Ep 033: High End Online Coaching with AJ Mihrzad

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In this episode Brett talks to AJ Mihrzad.

AJ is the author of the best selling book; “The Mind Body Solution”, Train your Brain for Permanent Weight Loss where he proves that the key to a better body that’s in shape, energized and youthful is a healthy brain.
AJ is also a Fitness professional and has a Masters in Psychology. He has also been featured in Men’s fitness and on Bodybuilding.com and is a keynote speaker at various events.
Along with changing the lives of the general public. He’s dedicated to helping Fit Pros create an ethical and profitable Online Income with his 10X Online Fitness Coaching Program.

In this episode you will discover:

  • The #1 client getting strategy that AJ uses
  • How AJ structure high end 5k online coaching programs
  • AJ’s #1 resource to learn direct response marketing
  • and so much more…

Find out more about AJ here and what he offers here.

 

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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.

 

Ep 032: How To Run A Health & Fitness Retreat

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In this episode Brett shares the framework on how he was able to create and deliver a SOLD OUT health and fitness retreat in Bali.

You will also discover:

  • Brett’s hidden talent, revealed within the first 60 seconds
  • A step by step process to a successful overseas retreat
  • The hidden step that SO MANY people forget (will save and make you thousands).
  • How he was able to sell out the retreat within 24 hours and have a waiting list of over 176 people.

and 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.

 

Ep 029: Bali Business Lessons

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bali business lessons

(9min) In this episode Brett shares a VERY valuable business lesson he experienced whilst away on holiday. You will also discover:

  • Where and how you can implement this into your own business.
  • How this one thing transformed into a life time customer.

and so much 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.

Episode 16: Planning

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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.

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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 14: Brett Interviews Industry Expert Justin Tamsett (Trends)

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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.

 

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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.

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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 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.

 

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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 9: Fiit Professional Master Class (Getting S*&T Done)

[sharethis]

In this Fiit Professional Podcast Brett is flying solo.

He takes the time to answer some very important questions from the listeners.

  • Whats the fastest way to build a business?
  • How to get the most done in the least amount of time?
  • What would he do if he only had $1000 cash and had to start again?

He even gets on a rant about a non Business related question.

And explains why there has been no podcasts for the last month!

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

 

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Fiit Professional Master Class (Getting S*&T Done)

Transcript of EPISODE 9:

Introduction:

Hello and welcome to another fit professional Podcast I’m your host today Brett Campbell and today’s episode is going to be slightly different to the previous ones. The reason been is I have absolutely no guests today; I have no one to talk to. No one wants to talk to me, know I’m actually kidding I’ve actually got some really good interviews lined up over the coming weeks, so stay turned for those. But, today I’m going to use this time as a bit of an opportunity to answer some of the questions that many of the fit professionals have been leaving on the been a personal trainer Facebook fan page. If you haven’t seen it yet, jump on Facebook and go to Facebook.com/Ilovebeenapersonaltrainer and you can check out the page.

It’s another opportunity where whenever we create a Podcast we put the links and so forth up there and also put links to other tip, and so forth what we have. Today I’m going to start off by answering some of the questions we have had like, I have said on our Facebook fan page. Then in seeing how much time we have left will really determine what I’ll be speaking about again, as always these episodes are very raw, and I always feel when they are raw like, this and there is no real big plan around it some of the best material can come. If we get started and straight into the question – well actually no I’m just going to give you a bit of a heads up, because I know there has been many of your mailing me saying, “When is the next Podcast coming out” you know and admittedly it has been at least three weeks since I did my last one and the reason behind that is because I have had a lot of things going on myself in business. We ran our first ever fit-check retreat in Bali, so we took twenty-four ladies over to Bali. We spent seven days going through a whole heap of workshops ranging from personal development, the health and fitness realm, and it was just a magical setting, we did hippocrates things, we went white water rafting, we actually got to go and meet all the villagers. We went to a school there and were able to take a heap of sporting equipment to there, so that was a really good day, but overall it was a great success, so I’ve been away doing that. Then we came back for about a week and I ended up having to go to Fiji, some of my friends just got married over in Fiji, so I’ve just spent the last ten days over there getting a tan, know I’m peeling and I look like I have some kind of skin disease. All of that aside I have been extremely busy and we have new fit-check locations popping up you know every couple of weeks, so we are working hard behind the scenes to get hose going and of course with spring coming, as I recall the spring is only three days away, so we are going to get a massive influx there of trainers who will be wanting to start their very own Boot Camp Program, and really leverage I guess of the fact that the one-on-one training – I say this to many people and all my coaching clients it’s like, you can train one person at – let’s say you are going to charge them fifty dollars for the hour or you can have ten people turn up to a Boot Camp Program of yours paying fifty dollars, and all of a sudden your hourly rate has gone up from fifty dollars for the hour to five hundred dollars an hour.  So the thing with Boot Camps and of course there is some minor details in there that we would need to look at, but it’s clear that the Boot Camp training and group training and even semi-private training is beginning, or it’s not beginning it’s already been there for a long-time, but it’s certainly taking over and becoming more prominent in the industry. You just need to look at the fact that we have thirty new fit-check locations opened in the last four month you know that is where the industry is heading, so if you’re listening to this with your personal trainer doing one-on-one you know I would really suggest looking at the options of groups. If you’re in groups you know look at hey, “Is it working for you” if not then go through all of these Podcasts and take the information and try and implement it into your own business. But, hey if you’re one of those trainers and you don’t want to go and have to create it all and do all the hard work and so forth then head on over to fit professionals, so fiitprofessional.com, and you can just check out the opportunity we have there.

So, that is what I have been up to for the last month or so and you know I’m going to be getting back – we are going to be putting more regular Podcasts together, so I’m very excited about that we have some great people as I had mentioned earlier that we are going to be talking to. First of all let’s get stuck into these questions, now the first question here Alex has written, “What is the fastest way to build a business?” so that’s the million dollar question right there isn’t it. If I was asked that question by someone by a coaching client and they said, “Look Brett what is the fastest way to build a business?” my first reply to that would be well, “What do you already know?” so what is your education level in that particular area, so if someone said, “What is the fastest way to build a Boot Camp?” I’d go well, “What do you actually know right now about Boot Camps?”  I will get you to write down on a piece of paper and I’d say write out a list of what you actually know about it. We know that with Boot Camps you need to have like, your pricing you need to have that all sorted. You need to know how geez just hit a blank there – there is a truck that just drove through my problem, through my window, my office is actually looking out onto the main highway and I had almost just seen a truck off the highway, it just stopped me in my tracks, so lucky we are not editing this.

Back to the question, “What is the fastest way to build a business” and we were talking about if someone is going to build a Boot Camp right, so I would say, “Well, what do you already know?” so they may no nothing or they may already know that’s not what I want, and we need to you know either train in a park or are you going to train indoors you know, so you need to know that. You need to also know what price you are going to charge the clients, who often then clients are going to come, what is your referral program like, what are you actually going to do inside your program that will generate more referrals and more leads etc. It’s a very, very open question and it goes back to that thing what your education on it is, and if we look at it when people go to me, “Brett, what’s the fastest way to have an information product, and start making money online?” again, the same thing you need to have education based around it. If you don’t know what to know or to learn ask someone who is doing it and ask them, “What they should do” so an example is if someone asks me, “Well how do you build a business” I’d say well, “For one I’ve spent over two-hundred thousand dollars in the last five years educating myself” so I’ve actually gone out there, and searched for information because even though we have Google and all these cool search engines that where we can find information at our fingertips the issue with that guys is that there is, so much information out there it can become overwhelming. You need to really go out there and not only just educate yourself in the fact of I just need to go and look at information you need to educate yourself that you’re looking at the right information as well. Don’t just go of, of one thing and go, “Yeah I’m just going to go with that” find a re-occurring pattern with all types of information out there and then see what works for you.

I know that is probably not want you want to hear Alex, yeah you have to go out and educate yourself, because there is no extreme fast way to build a business, but if you’re asking me the question of, “How do I get my first few clients” you know because that’s the start of building a business then I would say a completely different answer. Then what I would do is I would tell you well, “Who do you already know that you could get on the phone immediately and ring up and tell them hey, “Look I’ve just started as a personal trainer” and this is even if you’re been a personal trainer for years the same thing applies here. You could say, “Look I’ve just got this new program starting it’s starting on this date. This is what is included and this is what you will get out of it. This is how it will help you is this something you would like to do?” if they said, “Yes” then you go, “Great” do you know anyone else who would want to join you again, it’s that whole thing of asking people. Every time I went through this particular strategy with any personal coaching clients there is guaranteed to be at least two or three new people sign up. It’s the most un-utilized technique for getting clients. You know your mobile phone is an extremely valuable tool you have all of these people in your contacts list why don’t you give them a call and actually talk to them. Same thing applies with Facebook get on Facebook and – most people have friends these days that they don’t even know, use that to your advantage send them a Facebook message and tell them this is what I’m doing would you be interested if not, do you know anyone else who would be? Again, you would have to work this out in more detail, but even offer them a reward if they were to refer someone. Let’s say I asked you, “I’m a personal trainer I’m looking for some clients. I said hey, “would you be interested in joining my X, Y, Z, program?” you said, “No” I’d say well, “Look if you know anyone I’d be happy to give you fifty or hundred dollars cash for any referral that you bring on.” What you’re starting to do is there is your starting to think outside the circle, so if we sum up that question for you Alex you need to educate yourself regardless. I’m not talking about going and spending thousands of dollars, and go out there and hire a coach etc, etc, although those things would be you know –  obviously what I believe you should do, but there are easier ways to start you know go and read some books. Go and jump on someone’s website and read some information and just be open to the fact that you need to learn before you can earn. You know that’s a really big thing as well people starting in the industry and they want fifty clients straight away and they really don’t want to have to do all the hard work.

Now, I guess whilst that’s the magical fairy tale, but you know there are ways now that can really alleviate all of that, so an example is you know with our fit-check locations you know the reality of it is that it’s all there ready for someone to really want to come and take the opportunity. But, if you’re not that person and you really want to build something yourself then you need to go and educate yourself in those areas. All right I think I have hammered that answer all the way home, so let’s get on to the next question and that was from Chris. Chris has asked, “How do I get more done in less time?” Now, normally I have a time management in procrastination seminar I guess that I go through, and it normally takes me half a day to get through it because there are so many cool, valuable things, and it really comes from the setup. I was actually filming a Podcast yesterday for our fit-checks and one of the things that we talked about was planning, planning obviously is the number one thing to be able to get stuff done. Not only planning it’s actually action the planning because the amount of people that have you know appointments in there dairy or there to do list…they just religiously just don’t do the, to- do list, and then what that does it give you a bad programming of, “Oh, it’s okay not to have to complete what I’ve said” which is really negative to your mindset, and it’s something you really want to stay away from.

[Coughing]

Excuse me! I’m just going to have a sip of my coffee here. All right as I was saying it’s really negative to your mindset and you need to – if you are one of those people and it’s happening to you then you really need to access your time management system that you currently have, because everything we do is a system and we can always refine the system to make it better or to improve it. An example is sitting in your car seat, look as silly as it sounds your driving and sitting in your seat and if you’re not feeling comfortable you just move the seat back a little and then all of a sudden it has a totally different effect. So, if we look at that from your time management you need to setup not only your day or your week, but you really need to setup a good three to four weeks in advance, that’s my take on it. Now, you get people going look, you have to have a five year goal, twelve month… whilst I’m totally all for that and one-hundred percent agree with it you really just need to get down to the nuts and bolts because that is where it really starts to happen. Of course without long-term goals you’re not going to know the smaller goals to get toward it, but let’s say for example how I plan my day that will be the easiest way for you to be able to relate. Now, every morning before I don’t work from home so we have the ability of having our own office space and headquarters etc, which one that’s a really big thing that allows me to make sure that I have to get stuff done within a certain time frame. I don’t like been in the office late you know except if there are heaps of things going on like, for example right now we have a product launch going on, so we’ve had three days where we are selling information product and I’ve been doing a whole heap of extra work on the back-end of things which you know I’ve been up till seven or eight at night, but this is the great thing about it, it’s all about planning, I knew that was going to happen weeks ago. If we look at my days, so I come into the office before I even, and this is the biggest tip I think since I’ve started doing this, it’s had a massive changes…don’t go straight to your emails, don’t open your emails.

I have got a white board in my office I’ll walk straight up to my white board and I will do a brain dump of everything I need to do today, so if I was to look at my white board up there right now I have got six tasks that I have for the day. One of them is to create an agreement number two is to finalize one of our locations that is going to be launching. Number three is to review all our marketing add, and so forth just as an overview. Number four is send an email out to our local fit-checks here at Burly, and then number five is create this Podcast, and then after that I have got number six is, outline our information product. What I did there is I wrote out all the points and as you have seen there is only six there…six of the main things. The thing is you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with a heap of little things, so I put six main things that I really wanted to complete today, and that may change at the end of the day…I mean I’m going really well today it’s three-forty and I’m doing the Podcast, so I’ll finish this in probably another fifteen twenty minutes or so depending on how much I ramble on. Then after that I will have the last hour or so of the day and I will get to put my creative mind to work and create our next workout product, our next online product. That is what I did there I wrote it out and then I actually put them in specific order of what needs to be done first.

The first thing you can see on my list the Podcast was the second thing that I wrote on the list, but it was the fifth thing that I put in order of importance. How I judge importance is I look at you know you would of heard all the different of quadrants of urgent, important, not important, urgent, etc, etc, so I just based those basically of impact versus what impact that will have on our business and how easy is it to accomplish it. I know for a fact that this Podcast is very easy it’s just sitting here talking, but I know also it will take up at least an hour of my time maybe another twenty minutes by the time we do the recording and get it sorted and put it on iTunes and put up a blog post, and then send an email out to you to hear it. Put a post on the fan page about it etc, etc, so you need to take those timings into account. That is how I organized the start of my day; this is before anything has ever happened. Then I will sit down and I will have on my note book here I have a list of, who am I waiting to hear from, and who I need to reach out to, okay, two key questions. Now, I will write under that who am I waiting to hear from and I might be waiting to hear from someone who is going to take up some opportunity or waiting to hear back from someone about some coaching or communication whatever it might be, and I will write that down and then I will go and write I’m waiting to hear back from them. Who do I need to reach out to today, now, that’s the difference is who do I need to reach out to today? On my list today one of them was a guy Nathan from New Zealand, I’m going to speak at the New Zealand Conference in November and I actually need to action my confirmation back to him, and then pass it on to Sherry who is our admin Manager to then fax, scan, and send off etc., so that is what I did again, before I even looked at my emails. What happens is when I go to look at my emails, I must confess right here when I do check my emails this morning I did break one of my rules, and that was because I wanted to look at how many sales we have made of a certain product today, but other than that basically what happens is when I write down whom I’m waiting to hear from and who do I need to reach out to all my brain is doing is scanning for the three or four people that I’m waiting to hear from. What that means is all the other emails are not important right now to me, and all it will do is just distract me from doing what I do. What happened was I generally try and knock out one or two tasks and then I’ll spend half an hour on emails and go through the list of emails and try and get as many as I can done. If I can’t get them all done in that time I just stop and I will do them this afternoon when I have finished the day, so again, it’s that thing of prioritizing what’s more important and at the end of the day is for us to give you some extra tips on that, it really counts down to not getting lost on Facebook. That’s number one, because what happens is that you log on Facebook, next thing you see is that someone talk about something funny or they have shared the video and all of a sudden you find yourself watching that video and then some ad pops up on that site and you click on it and next thing you do is something that’s totally of task and you have just lost ten minutes before you have realized that you are in the warp of that Facebook, so I really try to stay away from there and the time when I do go onto Facebook again is like is on my list number three is where I am going to review all my ads. I go into there but that’s in a totally separate account as well, because I know that is totally separate and I don’t want to get distracted on my personal profile. If I want to look at Facebook and have a bit of a jam around, that would be genuinely tonight, in my free time if I choose to do that. That’s one tip biz, just be cautious of way spending your time, especially online because when you get more online, you realize that there is mass of opportunities online, it’s a really thin line of trying to get lost on something versus trying to be productive. So how I do that as well? I just don’t open my web browser and I would do as much as I can without my web browser. Of course unless I am looking for certain things. That’s fine, Facebook.

My next one is, how do I get lost of that is I actually had my phone turned of silent, I’ve had this for the last two years I think I’ve been utilizing this skill. Now, while some people may think “Oh, that’s not good!” because what if a client ringing up for an order or ringing and phone is not ringing. That’s why they have voice messages for and I can give you a call back, admire less convenience. The thing there, the key is to not fall into the track of being joining on the spot all the time because what happens is that net can become inspect. Of course if you are in the industry and you feel like “What if I miss a call? What if it’s a client? They will go to someone else!” that’s just a decision you will need to make. I just know that for me that if someone is calling me when I am half way through… let’s use this for example, I am sitting here recording a podcast and my phone is on silent. What if it wasn’t and some rang me? What that would do? That would totally interrupt what we are doing. Just because I am recording this and you can hear what I am about to say and I am not going to edit it, what makes that different than me sitting there writing up the agreement this morning and someone interrupting me doing that. So think about that, I will say it again because I think that’s very, very important. What I am doing here is that I don’t want to be disturbed because it might make me forget something or say something wrong or… at the risk of embarrassing myself which is very hard to do, for myself, takes a lot to embarrass me, but the point of making is why is this more important than any other task throughout the day, so that is something to think about. I would love to actually hear what your thoughts are on that because I actually just had a bit of a moment because I think the importance is just outstanding. It’s just like, when you are with the client, so you are siting with client and then your phone goes off through the middle of the session, you don’t want to be disturbed and if you are one of those who has your phone on you through the session, whether you are using the stopwatch or not, get a different stopwatch because the last thing that you want is a distraction, but again that’s just my opinion, do what you feel but again, you don’t want to be disturbed while you are training them. So what is the difference of being disturbed while you are doing your paperwork or what is a difference of being disturbed when you are in your free time, because when I am in my free time I don’t want to be disturbed, that’s my free time, that means that I can choose to do what I want, not other people put me on the spot to make a decision on not whether to answer my phone so that’s another reason why I don’t have my phone on. It’s great because people soon learn to leave a message so I think if we direct that up in that question, there are some pretty good valuable little tips there. Another thing that… how I know to get stuff done. I would normally implement this probably the last six weeks and it’s, common ideas always got ideas and a voice got things popping up and it might be locked on and I need to see an email to join blogs. What I do is, I use the notes in my actual Iphone, I use the Notepad and I just send to myself email to a specific email address, so I have got an email address that is set up totally separate than the other one which is just basically all my ideas and notes and things that, now I need  to do I just send them to there. I have said that is a cool little tip that I found to be quite useful to myself. Alright, thanks for that question Criss, so we are moving on to Norm.

