What Can A National Transformation Contest Do For Your Fitness Business?

The Campaign

Earlier this year, some of our clients and FR franchisees participated in our first ever National Transformation Contest. Hundreds of fitness professionals were given the opportunity to host a local contest, which not only led to a lot of leaner, healthier bodies throughout the country, but also gave fitness business owners the chance to generate new business, increase membership sales, build relationships and good will in their communities, and reinforce a results-driven culture within their facilities.

Fitness professionals teamed up with Personal Trainer Foods, a business that delivers 28 days of pre-cooked, healthy, and preservative-free meals of protein and produce to homes throughout the United States. The PTF program allows fit pros to earn commissions while providing a done-for-you nutrition solution to their clients who are trying to transform their bodies.

National campaigns tend to generate a lot more buzz than other promotions, so we provided fit pros with a complete 30 day promotion plan to endorse the contest in their communities, allowing them to extend their reach to many new clients while also reinvigorating current members. Included in the plan were email sequences, joint venture strategies, and press releases, among several other marketing materials. The benefits to those businesses that participated were significant.

For example:

• Ryan Ketchum and Wil Fleming, owners of Force Fitness and Performance in Bloomington, IN, had 54 participants, 38 of them new clients.

• Ken and Kerri Grall, Fitness Revolution franchisees and owners of Edge Fitness in Sun Prairie, WI, had 36 participants, 10 of which were new.

• Chris Arnold, a Fitness Revolution franchisee and the owner of Physically Fit Personal Training in Shelton, CT, had 40 participants, 21 of them new.

• Anthony Dix, a Fitness Revolution franchisee and the owner of Coulee Region Bootcamps in La Crosse, WI, had 42 total participants (18 new and 15 reactivations). 

Also equipped with an 8 week training and nutrition program to give to participating clients, fitness professionals were able to begin the contest in February without spending a significant amount of time trying to come up with the contest details.

"What made this contest so appealing was the fact that we received access to everything we needed to run the program… marketing materials, an 8 week nutrition program, a guide to organizing and regulating the contest, handouts to give to participants, and even sales systems to ensure we would be able to continue helping the new clients achieve other goals even after the contest ends," said Ryan Ketchum.

"The Fitness Consulting Group team even sent out weekly tips, updates, and scripts we could use to continue keeping our clients motivated throughout the contest. The new business this helped generate was much better than many other promotions we’ve run in the past."

The National Transformation Contest Winner

In addition to cash rewards and other prizes individual fit pros made available to winning contestants, the winner at each location was entered into consideration for a national grand prize, the opportunity to be in a commercial for Personal Trainer Food.

The contest officially ended April 1st, and finally, with all the data collected and analyzed, Fitness Consulting Group is ready to announce the 2012 National Transformation Contest Winner: Jodi Trippany of Bloomington, Indiana! Jodi trains at Force Fitness and Performance (member of the Fitness Revolution Nation), owned and operated by Ryan Ketchum and Wil Fleming.

The three other finalists in the contest included Scott Prouty, who trains with Trevor Wittwer at Functional Fitness (also a member of the FR Nation) in Redwood Falls, MN, Marlin Diekfuss, who trains with Mark Lopez at Fitness Revolution New Tampa in Florida, and Joe Mangan, who trains with Ryan Riley at Riley Athletics (FR Nation)in Seattle.

Throughout the 8 weeks, Jodi added extra days to her training program, began training for the Tough Mudder, and added Personal Trainer Food to her nutrition program.

According to Ketchum, "Jodi is 100% dedicated to reaching her goals. Her husband, George, is a huge factor in her success as well and has personally lost 80lbs in his time at Force. These two are our Power Couple.  Over 130lbs were lost between the two of them, and they made incredible changes."

"The energy and enthusiasm that Jodi has for training are unmatched.  Jodi completes our boot camp workouts with a weight vest on to ensure she is getting the most out of the workout, and she never misses a day. She and George are a motivating force in our boot camp program and push the entire group to an entirely new level."

