing now?

Michael: I think you hit the nail on the head, I mean I was so desperate to sign up every single person I was so broke, I think what happened was I began to appreciate people when they came in because like, oh these guys are saving my car, these seven people I enrolled this week are saving my house, so it was a totally different mindset than before.  Before I didn’t give a shit whether someone came in or you didn’t come in. I was like wow. I think I was doing well when I was in a complacent stage, but like I didn’t care, I didn’t equate the success. But now in my life, I have nice things I have a nice home I have two luxury cars that are paid off, no loans on them and I really thank my clients, even just mentally every single day because I recognize that they’re responsible for me having these things, having a lifestyle where I don’t have financial worry or stress or pressure and I can enjoy myself, but I acknowledge that by doing good things for my clients, by helping them and being sincere in my motivation to help them get to wherever they need to get.  So I think that was it, just I was so appreciative to have anyone, I was going to feed my dogs, I have two labs, I had to go to the supermarket, I don’t know if you guys have those over there, but like I had to take all the change in my pocket and dump it into a machine that counts how much it is and you bring a receipt and you had to bring it from there over to the cashier, it’s like a walk of shame, you had to walk down and hand the cashier a receipt and she gives you 37$ in cash and I had to go buy dog food and it was, because I didn’t feed them expired TV dinners of course and it was like I couldn’t get any worse, I couldn’t get worse, and I think that everyone says oh you have to hit that point of desperation, and I wish I didn’t hit it, it wasn’t a fun time by any means, it’s easy to look back now, but it was really painful, but again in a long roundabout way I’m getting back to the fact that I appreciate every single person who came in because I knew that this person was going to enable me to eat tomorrow, this person was going to enable me to feed my dogs, pay my car insurance, you know save my house. And I just don’t think I’ve lost that, does that kind of answer the question I guess?

Brett: Yeah, 100%, mate and again thanks for being so open with that, so I guess what the listeners sitting at home thinking or whatever they’re doing while they’re listening to this, the big question everyone is going to have and the question that  I get quite often is how do you get all these members turning up to your facilities, so obviously it is a whole heap of tricks and strategies that you’ve learned over time, but what would be a couple of your key marketing strategies that would be most beneficial for the fitness professional and personal trainers to look at first?