Norm asked me question and this was based on previous podcast interview that I did and it was actually a question that I asked one of my guests and basically the question was “If you had a thousand dollars to spend, an education that you have now and a thousand dollars and a MacBook Pro, what would I do?” I guess I’m actually taught about that answer quite often, every time I am asked I am like “I wonder what I would do.” I guess what I would do first of all is, I know the power of online marketing so that’s a given that I would start on online. I would go and buy a domain name which cost you like twelve dollars for two years, I would buy for two years because I know it would work, if you want to be cheap on you could get one year, you could be saving money up front. I would buy domain name and basically I would, if we are going to get net ingredient I would buy a small camera that I could film myself doing some video tutorials or something like that, and I would just create an information product and I would be able to get that all set up and done because I know how to do majority of that, let’s just say that I could get all that set up for three hundred dollars and what I would do, I would spend the rest of it on advertising because I know my returner investments so I know that if I spend a dollar, I will get a return. And that’s what it’s all about; it’s about finding something that you can invest your money into and being sure that you are going to get a return of it. And something it’s an immediate return or it is a return down the track, whatever the case you just need to know that to be fact. So that’s what I would do it, create information product and get it out there ASAP. What I would do is, I would use obviously Facebook, set up a free page for it as well. I would use that to promote it, and even give away the product initially to people who, set up some sort of competition where give away and the product, if people would help me market it or affiliate the product etc. So [00:27:47 Inaudible] ways there that I would look into. But I think, normally that’s probably what you are looking for there; maybe I would set up information product and go from there.

So I got another question here from Dave, he actually talked, his question was more based around weight training, new trainers and so forth and I would actually bring up the question there so I can read it properly. One moment so… please cut away training basics old school, so to speak too many young trainers move straight to fancy exercises and train well their clients, when I don’t know how to instruct someone to do a flat babel or even a prone weights with chin ups. Dave has been in industry for ten years and look while this is generally not a weight training or physical training podcast, it’s more based on business, regard I can totally relate to that Dave and I think it’s one of those things now that it really does come back to the how education of, who is teaching these trainers at the start, because you are right, there is so many different exercises now and the whole introduction of functional training and so forth has been sort of taken, I guess, in my opinion it’s being taken out of the perspective and you get people doing single leg hop jump skip to a burpi followed by a triple twist mc pike, there is no limit to the exercise, and may not more for trainers teaching those exercises if they know how to obviously do the exercise but if they don’t, like anyone, if you don’t know how to do anything then I wouldn’t suggest you do it, I would suggest you go back to the start and… my first answer to Alex’s question is education, you need to educate yourself. But you are right; there are so many different philosophies with how you can achieve the result. It’s the ultimate debate really and I would love to actually see a big debate on it one day and it could be something that maybe I would try to push it and get started as the whole debate of… functional training of people who are fully into that and you got cross for a cross product that’s got inside as functional but again they got different mentality, you have got people who are into the box and martial arts training and at the end of the day it really comes down to what is the end result for the individual doing it because there is so many ways to achieve result like we are saying. If you use our Fiit Chick locations as an example, we realize that so many different trainers have different philosophies and if you are not passionate about what you are teaching it can become quite boring and one day….. So we keep it open for trainers to be able to train the way they would like to train, which is exciting because when you are passionate about something… let’s use the example of flat bench. I could literally make the flat bench press a really fun exercise. Now, fun I don’t changing it up at all, it keeps the exercise the same but it’s all at your approach to the exercise so… Where I see the reason why trainers are trying to do fancy exercises is, is like you said to weld their clients. You can weld your clients in many other ways other than trying to do really tricky stuff. You can weld them with your attitude; you can weld them with your energy… If you are really exciting your pump trainer, all of a sudden the flat bench press is an amazing exercise to someone. I guess that’s my two sense on that, you always have to start from basics but of course always be open to try a new things but before you try them on other people, try them on yourself. And not only that, actually understand how it works, and if I make the co-relation of that is actually understand what are you doing an athletic launch, before you just say someone do it, and they go and do it, understand the body mechanics behind that because that is really important. Just like understanding business, why are you actually doing what you are doing, understand why you have actually got a Facebook fan page and what you are trying to achieve from it, instead of just having the page, the equivalent is, to try and get you were talking about that, is the business owner who just gets to their page and just post stuff just because they think they need to. You need to understand why, you need to understand the back into it, you need to understand how it is of working parts to it. I will give you an example, I am on a bit of [00:32:52 Inaudible] but this is how I function. The example is, I put a post there on Facebook, would have been probably three or four weeks ago and it was all based on our information product that we have on sale right now. Cleanrecipesmadeeasy.com is the URL if you want it to check it out. So that is the information product that we have got right now and it was three or four weeks ago that I put it, a bit of a teaser out there, and a reason why I did that is the purpose behind it, to engage excitement, to get people talking about it because a week later someone was like ah.. when is this post is coming out etc. And then when we actually came to our product launch which is, I guess what I will do is, I would actually cover that in another episode and I will run you through, I have got it on a list here if anyone who wants to make information products, I can run you through how I was able to do that and why I did what and so forth, which is very, very valuable to you, if you want to get into that sort of stuff, but the purpose I am trying to make here is; everything that you do, you need to have a purpose behind it and there needs to be a reason why you are doing it because the last thing you will do is just flutter around and… while you get stuff done and you will achieve things. You need to ask yourself; is that really what I want to be doing, was that really the why did I wanted to achieve it? So if we get back to Alex is you need to know exactly what you are doing and why as well.

Look, I will think on that tonight, I am going to stop that question because it was all about covering weight training basics and then I am talking about information products but… that is what it’s all about. I think what we are going to do is, we are going to leave that episode there it’s going to be a nice little short mass class, I think we are coming out to the thirty five minutes now, but what I am going to do is if anyone has any questions at all, be sure to leave them underneath this post or hit to a fan page and make sure that you do ask the question, I do enjoy answering them and I know that there is many of you out there who are benefiting greatly from this podcast and I want to thank you for listening because there is no point for me talking to a computer or a microphone if no one is listening. So look on it I am going to leave it, if you are a personal trainer like I said and you are looking at amazing opportunity and with spring coming around the corner and you want to look at having your own Fiit Chick location, even if you have been in a business for years and you want to have this as an additive to your business, check it out, we will give you a call and we will let you know more about it, but until then have a fantastic day and I will talk to you, actually I will talk to you in the next episode. Bye now.

Episode 7 – Jason Urbanowicz asks Brett Campbell The Tough Questions

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This episode you are about to listen to is a little different to our regular Fiit Professional Podcast Series.

WHY?

brett campbell

Brett & His BFF – Puggsly – Soaking up the rays

Well for one, I am not the interviewer. My good friend Jason Urbanowicz takes the time to turn the tables and interviews me.

So if you have wanted to know my back story, where i started, what i have learnt, discovered on my was to running a SUCCESSFUL fitness business, then i would suggest having a listen.

  • You will also learn the 2 ah ha moments that literally turned my way of thinking upside down. That everyone will be able to relate to.
  • You will see how i was able to generate 12,564 new leads in only 24 hours, but more importantly how this unfolded.
  • You will see how i was able to go from a 1 man band to a company with several employees. (the big shift)
  • Jason also asks me who i would turn GAY for – I know, not very business like, haha, but i was happy to answer.
  • He also asks my worst habit – i know i am not alone on this.

Asides from getting to know me, my story and what it takes to be successful, you will take away points, strategies that you can implement into your BUSINESS TODAY! in fact in less than 1 hours time – after you have listened of course.

Enjoy

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

 

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Jason Urbanowicz asks Brett Campbell The Tough Questions

Transcript of EPISODE 7:

Introduction:
Okay welcome to another addition of a personal trainers guide to wealth creation that is all based around our book our best selling number one book A Personal Trainers Guide to Wealth Creation. What we have really wanted to do is get inside the minds, the heads, the psyche of the people in the book to get I guess a more elaborate view of these trainers that have really made it successfully in the industry. Today we are fortune enough to have Brett Campbell join us and before I formally introduce Brett a bit of background is that I first met Brett four maybe even going on five years ago. Brett attended one of our two day workshops and the thing that really stood out to me with Brett is like, in the front row engaging us and questions and participating at a high level, and funny enough after presenting, coaching, and mentoring people for the last fourteen odd years you know it doesn’t take me long to identify someone who’s really going to be successful – not only the personal training industry, but every area of their lives.

Here I am engaging with this guy in the front row even though we had about fifty sixty people there Brett just stood out, and I’m not surprised at all to be talking to Brett today on another whole level, so from four or five years ago from Brett attending our two day workshop to becoming a student, coach, mentor and speaker with us to then go on and really create his own empire it doesn’t surprise me in one slight bit. To introduce Brett formally Brett is the Director of Fit International which is Australia’s fastest growing fitness life business model for personal trainers, and Brett will expand more on exactly what that is when we chat. Fit International flagship is called Fit Chicks and just under fourteen months Brett has built one of the largest female only communities with over a hundred and forty thousand facebook fans I believe, and Brett can correct me if that’s wrong.

But, even more importantly he’s been able to reach over two hundred thousand people via the free giveaways, education, and products etc., so it’s really been a massive and rapid growth for Brett and Fit Chick International. Brett is also a speaker, coach, and mentor to fitness professionals, but he also runs the first of its kind free podcast for fitness professionals around the world. When he interviews the industry leading experts on all things and how to run a successful business, and I was fortunate enough to just do an interview with Brett last week where he interviewed me. Brett on the side of you know the business side of it loves riding his motorbike, and I definitely get to experience that with Brett we go on many rides together, hanging-out with his friends, and his pug Pugsley the cute and adorable little puppy he’s got there, and also like, cuddles in the winter time, so very soft and affectionate kind of guy as well especially on those cold nights. Without any further ado, I’d like to welcome Brett Campbell along to our interview today.

Brett: Thank you very much Jason and thanks for having me mate, and thanks for that wonderful bio there. You know it’s quite funny and I just want to clear something up now in case people out there are thinking – you know I like riding my motorbike, because you get to come along on rides and we go all around Australia, but when it comes to the cuddles in the winter the only reason you know about that is because I told you.

Jason: That is exactly how I know yeah; we will wear on that at the moment like to clear that up.

Brett: But, if it came down to it you know and there was a bit of man up I wouldn’t be worried about giving you a cuddle.

Jason: Yeah, I don’t know about the man love that made the man cuddle would be sufficient for me.

Brett: Yeah, okay, maybe we should word it differently.

Jason: So, romance and man love to the side let’s get into…

Brett: Yep, that’s what I’m here for.

Jason: Yeah, I’m not sure now, but let’s give the listeners something that is really going to inspire and help them. Let’ start by kicking off and giving the people listening at home a bit of an introduction to Brett Campbell. One of the things I like to paint a picture for people in their minds is I guess is how long have you been a personal trainer for? Why did you decide to start your own business in the first place?

Brett: Sure, I mean I will try and give you the quickest possible version, because I guess it extends back many, many years ago when I guess I got booted out of high school. Not because I was a bad student, but more so along the lines of I just really didn’t listen. What that was known that I look back at it I go well it was just an accumulation of ADD, and my entrepreneurial wisdom that I had that is what I put it down to.

Jason: Yeah.

Brett: You know I’ve always been that person that wanted to do ten things at once I could never sit still for long enough to concentrate on something, but you know everything that I really put my hand to I always sort of seemed to get a really good start, and it would blast off, that I had a guess – if I use the word disorder…I have a disorder called following the truth disorder I’m not sure if that’s there, but I’ve created one and basically got kicked out of high school. Then after became a cabinet maker you know I did the old thing that most parent’s say is  get a trade behind because you never know down the tracks if you ever need a job you can always fall back to it. It’s quite funny just thinking about that advice that I was given by my parent’s you know, and I don’t totally blame my parent’s at all, because that was just the advice that they were given from their parents. For some reason I couldn’t get it upon myself and thought you know well that is not the smartest advice I personally believe, but at times I didn’t have any other thing to do, and I didn’t know what to do, so I thought bugger it I’ll just go and be a cabinet maker.

I became a cabinet maker and did my trade, and I guess if I look back – I’m big on looking at lessons about everything, and the biggest lesson I got from been a cabinet maker was sticking at it. I don’t know if anyone is out there listening to it and have actually been through a trade I know you have as well Jason, so you’d be able to relate to this. There was probably three hundred nights out of three hundred and sixty out of the year that I’d come home and be, “I hate this job. This is just not me I’m not built for this.” But, you know when you’re an apprentice you can get fatigued and you get treated like, the boy I guess and you get all the crap jobs. My mind back then was why I should be doing the crap job I’m not that type of person around you know, and I didn’t understand philosophy of you know you have to walk before you can run. But, fast forward four years of finishing all that, actually three years I finished my trade early and basically went to the owner and I said, “Look I’m going to leave I’m going to finish you know I’m sick of getting paid about twelve bucks an hour building kitchens,” and you know the top tradesman were on about seventeen bucks an hour at that time, and I why can’t I get that amount of money when I’m doing exactly the same job if not better than some of them.

I think that was the first lesson for me in asking for what you want I firmly believe that I was worth something greater so really took it upon myself to go after it, and I did choose that as my first ever preference in negotiation in the business world. I took that lesson on and basically you know I started managing the factory, so I was managing a team of about fifteen guys and that, and for me it was at that stage where I wanted something bigger and I wanted something better. I knew my skill set was better than managing a team of cabinet makers, so it had been about a year and a half I finally pulled the trigger after thinking about leaving. When I pulled the trigger I decided you know what I’m going to University and study to become a personal trainer. You know I left my full time job – I was getting paid decent money at that time compared to New Zealand standards, but again, I just took the leap and became a trainer. I went to University for one year…I personally believe that University is a waste of time you know there was more free time than there was actually work time, so coming from a background of working fifty hours a week to then go to Uni for six or seven hours a week just wasn’t really juicing my boat, so at the end of the first year of Uni I jumped on a plane and came over to my sisters in Australia, and funny enough I got to stay with her for free, and as long as I built there decking around there new swimming pool, so a bit of battering there that was my first communication in battering, and contra deal. I did that and then I just searched over there how to become a personal trainer, and I looked on the internet I’ve seen it before so I thought you I got some correspondence to do that, and because of the first year I spent at Uni it was all things that I had already done, so I became a personal trainer and that was five years ago when I embarked on that endeavor. I told you it was quite a long story wasn’t it, but I embarked on that endeavor and then basically – at that time I had enough evidence to  want to be good at something you need to be around people who are good or who are displaying quality you want to achieve yourself.

Jason: Yeah.

Brett: I basically received a letter in the mail…it was funny because I was thinking about it the other day like, the evolution of our relationship and it started from a sales copy written letter that got delivered to my mail at my home address at the time, so I must of opted in I believe to a name and email field. I got a letter in the mail and it was of these two blokes running an event in Brisbane which was only an hour away, so I was like you know what do I have to lose there is some guy on their claiming he charges four hundred and forty bucks an hour and I thought it was a load of [expletive] I better check him out. I went up to this event and funny enough I sat in the front row, and started asking questions and it just, so happened that you were standing up the front as well answering the questions, so that’s basically where it started. Did you want me to continue on mate?

PM: No that’s fine, and I’ve got a saying I’d share because as you were talking my phone fell over and it actually hung up

Brett: I’ve done that.

Jason: I was pretty quickly trying to get back on and I was like, well he’s still going that’s great.

Brett: Yeah, well funny enough mate I was the idiot because I’m recording this I actually knew that you dropped out.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, that’s great.

Brett: Listen I could talk another twelve hours about myself you know it’s not hard.

Jason: Well it’s good I think it’s good to give people some background story on where everyone started, because from my experience that is how people really relate and there is some really key you know parts to that. Just to lead on from that what was the defining moment that made you realize that developing your business skills was essential, so say you’ve come through and you realize that cabinet making wasn’t for you and embarked upon the PT side of it – obviously the technical part of it like, so many trainers do get really good or skilled to some degree and go out there and join a fitness first you know pay your rent, go out to the studio you know whatever it is I need to be. I guess you put your reality that people don’t necessarily just start knocking on your door just because you’re a trainer, so I guess my question just to recap is, was there a defining moment that made you realize that developing your business skills was essential as the technical side of it, and so what was it and what did you do about it?

Brett: Sure, so again, I’m massive on you know there are certain moments that actually changed the way I look at things or feel about something, and I have gotten really two key ones. I know you asked for one, but I’m going to share two because I’m a bit of a rebel. The first key moment for me was…actually I was walking out of my garage one day and I was with a flat mate at that time and she was on her computer, and she was scrolling through what was called a PDF. I didn’t know what a PDF was back then either and I was like, “What are you doing?” and she goes, “I’m just reading this PDF” and I’m like, “What is that?” and I looked over, because what caught my eye was I’d seen photos of like, someone doing a squat and I was like, “Okay what’s that person doing?”and she told me she just purchased an eBook and it cost her thirty-seven dollars. I was like, “What you just purchased that on the computer” which is not real right, it’s just fake that looks like something you just purchased for thirty-seven dollars and know your reading it, and I said, “Where is the person from” thinking you know there is someone down the road or a friend of theirs, and she goes the persons from Canada.

I was like, that right there for me was a defining moment of this world believe it or not is bigger than your community, and bigger than your stake in your actual country. There are a whole lot of people out there that we can reach versus just our initial internal realm, and I looked at that and I thought you know what, “ I am going to sell those type of products, but better, “ because I looked at it and thought this was pretty crap it was just an exercise with some writing on it, and I was like, “Wow I could do that easily” and that was my big defining moment of what was opening the world wide web and what sort of lead me onto my internet marketing and marketing path.

The second part really guess kicked started and made me decide I want to build this multi-million dollar company whilst – my partner Emily she wanted to become a personal trainer she hated her full time job, she was working in retail, and me been someone who always just wanted to try and follow, “Oh, why don’t you do this. Why don’t you do that,” and then I basically just stopped and asked her, “Well what do you want to do?” and she goes, “I’d like to be a trainer” I said, “Oh, okay if you want to be a trainer then you will have to find a course and learn” and she learned. In that time there was a period where I guess my personal training business was put to the side, so I had my clients and was getting my money each week, but my main goal passion was to work on internet marketing, and sell my first ever eBook. Basically Emily got qualified and then I was going to use my skill set that I had acquired over the time with marketing to be able to get her some clients. What happened was that was quite amazing because we filled Emily out with clients in the first couple of weeks she was booked out. Then something extremely amazing happened which to me to this day I’ve never seen anyone ever have results like, this in the internet marketing world, and I actually know some really big hitters in the internet marketing world and some of the leading internet marketers.

It was over a twenty-four hour period I’d done something that no one had done before, and it was all to do with facebook. Basically we generated in a twenty-four hour period it was twelve thousand five hundred and sixty-four new leads come through our opt-in that we created, so to repeat that it twelve thousand five hundred and sixty four new leads in a twenty-four hour period and that to me was just you know what this thing has legs I’m going to now put my energy into creating a business. I didn’t want to have a big company I just wanted to create eBooks, sell eBooks and then just live a nice cool lifestyle, but myself been the entrepreneur and the you know person I found and asked myself, “I would be doing a disservice to this country and the world if I could not create this company, because there are so many people out there who can utilize our help” so those are the two moments mate.