Before starting her transformation, Jodi weighed in at 178.8 pounds and measured at 36.5 inches around her belly. By the end of the contest, she finished at 146.4 pounds and 29.25 inches for a grand total of 32.4 pounds and 7.25 inches lost!

When Jodi was asked the difference between this contest and other programs she had participated in, she replied, "Personal Trainer Food! Using Personal Trainer Foods gave the contest a new spin to my approach. It made the process easy by not having to think about my meals. The food was always ready, making it simple. There was no guess work involved."

"I don’t think it would have been possible to achieve the results without Personal Trainer Food, the Force Fitness team of coaches and administrative staff, my fellow boot campers, and my husband and committed boot camp comrade George." 

Congratulations, Jodi Trippany! We look forward to seeing you in the commercial!

Would you like to be involved in our next National Transformation Contest?

With our first National Transformation Contest in the books, we are planning on taking the second to another level! Would you like your local fitness business to be a part of something bigger? What about your clients… would they like the opportunity to transform their lives like hundreds of others contestants and have the opportunity to be recognized on the national scale?

What can participation in the next National Transformation Contest do for you and your fitness business?

It will…

1. Save you time- It’s as SIMPLE as it gets; our "done-for-you" National Transformation Contest Blueprint gives you everything you need to run the campaign

2. Make you money- You’ll get an influx of paid leads, will have the opportunity to sell new memberships, and you’ll make money on the back-end through Personal Trainer Food and supplement sales… but best of all, these systems are built into the blueprint!

3. Build community- Nothing builds community like people working together to change their lives. A transformation contest will help your business reinforce a culture of results.

The FCG Family is blazing a new trail for fitness professionals. Together, we work to cultivate relationships, discover untapped market opportunities, create effective solutions, and maximize the success of fitness professionals and their clients, our business partners, and our team. 

We want you and your clients to join us in our next national transformation contest.

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

A Post On Getting Referrals By Pat Rigsby

As fitness business owner we all want more referrals. They’re the easiest prospects to sell, they are more likely to refer others and they’ll stay longer and pay more while they’re clients.

Unfortunately, referrals aren’t as easy to come by as they used to be. In years gone by all you had to do was offer up a prize or reward and your current clients would line up to send you new clients for a chance to win what you were offering or a crisp $50 bill.

It’s not quite that easy any more.

You can still be a referral driven business, but you need to set the stage to make that happen. Here’s a primer to get you started.

Referrals can be broken down into two categories:

1. Incentivized
2. Inspired

Inspired Referrals are the Viral payoff for giving your clients an extraordinary experience.

Inspired Referrals will come by making sure you and your team treats everyone like close personal friends, you deliver the results the client initially came to you for and make your clients feel like your facility is their home away from home.

In fact, a training business that excels in those areas alone can build a great client base with a fraction of the marketing cost typically associated with business growth.

Incentivized Referrals, however, can give your business a great boost too, especially as you’re still positioning yourself as the premier training solution in your community.

But in general, you can’t expert to build a business solely from incentivized referrals.

Unfortunately, most of the talk about referral marketing only focuses on incentivized referrals and the short-lived fireworks they can provide.

Don’t get caught up in the hype and think that alone will carry you.

So remember, the first thing you should do is focus on Extraordinary Service, and Client Experience. Once you are in a process of gradually improving those things, then add in Incentivized Referral programs in any of the following ways:

1. Point of Sale Referrals
2. Contests
3. Rewards
4. Gift Certificates / Gift Cards
5. Bring-a-Friend

Just remember that when you “bribe” your clients (let’s be honest, that’s what you’re doing here), you need to help make the experience fun for your clients and those that they refer. Referring shouldn’t be your clients pitching or hard selling your business. It should be education, shared positive experiences and an opportunity to experience what you do with as little risk as possible.

So that’s it – a simple formula for Referrals Made Easy that will send you new business month after month.