Michael: Well, I think the first thing is, you need the right website to communicate to your prospects and I think when you look at your website, you get very involved with who we are and what we think everyone wants to know and I think that’s the big mistake.  You need to find out exactly what people need to do to get started with you and you have to eliminate everything on your website that’s not about that, it’s not about you and the 742 certifications you have and all the accomplishments you have done, it’s really about what’s in it for them so using and changing your website and saying, ok, first of all when I go here the person going online has the attention span of a ferret on a double espresso. So they want to know in like a millisecond what do I do, where do I go, and how do I do it, and if you’re website isn’t answering that question like in seconds, then psychologically you’re losing your clients, they may not click off your website, but they’re already in another world. So I think you have to be really clear, you have to collect a lead base on your website so you need to make sure you have an opt-in area on your website to get people in, you need to have a great series of success stories, showing people what happens when they use a product, you have to make sure your website is designed not by a 13-yr old kid with bracers in your neighbors basement, but by a company that is great graphically, because listen, aesthetics are important, aesthetics you know, you have a luxury car and you have a baseline car and aesthetics come into play, it’s the aesthetics on the car, it’s the stitching on the seats, it’s all those little details that make the difference because otherwise for all we know the engines are all the same, the chassis are all the same, the axels are all the same, if you’re not a car buff it doesn’t  matter to you, I press the gas, the car goes, so it’s all the other features that make it special. You have to think of your website that way, you have to make sure it’s designed extremely well, you can’t look cheesy.  You have to have all the bells and whistles, but you also have to follow the rules of simplicity and making sure people get what they want as fast as they can see it, you need to make sure you have a compelling offer, you need to make sure you have an iron-clad guarantee, you don’t stand behind your product, you know, no one is going to.  So I think that has to happen, I also think you need to have a great responder, because it’s not prospects and members, its suspects, prospects, and members. Its people who are interested in buying, but maybe not people who are interested in buying right now and you have to take that opportunity as a good friend of ours says all the time you have to get them to trust you.  I think you have to get those in place to have leads, and then you have to make sure in this day and age your reputation is probably one of the most important things to manage online and you have to either subscribe to a service or diligently register yourself on every directory site for your area, build citations, things that link back to your website to get you a high page rank, you have to make sure you’re managing your online reputation and I’ll give you one or two quick tricks that work really well for us, we do those bracelets, you know the rubber bracelets that people have today where you have either your logo branded on it or your website or the name of your company and every time one of our members writes a review on either yelp or Google + we give them a bracelet as long as they show us a link, so we have been giving out about 60 or 70 of them per month in every facility. And that works really well. Another way that we help is, I ran a client contest for everyone who had purchased a website from us. I had given 500$ out to a member who, I’ll give you the link and tell you the person’s name so you can look them up online yourself, but this person got a 100 Google+ reviews inside 7 days.  And I hope he doesn’t mind me saying his name, his name is John Wai and if you do look, I know it’s in Florida, but if you do look up John Wai Kung Fu, or John Wai Plantation Florida, some as semblance of those strings. You’ll find his Google+ account and you’ll find that it’s over 100 reviews and if you look at the dates of when they happen you’ll find that it’s within a 7 day period, so here’s what happened with this.  I baited my clients because I want them to do well, with a contest that I’d give away to anyone, any school and any martial arts school who had 100 reviews or more in whatever period of time, the first one to get 100 reviews starting from this day, I gave them 500$ dollars.  What John did, which was smart, is he gave them a member appreciation party and would use the 500$ towards throwing them a party.  Within 7 days he had all the reviews.  