Jason: Yeah, and it’s a good point and for people listening at home what you understand is Brett is a really big thinker and the other thing I really took away from that point there is when you say I tried something and I haven’t done before the key components that I learned when I first started learning marketing was that you know if anything be different, standout, and be courageous. You learn the actual psychology of marketing and sales, but don’t just follow the rest of the pack which is I guess is what you did Brett, so…I mean to take away points that I’d rehash to people is that you need to think big, and Brett was exposed to the idea it’s not just his circle of influence in his local area that – even if you were starting to build a data base up of a product or service or some type of training method, or something you have got to offer that not just people that come up to you and pay money for exchange for a session can benefit, but some kind of information product worldwide, so you might not even have that at this point.

But what you might want to start doing is looking at doing a large list in a data base, so yeah; some very key points in there. Mate, what do you believe was your biggest break in getting your business of the ground? It’s cool if you want to talk about your own PT business it’s probably what more people are going to relate to here now. I guess you can also then transfer onto Fit Chicks, but first with your own PT business what was the biggest break in getting your business off the ground I guess from when you first started to when it was really going great guns for you?

Brett: Sure, so I think if I look at it you know to step out of the actual story and look at it from the outside I see it broken up into two or three different categories, because there was the first category where I knew – I played sport all my life competitive sport and I was like, to be good you have to have a good coach. I guess it would be good for me to actually not say you know I came to one of your guys events and look I guess what I got from that day I guess just light the fire underneath me that was the big key thing attending an event, and actually knowing that it’s possible, because when you enter an industry you can go into it with the unknown of, what is actually achievable in this industry? I guess a big trigger to me was when I had seen Brad you know a great of mine, yours, your business partner saying, that he charges four-hundred and forty dollars for a PT session like that that actually stopped me in my tracks, and I was how can a guy be doing that. My mind set at the time was like;“This is a load of [expletive]” he must be either like a ninja and just milks of people like that or he must do something differently. I knew there was no such thing as ninja’s after watching the American ninja movie with Walter Berkoff

Jason:  Golden oldie.

Brett: Yeah, I was talking about that with someone the other day, but it’s not his top movie, but I wanted to see what this was all about. I liked you guys when I first meet you and I made it a pact from then to stick to you guys like flu, and I’ve certainly done that even though you know sometimes you’re trying to peel that glue off yourself, but you know it comes back on. There are so many lessons that I take out of that and one of them got massively was perseverance you know don’t give up. Like I remember our first ever meeting you know I sat in front of you and I said, “Well look you know I want to be a coach to you guys one day” and I even had in my mind you know, and you trust the before saying you know I’m a quick thinker. I was already thinking in my head, “How can I own this business? How can I be partners with you guys?” like that’s type of mind set that I had.

The great thing about it mate was that you were able to smack me down on my face almost and mostly put some reality into my mind, because I had never really had that reality check when it came to my big thinking, “I want to do this and I want to do that” because I’ve known for a long time that whatever I put my mind to I will achieve if I want to enough, but what I was lacking was a lot of discipline, and I’m sure your testify to that, but that was one of the biggest things for me is been around people who were doing it and been able to advise me in the right way.

Jason: Yep.

Brett: You know so pointing me in the direction if I come of the track a little bit maybe your just want to get me back on it, because you know again, I put my hand up and I know that you know a lot of the times I can be all over the place sometimes that can be a great thing, but sometimes it can be very limited to the outcome I’m trying to achieve.

Jason: Yeah, it’s always too much of one side you know that’s never going to be a great thing, and you know to your credit your right. You did what I probably did pretty much with my first mentor and that was I just travelled went everywhere that he went to learn the skill, because there is nothing else like it. The reality in this day and age you don’t always get that opportunity, so as you know yourself Brett whenever we were coaching or teaching we’d use that expression that opportunities come and then they go, and it’s a real shame if someone has that opportunity and they don’t grab a hold of it. That was one of the things I really admired about you, you did that pit bull approach that you were going to make it work and you were going to do whatever it took to get it, and I totally agree to.

In terms of strictly business because I’d say that’s on the emotional intelligence and almost the personal development side of it to be able to recognize what you need to get and get around the right people. From a business perspective what do you think was the biggest breakthrough in getting your business off the ground? It doesn’t have to be one, but what was the combination for you going, “That’s been the missing component of my business that I didn’t know that I should have had in place” what was that for you?

Brett: I think mate if it comes to the vicinity between one of my own emotional intelligence because I was – everything I know I knew already if that makes sense, but the problem is; not knowing how to think about that. My biggest issue you know and if we go back to the emotional intelligence and my personal development was – that’s really the catalyst to what opened my eyes to what is achievable. If we go into it from a business perspective what enabled me to then do is to understand that I need to become an expert in the area. I didn’t have to be the expert in everything okay that’s why you have great team members for and people who can do tasks for you. I knew that my expertise and I’ll use the term unique-ability which a great entrepreneurial coach and tolerance coach that everyone has a unique-ability and I never knew what my unique ability was because I was – without trying to blow my trumpet of I was always good at a lot of things, but I never really fully excelled at the one thing, because I was too busy trying to be good at everything.

Jason: Yeah.

Brett: For me the biggest thing was I believe I feel I love with marketing I just loved what marketing does and what it can do. If I knew if I mentioned marketing back when I was in the dating game you know honestly the amount of people you can talk to and, you know, because your marketing yourself to people your marketing your service your products you know I could have been…my teenage years would have been a lot fitter if fact it’s,  probably a good thing that I didn’t need it, but marketing to me was the thing that was the catalyst of my business and all my success I believe because there are, so many off shoots in marketing, and world systems. For me another unique ability of mine is I can see a big picture like, I can see a massive project where a lot of entrepreneurs see these big projects, but they don’t know the incremental steps to get to it, where I feel something that I’ve been blessed with is my natural ability is to see a massive job, task, or product that I will know how to break down each little step systematically to get to that. That is where I believe the biggest business shift for me is under-standing marketing and business.

Jason: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more you know it’s what we…

Brett: It would be rude for you not to agree, because I’m the guest remember.

Jason: Say again.

Brett: It would be rude for you to not agree, because I’m the guest remember.

Jason: Well that’s probably true yeah, yeah you know that’s just how it works I was like yeah, Brett that’s great man fantastic in fact.

Brett: Yeah, mate it is.

Jason: Superstar, the reason I agree is because we say at our workshops that you’re not in the personal training business you’re in a marketing and sales business and you know you can be the best technically what you do, but if your unable to promote yourself effectively and get your message out there that your be the brokest with the best kept secret, so I agree the two key things are marketing and sales.  At the end of the day you need to be really good at it, so I couldn’t agree more on that. Though in your opinion and I know these can be generalizations, but you’ve been around the game long enough to see what would you think holds most trainers back from getting their business of the ground? What would you say it was? I know we have covered your elements of it, but in your experience because you have coached for us for a long time and you have coached a lot of people and your also presented to a lot trainers what do you see out there that holds most trainers back? I guess once we get through that we can talk about really what they need to be looking at and doing instead?

Brett: Sure, mate I think like, you said after coaching hundreds of trainers and speaking to thousands of trainers as well, I personally believe – we could talk about this topic for at least a week and we will use the headline as, “Mind Set” right, so it’s the mind set of people, but underneath the mind set we want to start categorizing things. I personally feel that the biggest thing holding trainers back is the scarcity, so the scarcity mind set of going, “There are already people out there doing it you know how am I going to break into the market” or also I guess there self belief like, not believing that they can actually do it, because I think a lot can come from both those categories.

If we go back to that whole scarcity mind set of – especially in the gym scenario, so when I first became a trainer I worked in the big boss-chairman you know there was like, thirty-five trainers and all I would hear all day from trainers, “Oh, I’m not getting enough leads you know I can’t believe you gave three leads to that person I’ve been here for a year, and you didn’t get me any” you know it was just that I personally felt you know maybe if they had thought about it a bit differently you know, because at the end of the day what are you doing yourself to get leads. I would be out there literally on the gym floor talking to people doing what I was good at you know and I never had a scarcity mind at all about, “Oh, know are they going to train with that person or me” because at the end of the day I believe there is enough fish in the ocean for everyone to have a good feed. If I can help you get a good fish so you can help feed your family then for me that is a bread winner’s loss, so I believe that scarcity versus abundance attitude is the key.

Jason: You know I couldn’t agree more and you know in your head like it’s not just about this, and your learning about more marketing and sales that stuff definitely has to happen, but your right if the mind set does not change you know ultimately you will have that bunch of information and you won’t be able to put it into play if you don’t have the right mind set if your thinking that’s the case.

Brett: It’s like yesterday when we had done our podcast right, so we did an interview together and on that interview we shared some really valuable information and we are going to do that again today. We are going to share exactly how everyone achieves something. If you ask me a question my minds going to go, “Oh Jason look I don’t really want to get a trainer because they might go out there and steal clients” you know you just need to have that – if you haven’t read the book Influence from Robert Cialdini I highly recommend that you do that. Last night I actually watched a video of that and he talks about the six rules of  human psychology and how to get people to say, “yes” and one of those laws, his first law reciprocation for the law of repository you know that whole thing is give first to receive. I’m a massive, massive believer in that so whatever happens from any interview podcast, any article I write out there someone is going to be there and they are going to go, “You know what that’s amazing stuff thank you so much” and they can implement it. At the end of the day we are all here for a reason and we are all here to just do the best we can do with the information we have and I’m a massive believer in that.

Jason: That leads me onto then we talk about sharing information and I guess you know access some blue print as I call it because the thing that I really – obviously we are in the coaching, and mentoring organization and talk to anybody that is successful they all have mentors from top athletes, forty players you know business people that…they all have someone for that reason. Brett you know you have a coach I have a coach, and I have a coach in a couple of different fields also, not just business, but financial coach and someone knows that little bit more than me or a lot more than me in some cases, and I seek out these people. I guess my question is now can you tell us your secret to building a successful personal training business, so maybe there are a few different key components of that in your mind? If a trainers sitting in front of you your saying, “Hey look at the end of the day if you want to be successful these are the most haves” secrets if you want to call them that to make sure your business is going to do as well as it possibly could.

Brett: Sure, mate I think with anything a blue print is always something that you want to have. I guess one of my first episodes I did on my podcast was talk about five keys to successful fitness business. Now, we could sit here and talk about bloodly maybe twenty, thirty, forty or a hundred different of these methods, but you know my five keys first of all is, one is that you obviously need to be in the right mind that just goes without saying, so you need to know what you’re actually doing, and in no particular order another one is you need to build a rating community, so you need to – whatever your product or service be you need to make sure that your going to create a rating community.

If you want to create a product on how to feed your pet pug now you need to create a ratings community to people that love pugs, so an example of that is if I see a photo on facebook and I see a pug I’m going to automatically gravitate towards that, because I have a pug myself you know actually the Men In Black movie because these dogs are awesome to my eyes. Now, someone else may look at a pug and go, “Geez there ugly dogs” and you know I have to agree with you they are a bit, but in the same token you need to build a rated community of people. Whatever that is, so if you wanted to train old people or young people, athletes, and the general public you know then you really need to build that community and you grow that by using the term I like to use “Education Based Marketing” so you need to educate and motivate these prospects to want to engage in your products and services whether it be immediately or six or eighteen months down the track you need to adapt that mind set.

Now, secondly I think you need to produce results so you can go and create the best product for service out there in your eyes, but if it’s not producing results you’re going to get found out and a lot of that particular product or service just won’t be worth it to anyone. I’m a massive believer in other keys so to the third key is providing multiple services. Now, you could look at this as your products with another famous entrepreneurs coach a friend of yours who talks about creating a product client sweep, and if you just want to look at like, I’ll give you some examples of our products sweep that we’ve created with International, so we have Fit-International as say head of the company out of that we have our Fit-Transformations which is our licensed program professional trainers who want to run their very own Fit-Chick location, on that we have also got Fit Kids, Fit Mums, so off shoots of that particular program. We have got our Fit Online which is all online products, nutrition products, and workout assistance. What else do we have we have recipes, and a whole heap of products just there that people can purchase online they may not be in our community, but anywhere around the world people can purchase it. We have got Fit Supplement, so you can purchase supplements, we have got Apps which is an iTunes and Android App you know we have got the Fit Foundation which we are currently creating which is really exciting for me, because as our company grows we want to be able to give back to the community and charities as well.

We are running a Fit Chick Retreat and in actually four days we are actually heading over to Bali, and taking thirty girls with us on our retreat, so that’s the product sweep, so we have multiple different products and services that we can offer to the clients that we currently have. If you’re listening there going well, “Geez I can’t retreats and I can’t do this can’t do that” I totally understand just start with something simple such as your doing one-on-one training, or maybe have group training option. Have an option liaison method and service where if they want to get a massage they can go through you you know liaison Supplement Company if you can and get and the supplements for your client you know there are a heap of different ways that you can build this on a smaller scale as well.

Then the next one I have is been genuine you know at the end of the day the key component one of the key components is to by genuine you need to look at it as though it’s not all about the money. You also need to have a reality check and realize that money does make the world go around, and for me in order for me to achieve my purpose of actually helping millions of people I need a lot of money to do that however; in the same token you need to be genuine. People know if you’re not genuine and they will be able to get that vibe from you that you just did it for a quick buck, but you need to be totally genuine about that and of course having a real purpose.

Jason: Hum.

Brett:    I’m a massive believer in you need to have a real purpose in and what I talk about in that aspect is I’ve created a Fit Foundation, so my purpose is for me when this company is running to its…where I would like it to be I see eighty percent of my week spent with working in the Fit Foundation going around to places and been a part of something that is just bigger than me, so that is something I’m really, really passionate about and I can’t wait to be able to do that, that really gets me excited. Again, we need to just have a reality check on that going well, in order for me to be able to do that and have the Fit Foundation you know the company initially is making money you know or else I’m not going to be able to do the things I want to do. Finally mate, actually well that’s five, so those are the five key components I believe, so what are your thoughts on any of those that stuck out for you bud?

Jason: You know really at the end of the day the best part is you have really have expressed what made your success and your business successful, and for me I couldn’t agree once again, more with those things. The thing that stands out for me out of everything you said was that having a real purpose and passion. What I’ve personally found over the years is that when it was just about the money when I was I guess in my early twenties I was just thinking I want to have more money you know it really didn’t get me out bed for who I am or it didn’t really drive me. It’s not a clear direction about why you’re doing everything, but for some people maybe money will be able to do it, but I can pretty much access after many years of been in it and seeing other people it will run its course if it’s just about the money. The thing in it what you said for me was having a really clear purpose of what you’re doing like, in our business we are very clear we have a target of educating you know by the fifth year in four thousand trainers that was just a goal we set you know it was more or less great, but you know we wanted to provide as many education material that we could not just in Australia, but around the world. For me that’s exactly it, having a very clear vision for what your business goal is, so you can work back so every year you do have some structure, so you know every month this is our target, this is what we are trying to achieve, this is what we want to head towards and then you can break that down to the daily tasks. In our workshops the biggest thing we hear is time management, and when we look at it what resolves time management is having a very clear purpose as you said, and the people I ask, “Well what’s your end goal for your business?” and really the next question is they don’t know, because if you did know what it was you wanted t achieve, you know it’s not about been better time management it’s about really going and getting stuck into the activities that excite you to fill your own goal. Procrastination only comes in when you really don’t have a clear purpose and you know desire, drive, and having goals.

Brett: I think just on that as well mate is that home that point of purpose it really only dawned upon me probably a couple of weeks ago…I had this realization since I started the podcast and doing interviews you know like the other day when we were chatting on all things and how to have a successful business and stuff what really dawned on me was I asked myself the question, and asked myself really like, “Am I enjoying my role currently in the business I’m in, and what do I enjoy the most about the role?” what stuck out for me was I’m actually enjoying right now at this moment in business and time I enjoy sitting here and talking to you on the phone right now. We are not getting paid for this we are just simply sitting here talking about business and on how we can help other people and to me that’s weight in gold. You know, so it always does you know and I guess it triggers me sometimes in regard – usually we are on a constant search to generate more income for the company, but the thing of it is it’s just a vehicle to be able to help you do what you want. If we weren’t making any money I would not be able to sit here and talk to you on the phone and do something that I really, really enjoy.

Jason: No, but you’d be busy out there trying to do it you’d be out there exchanging time for money.

Brett: That’s exactly right I’ll be training clients again, trying to get paid for my services yeah, it’s I just think it’s a really valuable couple of points in that for people listening is that…you know check in with yourself and ask yourself are you actually enjoying what you’re doing, and if you don’t get out of that stop putting yourself under all that pressure when you can go and find something that you enjoy you know.

Jason: Yeah, you know things from my personal and once again, having the opportunity to work with thousands of trainers you know I think I also liked the idea of a passive income and I think I liked the idea of working less then there is that middle you know the part in between of going, “Can I really do this? Have I got a track record of not doing what I said I would do? I don’t know even how to do it. It’s a little bit scary” you know, so they get stuck in the rat race or the treadmill where it’s not really ultimately what they want t do, but I’m not sure what else I would do. Not sure whether I would be able to make it, so you know what I’ll do is more of the same.

I guess my question to you is we have all been through the process of going from a single self-employed person bringing in a hundred percent of the income to then what you’re saying know is, which I personally love as well is I can be sitting here doing this my businesses run themselves, and I’m not required to be actively in it doing all the delivery of the work although I have a part to play in it. I can go away on holidays and you can go on holidays and the business is not going to stop. So, that’s the pay of the picture of the excitement of what’s on the other end, but how you get through that middle bit, how did you go from going…maybe you’re not the best person to ask because your that person who thinks big and just has that drive and motivation to go through, but let’s run with it anyway.

What was that middle experience like for you from going single employee to where you are now to – you don’t do any PT of course you haven’t for a long time and you have this massive multi-million dollar organization called Fit Chicks was the process and what was some of the main pivotal steps in between?

Brett: Well mate I think again, like there is that part of me that just wants to say just do it, just do it and take a leap and jump, but we could be realistic about this. You know I’m a guy that thinks big, but like everyone I’ve had struggles, “Should I do this? Should I do that?” and I think mate it really comes back to looking at laying out the situation, and one of things going, “Look what is the worst case scenario if I was to take this next step?” so, if I looked at it and go, “What is the worst case scenario of me not wanting to get more clients when I discovered internet marketing?” so I was like, “Well the worst case scenario is all my clients drop off and I have no money” so then I ask myself, “Well do I have the skills to go get that back again” and I said, “Yes” well okay no worries. Then I went on the flipside and I go, “What is the best case scenario if I concentrate and spend that extra heap of my time” and I literally spent over six hundred hours sitting learning internet marketing, looking a website etc., doing all the technical stuff which I probably recommend not everyone do, but I just said well, “What’s the case” and I said, “You know what’s the best case is I get to live the dream. I get to make money while everyone else sleeps” and I’d way rather have that than you know not have clients, and have to go back to getting new clients on the gym floor.

