How To Do More Than Just Make A Living As A Fitness Professional
By Eric Ruth
Recently I got a call from a fitness professional who was a little concerned about his future. He’s a 29 year old in-home personal trainer, been training for 6 years, has a solid client base and is doing pretty good financially.
But emotionally and physically, he’s getting tired.
The grind of daily travel is wearing him down.
And he’s concerned that if he adds more new clients, he will only burn out quicker.
So we discussed his options.
This is an important subject that you will likely face sooner or later in your career. Luckily for this trainer, he’s decided to begin investigating now – before he gets burned out, switches careers, and essentially flushes the last 6 years of sweat-equity down the toilet.
One of the interesting things about being in his situation, is that it is exactly this kind of disgruntlement that can be the catalyst for making the paradigm shift that’s necessary to really earn serious money as a Fitness Professional.
Maybe disgruntlement isn’t the right word for what he’s feeling. It could be that he’s just experiencing a reality check. He’s realizing, as you will too at some point in your career, that what you are doing now is essentially manual labor.
And when you open your eyes to this fact, one of three things will occur:
- You will quit and pursue some other line of work.
- You will continue doing what you’re doing and become increasingly disenchanted with your business.
- You will have a profound and powerful paradigm shift.
See, what you’re doing right now is earning a linear income. For every X number of hours you train, you earn Y dollars. You don’t earn unless you’re training. THERE’S NO LEVERAGE. If you’re not training, you’re not earning.
So how can you change that? How can you begin earning a non-linear income as a fitness professional?
Well, that’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? When you begin seriously asking yourself this question, is when you will (hopefully) start the journey that will position you to earn SERIOUS money in this business.
Let me tell you what I told this trainer on the phone the other day.
- Leverage PEOPLE:
Bring on an associate (an independent contractor) to work under him training some of his clients.
First of all, it’s HARD to find good people who will respect your clients and your business the same way you will. But look, that’s the case in any business. Finding good people to work for you is one of the biggest problems any business owner faces.
It takes time and effort to locate and train the right person. But the upside potential is really very significant. Once you have a good associate, you can essentially double the number of clients you service, and begin earning residual income because you take a piece of the action from each client your associate trains.
A word of caution: I recommend you go to GREAT LENGTHS to avoid “employing” anyone. The legal, bureaucratic and regulatory headaches you’ll encounter having employees are legion. If you bring on associates, the best way to do so, in my opinion, is as independent contractors. Talk to your accountant and a good attorney and you’ll find that they will likely agree with me.
- Leverage LOCATION:
Open a studio.
With a studio you are able to train literally 2-3 times more clients, particularly if you combine people leverage (as I mentioned above). But opening a studio takes money. You’ve either got to have a good chunk of cash available to you, or you’ve got to take out a loan (a home studio costs less to start up, but it’s also less visible and therefore not as easy to market). You’ve got overhead with a studio. Your “nut” gets bigger.
I hate overhead. It’s burdensome and encumbering. But that’s just me. I know many trainers who have built very successful businesses with a studio. And it’s a great way to use leverage to improve the quality of your life. Just be certain that you are COMMITTED to it before you undertake it. You can’t just walk away from a studio.
- Leverage TIME and GEOGRAPHY:
Phone coaching.
You can leverage time and geography by incorporating Susan Block’s Fitness By Phone® training system. Using her system, a trainer can fit many more clients into his or her working day, avoid the hassle of travel (for in-home trainers), PLUS overcome one of the big hurdles Fitness Professionals face: geographical marketing limitations. If you are interested in learning more about Susan’s service, you can check out her web site at:
I’ve known Susan for many years and I can’t endorse her highly enough. She is an exceptional individual who is committed to her Coaches’ success. If you contact her, be sure to tell her you were referred by me, and she’ll give you her best deal.
Obviously, you don’t need to be a Fitness By Phone® Coach in order to offer phone coaching. You can just add it to your list of services and begin marketing it. However, as with almost anything, it’s exceedingly helpful and more efficient (getting you to profitability much quicker) if you have a proven SYSTEM. That’s what Susan offers.
- Leverage RELATIONSHIPS
Cross Selling Relationships.
Cross-selling is when you sell related services such as massage therapy, nutritional counseling, chiropractic, other forms of fitness training that you don’t already offer, etc.
You set up relationships with these other service providers and sell their services to your clients and prospects and you get a piece of the action. It’s more than a paid referral, because you are actually selling the services yourself, then directing the client/prospect to the provider for fulfillment. You take the person’s money. Then you pay the provider a predetermined fee, which is of course less than what you charged the client (that’s how you profit). This can only work if the provider will offer you discounted rates so there’s “room” for you to make a profit without overcharging the client for a service he or she could get on their own at a lower cost.