So I wish I had thought of that idea as well, it was a great idea by John, so if you guess browse his website you’ll find that as well, so it’s how that’s so important because say if you’re a restaurant or movie theatre I mean people are looking at reviews, I mean I wouldn’t check out any movie without looking at reviews and searching for online reviews because I don’t want to waste my time with a bad meal or stuck in a 2 hour movie that’s a bomb.  Although I don’t think that fitness centers and martial arts aren’t the most mobile, because I’m not just standing in the middle of an apartment like hey where’s the nearest fitness center, let me check it out, but people are searching for, they are looking for you on yelp and Google+ to see if you’re reputable or not and if don’t manage your reputation, I mean I see clients, new clients all the time and you guys can probably do the same thing in Australia, I see people at 2 reviews, 3 reviews, and 2 of them are crappy, people are more inclined to right something crappy than good so your bad reviews are going to rack up first and if you can be the kind who gets 50, 60, 70 reviews, you are head and shoulders above everyone else.  So I think that is an important key, and you can do it as simple as making a spreadsheet, taking links of all the directories, to find them type 50 best directories in all of Australia or whatever country you’re in, and the internet will supply you with the data.  The Google gods will be kind and give you a list of them and all you do is make a directory and make sure it’s the same address and phone number/business information on every one of them and you plug all that stuff in, and every week you see if you got a review, if you didn’t get a review, how to ask your members to review, give them the links on Facebook, ask them, say hey I’m really feeling the love lately in class and I was wondering if you guys could do me a favor and tell me the thing you love best about our facility or the thing you love the best about training with us and if you would write a little giddy about it on xyz site here, I’d really appreciate it, and people don’t mind doing that, you know, if you’ve done a good job in your business and you’ve shown people that you care about them, they’re feeling very reciprocal.  The 3rd thing I think is so important today, besides your website and reviews, is using deal sites. Now, I convinced a rep on group-on 4 years ago to let me become an aggregate, which means to let me post deals on behalf on my license to franchise. Well fast forward 4 years in the states I’m group-on’s 4th largest customer and we’re the #1 fitness deal in all of the United States, I run about 6 deals per year per location and I run about 2 national deals, which means there are, you know the 290 or so of them in the United States, they’re all on one weekend or all for one week.  We are currently doing about 2 million dollars a year in total group-on sales. It’s about half for us half for group-on so that actually, you know we’re at the half million dollar mark this year, group-on is responsible for 1 million of it, which is really cool and especially now because I’ve done the work it’s kind of plug-n-play just kind of sit back and leads come in. The locations are happy because they get so many deals per year that they could never get if they got it on their own, but group-on also emailed our brand out, I think last year alone hit 24 million subscribers.  I don’t know what that would cost if I were to buy lists or something like that, also that it’s a trusted site, you know, I couldn’t pay for that, and that’s been huge for us, not just because it’s generated revenue from the sales, but it has driven lots of traffic to our websites, and that has resulted in residual sales, so I think that people sometimes look at these deal sites and think oh that’s bad, let me tell you, I teach clients how to convert between 25 and 45% of those members to come in and pay. So you’re not going to close 90% of them, but I mean you’re getting free leads, you’re getting paid to get leads and you’re getting paid for exposure, I mean there’s nothing better than that, you might say oh yeah but it’s a pain in the ass I have to sit there and this person’s not serious and, first of all, you have an opportunity there to convince these people that you’re the business to continue going to.  They didn’t buy from you, they bought from group-on or another deal site as the trusted vendor, you we’re a 3rd party and they’re giving you a shot and you have an opportunity to just knock them over with just an amazing customer service experience. And there are some people that no matter what you do they’re never going to join, and that’s ok, be cool with those people, give them a free t-shirt you know.  Make sure they say something awesome about you, as opposed to them being pissed that you tried to pressure them into a sale.  But I think that deal sites are the number one way that you can get traffic, you can’t  beat it, you know you can’t do immediate buying or paper click stuff that will ever amount to the volume that you can do through group-on and if you are, and I think group-on is pretty big in Australia as well, there’s so many deal sites over there.  But dude I mean it’s free traffic, yeah go ahead.