I just weighed out my pros and cons and looked at worst case and best case, and I just liked the best case so much more that it was worth having a shot, so that’s probably one way that I really look at it. I guess if we looked at it from a more of a technical point, let’s say you’re already in business and you’re doing okay, and you’re at the amount of clients that you like, but you don’t know how to take the next step. Look at return on investment is, so for example we have some sales team now who work for us and they are responsible for liasoning with the personal trainers who are looking to take on a Fit Chick location, so I looked at them and said, “What is the worst case scenario for bringing this person on?” because at the end of the day I need to look at it and go, “If I bring someone on I have to pay them a wage” so there is an expense there. Then I’m like, “Can we afford that extra expense?” where is that money going to come from. But, I look at this mate and I think this is a really powerful thing for people to look at, and am I willing to give this person – like I look and go, “How long do you think it would take to train this person up until you feel they would be good at their job and your getting your return on investment?” I looked and I said you know, “I’ll be happy to pay someone for a month” so if someone wants to work for a month full time doing our sales role that we currently have, and if they were to produce – worst case scenario if they produce no results and we just had to pay them then all that means is we would be out X-amount of dollars because we just had to pay them in my time and energy for them to get into it. Then I thought, “What are the best case scenario?” well the best cases were if a person turns into a gun and just is a sales machine and brings on dozens of new trainers every month. Those were the two passionate scenarios and I went back to the…you know we did the max on that, “Would I rather lose a fair bit of money investing in someone’s time or would I rather have hundreds of new licenses come on board” and it was such an indecision, but you just need to weigh out what your worst case, and you’re willing to do.

I will give you one more example of that which I think is imperative for personal trainers is investing into your marketing and looking at what where your marketing dollars go to. For myself I spent more money on marketing in the last twelve months than the average person would earn in five or six years. Now, a lot of people go, “Wow why are you spending that much?” and I go, “Well I know what my return on investment is. I know every dollar I spend I can get back, and I know for every hour I invest my time into something I know what I can get back” so you know you just have to know your math, and for me math in school with the algebra and all that I finally realized why math is important, because when you want to count your dollars your meant to be able to count.

Jason: Yeah, I failed math terribly at school, but I definitely love it know from exactly what you just said then.

Brett: Yeah, I meet an example and this is something that totally does my head in because I’ve got multiple websites and we are really big on, and this is something I definitely took away a great lesson from you and Brad is, the whole thing in testing and measuring. I was always good at implementing stuff, but I never really tested and measured and got a result. I have a squeeze page and I was like, “I’m actually going to do a split test on that,” so I have two squeeze pages offering the exact same result the only thing different was the image. What I’ve been interested in putting up for three days, and I found out that one page was out converting the other page by six percent, and that six percent meant an extra…it worked out about two hundred and thirty leads a week you know difference between the two pages. Now, I know what each lead is worth to us and I know that two hundred and thirty times that money ends up been quite a lot of income.

Jason: Yeah.

Brett: The thing about mate I would never have known that if I didn’t fish or just have a crack at it you know because I’m sitting there going, “Well I don’t actually even know about Split Disc or how would you start a Split Disc?” But, I knew what it was, but I’d never really implemented it properly until this stage, so that is really something valuable testing what your done, and see what works, and doesn’t work and then you know where to spend your money. It’s the same thing with hiring someone if you have someone who works for you catch them, and make sure they are doing their job if they don’t find someone else to compare, and see who the best is.

Jason: Yeah, and something that is really important that popped up to me when you were speaking about testing and measuring you know I guess from where you where to where you are now with the success you have had it’s important for people to understand as well that – I can remember a good break through it was definitely closer to two odd years you know you just back to that persistence you learn you went over to the states, you flew yourself to Las Vegas, you’re in our program, but you didn’t stop there and you went over and invested more of your hard earned money to get over there and get around experts in the stuff you were just talking about the online stuff to  come back and persist and persist.

I’ve seen many people over the years get the same information that you did and you know I guess you have to look for those of you who have read the book, Think And Grow Rich she talks about stopping three feet from the gold, so you dig, and dig, and dig, and go, “I’ve had enough of this, this is too hard this is rubbish it’s not going to work” and then they stop, you’ve just persisted and I think that is the message I want to get through to the listeners is that we have got to make sure we understand that you know it just does not happen overnight for me and didn’t happen overnight for you Brett. You know it took five years to be an overnight success, but what I really want people to understand is that regardless if you build a massive business or in between business whatever always just think about your lifestyle, and what people like, Brett and myself Brad, and other successful people they design their lifestyle first, and what they want to do.

Do they want to go away on holidays for six weeks of the year, how do I want to give back to society, what do I want to retire on you know, what kind of cars do I want to drive you know how much will I donate back to charity and stuff like that. The clearer you are on that then the business will then develop behind that and not the other way around, so I think it’s really important for people to hone and get that part clear and the rest will fall into place. Plus to really emphasize it I personally have witnessed Brett try, try, try, again, to nail it, and I tell you what when you get that one that works you know if your saw the inside of Brett’s business and what it turns over, and what it does, and not only the money, but how many of the people are helping now and how many people it’s had on a big impact around the world. Not just here you know a lot of the green buttons can go off, but it’s that classic thing again, people say Michael Jordan was a freak, but they didn’t see the extra five hours of training he did when everyone else on the team had left, so that is the part I really want to put across. If you really want it bad enough you have to persist.

Brett: I guess mate just on that I hundred percent agree with everything you said there because persistence is the key, and what people don’t see is, what goes in and right a quick story on that which I think will relate.  When I first started internet marketing I created my first product and I was like, “Yeah, this is going to go great I’m going to make thousands of dollars just like guys that I follow do and it’s going to be awesome and it will just create my lifestyle.” With the first information product I created I did what you would call a product launch it wasn’t that good of course, because I didn’t really follow too much of the method because I didn’t really know it. But, I had a crack right and got my first product out – I did all the backing and setup myself literally hundreds of hours of time spent on this hoping for that big payday I’m going to get paid. I did the launch…the first person who ever bought my information product was my mum because you know which for me – my first information product I was under the feeling you know I can’t wait for that first sale it’s just going to be the first of many, and I actually felt quite saddened by it because I was like, “Oh [expletive] now I have to pay my mum back the money I don’t want her buying my stuff I’ll give it to her for free you know” and that little product launch I sold about twenty units or something nothing at all glamorous you know twenty unit, and I think I only sold it for nineteen to and that was my first ever product launch. Most people would stop at that and go, “This internet marketing does not work it’s crap” you know, but I persevered then our second product launch we did about six hundred sales and then on our third product launch we did over a thousand sales, and this is like within a three day format, so in three days we sold over a thousand units. Now, people think oh, man you had overnight success and I go, “Yeah, my overnight success of hard work and hours and hours of learning stuff that’s what it took mate” you know for me it’s really for me it’s…I’m really product to talk about that because you always hear these stories of persons doing well and they killed it they’ve done great, but there is always a back story thing and I think it’s really important to be able to relate to that. I’m not anyone special although I like to think I’m a special type of person, but there is not too much difference between me and everyone else. Maybe I think a little bit differently, but you know to create an information rating community anyone can do that you just have to want to do it you just have to want it.

Jason:   Yeah, and I think you know in terms of the whole…not been special yeah, it’s a good point you know two arms, two legs, you know the same as everybody else. Well, the thing that’s really important is you know a lot of people go, “Oh yeah, but that’s so and so, and they have the look or they come from this background or they have come from this background” and you have to be very careful I guess if not limiting ourselves and making excuses or you know putting those limitations. It’s really powerful what you said there it’s exactly right everything that you’ve learned can be learned by others. Everything that I have learned can be learnt by others, and if your open and have a desire.

Mate I guess you want to start to wrap up you know you did a really cool thing with me last week, but I’ve just got a few questions. I guess a bit of fun a bit of heart in this before we begin…I do want to finish with I guess a snapshot of your current business though and what Fit Chicks is doing and if anybody is interested to find out more about it, and where they can go and explore that kind of stuff. I guess firstly mate the first one, – and I don’t mean an disrespect to anybody listening to this it is purely just for fun, so I’ll appreciate it, but your straight we know your straight you have a beautiful partner in Emily, but I want to know who would you turn gay for?

Brett: That’s an easy one mate definitely has to be Ricky Martin that dude I think is quite funny we were watching the voice just recently and Emily and I just kept looking and going, “Man does this dude do anything wrong” watch he speaks in a seductive way, he’s a great looking bloke you know it would definitely have to be Ricky Martin if I was in love with him.

Jason: Well what got me how easy it came out how you said that’s the easiest, so I kept thinking he’s thought about this before.

Brett: Yeah, I constantly think about him I guess it’s quite easy to roll off.

Jason:   Well now that we are all comfortable with our own sexuality I’d agree.

Brett: Yeah, yep.

Jason: The next one is mate…

Brett: I’m thinking about going to his concert to mate.

Jason: Say again…

Brett: I’m thinking about going to his concert. Do you want to go?

Jason: Mate I would be happy to go.

Brett:    Okay, that’s cool.

Jason: Well what’s been your most embarrassing moment I know you probably had a million, but what jumps out when I first say is you’re most embarrassing moment and why?

Brett:   That’s a good one mate because it takes a lot for me to get embarrassed, because if you know me well enough I’m pretty much black and white, but my most embarrassing moment…can you break it down into a context, because like you said there is probably many things I can say.

Jason: Well, like it could be a conversation with someone you just meet and you said something that was you know…silly or stupid in my view, and you know I said something that you know could have been a bit embarrassing a bit like, you know, “Congratulations” like that or, “Your pregnant” well not I’m not.

Brett: Okay, yeah well I probably haven’t said that because I was probably quite introvert, but something that pops up to me that was quite embarrassing was – I’ll give a little bit of a back story. I only ever used to drive manual cars and moved to Australia and bought an automatic, and because I always heard automatics break down and this type of thing. I parked at Movie World on the Gold Coast, I can’t remember what – I didn’t go to Movie World, but actually I went to a casting audition at Movie World and I got back to my car and I went to start it and it wouldn’t work, and I went, “Geez this is not good” so I rang up the RACQ, rang them up, and got the dude out. The car was parked in reverse like; I didn’t have the car in park so it wouldn’t start, so that was quite embarrassing from what I just remembered.

Jason: I had a classic one I’ve got plenty more, but when you said that I just remembered been at the coast once and I was at the sunnies up there and I’d just bought these new  sunnyies and I’d had a stock, and track record with loosing and breaking them, and I got in the car and went, “[Expletive] my sunnies” and I’m racing back to the restaurant thinking I left them on the table and I said to the chick, “I just want to check to see if my glasses are there,” and the poor thing she kind of subtle looked on the top of my head and I discovered that my glasses were sitting there, so that was one of those moments to mate. If you have the opportunity to just meet one person famous whatever if you got that opportunity if there was just one you had to pick who would it be and why would that person be important to meet?

Brett: It would probably be Ricky Martin first, but I would have to say mate because it’s quite funny I talked about that the other day with another mate about who would you have around for dinner if you had five people, and it’s a really, really hard question to ask, but I think what pops up to me the most right now would be Steve Jobs for the reason been you know I’ve heard a bit of his back stories, and you know I think that would just be amazing to be able to just in the head of – any ambition to iPhone back in the ‘80s when no one thought it possible, so that type of visionary thinking is where I’m with that. I like to always think what you know what’s the impossible, but really possible, so probably Steve Jobs mate.

Jason: Yeah, what’s a bad habit that you have that you know you might not absolutely want even break, but you just probably deem to be a bad habit?

Brett: Yeah, so I probably have a few bad habits.

Jason: Yeah, my wife points those out to me.

Brett: Yeah, yeah, so does Emily she’s really good at that. I think probably one of my worst bad habits would be cleaning up like, ninety-nine percent. What I mean by that is I will do the dishes, I will clean up stuff, but for some reason I will leave a glass or the chopping board there and I go, “Why do I do that why don’t I just do and complete it” so that’s probably a bad habit.

Jason: There will be a bunch of people pissing on sales laughing because I got that trait I’ve it’s a certain personality to some degree that you kind of go, “Mate you’ve come this far you might as well just knock the rest on the head” and she’d be like, “I checked and I’ve done my part” you know, but leave two or three dishes there.

Brett: It’s not like I left the last piece of bacon in the frying pan well I cleaned up everything, so  I left the stuff in there and I was like wait a minute Brett,  so I actually went back to do it because I caught myself out, so I guess it’s a habit that I’m looking to break. I’m not crazy I promise.

Jason: Okay, that’s great thanks for sharing that always good get an inside and other perspectives. Just to finish up mate you have Fit Chicks International going gang busters you know if people listening haven’t heard of it you know I would be very surprised if not when they go and check it out I think they would be very amazed. The things you and I have been speaking about it definitely a lot of great morals out there and some people may not be totally clear on what they could use and you know we absolutely are big advocates of the coaching and mentoring and business opportunities, so for people that want to go and find out a little bit more about Fit Chicks and what it’s all about and a bit more about yourself Brett Campbell, and your vision and passion behind it where can people do mate?

Brett: Sure, so I guess probably the easiest place would be to go to FiitInternational.comau and that’s spelt with two I’s F-I-I-T, so FiitInternational.comau or they can see the prices I guess of what we have. Even from a learning perspective even if you’re not interested in looking at anything we have just have a look at how I do it, it’s the way you learn. On the website you can click on a tab which says podcast you know I really suggest you get on and register for the podcast, and listen to – like last week I interviewed Jason, and I also interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger he’s a fitness advisor, so you know we have great people, and we have some awesome information to share. Definitely go and check out episode number six with myself and Jason which I believe is extremely…it’s probably my most sellable one to date.

Jason:  Yeah, awesome heaps of fun I agree it’s one of those rare I, don’t know if it’s rare, but it’s definitely…I was talking about it yesterday going and doing some interviews, and after doing it for a long, long time as we have we really identify if you advise anyone to listen to it’s definitely that one, so I would agree although it shows we really are pumping our tyres up you know we know a thing or too. Mate it’s been great having you on the interview today and for those of you listening if you are thinking, “I don’t have these people in my life and I don’t have mentors or people to be able to connect with that want to go ramble” my message is that you know around a least two of them, and not two you know Brett’s company and our company we work closely hand-in-hand and we have a very much a great relationship, and our main aim is the same which is why we connect so well and are such great friends.

We want to pass on what’s been such a great blessing for us to those who are driven and want more from their life and I couldn’t recommend getting yourself around more of what we have to offer on a regular basis. Those would be my parting words and once again, it’s both our missions to make a difference out there, because the industry and business has rewarded us handsomely and there is nothing like, passing that on to other people and seeing and denying the income they could make, but just a different quality of lifestyle and providing employment for others it really is a really great reward.

Brett: Look mate again, I just want to hone that one home to people listening to this you know whether you’ve found about this interview via myself or Jason or someone else I’d highly recommend I can’t recommend enough coming along to the two day events that you guys run where you educate and motivate trainers on systems and procedure, and how to run a successful fitness business. If you’re listening and you’re like, “Uhhms and Arrhs” about getting along and you going, “Well I don’t want to have to pay the two hundred or four or five hundred dollars” whatever the ticket cost now to go there take that money aside it’s going to be the best investment you have ever made whether you do anything with it or not just getting along to these events will just make such a massive business in your business, so I highly recommend. Hey you know if you’re listening to this I’m going to go out on a limb here because I like this kind of stuff, because I reckon if you email Jason privately, and let him know you listen to this podcast I’m sure he will give you a free ticket. So, I will leave you with the rest of that Jason I’m sure you will follow through on our deal.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, well we will see how we go maybe we will just limit that to the first five people that listen to it and email me.

Brett: Yeah, that’s probably a good idea actually.

Jason: Yeah.

Brett:   The first five people who contact Jason will give your rewards.

Jason: You know what Brett we were saying if you really, really want it and you want to negotiate and sell me on the idea of giving you a free ticket to come along that is my challenge to you don’t just say, “Hey it’s me I heard the podcast I want a free ticket” because you probably won’t get a response from me at all, but if you’re going to respond make sure you put everything into as to why that would be so important to you and why we should be giving you that ticket as someone else having pay for it, so that would be my feedback on that.

Brett:  Cheers mate.

Jason: All right Brett I’m going to get off this call before you cost me any more money mate.

Brett: All right I’ll go and, so what am I going to do…actually I have a massage booked just to let you know, so I’m looking forward to that.

Jason: Good, great I’m getting a haircut, so now everyone knows what where doing now we can split, and let them get on with the rest of their day.

Brett: All right mate.

Jason:  Good on your’ mate thanks for that.

Brett: Bye.

Jason: See yah.

 

Episode 6 – The One With Jason Urbanowicz

[sharethis]

In todays episode Brett interviews Jason Urbanowicz from Create Pt Wealth.

Jason was a struggling Personal Trainer getting frustrated with earning a measly $17,000 per year! Then something amazing happened… he was introduced to some strategies and Jason_HRmindsets which turned his business and life around.

In less than 12 months he had earned over $120,000 AND only worked 20 hours per week.

The following year he had more than doubled that again and it hasn’t stopped.

He is the Co Founder of Australia’s Largest Coaching program for Personal Trainers called Create Pt Wealth.

As a FREE GIFT You can get his FREE chapter of his best selling book right HERE

In this Fiit Professional episode you will learn:

  • A strategy you can practice immediately, that will help you break the procrastination nightmare
  • The back up plan strategy (we discovered this on the call)
  • How to avoid the client drop of phase (this will happen if it hasn’t already)
  • And our new segment – SHOOT _ SHAG_ MARRY

This is a episode that you will want a note taking device handy.

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

 

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The One With Jason Urbanowicz

Transcript of EPISODE 6:

Hello and welcome to the Fiit Professional podcast I am Brett Campbell and you are tuning in to today to another fantastic episode. I have got another special guest today, the special guest is someone that I know very well and personally so I am very excited to have this person on board with us today. But again as always if you haven’t listened any episodes prior make sure you head to podcast.fiitprofessional.com.au so that fiitprofessionals with two II’s bit of mouthful there and we might have to change that url I think to make it a little bit easier but head over there put your details in so that you won’t miss out on any of these upcoming episodes. So without further ado I am going to give you a brief overview about tonight’s guests and then we are going to start straight into another conversation and I have got some pretty cool questions that I want to be asking today and we’ll actually surprise the guest as well even though I had given him a bit of a heads up about what we are going to talk about but nothing beats beyond the spot of the moment.