]]> http://fitbusinessinsider.com/referrals-made-easy/feed/ 0 http://fitbusinessinsider.com/personal-training-sales-value-capture-solution/ http://fitbusinessinsider.com/personal-training-sales-value-capture-solution/#comments Mon, 16 Apr 2012 01:50:09 +0000 admin http://fitbusinessinsider.com/?p=7783

A Post on Personal Training Sales By Pat Rigsby

For the typical entrepreneurial personal trainer sales is a hot topic. 

They want to know how to sell more. 

How to close more deals.

But in my mind, this view is a small part of a much bigger picture.

The Client Value Capture picture.

So I wanted to explain my take on Client Value Capture and how it can explode your personal training sales.

Client Value Capture – Level One

At Level One, we’re simply talking about maximizing the value of the standard personal training client program.

We can do this by:

Raising Rates – Raising rates is something that most personal trainers are afraid to do, but it’s one of the best ways available to maximize personal training sales. 

My suggestion is that you should raise rates each year, typically by an amount that will not cause you or the client much if any stress.  You could easily raise rates $1-2 dollars per group training session or $3-5 per semi-private or private training session with little if any backlash.

Let’s look at the simple math…If you raise group training sessions by just $1 per session and you have 100 clients that train 3 days per week (12 sessions per month), you’ve made an additional $1200 per month.  $14,400 per year.

Did you ever consider pricing your programs with a .99 at the end? 

Going from $179 to $179.99 per month for 100 clients will add almost $1200 to your yearly bottom line.  Maybe enough to pay for your client management system by simply adding .99.

Better Retention – Getting people to stick around longer.  If your typical client stays for 6 months, but through improved retention you can get them to stay for 9 months, you’ve increased the client value capture by 50%.

You can do this by:

• Enrolling clients in longer programs from day one.  Getting them to sign up for 6 months or 12 instead of 3 months or on month to month agreements.
• Upgrading clients as early as possible.  Magazines don’t wait until the end of a subscription to renew someone and neither should you.  Start asking for an upgrade after the client has been in the program for a few weeks and can start to really recognize the benefits of your service.
• Provide a Great Experience.  If you’re clients are delighted (not just satisfied) with what you offer – they’ll stay longer.

Reactivation – If someone leaves you, you should have the mindset that they’re going on vacation – not breaking up with you.  So with this mindset you:

• Make sure they leave happy.  Give them a gift (sounds crazy, right?) when they say they’re leaving.  Why?  Because you want their most recent memory of you to be positive and because no one else would ever do it.
• Stay in contact.  Keep them on your newsletter list and follow up with them periodically to make sure they know you care about their success.
• Win them back.  Make really strong offers at least a couple times per year that will win them back.  They may have left for reasons beyond your control – finances, schedule, etc.  If that’s the case, reactivation offers will often get them back in the door.

Client Value Capture – Level Two

At Level Two, you want to capture a bigger share of your clients’ investment in improving their health and fitness.

Level Two is an area that most fitness pros miss – and this really puts a glass ceiling on their personal training sales.

Here are some ideas as to how you can capture more of your clients’ investment in their health and fitness.

• Offer a Done For You Nutrition Solution – Your clients are eating.  That I’m pretty sure of.  So offer them something like Personal Trainer Foods where you can capture some of the investment they’re making in supportive nutrition. 
• Offer Nutrition Education - Clients know (at least most of them) that exercise alone won’t get them to their goals.  They’re likely buying diet books and trying to figure things out on their own.  They may even join something like Weight Watchers.  Offer a Nutrition Coaching or Weight Management program that educates them on supportive nutrition rather than letting them try to sift through the overwhelming amount of information out there.
• Sell Supplements – They’re buying supplements whether they’ve told you or not.  So choose some that you believe in (we recommend Prograde) and capture some of the investment they’re making and save them from buying things based on hype and sizzle.
• Sell Equipment - If you talk about the importance of foam rolling, they’ll buy one.  Better they buy it from you than from a local sporting goods store.  If they get the kettlebell bug or fall in love with bands – they’re going to buy some for home.   Let them buy through you.  Plus – you can offer workshops to help them derive more value from these tools – another way to capture value.
• Serve Their Family - If they have a child that is enrolled in a youth fitness or sports performance program – is it with you?  They already know you, like you and see you as an expert…so why shouldn’t it be?