Why would a provider agree to this type of “discounted” arrangement? Unfortunately, many businesspeople are myopic. They don’t understand the total (lifetime) value of a customer, and therefore are sometimes reluctant to take a new customer at a discounted rate. This is foolish. Consider this: you might sell one of your clients a massage for $50 that the massage therapist normally charges $60 for. And your cut of the $50 might be $20. So the massage therapist is providing his service at half price to your client.
BUT THE MASSAGE THERAPIST IS GETTING A NEW CUSTOMER WITHOUT SPENDING ONE RED CENT ON MARKETING!
And…
IF THE MASSAGE THERAPIST IS ANY GOOD AT ALL, HE IS GAINING A NEW CUSTOMER TO WHOM HE CAN SELL ADDITIONAL SERVICES, A PACKAGE DEAL, A MONTHLY MASSAGE APPOINTMENT – OR WHATEVER.
The point is that every businessperson MUST understand TOTAL CUSTOMER VALUE if he or she is serious about building a strong and profitable business.
If you look at a customer/client as a “one-shot sale” you’re missing out on the most profitable aspect of being in business: ON-GOING RELATIONSHIPS.
As long as you’re providing value and doing a great job of delivering your services, you should be able to ethically exploit the relationship for an extended period of time, thereby realizing total customer value.
ALWAYS, ALWAYS REMEMBER THE LIFETIME VALUE OF A CUSTOMER.
- Leverage PRODUCTS:
Product Sales: particularly information products you can create yourself with your existing assets – your knowledge.
If you’re just selling personal training services to your clients/prospects, you’re leaving so much money on the table.
People buy from people they know, like and trust. You’ve already established a relationship with your clients/prospects through your marketing and/or delivery of services.
If you understand how to capitalize on it, you have a “toll-position” established with these people. They can, and should, come through your “toll booth” for every health and fitness related purchase they may ever consider.
You MUST position yourself as their resource and advocate for all their health and fitness related needs. You must make them aware that if they need ANYTHING related to health and fitness, you’re their guy or gal!
Just like a good concierge at a nice hotel, you want to be the person to whom your clients consult when they are in need. And you must be ready with the resources (cross-selling relationships and products) that they want – WHEN THEY WANT THEM.
You should be creating your own information products like books, manuals, reports, videos, audio programs about health and fitness (learn how in a special program we have available here <link to info-millions sales letter>) and you should sell other products that they might want like supplements (I know this is a dicey issue – but if you honestly believe in the product, and are not just “peddling” it to profit, there’s no dilemma that I can see), home fitness equipment, etc.
You don’t need to carry lots of inventory – or even any at all. A good supplement company can turn around your order within a week. With the fitness equipment, you may want to have some lower priced items on hand, but big items like treads, bikes, etc. can be sold through a cross-selling relationship with a dealer/retailer. Again, it’s up to you to EDUCATE the vendor about why he should discount his items for you to sell to your people.
- Leverage MARKETING:
The internet and direct mail provide you with an opportunity to be selling 24/7. Digitally delivered products on the internet are the holy grail of leverage. You create a web site – ONE TIME – you create a product – ONE TIME – then you sell over and over again.
As you build a customer base, you roll out more products and continue to sell.
The point is that there are endless opportunities for you to build a residual income in this industry. It’s really just a matter of you educating yourself about the possibilities, and then utilizing a “system” for marketing and delivery.
That’s why you will want to invest in your marketing/business-building education. Learning is never an expense – it’s always an investment.
I invest in my ongoing education to the tune of many, many thousands of dollars each year. One of my resources and mentors is Dan Kennedy. Here’s a story from Dan’s “No B.S. Marketing Letter” (which I pay $480/year to receive as part of my ongoing education).
In case you don’t know who he is, Dan Kennedy is the reigning king of direct response marketing, a self-made millionaire many times over, literally a living legend to marketing guys like me – and also an avid horseman. He owns harness race horses and also races them. Here’s his first person story:
“The other night at the track, waiting to go drive in a race, sitting outside the barn in a lawn chair, I watched one of the barn cats patiently and persistently stalk a bird, and at the precisely correct opportunity, leap far into the air to snatch it in his teeth. While the other barn cats were hanging around several people sitting with me, begging for “table scraps” from their bucket of chicken wings, this cat eschewed the begging and the hand-outs, hunted and caught his own dinner. The other cats then took notice. Jealous, they stalked him, too lazy to do what he had done, but still eager to share in his catch. As you might guess, he did not share. He did not express any guilt over his good fortune and their lack thereof. This is the natural order of things. Those who make it a point to master hunting and who will hunt…eat. Those who do not acquire the skills or who are too lazy to use them, watch and go hungry. Tigers neither wait around to be fed or apologize for feeding themselves well.”
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