So the guest that I have today is not only a great friend of mine, a business mentor and a coach also to myself. Actually the last 5 years I believe we have known each other and his name is Jason Urbanowicz. Jason Urbanowicz he was a struggling personal trainer like many of us when we started, he was getting frustrated with earning and paying over 20,000 dollars a year and then something amazing happened, he was introduced to some strategy that helped him break free from his limitation which hopefully turned his business and his whole luck around and in less than 12 months Jason went over to earn 120,000 dollars and basically he was only working 20 hours per week.

The following year he doubled his income again and that basically hasn’t stopped since then and Jason also witnesses other trainer’s frustrations with limitation to the business side of things and he has dedicated to take action and provide them with assistance to success. It was around this time that Jason joined forces with a good friend and Australia’s highest paid personal trainer, Brad Sheppard and they formed Create PT in December 2007, and since then they have educated thousands of trainers on the methods on how to boost the profitability for their business, whilst living their dreams. So quite PT well Jason was a partner with a multimillion dollar personal development company so he definitely knows firsthand what it takes mentally, emotionally and intellectually to go from struggling and then running a multimillion dollar company. Today Jason is one of the directors of Create PT Wealth and continues to teach workshops to thousands of trainers around Australia and the world.  He is also a co-author of two bestselling books and also international speaker so I think that wraps up the interview and we could probably call it a day, what do you reckon? Is that everything about you?

Jason: Yeah great thanks for having me.

Brett: No problem. So Jason, let’s just give the audience a little bit of a background on how we met. I will paint the picture so you can elaborate from there. It was about 5 years ago, I had moved over from New Zealand to Australia and I have decided to become a personal trainer myself, and then I always knew, there was someone who wanted to take action and make sure I was doing the best I could do in the industry. Actually what I did I shipped out people in the industry who were doing well, that’s where I basically came across Jason and Brad who are the co-owners of Create PT Wealth and I came to the workshop with these guys and learnt what they were all about and with teaching I basically joined forces with the boys and fast forward to 5 years, we are best mates and I hand it over to you, you can fill in all the exciting parts.

Jason: About you?

Brett: We have just spoken about me and what they want to listen to I suppose.

Jason: I guess in relation to how we met you are exactly right, you attended our business training boot camps with personal trainers which is all about increasing lead generations and profitability structure and systems and having some people meet there for long term success in the business so yeah you attended that work shop as he has explained backed upon what we call our internship program which is full of services and from there, educate in the process of lead generation and online marketing which I might say you well and truly exceeded way beyond what I have ever done online, you know just really grasp the concept of running a successful business and from that your business went from strength to strength identify the online service where you are really passionate about. We set you up as a coach and I think it was 3 years hoping to educate and mentor other trainers from the success you have had and the systems we were teaching so all I can see it’s an interview about yourself but I guess the main thing is that we were fortunate enough to meet and I am a big fun of training myself with people that, have that drive, have that ability to see opportunities and jump on them which is exactly I saw on yourself and no doubt you saw on us, it was great opportunity to meet and work, and see we are there talking about how we can inspire other trainers to do the same and look beyond just the fact they are a personal trainer.

Brett: I totally agree with everything there especially the part how we, I guess if we run the clock 5 years ago we would never have thought I’d be sitting here in my headquarters giving you a call and you would talk about how we can help other trainers and increase the profits and basically for me it’s all about living that cost I know you are definitely an advocate of. Let’s get started and start giving some great interview out here. I have seen a few questions and like every person that I interview in this podcast and I am a big believer in follow the lessons that we can learn in business and so I am interested in finding out not only with Create PT Wealth your personal development company what is one of your biggest business lessons that you have learnt?

Jason: I have seen these questions come through, when you have been in this business for long than I have been, there has been a time if you ask me 5 years ago it would have been narrowed down, I mean it always come back to the basics the biggest lesson I learnt from this for myself personally and it can be different to different people, for me I had no problems taking actions, but also I have had a lot of a mess, we are doing that so I could get out there and get things happen. But really I didn’t have a clear vision and clear structure of why I was doing that , I would get to the end of the financial year and I would be hoping it was all in my favor, so the main business lesson that I learnt in my opinion, if you are going to be in business, you don’t have this really in place, you are running your business on luck, you need exactly to know why you are in business, what is the purpose of it, is it to give you a retirement or to spend time with your family why you are getting up every morning, to do what you do and I didn’t know that from the start and so once it became clear it made a lot of things decisions in my business a lot easier so I am amazed, I look back at myself when I have educated over 4,000 trainers now people hadn’t made a tax return in over 3 years, people that really didn’t know what they want their business to earn in 12 months. I guess the biggest lesson I have learnt you have to be clear, you have to spend the time and energy to sit down sharpen that sword before you start coming down the forest, make sure every week every day you are doing exactly the activity daily that is going to take you in the right direction and then you have got to measure everything. I am a big fan I never used to do it for many years of really stopping and saying hey, do we have a clear plan, doing what we do daily why are we doing it and can we get the feedback to test and measure that. So if I am going to do marketing or sales, come up with steps on that, do I know exactly what I am spending and what am I getting on return so for me by biggest business decision was making sure that I could explain to someone clearly that you are somebody else in every area of my business, why we are doing it and what is the result and what is the return on investment.

Brett: That’s a valuable lesson and I put up my hand as well and I am sure everyone listening does that. For myself I used to struggle with that being an entrepreneur and an action taker. It’s really fun and exciting to be able to start new ventures but then it comes back to them. Is that venture worthwhile pursuing? Let’s comment on that for a moment.  Do you have specific examples that we can break down just to hammer home the point of being able to track and measure your investments because I know personally that I struggle with it and I also know through coaching hundreds of other personal trainers as well that it is certainly an area that certainly gets overlooked. Just to elaborate on that as well maybe you could even with all your personal general knowledge maybe you could touch upon why we do that why you think we probably steer away from the tracking and measuring side of things.

Jason: Just to be clear to answer your first question an example would be some of you track and measure?

Brett: Yes.

Jason: Yes I mean, ultimately it depends where somebody is at. If I look at my business for example what I would do and if I was a personal trainer and to make it really simple, look at the fact that I might be paying rent, I would really sit down and I would work out exactly what does it cost me to run my business, if I am paying insurance 50 bucks a week, rent 1000 bucks a month I know predictably I have 1000 dollars a month, 12000 dollars a year that I have in order to run my business. Now for me if my business would only cost 12000 dollars to run I’d be high and everybody pass me in the streets but I would look at it and so the basic level I know I need to be able to look at that is my expense and now what am I making so if the business grows to 60000 I could clearly define that I have invested 12000 dollars to get a gross return of 60000 dollars that is for the really basic level and I find most people not just trainers but people in business couldn’t tell what does it cost you to make that return they would be able to tell us. Any business in my training or experience, any business that’s returning a 30% return is a really good successful business, other thing you should look at is that you are spending money on lead generation so play some ads on Facebook, I am spending 100 bucks a week I would really want to know at the end of the week a couple of things. Ok how many leads did I get through in that week, if you are good you get 50 leads a week we can work out what that equates to per lead and then the next question I ask is how many of those people are you converting so out of those 50 maybe I have only got 5 people that become actual clients of yours and for me you can work the average spend and that persons income is 5 and you have worked out and the average spend of those people to keep it simple is 60 dollars per week and you can start to get a sense of is that a good return on your investment. Now unless you can demonstrate those figures once again it just gets work and once again it is a simple level and then you go into sales process. So you have 10 points a week and you have only converted 3 so I would say something seriously wrong with yourself maybe you don’t have one and each time you are doing it is different and you don’t have an unpredictable method for doing sales and that is reflecting in your results, so you go and to be able to follow to the very end to the bottom line which is how much profit is coming into your business and if you can’t do that like I said you are really guessing and that’s gambling to me and all I can see you are putting 50 bucks on luck and hopefully it is going to turn into your favor so that answers your question.

Brett: Yes. I just want to talk about that a little bit more and its quite funny you bring that up because today alone I have been doing some split testing so we have got different web pages that all we have done is split tested different images on one of our screen pages and today I have noted that one page outdone the other by 12% and I know by seeing 12% that’s an extra 80 to another 120 leads that we could actually generate ourselves per day so you know I can look at that and what’s that extra 80 to120 leads mean to us on the bottom dollar. Just the tracking and measuring and moving to my second part of the question which is more psychology behind it because I have heard personally used to hate numbers never really wanted to look at that them I didn’t want to track how much I was earning I just wanted to put the money in my back pocket and spend it, now I guess I go to the other side of that and I get used by the numbers now and talk about 12% and show a lot of people even at that was a 5% increase its still an extra 40 to 100 leads per day. Let’s talk about the psychology of why people probably resist that.

Jason: Maybe you should answer that you have got the big break through. I may not know your personal story that well and change for you and partly the answer is in what you just said to that is hard it’s a generalization because I could take six people in a row after being in the psychology counseling and sports performance and all that side of things for a lot of years. Out of six people could vary their responses so to give you some examples one can be the simple fact that someone doesn’t know or they don’t know and the unknown can be quite daunting so when we don’t know something it is out of easier a comfort zone because everyone can relate to that term, it will produces an emotional response in your body so okay here I am sitting at my office and my desk and I am presented with an activity or task that I don’t feel comfortable with but I don’t feel I have the skills to any version I don’t like it because it reminds me of being back at school and here I am back in the math class, feeling like am the dumbest kid in class feel like I am 3 weeks behind everybody else so it produces to the feeling for me that I am not comfortable with and now unless you have got some emotional level of intelligence in that area, there are a couple of things that you are going to do, one you can make that feeling go away and maybe we can introduce the word procrastination or avoidance and what we’ll do is check emails go for a run or mow the lawn anything to get us ourselves out of that particular state or emotion or feeling uncomfortable most don’t like feeling that way because it brings up a feeling from the past it can be totally unrelated but here I am Jason feel like a ten year old boy and in the math class about to do the exam oh great this is more evidence that I am stupid or I am not good enough so the bottom line for most people is that I want to avoid more evidence of that happening so this is not something you will read in a business school or this is not something you will read in any workshop but obvious I can guarantee anyone listening to this will be able to relate to it

Brett: Like I mean, procrastination is a subject I was a top student and definitely had to work at overcoming that and am happy to say that probably it is one of my worst subjects moving forward but the key thing I guess is that it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are or how much work you are still doing, there is always in my opinion there is still that element of you can feel yourself just starting to procrastinate the good thing about it is that you are able to identify hold on a second you are doing the same thing you used to do again, do you have any tips or any strategies that you think you will be able to pass on to listeners that next time they feel that procrastination is coming and they feel resistance to an actual activity and what can they do about it?

Jason: Yes there are some immediate simple things like in reality I have spent three days teaching a course gear and break through sabotaging road blocks which is what you talk about it there. A really good technique you have mentioned number one is just to be aware of it and start to be honest with ourselves because we like bull shitting ourselves and just go and do that. The moment we go, you said is that feeling again where I start to feel uncomfortable and easy, the first step you actually do is to focus on your breathing so the more that happens when you get in a stressed state, the more the brain accelerates and the more the emotional response happens so if you can sit long enough and take some really deep breaths slowly breathing down and sit there long enough it will start to pass and if you start to identify like you said there is that feeling again and what I actually feel like doing is anything else like I want to go and wash some dishes you can just go and do that. You can just start get yourself managed and say could I just for the next 5 minutes make a star a small start and if that brings up I am not sure what that is, then it asking the question and if you really know is good in this area, and maybe at the moment am not actually sure where the make start and I don’t like that feeling with what it brings up. A better question is who could I ask? Who do I know? Surely somebody in my circle of influence or people I know has a skill set that I can call upon to find out and maybe that’s my first step because I need to chat with him. The more that you do that the more you can break from what I call getting hijacked by your thoughts and emotions and you can start to curve a new pathway to your brain the better that will be and you can start really small once again the problem is we get hijacked and we just don’t take a moment to just pause and there is a thing called the gap, a simple concept called the gap if you can stop there and breath through this experience and slow yourself down, it will pass and you can really ask some solid questions, that is the basic levels that I can’t explain on the phone here and now

Brett: That’s great, that’s fantastic. You totally and you know the gap is definitely something that you want to learn whether you are in business or even in your personal relationships. If someone in your family pisses you off. Pause for that moment start breathing and if you feel you want to say something turn around and leave through the front door because you will regret it.

Jason: Yes we all have different personality traits and personalities is not who we are it’s a collection of habits and behavior some are key that helps us get through life without getting more wounding so it is not really who we are and under pressure, and when you are under pressure and stress that’s the easiest place to find and what I call default behaviors. My biggest step to people is that people tend to have a new forum so I stop talking and getting in shape and get a new job. Just turn a new leaf and for the last 10 years what I have done is just if I could work on 2 habits or beliefs or programs that I can spend 12 months being disciplined to do that, in 10 years I am going to have 20 new empowering habits or traits than get to 20 years down the track and still running the same old way of doing life and getting the same limited results at a basic level if I just focused on more being relaxed under pressure, you can ask yourself how will that serve you, what results will that be? will it better in sales, better in conflict, better in arguments maybe getting a car and giving a speech so people I think don’t understand the power of one and then under estimate it and thirdly and discipline to focus on one particular area for 12 month to perfect it but if I would say someone to come and pay it would really be helpful to practice meditations daily for the rest of your life. It can be hard for people to comprehend and one thing I have got to do, if I said I can teach you a process which you will relax in 10 seconds so you can increase the conversion of your sales to make better decisions and stop having arguments and stop giving threats at the wrong time, when you are in arguments you pan out and you said the bit you knew shouldn’t have and all those bits are going to make a big difference in your life.

Brett: Yes that’s fantastic words of wisdom right there, so I guess some one seated somewhere and you had to find out about other things and what do you recommend?

Jason: Read a book called mark you see, mark you don’t.

[0:23:57]Brett: Yes I was going to say that there is a book called mark you see, mark you don’t. it has been a running joke for some time. I am a big fan of the book myself whenever I am feeling tired at night just put to straight to sleep. On the flip mark you see and you don’t there is a book mark worte with another gentleman who taught you the craft..I would highly recommend it and what I would do, I will talk to Jason and we might be able to work something out. Maybe you guys can read it it’s a fantastic book to get your hands on.

Jason: Maybe the downloadable version

Brett: What I will do is to get on our website here and people can get their hands on it because I would definitely recommend whether your struggles are in business or in personal life. Whether it is just yourself it is definitely a book that you are going to break through and belief because like I said it is not always just about business so if you don’t get yourself right and the first instance and the business is not going to get to the success that you want it to be and I am a firsthand advocate to that. My biggest road block if I could call it that was myself, I never lacked any business struggles, skills etc for me once I think for me is once I could identify my own behavior and it totally transformed me so that’s awesome.

Jason: To answer your question about where people start, my tip to people is start down the journey on the path of understanding yourself better your limitations, your strengths and weakness is that means finding someone who has a personality profiling just taking note of some of your behaviors that you find are limiting, write them down, recall them and ask yourself, how would I rather be and the first step is always about trying to be aware and wanting to be aware and a bit like you, the day I actually took the responsibility for my life was a big shock and you know they say ignorance is bliss, on the flip side when you realize it you are responsible for who you are and you stop blaming other people, you start being a victim I certainly did I put myself back in the driver’s seat and was in the control, people would say to me Jason, I would like to stop smoking but I can’t, I said you change one word and you are half way there to have a breakthrough on this area, I said you should just change the word I can’t to I won’t and if you are listening to this podcast, there are two kinds of different things when you say I can’t you are saying the power is out of your control, there is some mystical power that shoving that cigarette in your mouth and lighting up that’s really what we are saying you are a victim of this process and when you say I won’t, really what you are you are saying I’m just choosing to smoke. So I saw the people instead of beating yourself up with I can’t and all the rest of it being, just say at the moment I am choosing to smoke because that’s what happening that will give you the power to when you want to stop smoking and that’s the everything in your life, the moment I said you are responsible for who I am that means I have the power to change it. If I am blaming my boss, I am blaming clients and other people basically it is convenient way for me not to take any actions to doing about it. So we just have to be responsible for where we are at, so we can do something about change like I said start with being aware with some of your behaviors, be brave be honest and say these are the things I need to improve on and then it is your job to go and change them and it is my job and to do the things that I wanted to improve about myself if that is really like I couldn’t tell the amount of books, audio courses in this area, I would rather become accessible like Brett said the biggest road block between me is getting the thing I want and so it was up to me to say a thing about it so learning to mediate, relax under pressure and all the things is very powerful and very healing to people and it’s the quickest way to move forward in my opinion.

Brett: Awesome. I guess the question I have is once you are obviously able to grapple yourself and put yourself into submission, what were some of your biggest business lessons.

Jason: One of these lessons, I guess it is the start of the interview and that is keeping track of everything, but you need the biggest lesson I realized is that I couldn’t do it alone when I said I couldn’t, I could do it alone but when I realized is that I could do it alone but I could train myself with very influential people and the time I wanted to move forward, I looked at the top 5 people I spend my time with I realized they weren’t really headed to where I wanted to be I am not saying I ditched them those people but I realized hang on, I had a saying if you add the sum of people that you hanging around top 5 people that’s probably an average of what you earn, it stun me because I thought it was spot on I had to get myself around people that are further down the track than me or at least heading in the same direction because I think they have paved the way for me to follow and that was a big step for me I had a big ego to let go off and need help before I found these people I got myself a business mentor, I realized that was something I needed to do as a trainer I saw people were beginning to paying me to be their coach and I though here I am wanting to be better in business and I don’t have a coach. I know myself there are things I could get there but it could be a struggle for the road, and actually I got to the point where I professionally lonely as well because its just you and you have got inside your head and you have got no one to bounce off it was a struggle and for me to meet people like Paul on the side of it. Those people were pivotal for me moving forward and to answer your question actually get the right support and get yourself around people that have been there and done it.

Brett: Perfect, I couldn’t agree more, let’s change tact a little bit and you started working with thousands of trainers over the years and speaking to those trainers. Now there has to be some common similarities that can generally pop up with regards to frustrations and lets pick one of those issues and have a chat about it. I am going to put you on the spot.

Jason: Once again there are a number of key issues if you ask me to pick one the one that jumped out of me when you said, the biggest the baddest that jump out of the covers is when trainers get their business upto their capacity I am doing as many sessions as I can and then very next week or within next week they have 3 or 4 clients leads and those particular clients could be doing 3 or 4 sessions each it can be a dramatic drop in income so I have lost amount of time trainers coming and going, everything was going great until these people dropped off and it can mean 3,4,500 dollars decrease in income that’s never again especially without warning so it is one of the key frustrations, so you get into a business, we get ourselves busy its all going sweet and then we arrive at what we call a yoyo effect where 100% of that is income and lifestyle is been depending on one person and that is them, there is a difference of having a business or being self employed and it can be stressful, I have been there myself and you kind of hoping all your clients turn up for the week they all do the sessions at Christmas time and people are going away and ultimately if your only source of income relies on you getting money then it is going to be an issue, it is going to continue unless you are touched by an angel and for some strange reason to 20 year solid without an experience is never going to happen, it is a real concern for trainers.