Client Value Capture – Level Three

Now the goal is to capture more of the market.  This means capturing more leads, having more front end offers and a broader array of programs.

Here are some examples:

:: Getting More Leads – If you do private or semi-private training as your primary offering, you need to be getting a minimum of 20 leads per month.  If you do more bootcamp / group training, you need to be getting a minimum of 30 leads per month.  If you’re not hitting this number then you’ve already made it tough to reach your personal training sales goals.

If you aren’t hitting those numbers consider:

• Stepping up your referral systems
• Contacting your network more regularly and working to grow it
• Employing more external lead generation strategies like public speaking or direct mail.

:: Expanding Your Offerings – If you’re all bootcamps, considering adding semi-private.  If you don’t offer weight management, tap into the Weight Watchers market and offer that program.  Look into Corporate Programming or Youth Programming.  Offer some niched programs for moms or some other group.  Create some programs for people trying to derive a specific benefit. 

There are people currently in your area who are:

• Using P90X
• Going to a big box health club
• Using a different trainer
• Participating in a corporate driven program
• Working out at home on their own
• Dieting
• Thinking about getting started

How can you win some of them?

And to make sure I’m not confusing you – this doesn’t mean that you should do all of these things – just pick one or two crowds to go after.

So there’s a different way to look at improving personal training sales.  A way of thinking about things that I’m guessing is a little different than what you’re used to.  So start looking at ways that you can increase your Client Value Capture and watch your personal training sales go through the roof.

Tell me what you think below…

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

A fitness business owner success story by Pat Rigsby

Each month here at FBI we recognize a Fitness Business Owner of the Month.  We hope to not only recognize fitness entrepreneurs for their successes but also to inspire other fitness pros to move forward in their business endeavors.

The winner will not only get a public ‘pat on the back’ in the form of a post like this, but they’ll also receive a 1 hour coaching call, free admission to the live event of their choice and a product of their choice from what we offer here at FBI.

Our March Fitness Business Owner of the Month is Jeff McDaniel, Owner of Bootcamp: Bulletproof in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Jeff and his business Bootcamp: Bulletproof have been in operation for over 3 years and in that time have grown to serving almost 90 clients with just he and one other staff member.

Jeff initially started out running his camp in a park like many fitness pros and has grown into his own facility where he runs 6 different camps and an expanding online Bootcamp To Go program.

Jeff is one more great example of the opportunity the fitness industry offers.  In just a short period of time (he really only started studying the business side of fitness in the last year) he’s grown into his own facility and has both an offline and online presence.

So Congratulations Jeff!  I’m excited to name you Fitness Business Owner of the Month and look forward to giving you your well deserved prizes of the coaching call and the product from the FBI collection of resources as well as seeing you at a live event of your choosing soon!

If you’d like to be considered for next month’s Fitness Business Owner of the Month, please contact our Customer Experience Manager, Lee Ann Salsman at leeann.fcg@gmail.com for an application.

A post on Growing A Training Business by Pat Rigsby

Oven the past few weeks we’ve had a couple groups of Mastermind Members in town, held a live event and hosted a Fitness Revolution franchise training.  Every chance I have the opportunity to spend time around elite fitness professionals like I recently have, I get a flood of ideas and thoughts about growing a training business.

With that in mind I thought I’d share some of them with you.

Know What You Need & Get It – Every successful training business needs to have certain processes and systems in place.  First you need to know what those processes and systems are – then you need to get them in place in your business.  If you don’t know what you need – talk to someone like me to fill in the blanks or model someone who is where you want to be.  Once you know – create the systems yourself or lean on products, coaching or a total solution like Fitness Revolution if you don’t want to create them or you want to fast track the process.