Brett: My question on the group-on is now, for those in Australia, and I’m not too sure what the States is like with that, what you’ll find now is there’s so many personal trainers out there or fitness businesses that are basically prostituting your services so you’ll pay, the deal may be 19$ and you’ll get 6 weeks worth of a boot camp and you’ll pay, 19$ and you’ll get 5 personal training lessons within a month of boot camp.

Michael: Well I mean, the same type of deals happen here as well.  What’s the primary question though about it?

Brett: Yeah, so what is your way around that, that makes for your deal getting taken up as opposed to the price shoppers who will go and click for the 6 week boot camp or the 6 week program, the 19$ versus the offer that you’re going to produce.  Because I guess that if you look at it, you’re offer that you’re producing on the deal that I saw it needs to be a comfortable deal on an ongoing basis right?

Michael: Well, I think that’s where the rub is, I think that in that past, and let me ask yourself the same thing, did you offer free, any type of free trial in the past? You know going back a while?

Brett: Yeah, so we actually, we run, we utilized a paid trial and also we still are utilizing a single day, we used to run that and that never worked and we got it down to, we do offer a day tryout, but we’ve moved on from people attending, but we still do dabble with that.

Michael: All right well let me give you a take on that, number one, I don’t think the free trial will ever do as well for you in the long run as a paid trial, with that being said what I’ve learned from dealing with group-on, I’ve run this year alone, I’ve run over 650 deals, so the data that I compile and that group-on shares with me, is invaluable, I’ve run 16 hundred deals in the last 4 years, so just to imagine the amount of data, and I’ve run maybe 180 thousand buys actual things people bought, so mass amount of data, so here’s what I know sessions for adults, sessions sell better than time, when it’s time, people think that I’m going to run out of it, it’s something that’s going to happen that next week anyway, so I won’t be able to go that next week it’s not a good deal anyway.  Don’t sell time, sell sessions and sell things with a long term expiration date, go for the 1 yr, you’ll get more people in and I know some people will say, well I wanted to come in earlier, ok well you know I want lots of things to happen, doesn’t mean it’s going to happen the way you want it to, so I want to get maximum amount of people coming in, so I  want to do something with number of sessions, 4 sessions, 10 sessions, 15 sessions, whatever it is, people seem to respond better to that, so that would be the number one thing you could do differently  that would set you aside from the competitors in the area.  The second part of that is, it’s like, if you can’t convince somebody, in 5 or 6 sessions to join your facility, you might as well just pack up and leave because if you try to bang people over the head, that come in from a deal site, that come in on the first day, you’re making a very big mistake.  Your first day is about first impressions, not about asking them to join, although we do ask people, we do let them know that there’s an offer like you can save 100$ off the initial startup fee by starting today, but we don’t pressure them and we only keep it limited to that one day.  We’ll allow them to do that pretty much throughout the entire trial period and it’s a no pressure thing that’s going to be very important, but you have an opportunity and I think that you should look at deal sites as equal opportunity, you are different from other people, where other competitors will try to bang them over the head the first day, you have a chance here to say hey, I’m going to show you how awesome this place is, I’m going to make it so that you never want to leave and you can’t wait to come back.  And if you keep those 2 things in mind you’ll begin to create a great experience because if you don’t have the kind of mindset to start creating great experience by knowing I want to make sure that when people leave I have to push them out the door and I want there to be a line of people out there before I open up in the morning.  If you just keep that in mind, you’ll be able to answer all the proper questions, you’ll know what I can do to make them do that, that’s not a problem, but as far as the sites go, time does not sell as well as sessions, sessions are tangible. I hand you a ticket to go somewhere, you know 5 sessions, it’s like a punch card or you know 5 individual passes like there’s something tangible, time, you know, there’s something we’re all losing, we’ll never have enough of, and we’re all running out of, so I don’t think that’s the right thing there. Did I pretty much answer the question Brett? I kind of talk sometimes…

Brett: I’m listening and I’m sure everyone else is too because there’s so many golden gyms out there and I think that it was, I guess that the main part of the question was what’s your take on other businesses.

Michael: Oh, I remember where we were, my A.D.D. was ticking in, ok. So you offer a service free, so anything paid makes it more valuable than free, so if you’re able to convert people from free, you’re going to be able to convert people from paid, but nobody will ever think that the prospects equate, oh it’s 19$ for these 4 sessions, that values them at 5$ per session, oh wow now he’s going to tell me that they’re at 15$ a session? I can’t possibly understand that, I don’t think that happens, because people are going to base the value of your service on the service.  And the facility, and the experience.  They know it’s a deal, you’re going to a restaurant for a third of the price of what it’s going to cost for dinner, they know that’s the deal but they have a very low risk way to try you out, so I don’t think like many people say, my monthly rate is 149$, how am I going to give them 6 weeks for 69$ or 6 weeks for 39$ it doesn’t equate. It’s not supposed, and don’t think that.  When you hear that and you hear people asking you for a discount and you hear people saying well, it’s only 39$ for 6 weeks or it’s 149$ well my friend is paying someone down the road 69$ that means you messed up.  When you go into a high end car dealership, a Mercedes dealership, a BMW dealership, you don’t even think of haggling on the price, you don’t even think of haggling for a discount, because you’re in a showroom that’s as posh as a Las Vegas hotel, you are being handled by a guy who’s dressed nicely, whose very accommodating, who calls you sir, or Mr. and your last name and they’re providing a certain level of high end experience for you. You feel important when you go in there, you feel respected.  Now if your facility doesn’t do those things, if you’ve got shitty fold up chairs in your lobby, if you’ve got a ratty carpet, if you’ve got dirty equipment or your stuff is all disheveled, you’re going to be discount center and then when you do a 39$ for 6 weeks, they’re going to think you’re worth that.  It’s up to you to make sure that the core of your facility and the design that the classes you actually have are kick-ass, that your customer service experience is exemplary, you need to make sure those things are in place, and that your marketing needs to be as good as all those things because that’s how they’re going to first perceive you when you’re first coming in, so you need those 4 or 5 steps to make sure that no one complains about the bugs and people look at it like they got a gift getting it for 39$ and they’re happy to pay whatever it is.  Now I think I answered it right?