Brett: Let’s talk a little bit about and look at some strategies for those trainers who are actually experiencing or even haven’t experienced it or it is a matter of time before it does happen, because I know myself I am just a quick back story I was going all well when I started training and I had my clients and all of a sudden I had four key clients drop off which was more than half my income so I dropped off that. So let’s talk some strategy trainers can do and maybe not stop it from happening but being able to ride the wave a lot when it comes.

Jason: My foremost thing that I put in place when it happened to me was getting upset by or getting stressed by it and once again it happened once and you weren’t aware of it that’s different but if it happens again you have no one to blame really but ourselves. What I designed was a 21 day cancellation policy I am not saying it needs to be indoor but however it needs to be enforced and it needs to be spoken about maybe upfront, so counsel whatever you want to call it, and make it to the client very clear and the way I portray to clients is that I have limited spots  in my business and you are taking one of those spots for 2 dollars a week. If at some stage you feel there is something that concerns the training I will appreciate you tell me straight away so we can resolve that. Secondly I do have a 24 hour cancellation policy in addition to that I have a 21 day cancellation policy if that is something that you are going to decided to do just move or whatever just didn’t want to continue the training so I would talk about that paints the picture in the clients mind that is the reason being they have got a spot. Im just going to be honest with all my stuff in business and I would say in reality it is going to take less than 3 weeks to replace your position so what I will appreciate if you could let me know as soon as possible what that will incur and what they will give me, it did take me 2 or 3 weeks to replace a client. It also doesn’t stress my time feeding my family or the rest of it because I worked out I could get a new client for my I felt confident in that process and it also meant that the dramatic drop of income was not going to fall away that very same week.

Brett: That’s a good input that I know will definitely be useful to people and especially trainers whom I have with them and trainers who have been in the industry for many years longer than myself even and one of the first things is trying to find hidden money in their business and you just need to look at that and go imagine in that 12 month training you actually had 21 day cancellation policy and lets a client was paying you 100, 200 dollars a week for training fees that extra 21 days is another 3 weeks’ worth of income another 600 dollars per person and you put to 10 people, you are looking to close to 6000 dollars of extra income that you could have and that is not by going out to get more clients, it’s about how you can get more out of your current clients and if you can rewind back and listen to what Jason said and its a very very very very valuable information and especially in the upfront concentration that’s where it is handed down you can’t all of a sudden surprise them and say oh I didn’t tell about it but we do have a 21 day cancellation policy so they are very valuable thank you.

Jason: When you sit down there and say I don’t know about that, this is back to the development side of it and that is something you need to resolve for yourself because there is a block around that or having the conversation they’ll bring up what they may say my experience and if you allow me to be your coach in this moment and just stay open to accept this advice, you have to bring up this up at the front like Brett said so you can deal with any issues someone said I don’t know about that 21 day thing I would ask the obvious next question and argue about it be curious about it and ask what about the 21 day that you have an issue with, you may need some more information my experience is that 9 times out of 10 its never an issue and something else that I realize if someone did have an issue with that because they have an issue or with something like that there is also room to negotiate I am prepared to go the 21 days prepared for the two weeks so its 14 days and that really then helps this process but the reason I’m telling you this is because I didn’t make it up on the spot last night its not because it sounded really cool and there was a struggle and I found a solution all you need to do was to struggle and apply it and get the results from it and if you don’t well I will give my favorite quote which reinforces this from Brett put it as a reminder ask me what my favorite quote makes perfect sense here about not using something.

Brett: So what is your favorite quote Jason?

Jason: Funny you should ask my favorite quote is from Mark Twain this one in this area was a big highlight to me Mark Twain said it’s a person who can read but wont is no better off than the person who can’t read. So if you have been given a bit of information and you don’t apply and don’t use it, you are not going better than the person who hasn’t come across it or have a privileged to get that information given to him because believe me it’s a simple technique maybe from the end there is a lot of blood, sweat and tears and money, time and investment to work that out, so if you get like a free book and put on the shelf and don’t use it, potentially can cost you a lot of money and you definitely cannot make a lot of money.

Brett: Excellent. Thanks for sharing that I guess the question that I have and I am always curious to see what would be the answer to this, where do you see this industry getting in the next 5 years? Where do you see it?

Jason: Brad and I sit on the council of fitness Australia so We are heavily involved with what is going on as much as we tackle the personal development business side of it. I can only go by the stats I have seen and it has hit the double, at the current stage it is right about 40-50 thousand dds trainers at the moment, it will hit the double for the next 5 years. One thing from a trainers point of view, the reality if you look at the test of time and fitness it is only evolved and developed. In my opinion it is going to be bigger and better I don’t really have a clear picture of what I think and where I think it is going to head but in terms of our industry being strong in the next 5 years that’s a big thumbs up for me and the time now is to act in terms of being a profitable business the other thing I look at is you never know what is going to happen. I have seen a big move online, people purchasing online products but that’s has been around and to answer your question our industry from the stats I have seen some people joining gyms in across the board it’s one the fast growing industries there is at the moment.

Brett: I guess we just need to look at the academic there is because there will never be a shortage of people to train and so I guess it just comes back to in 2 or 3 years it will take a turn for the worst because initially it had a good 3 years. So I guess in regards to that moving forward what’s in store for yourself?

Jason: We still have goals to educate more trainers, we were down in America this year and we made some conferences and made some really key connections so we gamble global and that’s the family car for us, we will be places like the United States, England, South Africa and some other places so we are going to expand and go global and we are at this point specialized in the last 5 years being in Australia I guess helping our back yard first. Now we are going to become global and our ultimate goal is just to be the number one educational providers for trainers who are serious about doing a successful business and we have got some really good online programs and developments as well and we would right a series of bestselling books and the key is to keep impacting people and the thing that excites myself Brad is the relationship that we have developed with you but you see the impact it has on your lifestyle it’s not so much about the business its about what we have survived in. our goal is we were sitting at the end of the day and we were looking at some of the stats and for people we have educated throughout our coaching and internship programs and then we were doing some quick and the people they have employed and I guess what makes me proud talking to you now in this call is something I haven’t thought about until recently we have actually played a massive part by providing more jobs and more opportunities in this country. You yourself have employed multiple amounts of people and so far we are getting hundreds of people that we have had a part to create more job opportunities because not every kind is going to be a business owner and we played a part and we want to continue with that and make this industry strive and be strong which been so good to us.

Brett: True. That’s awesome man. And also congratulations for that and you guys for putting all that effort, it’s not about the people you directly touch and the people indirectly as well that’s a massive opportunity as well. Moving on I guess we are going to have a bit of a question interrupt here and spice things up a little bit. I have heard this on the radio and I have actually liked it, and I am going to be adding this segment to the podcast, its called shoot, shag or marry.

Jason: Am I the first one?

Brett: You need to tell us what comes out of your mind either shoot, shag or marry, for people with me who may get upset that he may shoot someone is not real. So first person shoot or marry Madonna?

Jason:  Shag

Brett: Nicki Minaj.

Jason: Shag

Brett: The Queen of England

Jason: I’d marry her

Brett: Yeah that’s a good call you can’t be shooting her that’s for sure. And last one Mirrelle your wife?

Jason: Ok so I have already done that so I would go with marry. She would want to shoot me some times.

Brett: Yeah she would probably do that. Thanks for being a sport on that. Something that I am always interested in when am talking a lot for myself I am always thinking if I was given 1000 dollars and only the education that I have what would I do? To build a business or a company what would I do? I would be interested in what you would say about that. If I interest you in 1000 dollars and all you had was just your knowledge, what would you do to start your business?

Jason: You have given me a 1000 bucks and I know what I know now?

Brett: Yes sure. Which is not much s good luck? I will be a sport and give you a 600 dollar dell computer. You are mac man so I will give you a Macbook.

Jason: That’s fantastic. If I knew what I know now I am just thinking when we started we had a title spin when we started in 2000 so we are not so far off. I guess if I knew what I know now I would definitely spend the money on lead generating marketing and if I had the business concept in my mind and I guess what I have learnt successfully is how to market and I just doing the figures in my head and the lead I can get from a 1000 dollars. At the moment in my business, I can get a lead for about a dollar. So I would have 1000 leads coming in and that would be my avenue I would definitely get a website without paying for it no question about it.

Brett: Are you soliciting your body

Jason: To answer your question because I understand marketing and lead generation and copywriting I would be able to sort a website and lead within an amount and if I could expand on that..you know with us we know what a personal training is, you are in a marketing business so two key areas you have to understand systems and spreadsheets but you can get somebody to do that for you. The thing you need to understand is how to market and position yourself in sales and based on my analogy if I could teach anybody you need to understand how to do marketing beyond using the right key words and position yourself that would something I would get myself involve in to stand up one of my self alignment, one of my first online mentors said he was just talking about it and I will offer if you have 10000 people on the database and build a good  relationship with them they have great information and they are following you so they are like a tribe of followers and just one day you need 10000 dollars for whatever can kidney transplant a date with the queen and you could ask that list for a dollar each provide something with value and then 10000 dollar and the power for me is in having database and having the leads.

Brett: I couldn’t agree more. I guess tactical over there and we look at lessons that we learnt, if there is something that you could do differently or could have done differently that could have a different result what could that be? Do you have any of that story for us?

Jason: If there is one thing if I really run the clock?

Brett: Yes if you could something differently or change something slightly.

Jason: Yeah, sure I think there are lot many stuffs, yes there are something and thinking about it makes me cringe ..I guess the first thing that pops to my head I wouldn’t have got myself around the right person or people. There wasn’t education stuff out there if you look at training specifically, I would have done that, I wouldn’t have waited for so long and back then I didn’t know what I know so I would have definitely got help sooner I would have not tired to granted out and, I would probably my pride and get some help for me I would initially have a look at the investment I would have to pay and..my..i would have just pull, I would have attended seminars or go around the right people a lot sooner.

Brett: Sure. So if you were given 60 seconds to speak and to address the nature of the person trainer..what would you say in 60 seconds, I am going to set a stop watch here.

Jason: I just missed that, Sorry…

Brett: If you had 60 seconds to address every personal trainer in Australia and the world and you were given the stage and every personal trainer will be listening and you had 60 seconds I would be setting the stop watch right now.

Jason: I address them on what I think would be of value to them.

Brett: Yes, you give 60 seconds of you. Ready and go.

Jason: What I would say is design your life first. You are trainers but design your life first, figure out what you want to learn and figure out what you want for your family and make the business that you don’t go out there and show your time for money, make sure you get a mentor and coach who is going to assist you with that and understand you are in marketing business and sales and understand you are not in a personal trainers business become a trainer second and become a business owner first.

Brett: You have another 30 seconds you are on a roll.

Jason: What I learnt is not the measure of time and I am happy with that, that would be what I would say and that probably sums up today and putting a business owner on and designing a business in lifestyle first and make the business fit what you want make sure you have a clear vision of what you want to do. That’s a nice exchange of money for you and what you have got out there.

Brett: I will stop you there and that felt like a long 60 seconds that goes to show how much can be said in 60 seconds and this makes me think I should make this podcasts 60 seconds.

Jason: I wouldn’t say am a big fan of Donald Trump in terms of person but I can definitely admire him and I think he is an amazing entrepreneur. He does 60 minute meetings and 45 is just a waste of BS waste of time and 60 minutes is just straight to the point I could imagine him not having a lot of patience.

Brett: Its funny I remember reading something about Donald trump and he is obviously an amazing entrepreneur with what he does and he was talking about how he has an entourage following him around and people are asking who are those people and the person telling the story was like that’s plan B, that’s plan C, plan D and plan E. what do you mean? Well he goes that person there covers plan A and if plan A doesn’t work he implements plan B and plan C so lets talk about that and having those back up strategy we talked a little bit about earlier and I guess it took some synergy with it. The fact that personal trainers have some cancellation policy, that’s a plan B right? Lets look at plan A, plan B options that we can provide our listeners today. That’s another on the spot question.

Jason: I want to make sure to understand is that an example, inflation policy.

Brett: We are not recommending people to carry an entourage for people who have back ups unless you have got a billion dollars in the bank then you cant do that. I think it is very important if you are one of those listeners who have personal trainers. I think back up plans and rainy day plans are always good things to have.

Jason: That makes sense…I could use a back up plan as a strategy like a business and if you are a businessman, you can choose 6 o’clock on a Monday, Tuesday or Thursday make 5 times over and definitely you have got a premium ..that’s why you can increase your profit without doing any more work..that’s definitely one if it is being one of a trainer maybe they are the reason they cannot afford your service by cutting through out the week they can get there and maybe you can get 2 or 3 together for a cheaper rate but a high rate as you. You can make that work, I have had a session with one of our students and he switched totally off for that reason, you can offer additional training programs and we can get on a different for the moment. You can have a program that they can purchase as a game 29 dollars a month and they can get a training regime video and they have to follow it and that went really well. We all are going to be mindful of not being limited by circumstances and a back up plan over Christmas. There are a couple of things you can try I believe in different strategies.  To get a cash injection before Christmas and also trying to have a team of trainers and the whole income from them, you have to think about..to make money if you are so independent, probably like 10 months, I would say Christmas and the holidays Adjusting based on being more realistic definitely wait until the start of December to start thinking about how you can over come an issue. In Christmas I used to like when I was a trainer I would go to a client as fast as I could who is going away for Christmas and how long are the going away for Christmas and then I can think about some potential income decreases and had to figure out what I can actually make sure I wasn’t sitting at a corner somewhere on Christmas night hating because am stressing about money that would definitely another back up I would say. Have some offers and some ways you can boost some income over Christmas and that would definitely a back up plan that trying to throw but don’t think ahead, its Christmas again and we get caught up accepting Christmas should be a bad  time ..every year for the last 5 years, you have to stop and think about there is another way to do it or when you start thinking about it they go along to around 15th of December and then you left a little bit late. Is that what you were meaning?

Brett: I wasn’t meaning too much too be honest, the thing I love about this conversation we are talking about..Donald trump in the story and the next thing you have just given away some really valuable information and if you are out there you really want to be taking notes and writing stuff down. We are not holding back anything its just taking strategies and just about implementing them and it is quite funny that you talk about Christmas and so forth and being a personal project of the day and I was asking what is the hardest time of the year and two obvious answers were Christmas and winter. If you look at winter for example you can give us a strategy for example of operates when it comes to that, if you are running an outdoor bootcamp or training, you need to be prepared when that’s a response people get when if you are not lucky enough to live in Queensland and other areas and mind it still get cold out there, I would highly recommend you take on the strategy, if you are an outdoor trainer and you do your one on one groups then what you need to be looking at is finding another avenue where you can train people. Go to schools halls, scout halls, we used to run our first boot camps in a scout halls we had fishing trophies around the wall, planks of peoples name and, it was a quite a weird environment but and to that area again is another that I highly recommend and I remember talking to Brad and he suggest to run some of the boot camp under ground cover. So I started getting creative and think how you can implement these things into your particular situations.

Jason: People don’t accept things trying buying into whether they are here or there and I think partly it is convenient and people don’t try to because they are not sure what else to do, so if you are accepting something like that that’s limiting your income, putting stress in your family or lifestyle, at some level its going to be crazy right. I am just going to accept the fact that we are going to struggle to winter and stress about it again and logically and it doesn’t make sense and subconsiously I get why it happens but logically am I really prepared to let it happen again I met a guy in the States who is from Canada he is killing it and they are training in minus 20 degrees doing bootcamp style and he is packed up and he is absolutely smashing it and you have to say about the weather and the way he had motivated him to make that work and making it unique and I was watching the promo video I was going to do it. I guess if you buy the limitations of what people are thinking then you are going to get the results of ..on the flip side this is an amazing opportunity for a lot of people out there who would want to do my stuff then you are going to end finding them it’s a bit like you want to buy the new car but you have net got it..so you have got to be really mindful that you don’t buy into these limitations on Christmas and winter

Brett: I would definitely agree with that and I guess on that note I will get you on the podcast more regularly and get on with the discussion because this has been a valuable session today and everyone is going to take.

Jason: Unlike you I can speak for 3 hours straight

Brett: I guess I can be recording this but definitely I can get you on the podcast more regularly and get on with the discussion because this has been a very valuable session today and I know everyone is going to take a lot of great things out of it.

Jason: I’ll be the best one you will ever have again. A little 10 year old boy coming here just telling how he is.

Brett: One last question to wrap it up. If you were a super hero which super hero would you be?

Jason: Bat man, I know he is not a super human but I just like batman with all the cool toys.

Brett: Have you seen the new superman. That might change your thoughts but lets leave it at that bat man Jason. Before we go where can the listeners find out more about you and what you guys offer at Create PT Wealth and how they can fast track their business success.

Jason: What I really recommend is that you get a free chapter of our book if you haven’t already its www.personaltrainersguidetowealthcreation.com.au and that would be my recommendation if for some reason .au doesn’t come up then just .com but you can get the free chapter its on how to stand out from the pack, market yourself and the ever increasing. Market yourself out there that will be my recommendation. If you don’t like the chapter then I will urge you to do and grab the book.

Brett: What I will do is I will put that link on the website as well and when you get to this particular podcast you will see the link to the personal trainer wealth creation if you are on itunes, you will be able to see that link and you will be able to get this recording but Jason thanks buddy for having us on call today. Looking forward to the next episode and I will talk to you later today or tomorrow and we’ll go from there.

Jason: Thanks for having me on I wish everyone listening all the best success to their business and personal life.

 

Episode 5 – The One With John Romaniello

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In this episode Brett interviews his US buddy and fitness expert John Romaniello.

John Romaniello, one of the most highly regarded experts in the fitness industry, has written for a myriad of publications, ranging from Men’s Health to Fast Company, and has been John romaniello fiit featured as an expert on a number of television programs, including Good Morning America.

Romaniello is an angel investor in addition to his writing, and serves as an advisor to nearly a dozen fitness and tech companies. He’s also the author of the New York Times bestseller, Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha.

John is also the head fitness advisor to Fitness and all round legend – Arnold Swarzneggar.

  • In this episode we talk about everything from our MASSIVE night out in VEGAS (WARNING – funny story)
  • To how John produced an online marketing launch that reached $460k in sales in only 3 days.
  • John also explains the origin story on how he became a fitness advisor to quite possibly the most noted figure in the fitness industry – the Governator.
  • We also talk about how to start your very own ONLINE COACHING Business, where the industry is heading and LOADS MORE.