Burying your head or procrastinating on this will prevent you from ever having a great fitness business.

Live In Their Experience - If you want to be more effective in selling training or in growing your training business through maximizing the value of each client relationship, you’ve got to put yourself in their shoes.  You need to know what keeps them up at night.  You need to know what their day looks like.  You need to speak their language.  If you do this, being the best and most complete solution for them will become far, far easier.

Coaching Is The Ultimate Accelerator – Why do big box health clubs suck?  Well, there are a number of reasons, but the big one for me is there is no coaching.  If people don’t have a plan to get them to their goals, they may fumble around like they’re looking for something in the dark and accidentally get there – but the odds aren’t great and they’ll probably give up before they have success.  Coaching solves this and provides a road map to follow and accountability to keep people on track.  This is crucial for you to convey to your clients and it probably is something you should keep in mind for yourself.

One Is A Terrible Number – If you’re growing a training business, the number ‘one’ is your enemy.  Having only one lead generation strategy.  Having only one option to offer to prospective clients.  Employing only one revenue stream.  Being a one person operation.  All of them are potential roadblocks to success.

Meet People Where They Are – This hold true in marketing where you need to be where your ideal prospects are located. It holds true in the service you provide, by being willing to adapt and customize the way you present what you offer to address the prospective client’s wants and needs.  It holds true in coaching where you need to adapt your solution to help people where they really are, not where you think they should be.  This one is so important that our entire Fitness Revolution business model hinges on it.  Instead of being a one-size-fits-all offering like virtually all other franchises, we built our business to meet quality fitness pros where they are and work closely with them to move them to where they want to be.  You should do the same.

Think BIG – The most successful trainers and coaches I know all think differently than the rest.  They all think much bigger.  They think about doing big things, not ordinary things.  They set big goals.  They take big actions.  Big achievements don’t begin with little dreams.

Be A Better Listener – If you want to sell more, listen more intently to what your prospects are saying.  If you want to add revenue streams to your business, listen to what your clients are really asking for more help with.  If you want to grow, listen to your network and they’ll reveal a surprisingly large number of opportunities.  If you really pay attention instead of just waiting to talk, business becomes much easier.

You’ve Got To Be A Little Obsessive – Growing a training business into your own little fitness empire requires you to be a little obsessive.  Not to the point where you ignore the other important things in your life, but obsessive about getting better each and every day.  Most business owners don’t do this.  They essentially just go to work every day like they’re an employee and not a business builder.  If you want a great business, you need to get a little better every day – and that requires you to be somewhat obsessive to the details and obsessive about improvement.

Avoid Average – The average business owner – fitness or otherwise – starts a business because they hate their current job and want to do something they think they like to pay the bills.  This is average.  Don’t be average.  Hating your job is no better of a reason to start a business than disliking your current significant other is for marrying someone you don’t know.  If you want to build a great business you’re passionate about building something great.  Because you have a passion for what you do.  Those types of thoughts should drive you… not avoiding a job you hate.

Stay One Step Ahead – The fitness pros who are growing a training business to the highest level are relentless is their quest to improve.  There is zero complacency.  They’re always improving.  Always looking for another edge.  Staying the same isn’t ever even a consideration.

Education Is An Investment, Not An Expense – *Every* single one of the top pros in the industry either benefit from Coaching or Masterminds.  But they view education differently than everyone else too.  Most people see the fees for Coaching or a Mastermind as an expense.  “That’s too expensive!”  The top .1% simply look at it as an investment.  If they invest $5000, they do it fully expecting to make 10X, 20X… maybe even 30 or 40X that back in return.

So there are some big ideas to help you in growing your training business.

They’re just a few of the things I see in the people we work closely with that I feel are critical for success.

Also – if you’re interested in working with us more closely through our coaching offerings, email me directly at patrigsby@gmail.com and we’ll see what might be a good fit.

Let me know what you think below.