Brett: I think you did mate, you got it

Michael: I’m old it takes me a while

Brett: It’s all right, so it’s just I’m aware of the timing and I know you’ve got to go and start your day off and I’ve got to go get to bed in a moment, but quick question, what have you found today to best offer, that you’ve utilized before have you changed it up, have you tested different offers with group-on or what have you found to be most successful for your business?

Michael: Well, I’ll give you a, we in July 2 years ago, we did our first split test with group-on and we actually asked them about it, and they were right at the time when I guess they were experimenting with it, and I think we were one of the first companies to actually do the split test offer. So we initially had 4 classes and they had personal trainers and training sessions. We decided to do a hop over where when you click on the offer, it now says 4 classes for 30$ or 10 classes for 50$.  Wow, the higher price offer change, was a game changer for us because for about 70% of people took the higher price offer.  That created a lot more revenue for my company but from my client’s point of view; they had an easier time converting people who had a higher investment, people who became more invested and purchased a high number of sessions seemed to convert better. Now as far as the offers, I think six weeks eight weeks is long, I don’t think adults need that long to make a decision about something, if it was concerning kid facilities I think that would be a little bit different. But I think the short term less than 10 classes, because the facility wants to make money from it, that, that’s not the reason to do it. I think sticking with the, like on the website we do 3 or 5 classes on our group-on site we do 4 to 10, and overwhelmingly the higher number either the 5 or 10 always sells more. So that’s one thing I’ve found out for sure and having a price point anywhere between 5-6 dollars a class seems to work really well.  If you’re hearing oh it’s expensive or oh I don’t know I have to think about it, you messed up, it’s nothing to do with the deal, the deal site just brought you free people. If you screw that up it’s all on you not the deal site.

Brett: Fantastic mate, and you, thanks for sharing that perfect, that’ll give a lot of people some great information.  I guess a couple of key things that I want to bring out there because I felt this way with many trainers as well in regards to people who have gone and seen out the deal and, for example, you know, their website how to collect the leads and the process from once you actually get the lead to then becoming a client, make sure that you got that all taught and….

Michael: Can I make a suggestion? The problem is with deal sites is they don’t give you the leads.  Here’s something that we’ve done, and we don’t do it all the time but we do it when we run national deals and it works very well, first of all, your website has to look like the service you’re offering, if you’re offering a cow bell class your website can’t look like a zimbra website, there has to be a consistency between your website and the deal you’re offering.  Even using the same images, same colors, don’t just go with the stock photo, don’t let them pick the photo for you they’re all going to want to write the copy for you, try to use something that connects you to the website, most websites don’t let you brand, they don’t let you put a logo anymore.  The first year with did that with group-on and then they scratched that and everyone else followed suit.  However, 83% of all people from group-on at least refer to the company’s website, make sure that group-on gets a schedule link, this is really important, so it should say in your schedule. Huge difference in sales between having it and not having it.  Make sure that your website is congruent with the deal site.  So if you have an offer that’s the group-on deal, make sure that the offer on the other site is not as good as the group-on deal, but here’s one kicker that will make a big difference. Make a popover on your website during the time that you’re running a group-on deal and say for group-on clients only, put your name and email in here to receive this free report on xyz and what you’ll do is even group-on people who do not buy, you’ll be able to leverage the traffic from the group-on site and start collecting leads that you put into your funnel and just like you said a few moments ago that the responder is going and everything else. So using that popover and it comes up 2 seconds after the website loads where they’re going to click the link from group-on.  The other way to do it is to actually give group-on a specific link where the popover only comes up using that link and if they go say if you were Australianfitness.com you’d give group-on Australianfitness.com/popover.html that would be the link and that’s where your website would come and 2 seconds later the popover would show up. So that’s the way to get the most out of the deal site. Now you average the leads over a year and you’ve got maybe 180 leads, converted 30 more or 20 more contracts throughout that year, which is not unreasonable, and if you’re average contract is 1000$ that’s a 20000$ nugget you just got per year just doing that one thing. Not increasing your work output, not spending more money, but doing one little twist, one little tweak that will make a difference online.

Brett: If you’re sitting there listening and you head’s spinning right now I really suggest you go back through this podcast and actually put it on slow-mo and write down everything that might stick out to you because honestly the..