Enjoy

 

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The One With The Brookanator

Transcript of EPISODE 3:

Brett: Welcome to Professionals to another Fiit Professional Podcast. Today, I am very very excited to be speaking to this friend of mine from the other side of the world. It is currently night time for him and it is early morning for me. So, very very excited to be talking to this gentleman who I will introduce to you in a moment. First of all just a quick recap if you haven’t listened to any of the past episodes of Fiit Professional Podcast – what you can simply do is you can actually go to the I-tunes and type in FiiT Professional – F II T – so that’s FiiT with two Is and basically they will bring out the Fiit Professional Podcast and you can subscribe to that and what will happen is every time we upload a webisode you get that uploaded to your file immediately so you will never missing out on these awesome interviews. So, lets get started straight into it today and the gentleman I am going to be speaking to is John Romaniello and John Romaniello, just to give you a bit of a background – he is one of the most highly regarded experts in the fitness industry. He has written a myriad of publications ranging from Men’s Health to Fast Company and has been featured as an expert on a number of television programs, including Good Morning America ! John Romaniello is an angel investor, in addition to his writing and serves as an advisor to nearly a dozen fitness and tech companies. He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha. So John Romaniello, welcome aboard buddy !

John: Thank you so much for having me and thank you for that very kind intro directly from my Amazon buyer.

Brett: Yeah…just on that …just on that John Roman … I noticed that you have missed out on a couple of things that I thought you would have on there.. as a fitness advisor now,  we will get into this a little bit more in the episode but you are fitness advisor to the one and only Arnold Schwarzenegger.

John: Yes…yeah …I am… I am one with my collaborating {inaudible} team.  We are the heads of Arnold Schwarzeneggar’s fitness advisory board, which is just weird. So Arnold was actually kind enough to write the foreword for our book which is great. So it’s extremely cool to get to work with him and it is really what we do for him is essentially find and manage content on the website which is we also design some workouts which he himself has done and it’s nice that Arnold has occasionally will do workout that I have to….so that’s fun.

Brett: Yeah yeah that’s brilliant…must be funny, growing up and watching out on the big screen and all of a sudden you are writing for his website.

John: Yes but you know it’s been a fun filled journey. Every now and again I have a moment where I really look back and sort of like go over things and it’s all very strange that these things have happened in this particular order but we all feel very good.

Brett: That’s brilliant buddy. So John I guess getting stuck straight into this, let’s just paint a little bit picture of how we met and so forth and I guess you probably got a different story to me because there was some alcohol in the midst of everything. So we met in Vegas. I went over to Vegas to basically mastermind with the world’s leading internet entrepreneurs and John was actually speaking at this event and then as every event there’s an after party so we went to uh..then actually you might be able to tell me on this.. what was the name of the Club Festival. Its called…

John: Ah….I want to say we went to EXCESS which is … it’s the wheel-in hotel ……not sure why we wandered there but that feels great

Brett: I have been telling this story without being able to actually give the address but that shows how good the story is. Basically John {inaudible} me met there – at the event – and I guess we kicked it off at Excess…how was the night out? I haven’t been able to find out the aftermath of that…but it was spot ready

John: You want that …real …you want like the half or the full story …because this can be real bad…

Brett: We want the full story mate.

John:  Oh..Jesus..all right …So when you last saw me… or when I last remember seeing you we were talking to a couple of girls and then I remember like sort of walking back towards the table where our group was and then I don’t remember anything…at one point I remember falling down back at the table and then all I have is flashes…I .. have this flash where I am walking out of the club and then I have a flash and then it’s a black and then a flash I am in a taxiline and then its like five minutes blackness and then it’s a flash line in the taxi and then it’s a flash two, you don’t have to tell the boys this and then I am standing in front of the elevator vomiting bokshoy into a garbage can….and we had..it’s bad..not a problem and so there was this girl from the event who I was flirting with or whatever and we had sort of like hooked up the night before. So she has been very maternal and sort of like took responsibility for me and so her and my buddy Alex …. got me up to my room and then I remember trying to undress myself….I was trying to take off my shoes but I couldn’t find my feet and…..which happens sometimes …you are drunk…. you couldn’t lose your feet…and so eventually you know she says she will help me with my shoes and she followed up with “Many hands make light work” and I looked at her and I said “That’s a proverb” and then I fell over backwards and passed out and I did not wake up until the next morning. When I woke up…I was at the foot of the bed…like a scrolled up ball like a dog and in my underwear which was like bright red diesel creeps …and I made my way to the bathroom and proceeded to vomit and I just went back and forth from the bed to the bathroom and kept vomiting and I could end the story there but you said you wanted the full version…so then I like I am done vomiting for a while and this girl so there she had slept in my room ……and she began to rub my arm but not in a maternal way ….more in sort of a … you know like… this is going to happen kind of way …. I mean I just like I told you there is nothing in the world I wanted to do last than have sex…I didn’t know her that well….I didn’t want to say that I didn’t want to like I mean it’s a really ..we wanted poking up because I didn’t want to be impolite ….she did take care of me when I was drunk and it would be rude.  So rather than sort of her being up and I was like in the middle of really the worst sexual performance of my life and I had to stop in the middle to go drop again…and then

Brett: hahaha (laughter)

John:  It was so bad….….and I am blabbering ….l like I swear its not you ….its not you…sic….and she says I know I know….and so anyway eventually she and the other buddy of mine got me to the airport…I .. I had..I…I showered soda and well…I just catching my flight barely and I sweating out straight tequila on the plane…everyone around me must have hated me ….And I started to feel a little bit better about halfway through the flight and I made it home without vomiting again ….so that was good. So that’s the story…

Brett: I …I guess just to give people a little bit of background of what could have been a magic interview .to that …I ..I actually….I guess it is one of those things you know when an Aussie meets an American “I had to do everything” Aussie like him as we would take up to the bar and a delay if it was we had a {inaudible} instead of water we had a shot of tequila, a Yagabond and then a chaser. A quick fact… which is …not what you are thinking…the quick fact… is Madorie and Baileys….so it was two shots and a good Yagabond and not only that I believe there was a few bottles of tequila and vodka at the table but that’s now a great memory and that was a great way to meet you on that level …and …I think it was something funny that I picked up there just goes back to the type of person you are ….as drunk as you were …as strong as you were you still picked up that.. this mystery woman …still a pervert…which you know …for that lovely …..hilarious ..(laughter)

John: Do you remember that I you know I had like affairs thrown up {inaudible}….this is like on the floor of the hotel room… holding onto the carpet to keep from falling off the wall …it was bad….it was bad.

Brett:  All right mate … thank you very much for that …I am sharing a story I am sure everyone can relate to them…have had nights like that.  So, I guess let’s get stuck straight into John Roman and a bit more of a background to give the viewers a bit of a heads up because you are heavily involved in online internet marketing and like you say you got a number of different products and services that you purchase and one of those I guess would be your flagship product would be your online coaching.  So, I guess do you need to say anything else that you do you would like to be on it to share before you give into a question-what I would really like to know is what was your a…ha moment when you decided or realized that the internet really was a tool that you could utilize to invest your knowledge?

John:  Sure…I have been writing on the internet for I guess 13 years now and my first article was published on a body building website called T-Nation which most of you listeners know back when I was about 20 years old in 2002 and I didn’t have like a website or anything to trap traffic…so I was just like popular on T-Nation for whatever that’s worth. And I thought about setting up a website…. A few times of the year’s …never really did and at some point my buddy Joe Mannen, who is a big guy in the marketing world…at this point he wasn’t …he wasn’t wanted to get involved in my marketing ….and he just told me a little bit about it and it so to sound as – too good to be true and so good luck to all of you over there and then a couple of months later he launches for his product and he did like 300,000 dollars in gross revenue in like 3 days. {inaudible}….you got me!

Brett:  (laughter)

John:  So, that was the only haha moment where I saw what was possible because Joe had demonstrated and then I started looking into it and I saw what other people are doing and I really saw how there were many people who were making money who I didn’t think were particularly special in any real way ….not feeling bad about anyone particularly but you know I just thought he is not doing anything that I cant do better and once I saw through those people I decided to sort of jump in with both feet and thats really what happened …I decided to keep the treatment that was working out for a book at that point and really just developed it into a product so it became my key final phase fat loss …my first key product and when we launched that I was fortunate enough to beat Joe’s record and we did 460,000 {inaudible} in 3 days.  So it was pretty big and we just kept building from that.

Brett:  Fantastic…Those results would make a majority of the people shit in their pants really go well…coming from…. I guess if you are not familiar with the internet and the rich that they can have is that might right their  …is just living profound …it is possible that maybe you may not want to be out.  You may not want 460 K in 3 days.  Whether you are doing 10K – 30K you know this is still a really good opportunity.  I guess in a month or two of that ….to get to that…I guess awesome achievement of 460 K in 3 days, what was one of your biggest businesses lessons that you got through because obviously you know you didn’t just create something straight away and over the night it was success, you know …you must have gone through with someone … some good lessons along the way.

John:  Sure…what I mean I think the most valuable thing is take care of your affiliates you know that’s really all about businesses you understand in the affiliate marketing world I build.  On affiliates, so you just need to always be willing to go the extra mile, make things easy for people.  I remember in my first launch….it was sort of challenging because you know so many people had demands on my time and I didn’t want to be rude in any way.  So I was always being very prominent and I guess I didn’t understand initially just how much people depend on you to help them sell your product.  So you know I think I did a bunch of interviews and wrote articles for people so I expected  now I will double the products I just got to send emails to make money but I wound up writing thousands upon thousands of words and sort of fulfill other people’s blogs during that time and that was really a helpful  lesson..it helped me in all of my other launches and then for my book launch – the hard cover books – here comes the seller we sort of you know that lesson came in handy and it was really important as a matter of fact my coop and I in the week that the book came out we were on something like.. I don’t know .. 23 podcasts, 20 articles and 19 different publications around.  So, we were like everywhere and because I knew the value of that of having other people sell your stuff.  So, that was I would say the big lesson that I learnt during that launch that really helped this.  Helping other people sell your product.

Brett:  Fantastic. I guess if you could afford to give the listeners there now currently who don’t have enough information products you know that they want to get into internet marketing it and you know reap the rewards that has to offer, what would be your first bit of advice be for these type of people?  Maybe someone who has already got a product and is just not selling any of it …what would you do …your advice be then?

John:  Well…too bad for them…you know first if you don’t have a product you need to create a great product …you know that …we cant just create some need to a fabulous product because everyone else’s is a fabulous product you need to find something that people either haven’t seen before or will be interested in seeing it and having a different perspective is really important and so that’s the first.  From there if you already have a product I would say hold conferences, meet people, network, because again affiliates should know – that they are going to sell your product fully and all of them being pull people are far more interested in doing business with people they know than people they never met and so you know so many of my affiliate relationships have been a common bond by just virtue of holding conferences in knowing people and that’s why we are doing this podcast right?  I mean how many podcasts you think I did last two weeks….its astronomical….the amount of ofcourse I get through interviews – that’s again not to be  {inaudible}…..which is how it is at this point. And I said yes to you because we met, we had drunk together and I like you and that’s how it is.  So, I am not going to give interviews to just anyone because I don’t o …I will be doing f#$@$ interviews all day. So yeah….so I would say that’s the most important thing …if any of you are not selling because your affiliate networks isn’t powerful enough and to make that….. to fix that you know is pretty easy.

Brett:  Yeah…a bit of tequila and a good night out..

John:  Yeah…you could

Brett:  Another important I tell you I just really want to hold my head on that point day because I am the massive advocate on you know getting out there and doing something that might make you uncomfortable to myself I guess I have to fly all the way from Australia to Vegas which is not that bad of a task…thank you about it …I took {inaudible} faith out of that meeting alone and he took great guys and got some really good relationships which is you know he had met whether something inspires or doesn’t inspire from it I think it’s got to be something in the industry you need to the networking is a key thing and that’s something I know you do very very well.  And I guess just on that talking about how to look after your affiliates and so forth and I know in one of your last launches ..you did something different and a bit unique than what you generally see with people with affiliate programs because I guess there was a standard approach almost affiliate marketing correct?

John:  Yeah….absolutely

Brett:  And then what you did I guess was put that on the head and you made your approach a little bit different.  Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

John:  What specifically are you talking about?

Brett:  So, in regards to I guess how you got your affiliates to mail more, prices, etc.

John:   What I sort of saw….I am an affiliate as well so I promote other people’s products and the commissions are not you know you get 75% if you naturally did your own product and that’s really awesome.  But there are bonuses and everyone makes bonus cash that you get you win first place in the affiliate contest ….sometimes you get 2000 or even 3000 dollars which is cool…everybody likes competition ….everyone likes to be competent or feel like being competitive and have a chance to win right.  So, the affiliate contest is one of the primary ways that we get people to promote. But we run into this issue wherein lot of people with small affiliates, they cant possibly compete with the larger ones.  There is no way that someone with a list of 3000 people is going to be able to compete with Mike here who has massive emails.  And so what I saw happening is that was the same like 5 to 8 guys who are always wanting the affiliate ….and they didn’t even have to mail that many times to do it.  And so what I did was recreated a tiered affiliate contest where there was a tier-one for guys who had big lists and then two for guys who had a little bit smaller……no wonder we went down to six tiers based on either the size of your list or your performance with previous launches and that way you are only competing with people who were roughly as capable of winning as you could and so you know for the first year it was a $5000 first prize and for the 5th tier it was still a 1000 and so rather than having to scrounge like crazy for a chance to take eighth place overall and maybe make 250 dollars, now you said you are just competing against five other guys in your level you have a chance to win a 1000, 500, or whatever it is or all the different levels in between and really help people. So,  I think that… it needed more fun for everybody because now you are just competing with these five guys instead of giants and everyone thought like it was a bit more fair.  So I think that really helps

Brett:  Because I love that method and the approach to that because you can take that and utilize it in any form of business really like for people who are listening to this and they are not online now is maybe sitting and all this isn’t for me but you could actually tape what you have just said and are really recommended on just for one that they last 3-4 minutes and listen to this again and look at how you can introduce that into your procure order business, how you can run your affiliate contest and your iron gym or you are going to studio or you are going to boot camp. So, really good information here, John. Thanks for sharing that.  So John, I guess that one of your flagship services I can say is online coaching where you actually work with people from all over the world writing them highly and highly expert driven workouts…nothing of that makes sense really.  Anyways, that’s today….I hardly expect written workouts where you will be now able to I guess collect an income from servicing other people from all over the world.  Can you explain a little bit more on the online coaching and so forth?

John:  Sure.  Essentially the online personal training and what I do is a is have a comprehensive assessment form.  It’s about six pages long – about 7-8 {inaudible}  leads ….What I collect from the internet is just this one information that I would collect from someone in person and from there I sort of have the enough information about them to design one-on-one program and this covers their training …so I get them 3 to 5 workouts that they rotate over the course of the months….I take care of their nutrition in terms of their calories and macro-nutrient break down and then I give them a list of recommended fruits that helps them sort of build their needs and the goal is really to teach people how to be self-sufficient rather than giving people a corn-chip free fabricated meals. I hope people learn how rather than tell them what to eat….you know.  And it is very successful.  We have thousands of people go through the program in the past five years.  It’s really fantastic.  I have really enjoyed it.  You know because it’s low-priced program…. I try giving work between 350 to 400 but maybe that was $250 during the sale….but that’s still reasonable.  When I was training in the New York city if you wanted to train with me you had to be willing to pay 250 an hour and you had to be 8 minutes away …that’s the average travel time in a gym in the Europe city.  So, now, you know obviously that’s a very very specific point tell you beyond.  Not only it is sort of space locational but it’s pretty high priced program.  To get people train for 4-5 times a month it can be pricy. So now, because it’s lower overall and you could work with different clients. So, working with Brooke Shields…how was it {inaudible} exclusively I have been able to work with young guys who can spare 300 a month but they could not spare 300 an hour and it has been really cool.

Brett:   Fantastic.  To suggest on that and to someone who is wanting to obviously get into that I guess I know what really needs to go into the back end of it but to share with our listeners is what are the key things you need to get to set up and understand but first of all you can just start….right now to work out to people what would you say your key points are?

John:  There are ……breaking the body fat is really important.  But other things really sort of include their experience, what type of training they have been doing for the past several months, if they have food allergies, if they have an injuries, this is really important…there level of proficiency, there is exercises like some one’s never come with that {inaudible}  I am not going to program that in…I will find a different place to allow for the hinge…..also its stuff like that…So, I mean those are the big rules…..

Brett:  So I guess in regards to the business side of it someone wanting to get set up…things such as I guess they need to create an exercise library right, they can’t just what if the one of the client doesn’t understand what RDO was.  So, how do you structure that into your workouts – into your programs.

John:  Well you know the way it is set up it is really just that I am able to tell based on the assessment what exercise they do and they don’t and under the ones that I think they could run on their own I send them the video that has a tutorial and exercise their mind and that allows them to learn it. So they are never done. I don’t think I have worked with anyone who has never done push-ups before.  You know if they have never done…if they become {inaudible}  but haven’t done RDOs I think you haven’t mastered the movements. So, I just sort of teach them how to do it…coaching however I can and then remember to work it into the program.  So thankfully you know because of the way the program is set up,  I don’t really run to…I turn off beginner clients.  Most of my clients are intermediate I would say.  So it is sort of self brigades.

Brett:  So I guess if you have not tried and exercised the library of myriad of exercises imagined…what sort of work is involved to get an online coaching business set up?

John:  The hardest thing is recreating your templates and documents.  You don’t want to have to recreate new PDF’s or forms. So, it is sort of at least the structure videos in place.  The protraction –  you have to do that, you have to create a way to give them assessment, you have to create you know you deliver….how you can deliver and how you can charge so for me I just take over people’s Pay-Pal.  It’s a wrong thing to do that.  How are you going to promote it?   You have to have a funnel that gets people in….so all of those things.  I lot of this to the proprietor so I can’t talk too much about how I did it.  But, what I will say is that those are the finer things again. Your funnel how to get people in, your marketing, your follow up marketing and templates….the way they do away the content where there is presentable and sort of permissive.

Brett:  I guess coming back to the I will thing if you know……tried in the system, and just sitting down backing up…if we look to that as a cross journey of how they can do firstly get in front of you and then how that every step is going to be delivered from there.  So, cool mate.  So moving on to a bit of a through a curve ball on you. Now another question for you, if you were given 1000 dollars and a Macbook Pro and that’s all we had and of course knowledge you have got what would you do?  If you had to start again….

John:  If I had to start over 1000 dollars of budget and Macbook Pro and I have my knowledge …. but I don’t…I have my mails right?

Brett:  That’s right….you now have no contacts.

John:  Okay…well..the first thing I would do is reach out to editors and try to get published on websites that had high traffic and so to bring people back to my site that’s free .. hopefully or actually be making money there.  I will also try to get published in big magazines like Men’s House, Men’s Fitness.  From there, I will certainly be creating content for my own website and republishing content that I wrote for other websites and at the same time trying to build my Facebook column.  Once I start writing, you get to feed people in, I would develop income for my coaching program that I charge maybe 200$ a month and trying to get people on that to generate more income.  Once my budget is a little larger, I will be making maybe 1000 to 3000 dollars a month, I will create a product and I will have enough money that I could wind up and develop a very low priced point product maybe 999 to get people into the habit of buying from me.  I would give it fully 100 percent on it to get them to promote. I would even ask them to just put up a link through Facebook or I could write a bloggers forum, etc.   just get affiliates across into promoting for you and get people accustomed to buying from those who have been a big thanks and eventually maybe I will work up to a bigger product.  But the very next product 999 is probably works up.