Dedicated to your succes,

Pat

A post of building a training business by Pat Rigsby

I just spent a few days in Napa, CA at one of our Elite Training Workshops.  On Thursday we held and Fitness Revolution Franchise Fast Start Training Day.  On Friday we held a training business development day for the Elite Training Workshop participants.  And on Saturday we held the Elite Training Workshop with Dave Schmitz, Mike Robertson, Robert Dos Remidos and BJ Gaddour delivering incredible content through both lecture and hands on sessions.

As usual, I had some great conversations with attendees between sessions or at the resort in the evenings. The recurring comment from the fitness pros I was talking with was how simple we make things when it comes to building a training business.

It is Simple

My response to this type of comment usually goes something like: “We make it simple because it is simple.”

In fact, I often tell people that I only know a handful of things about growing a business.  Even though I write 5-6 newsletters or blog posts a week – they pretty much all revolve around several core concepts and I just work hard to present them in different ways to make sure our subscribers learn those concepts and apply them.

In general – the things I talk in newsletters or we teach through products or events are pretty much centered around:

Being Great At Your Craft – Let me start off this by giving you a bit of advice – if the ‘expert’ on business building or marketing you’re learning from doesn’t talk about this – run.  Far and fast.  This whole idea of ‘you’re not a coach, you’re a marketer of coaching’ is a scam.

Would you want to eat at a restaurant that believed that they weren’t in the business of serving a great meal – they were just in the business of marketing their restaurant?  Probably not.

Yet many ‘gurus’ totally ignore this.  Or if they mention it now, it’s simply because I’ve called them out on it so they touch on it in passing as if they care.

The bottom line – Being Great at Your Craft is the foundation your business is built on.  If you’re building a training business, be great at training.  Be great at delivering an experience.  It will make marketing easier.  It will make selling easier.  It will make retention easier.  It will make generating referrals easier and it will make maximizing the relationship value with each client easier.

Ignore this component of your business or simple think you’re in the business of just delivering workouts and you will have nothing but a revolving door – at best.  And the more likely outcome will be that the people who do focus on being great at their craft will kick you’re a$$ and put you out of business.

Getting More People Exposed To What You Offer – If you’re great at what you do, marketing & selling is simply getting people to experience what you do.  Why you’re different.  How you can help them achieve their goals.  I talk a lot about lead generation and front end offers because they’re essentially getting people to experience what you have to offer.

This is why the first component is so important.  If you have something great to offer – there is no better marketing or selling tool than experiencing it.  So I spend a lot of time talking about different ways to get people to experience what you offer – but it’s all basically just variation on a theme. Be great at what you do and find a handful of ways to get people to experience it.

Maximize The Value Of Each Relationship – I probably write / talk about this more than anyone else. Relationships are everything.  Maximizing the relationships with the people you know and meet that bring you clients and open doors for you. Maximizing the relationships with your clients where you retain them longer and get more referrals through providing a great experience.  Maximizing your relationship with them through providing a more complete solution through back end offerings that you present. Maximizing your relationships with clients through providing solutions for their kids, friends, family members, co-workers and their network.

Maximize The Value of Your Time – Maximizing the value of your time happens in a variety of ways.  We talk about maximizing your time through using a CMS software so you don’t have to chase checks anymore.  Maximizing the value of your time through creating systems so you’re more efficient and productive with everything you do or people on your team do.  Maximizing the value of your time through tracking the important numbers so that you’re doing more of what works and improving what doesn’t.  Maximizing the value of your time by stopping the pursuit of the next ‘shiny object’ and focusing on the fundamentals.

There’s not a lot more to it than that.  I write about those things over and over.  Why?  Because they’re what matter.  They’re the things that are important if successfully building a training business is your goal.

Focus On The Fundamentals

Again – we focus on this stuff because it’s what works.  Maybe it’s not ‘ninja’ or ‘awesome’ – but do these things consistently and you’ll have a great business guaranteed.