Michael: Now I’m in New York and I’m doing my best not to speak fast, because you guys in Australia actually speak as fast as we do, but slow-mo might help, but I’m trying to slow it down guys.

Brett: Nah it’s wonderful mate, you can speak fast because the more information you share, it’s quite funny you say that because I actually would’ve been probably 2 years ago I ran a deal and I actually did it with my online workout product I was amongst the first personal trainers to work with scoup-on which is another big one over here in Australia, and ended up doing about 700 sales and getting about 1200 leads from it and those people came on to the database because we had that setup.  So I totally agree with the setting up of…

Michael: Now that’s an interesting thing you bring up I think here’s where you have to understand something about your business to understand whether or not your deals sites are the best thing ever, do you know, not on a deal site, what your average cost to sell that product was, like what was the cost to acquire a lead and what was the cost to acquire a purchase? Do you recall on that number?

Brett: Back in that day, my lead that was one of the big starts to my lead I only had like about a 300 leads in my database at that time and now obviously it’s grown substantially in that area, but the cost I wouldn’t have even known. I’ve hardly sold any of the product as it was and I guess I’ve used the deal sites just to leverage it from that angle.

Michael: Well, look at this for a second. Say you’re a fitness center and you run an advertisement in a local newspaper. And it’s 400$, let’s just imagine you get eight calls, now you have paid 50$ per call and of the 8 calls 4 of them show up, now you have paid 400$ to get those 4 to show up. And let’s say of the 4 you’re really good and you close ¾  you paid 400$ to get 3 people to sign up. It is 125$ per sign up. It’s a lot. Now you had a product, and let’s just say on average you had a 97$ info product many people would say it might cost them 15$ to 20 $ to make a sale and you might say hey great it’s an initial product it doesn’t cost much money, but it cost me 4$ to get a lead and every one of 4 leads gets me a sale, I’m selling for 100 and I’m making 84$ profit I’m doing great I’m making 4 and ½ times profit.  That’s awesome, now you were in a deal site, collected leads, now the great part about this is, so 700 people bought, you now have those customers you got paid to get those leads so you’re in negative, you didn’t pay anything and you got potential 1200 clients, because what happens is it’s not the product that you sell today, it’s the product you sell tomorrow and the next day, so what’s the lead worth in the future and the next time you sell to 700 people, guess how much you have to pay? Zero. You send out an email, you’ve got people who have gained trust in you and have bought from you once before which scientifically makes them more likely to buy from you a second time 15 times more than the 1st purchase, so then you’ve got 1200 leads doing something else that got you leads from people who didn’t buy from group-on or scoup-on, whatever it was, and now you have an opportunity to market those people for free.  No cost. So if you do your cost-analysis in your fitness center, first of all, you don’t know what your average person costs you to acquire then you need to go back to your drawing board and figure that out, but once you do know that you could say, you know, you cost me 47$ to acquire a 1 yr contract on average which, let’s just say is 1500$ but I can get, since it’s only 47$, I can get paid 20$ to get the lead and I can close 30% of them and it’s an astronomically better number.  So I think that if you think about it in that context you say, well why wouldn’t I do that don’t think about what their perceived value is of what they spent that’s not important, think about what it costs for your lead and think about it now as an opportunity for free, not only free, you got paid to get them. You know which is the part you’ve got to wrap your head around.  And you’ve always done that and I’ve always done that and now, there’s this new revolution where you’re getting paid to give you leads, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Brett: No, I definitely agree mate, it’s actually a good little wake up, for everyone out there to actually if you don’t know what it costs you to get a lead or even a client or contract you need to sit down and you need to look at numbers because when it comes down to, and I noticed you said 15 times more likely to buy after they’ve already purchased from you and that’s where it comes down to because it’s quite funny you say this because I know one person where actually bought one of those highly discounted items, it was a 47$ product the guy was selling it for 15$ and I got half of it of course, little did I know one of those people had actually gone on to purchase a product worth several hundred dollars which was quite amazing when you look back through it, the journey, little did I know when I set up  this deal that I’d be selling hundreds of dollars worth of products.