Brett:  Perfect.  A good point ….that is you are going to give away 100% of your income.  For the people there listening who are don’t probably fully understanding why would you want to give away 100% of your 995…

John:  Well…because everyone is trying to make his efforts right?  How much money you really need for the affiliates getting 75%

Brett:  (laughter)

John:  You know you may add at best to make 250 sell and then minus quick entries….so this should be a sign of good faith and listen my focus might just work one to one with this…I will give you a 100%…it’s like they know they are not making any more money. To make $9 instead of $7 isn’t changing their lives but if they are big affiliates it’s a nice thing…they still know you mean business

Brett:  Yeah …And not only that…I guess the fact that you have been a big part in front of their large audience so you less can grow exponentially

John:  Exactly, if I am a big affiliate, I am thinking this ten dollar product, if I market it well, maybe I can sell a 1000 copies- that’s ten grand….now all of a sudden the …that extra 25% starts to mean a lot…right….so now its a difference of making 20…..uh 10,000 dollars that is 7500 you know….. its a nice difference.

Brett:   Yeah…thats a lot…that’s correct…so I guess again to the listeners there thinking you know how can you utilize this into your floor business, you know it is the same old thing what are you willing to give up in the front to get at the end…so I am I am a big believer in that.

John:  So that $1000 would go in building an empire. So good on you.

Brett:   (laughter) ….You passed

John:  Yeah

Brett:   So a question for you then…Where do you see this fitness industry heading …being so prolific in the industry…like where do you see it heading in the next 25 years?

John:  One I think online things will probably continue  …the markets could get more saturated but the people there will also rise to the top….I think that you have a lot of people who are very very very good trainers highly regarded in the industry who are not good at marketing and then you will be able to search and get people who will be marketing for them. marketing all that and they will really be going to crush it you know and from there, I mean I think…… in person you are going to see something like cross linking continue to do well…and you will see very very high priced point gyms do well and very very low priced point gyms do well but everyone in the middle is going to get crushed you know you try to. If there is a 10 dollar a month gym in your area and there is a 150 dollar a month gym in your area and you will try to do 60 you are going to get crushed.  Because people you know want posh services or they want to save money.

Brett:  I agreed that totally…and you can see that happening right now…You know here’s the reason we have opened up our FIIT Chick Transformations locations so we currently got 30 locations around Australia of about female only boot camp programs so you know that it’s definitely we are seeing the energies shift from one-on-one sole training to the group format as well and definitely online.  So, definitely agree with you on that one. So John I guess it is.   In one of my past episodes I talk about five keys to running a successful fitness business.  Now I just want to run you through the five keys and I just wanted to talk to one of those that pop out for you the most. So, in any particular order, we have got  – Be Genuine, we have got  –  create and run a range Community,   Produce Results, Create Multiple Services and Have a Purpose.  So out of those five…which ones succeed the most and can you elaborate on?

John:  I think creating community is really …probably the one that has been..if not necessarily the most effective in terms of bringing in money certainly the most fulfilling. You know I am very fortunate to say that I have a really active subscriber base…you know the people who comment on my blogs and who share them …you know I got ….can’t say right now actually ….I have got 18,800 fans on my Facebook page which is not a huge Facebook page by any stretch. There are people who have 50000 that has been still mine people online and those 50000 have got you know 11000 followers on Twitter but what I will say is that these people are engaged and that’s awesome.  I mean you know I care about their results…I would want to know what they are doing they want to know what I am doing you know when I post about fitness shit they enjoy it but when I post about stuff from my life they care and you know a big community like that caring about people and getting people care about you and then most importantly getting people who care about each other…that’s …. that’s the key right because if you have a 1000 raving fans instead of 10000 or 20 or 50 or 100,000 people feel informed about you, those people will always support your path.

Brett: Perfect….Love that..….I couldn’t agree with you more….You know its… its not about….its not about the size….its how you use it in our end ….whether that’s manliness or Facebook fan page  …you know gives something…they are really proud with our companies….you know we have got a 130,000 Facebook fans and its a very active page and I couldn’t agree of you more the training raving community …this means you know when you have got products and services they are going to love what you…. what you are bringing out and they kind of want to share a mindset you know.  So I guess leading onto that you know having a New York Times bestselling book you know obviously having raving fans and creating a community has been a big advantage to yourself on the success of the book so lets chat a little about the book.   Firstly, if you just want to give us and the audience a bit of overview about the book and in the end explain why you even wrote it and what do they look out into today.  That sort of things.

John:  Sure… again the book is called Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha…..A Real World Guide to an unreal life…it’s a fitness and lifestyle book for men who are looking to become best version of themselves by first mastering the physicality and then using the skills there to improve other aspects of their body…so for us that’s a really really serious thing.  The reason that we wrote the book is because we want people to experience some of the success of read experience.  Because what I believe is that it is sort of impossible to go through a physical transformation but also going through a mental and emotional is it…it gives you all of this confidence that really allows you to bring those skill sets either to your business life or to your personal life and I think that whether you go through a physical transformation or spiritual one or a financial one you will come out on the other side feeling like a better and more powerful person who can offset change in the world and that’s really important you know being about a sort of empowers you around the world…how we…how we you know …leave a mark ….that is sort….that is sort of the main purpose of the book…we want to help people become the best version of themselves physically so that they can best serve the world within whatever way they seek that.

Brett:  So that’s brilliant and then huge congratulations on that ….very very well done. So, if just for the listeners out there where can I get a copy of this book?

John:  Well, if you are in Australia its kind of hard to get your hands on it.  Can you guys order through Amazon.co.uk …you can?

Brett:  Ummm…I am not sure to be honest….I have ordered mine yesterday.. but probably should call Customer Help…. but I haven’t received yet… but it’s another story.

Yes…so here is the problem we have with Australia.  We actually had about 300 books shipped back to us.  So really really firstly expensive endavour.  We had to pay to send them firstly and then now we have got to pay to send them again.   Might be 30 dollars a book.  So it is getting pretty pricy and but what we are trying to do for the next book and it is obvious that we are still sending the books …it’s a pain in the butt…you know we just wish that we could get them here faster but you know we have one-two sent back yesterday from Abu Dhabi …you know sometimes you know not getting through customs….sometimes we get it back…whatever it is….we will get them to people as quickly as we can.  But for people who can order the book on Amazon in their respective countries that is the fastest cheapest easiest way and it is just getting it across borders and on our site engineeringthealpha.com.

Brett:  Fantastic. So, let’s stick to the book for a little bit.  Why do you even …I guess….what what led you to writing this book?  Why write a book….why have the book…just that one?

John:  Why …I mean …because I love books.  You know I really believe that knowledge is important.  You know lot of people think actions speak louder than words. I think that’s bullshit..you know I think that if you are aware of the power of words one thing to write a book is sort of in it and I have always been a writer first before anything else. And I have always wanted to publish a book because you know if you consider yourself a writer….you consider yourself an author…then you stand in the ranks of a great men and that’s always been really sort of a…not just inspired but really aspirational to me and its always been important to me on personal levels have my mom being able to walk into Barnes and Noble and see my book on the shelf.  That’s really cool to me rather than just having e-books and things like that. I think its value there …I think that it’s a qualifier and I think that people who have published traditional books and, in particular, people who have written bestsellers are perceived differently than people who have just written e-books you know it’s very different.

Brett: That’s true…I wholly recommend everyone listening to this coverage and getting hands on the copy because if you see how John writes, he is definitely got an innate ability when it comes to that and something that I just wanted to touch on John’s website he can get around in Fitnesssystems.com and just just the one line is an example on one of his short times which says- I have all sorts of bad shits that you should buy…it’ll make your life better. But you know mate it’s something that 90% of people will be too scared to one- write that because they feel that you know “Hey what would people think about that” sort of stuff but I guess that goes back to you know looking at the five keys to success …you know you are definitely genuine, you produce results…you know you have created your own community and we have talked about having multiple services now in regards to you know the fifth one of having a purpose, what do you believe is John Romaniello’s purpose or why you are on this earth man?

John:  I mean.… I haven’t really figured that out yet.  I think that I mean it’s really true…I think that my purpose is to help as many people as possible and I think that I am doing that right now through fitness but I think that there are other ways I can do it….I don’t know …I mean…..the only thing I am doing important work is anything ….any of us is important is you know …Is Richard Brandson important?  Is building Aeroplanes and launching racket labels important?  Genuinely how do we try to find change?  How do we try to find our legas?  Is it the money we make or the monuments that are built in our honor …the way that we push the world forward like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs….I mean maybe ….but I think that ….you know one of my favorite stories is this one I heard when I was at a concert at summer camp.  There is this big storm and all of the star fish are washed up on the shore.  There is an old man walking down the beach.  I am sorry there is a young man walking down the beach and he sees an old man picking up starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean.  And the beach is littered with them…so there is thousands upon thousands of them and so he calls after him and the guy is not turning around and he falls and is walking over and so finally, you know he gets to the old man who is just picking up starfish and throwing them in and picking up starfish and throwing them in and the young man says – “What are you doing?  You can’t save them all. You can’t possibly make a difference” and the old man reaches down, he picks up a starfish and throws it in the ocean and he says “To that one, I just did”.  And I think being able to change one person’s life even if it’s in some innocuous way like helping them get six-pack abs and feel better about themselves or helping them make more money and be able to provide their full family…or helping them find the thing that makes them feel better that allows them to help the world.  Whatever way I can do that is how I want to do that because at the end of it all you know maybe my name will be remembered for 100 or 200 years but that’s not really going to matter… there is not going to be any monuments built in my honor or statues of me anywhere but what there will be in this lifetime is a bunch of people who can look at me and say that I helped and I think that’s truly the best us normal folks can ask for.

Brett:  Hmmmm….That’s awesome..I loved the starfish story is so many so many take away lessons in that that you know should everyone can gravitate to serve.  I guess in regards to that.    John….what’s in store for you moving forward in the next five years…where are we heading…what’s …what’s in store?

John:  Ummm…I have got another book in the works….I mean I will be starting two books….we are also working on the second one now “People Women” and beyond that I have been approached with some TV deals.  So, we are sort of like sorting through all of that and trying to figure out if there is an opportunity there.  So, that …that sounds very interesting to me and something I always wanted to be part of.  So, I think that’s a very strong possibility in the next five years.

Brett:  Are you going on the bachelor…

John:  I didn’t understand….

Brett:  On the bachelor….(laughter)

John:  I am sorry

Brett:  Hey…Are you going on the Bachelor?

John:  No ..No….No..there has been a couple of production companies who have been interested in developing a show around me.  As it happens, I am no longer a bachelor.  I don’t know if you have heard I am getting married.

Brett:  Yeah….I have I have.  So Congratulations on that as she must be a good one.

John: Yeah….she is the best one…she is amazing!

Brett:  Excellent.  Love it.  Actually buddy I have articles and I believe about..you are talking about being engaged and how it sort of changed you etc.. levels ridicules ……

John:  Ah…ah…something else

Brett:  So, I guess then John…couple of great luck …..I mean we still got a few minutes left they say and there is a couple of things that I would like to check with you about is with one of them is the Arnold Schwarzenegger thing…I know its hush for a starry episode but how does someone end up being a fitness advisor for Arnold Schwarzenegger …what…what were your key title wise on that journey?

John:  Well you know what…the weird thing is the internet is small or is it big and you never really know who is listening and the way that it happened was sort of organic.  One day I got an email from a young guy named Daniel who said,” Hey man, is it okay if I ask you some fitness questions by email.  I know you will kill me…its on Facebook and Twitter but they are kind of a public job and I don’t want to put my business out there…is that cool?”  I said – “Sure man, yeah…absolutely”….you know….normal con…and so he went back and forth to answer his questions you know what and as you write…so you know a couple of exchanges which was no longer over a period of couple…over a period of two weeks…I got curious …so I googled him and what came up was the Wikepedia page for Body Man and Body Man is US political jargon for a politician’s closest personal aide.  And this guy’s name is Daniel Ketchell and listed under notable Body Men was Daniel Ketchell, the special assistant to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.  I was like ohhh…that’s cool…this guy is going to get a little special attention…and so you know now I know my you know what you are knowing and his emails get moved to the top of the queue kind of thing….and …we just sort of built this relationship.  Eventually, he signed up for my online coaching program and you know he used to do really well and Arnold started to seeing him make progress because he…that’s his job…he travels all over the world with Arnold you know, writes his speeches, everything, all that stuff or helps on his speeches I guess and it was really cool and so you know one day he mentions to me that Arnold has been like jumping in on his workouts with him which is really cool and so that Arnold will be doing workouts that I myself wrote …it is kind of superior feeling…really awesome.  Anyway once Arnold gets out of office, he decides he wants to get back into fitness-somehow or the other and he decided he wanted to re launch his website with fitness content.  So I helped a little bit there and when he did launch I wrote the first peer stardom and that’s really how it all happened and from there I just sort of happened writing for him for a long time and helping other people write to them and finding content and eventually we decided to form an advisory board of people who write consistent and that’s sort of how it happened……that’s how we came over fortunately as fitness adviser.

Brett:  That’s awesome…that just goes to show you know it’s a sad thing if you don’t know who you are talking to and you don’t know who you can meet and the opportunities that are out there you know …most people don’t think you have engaged probably yourself….you know you probably never thought.. one day I am going to be a fitness advisor to Arnold so….you know that’s pretty cool.  Pretty cool …why on…I would to….I guess….get in front of someone like that and provide such a great service because …that cannot be big extremely helpful for your profile as well moving forward.

John:  Certainly …yeah…its I mean its just fun…its really cool ..it’s a nice thing to say and it’s nice thing to feel.

Brett:  Another curve ball for you….if money was not an option……okay you have unlimited money…what would you be doing…what would your day look like.

John:  If money was not an objective…what would I be doing?  I mean…should be gymming it…my life is not fun and different since let’s say my…. my income has doubled a few times and my life has not been really all that different and so, for me, it’s just – I would still be writing.  Maybe I would be working on different books with other things but no matter what I would just be writing all the time.  That’s the main thing.

Brett:  Cool….How about travel Australia in the midst of John Romaniello?

John:  Yeah man …I fucking travel a lot..I am really sick of travelling

Brett:  (laughter)

John:  I would wait to do less business travel and a tiny bit more personal travel which honestly I have been a road wire for like three and half years now…I mean there have been months where I am home maybe 10 days…but I am getting married…my fiancée and I just kind of like hanging out…I would really love it if I get three months where I did not travel but to me it will be really exciting.

Brett: (laughter) The opposite of publicly nice people but I totally understand but I guess again the whole travel thing just goes back to what you have needed to do to become a successful as you have been so I guess it’s just part of the journey isn’t it?

John: Yeah…that’s the whole thing ….just figuring out what you like….what you want to do.

Brett:  So John…..we got like five minutes or so left here.   I just want to put it out to you and you are always never short of a great story. So, is there any good words of wisdom anything that you think you will be able to share with our listeners that they could relate to and in some sort help them become more successful in their fitness business and laugh in general as well…

John:  Yeah…I think the most important thing is to sort of find a mentor and to eventually be a mentor. I think it’s really important sort of step in your process to go through all of those different phases of your education really really …Mentoring has been really invaluable to me and I really can’t say enough about the people who helped me but it also has been satisfying in a completely different way to have helped other people and to become a mentor and a coach and I think that sort of nature of things..the cycle that you go through…may not be great things and then you want to pass them forward because once you sort of achieve a high level of success and must you find a new coach you wont go anywhere, but that must be a common coach you won’t ever appreciate what it is to be one and o think that’s just a stupid valuable experience to have.  So, having coaches is really the No.1 piece in buy-or-sell.  That’s really credible stuff.

Brett:  Fantastic….it’s quite funny you say that the other day {inaudible} he said you have to learn to teach.  So, whenever you are learning anything learn it as if you got to be teaching it and sharing with the others so I really loved that quote.  So I guess speaking of quotes you know what is your favorite quote and why?

John:  My favorite quote….. good one…I think it’s from a book called “Snow Crash” by a man named Neal Stephenson.   The quote says until a man is about 25 years old, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. So I think that for me …it is that quote is really about sort of like appreciating your youth and that leads me to think about appreciating the various appreciating the right time of your lifestyle rim you are in and this is really an exciting time for me….I am moving across the country..to California …you know I found this unbelievable woman whom I am going to marry but it’s scary it’s a lot of crazy things.  When I was younger I didn’t appreciate how young I was….how beautiful that was…and I was also actually recently in Louisiana, New Orleans, with a bunch of buddies of mine for one of our friends bachelor party who is getting married as well and you know we would just sit around talking it’s like …its crazy to think that when we were twenty three and we got to hangout all the time and how much time we spent together – we don’t have {inaudible} – we don’t have AC and every single Friday night we all drank our mind out….it’s crazy….but we didn’t take the time to appreciate how fleeting that was.  In a lot of ways, my early twenties were like the best time of my life.  You get to hangout with your friends all the time.  Now, we all have serious girlfriends or wives or fiancées, I never get to see them. And looking back nostalgically helps me sort of appreciate what I have with my fiance and what I have with my stepson…Isaac. You know I think about the fact that he is around all the time and that’s probably hard for him to be in with his parents all the time and that will be….it’s certainly …it can be stressful to deal with a child….but there is going to be a time when he doesn’t want to hang out with us at all and there is going to be a time when you know he goes away to college or he moves out and we are just not going to see him as much.  And you don’t appreciate those things while they happen.  So, I would say the main thing is to just appreciate where you are.  Take a moment and appreciate everyone.

Brett:  Yeah cool..I am into that..you got me thinking there…that’s fantastic. So, look John, I am going to leave it on that because I am always someone who loves leaving on a happy note.  So, brother mate, thank you once again for jumping on board and then sharing your wisdom and look, I am definitely going to get you on another episode coming up where we can talk more technical side of training because a lot of trainers like that and you have definitely got some different strategies and so forth in that area.  So I guess just to finish off in regards to where can people have find out more about John Romaniello, and where would like to find out more about you buddy.

John: Well…just my fitness stuff might be in my main website which is romanfitnesssystems.com and then if you are interested in more like business and personal stuff – johnromaniello.com as well and ofcourse the website to the book is engineeringthealpha.com.

Brett: If you can’t find all of that just google John Romaniello.

John:  That’s the other one…all of those things will come up.

Brett:  Fantastic…….again thank you very much.  Hope you have a fantastic night there….you probably reaching on to big time probably and I am about to get started in the day so great chatting to you and look forward to speaking to you very soon and no doubt I will be catching up at the end of the year or early next year in order to the US again….so might be great to catch up with you again and ..

John: I am done…thanks for the time now…talk to you soon…bye bye

Brett:  Excellent….See you brother