And you know what – it’s the same whether you’re reading one of my newsletters or this blog.  That’s what I cover.  In our products – same thing, just in more detail and with more of an action plan.  Even when you get up to our franchise – Fitness Revolution.  Same stuff.  We still focus on what works.  Just there we provide everything in a done-for-you fashion and support it all so you make sure it gets implemented effectively.

So my suggestion to you is this: if you’re building a training business, focus on what works.  Focus on the fundamentals.  Fundamentals are the foundation of most any success and they’ll be the foundation of yours.

I’d also like to say THANK YOU to Jeff & Tiffany Larson, owners of Fitness Revolution – Napa for hosting our recent Elite Training Workshop.  It was an incredible event and Jeff & Tiff played a large role in making it happen.

If you’d like to learn more about or register for one of our upcoming Elite Training Workshops, you can learn about the upcoming one in Frisco, TX here:

http://elitetrainingworkshop.com/

And the upcoming Elite Training Workshop in Canton, CT here:

http://elitetrainingworkshop.com/canton/

A Post On Fitness Business Income Generation By Pat Rigsby

Since I’ve been on the business coaching and franchising side of things for fitness business owners, nothing has surprised me more than the number of business owners who fail to maximize the value of their personal network and their client base.

This is amazing to me because those same fitness business owners will spend piles of money to market to people that they have no prior relationship with.

The truth is, the biggest opportunity for an influx of income into your fitness business is right in your own database. When you make an offer to members of your personal network or existing and past clients, it’s not only easier to sell them something (versus new prospects off the street), but your business actually become more profitable because you don’t have nearly the cost of client acquisition.

The other benefit to this is that it really is providing a better, more complete solution for your existing clients and it’s helping those people in your network achieve their health and fitness goals.

A true win – win.

Your Fitness Business Database

What do you need to get started generating a surge of income for your business?

First, you need to create your Master Networking List.  This is a database of everyone in your area that you know.  You can start developing it by creating a spreadsheet and list the following people:

• Everyone in your cell phone that is local.
• Everyone in your email address book that is local.
• Everyone on Facebook that you actually know and lives locally.
• All of your clients, former clients and prospects.

List everything you know about them.  If you have any of the following, list it:

• Email
• Phone
• Occupation
• Birthday
• Address
• Hobbies / Organizations / Interests

Once you have this list started – and understand now that it’s never finished as you’ll be adding people each and every week (won’t you?) – here’s the next step…

Fitness Business Income Booster #1 – The Master Network Push

For all the members of your network – friends, family members, neighbors and more – you need to start reaching out and personally inviting them in to experience what you have to offer.

This is an easy one – but I’d bet it goes overlooked 98% by fitness pros trying to grow their business.

Send a personal email or make a personal call and let them know what you offer and invite them in for 2 weeks worth of free training. Here’s what will happen.

• Some won’t respond.
• Some will be polite, but they won’t be interested.
• Some will take you up on your offer and come in to try out your programs.
• A few will really be excited about your offer and become your biggest advocates.

Assuming that this list is a minimum of 150 people (except in rare circumstances, if the list is less than 150 people – you’re not trying), then you should be able to get through it in about 6-8 weeks if you’re contacting at least 3 people per day.

The added bonus to all this is that you’ll find doors opening for you based on this outreach.  Your friends will know people that can get you public speaking opportunities, PR opportunities and any number of other things.

Treat your Master Network like gold and focus on growing it – you may find that along with the referrals from your existing clients – that’s all you need to get the number of leads you want for your business.

Fitness Business Income Booster #2 – The Reactivation Campaign

You’d be surprised by how many past clients have no idea why they stopped using your services.  Or maybe they do know – but their reason for leaving was temporary. All they need is a reminder of why they liked working with you…and perhaps a special incentive to come back.

What could you do to reactivate past clients?

You could start with a simple email or personal card with copy something like this:

What else works well for reactivating past clients?