Michael: I think you hit the nail on the head, I think that giving it away for free would’ve still made sense to you.

Brett: Yeah.

Michael: I met with someone yesterday who owns Marilyn Monroe, I met with a company in New York, that owns the license to her and he shared a story with me and they own a lot of licenses actually as they’re a licensing company, they were approached by a cosmetic company that wanted to use this license and it would cost x and we’re going to do y amount of business and this company said ok we want x number of million dollars and they said, well, we’ll give you a couple hundred thousand, and they said why would we do that, well we’re going to be advertising a 20million dollar campaign advertising this.  So this guy gave this company the license for free, or close to free, and I thought this is insane, then he told me about all the deals he subsequently closed and one of them has to do with apple, and now apple is dealing with Marilyn Monroe’s image he was able to close more deals because of the advertising campaign that the cosmetics did, so it’s really cool if you think about things in that context, so it’s a little bit like blows your mind in the big picture but that’s the way you have to think, so if you gave your membership away for nothing granted they have to pay somebody for it, so there’s perceived value there for it and there’s commitment but man if you gave your stuff away like that how could you use that idea in other things? For instance if you make a product you know that you always trying to find people with big lists because you want to partner with them, but imagine you gave those guys 100% commission on whatever you felt the product was going to be and like wow that’s crazy I’m losing all my money, but no you’re acquiring maybe hundreds or thousands of potential customers for you to sell your next products or services.  Just think who you could give your stuff away to that would promote you and advertise you more and there’s so many neat things you can think of, you know how can you find a local drink manufacturer, that you can find a way to get your offer on the other side of their cap and you know you’ll agree to sell it in your facilities if they’ll agree to put this offer under all the caps or you’ll pay whatever loyalty or coupon code online, or approach a local brand of fitness wear in your facility, and something that’s your demographic, maybe a skate shop or something beachy, I know you guys have water in Australia right? So something like surfing and there was another tag put in every shirt that gave you, once you bought this it gave you two free sessions at xyz fitness center, like using things like that, using other brands to bring you leverage, like this is what I do with my franchise, I got group-on to partner with me, they fortunately paid me money to but I got them to give me brand exposure and I think that all of us no matter how big or small we are we are a brand and we always have to look at our 1200 sq. ft. fitness center or our chain of 50000 sq. ft. fitness centers we have to look at us as a brand and the internet provides you will the ability to be as big as anybody, because anybody can make a website, anybody can do lead generation, anybody can do link building, can build citations, build a reputation and can link with almost anybody. The cool thing is that anyone you know that’s in reach and whether you’re reaching out to someone that helps a life or whatever site it is, there’s ways man you got to start thinking outside of the box, and this is what I’m spending my time doing now, I mean I’m telling you all these things and I haven’t done all these things yet, but it’s a direction I’m moving in and it’s where I want o align myself with, so I can have other people benefit from my service or product but also promote it for me.  So I hope that that little story from yesterday helps a little bit, but really for me it was like wow.

Brett: Mate, I’m an advocate for that and whenever I’m talking to you about whatever it’s the whole thing of what are you willing to give up at the front to get the sale.  You know I get emails everyday from trainers going, help me, how’d you build your fan page so fast?  How’d you get so many people in your database? And it all comes back to what did I give up at the front to get there? And that’s something that I was living true to was, it’s just something that keeps me focused and holding on to, like a said a few minutes ago I know you have to keep to a schedule and we could talk all day, but I want to leave the call with any words of wisdom or any advice you’d give someone out there, and I know that you gave some earlier like businesses, and you’re a man of many analogies and so forth so give us your favorite analogy and something we can take home and give out.

Michael: Well, I think we talked earlier and I always think of business like a hand you’ve got a bunch of different fingers and each one of them is a different fastest of your business and you just don’t know when you start which direction you’re going to go in.  But as you move forward and you try to grow each one of these fingers, you’ll find which one grows the fastest, becomes the fattest, where the low hanging ones are, you can’t always know what the end is, you have to monitor all these different areas, see where your best opportunity is and then run with it, but the other part is, my first business mentor I ever had told me one thing I’ve never forgotten and it always pushes me forward and his name is Andrew Wood and his, he always said action creates opportunity and sometimes you don’t know what’s going to happen. You initiate conversation, you have lunch, I once organized a business lunch with a bunch of businesses in my community, as a way to get us all together on the same page to fortify ourselves with the commerce of the area.  The hair salon wasn’t referring people to me, I wasn’t referring people to the restaurant and from that a lot of really cool things happen, I won’t go into detail about that today, but I just took action, I didn’t know what the result was going to be but I started moving forward and it’s kind of luck ready, fire, aim. You know everyone’s kind of luck ready, aim, fire.  Sometimes you just have to shoot and see what you hit, and those are the things that really drive me forward and I try and remind myself of every day so I can make things happen because to think that you can figure it all out and I know that we’re all, listen, as business owner’s we’re a type personalities right? But as like fitness guys, we’re like triple personalities so we want to control everything.  We want to really know what’s going to happen next and what’s the next step and it’s like man, just get out there and do stuff and the other part of that for me is that done is better than perfect.  You can take time to perfect things, but if everyone who entered the fitness competition did it at the peak of their career, no one would ever enter them.  You’ve got to just do some things when you’re not ready, you’ve got to put your feet to the fire. I don’t know how it’s like in Australia, but like when you buy a house in the States, you’re never ready, you’ve just got to make a commitment and just do it you can’t always have everything in place beforehand. I think there’s too many people so fearful they wait until every condition is right, the planets have aligned, the right horoscope, just get out there and do shit man, just do think about it all day, just get out there and make something happen, and you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, you’re going to screw things up, but as it was explained to me as a young man, to guys stand on the corner, one guy asks every girl to get laid, the other guy doesn’t ask any girl to get laid, so here’s what happens, the guy who doesn’t ask any girl, he doesn’t get slapped in the face, but he doesn’t get laid, the guy who asks every girl to get laid, he gets slapped in the face a lot, but in the end he gets laid too. So if you keep that bizarre analogy in mind, that was actually told by my father, believe it or not, when I was about 15 years old, that’s it man, just get out there and do some shit man, you know, if you mess up, you mess up, make something, happen, and if you have an open mind, you talk to enough people, something cool is going to happen to you.

Brett: Man, I love it! Perfect! Words of wisdom right there.  Look mate I guess, just thanks so much for taking the time out of your day, you know it’s been great chatting to you again and we’ll have to get you on a future episode. No doubt we’re going to get some comments on this and with many questions and we’ll just if you can find time to hop off your new boat that you’ve got there that I’ve seen, well deserved…

Michael: Thanks.

Brett: Look thank you very much mate and to everyone out there listening, I really suggest you re-listen to this podcast, I’m going to do it tomorrow myself, take down some extra notes and some key things, and head over to podcast.professional.com and listen to any future episodes, you can download it on ITunes and to your mobile phone, so, Mike, thanks a lot again my friend and you have a fantastic day.

Michael: Hey it was my pleasure and if any of your clients have any questions feel free to reach out to me on Facebook if it’s something pertaining to this, you know if I can get to you I certainly will, and yeah listen it was a real pleasure…

Brett: Yeah mate and what I’m trying to do is I’m going to put your details underneath this episode in here so people will be able to find you on Facebook and also I’d like to, any other trainers out there who are interested in looking at the kickboxing franchise, it’s all at kickboxing.com and we’ll put some details there as well so you can check it out, and so hey, we’ll see you branching into Australia a lot more rapidly and yeah, looking forward to it.

Michael: Well I hope to see you down there sometime before 2014 and again thanks for the opportunity to chat with you, and the people over there and wish you guys the best of luck, and now I know it’s late for you so go get some rest and I’ll speak to you real soon.

Brett: No problems mate, thanks a lot.

Michael: Thanks Brett. All right. Bye.

Brett: Bye now.

Thanks you for listening to another episode of the FiiT Professional podcast, the number one podcast that will help fitness professionals grow their fitness business. Head over to fiitprofessional.com now to check out the number one business opportunity for fitness professionals.