• A phone call from you the owner. People want to be treated like VIPs.  Make them feel appreciated and give them a special offer to come back.
• Invite them back to special client appreciation events. Make them feel like they’re still part of the community.
• Invite them to enroll in one of your Transformation Contests or attend a Charity Workout.  These are relatively small commitments compared to a longer term membership and might be just what they need to come back on board.

Fitness Business Income Booster #3 – The Triple Threat

The next Income Booster is a favorite of mine called the Triple Threat Money Maker.  It’s something we’ve used in our businesses – both training businesses and online businesses actually – and always enjoyed great success.

And the best part is that the Triple Threat Money Maker is super simple to execute – so you have no excuse not to put it into action asap.

Here’s What You Have To Do:

Step 1: The foundation of the Triple Threat Money Maker is raising your program rates.  You should be raising your rates periodically and there is no better time to do this than now as most fitness pros don’t raise their rates often enough. A rate increase of 5% is very reasonable – even conservative for group training or bootcamps.  For 1 on 1 or semi-private, adding $3-5 per session is easy and will virtually never be met with even a hint of a complaint.

Step 2: Notify your current clients that the rates will be increasing on the first of next month by whatever amount you determined was right – however, they can lock in at their current rate by committing to a 12 month membership (6 months is fine too if you’re only selling month to month memberships now).

Step 3: Contact all of your former clients in your fitness business and your prospects, and tell them about the upcoming rate increase.  Let them know that they can lock in at the current rates if they enroll in a 12 month program before the year’s end.

That’s it.

Well, that’s not exactly it…here are some details that we’ve used to make this work like crazy:

• Use a variety of means to contact your clients.  For our clients, we’ve sent letters and emails as well as making personal calls and in person notifications.  We wanted to make sure that all of their questions were answered and they were not only willing to make the long term commitment – but they were excited about it as they felt like they were getting a great deal.
• We used the same type of approach for former clients and unconverted prospects.   We sent letters, emails and made phone calls.  We’ve also even used voice broadcasts to remind people on the final day of the offer.
• It’s always worked best when we’ve intensified the push during the final days of the offer leading up to the deadline.  People are procrastinators so we always make sure that we hit everyone with a call during the final 48 hours and at least one email the last day.

With this approach you’re personal training business is going to make more money in 3 different ways and none of it is a short term boost:

• You’re going to get current clients to commit for 12 more months – which is longer than the membership lifespan of the average bootcamper.
• You’re going to get a surge of former clients and unconverted leads who don’t want to miss out on the deal – and they’re all committing for a 12 month term too.
• All your new clients – and the current ones that don’t want to commit – will be paying you more each month.

Not to mention that when you get the new surge of business you’ll have more people to get referrals from and make back end offers too…

So there you go – the Tripe Threat Money Maker – Income Booster #3.

Fitness Business Income Booster #4 – The Complete Solution

Offering upsells and back end sales to your current clients is simply trying to provide a more complete solution for the people you serve.  Whether that is giving them an opportunity to buy bands so they can workout on the road or offering them supplements (we recommend Prograde to address some of their nutritional needs – you’re simply better assisting them to achieve the goals that led them to you in the first place).

Nutrition is an easy solution to add on as it’s usually the biggest challenge you face when trying to keep your clients compliant.  The best solution we’ve found that you can add into your business to address making eating supportively easy for your clients is Personal Trainer Foods.

For you it’s great because it doesn’t require a significant investment of time or money and it doesn’t require any inventory.

For your clients it’s equally great as it addresses portion control and convenience – two big nutritional challenges to getting clients achieve their goals.

So with that, here’s how you can integrate Personal Trainer Foods as an upsell and a back end offer into your business.

Step 1: Enroll In The Program – To start offering this solution to your clients you need to enroll in the program so you can start selling products to your clients and receiving a commission for those sales.  If you want to enroll in Personal Trainer Foods program at no charge, you can do that here:

https://www.personaltrainerfood.com/signup.html

Step 2: Decide How You Will Promote The Products – We set up a few different systems to promote products to our clients.  We had structured offers at:

The Initial Point Of Sale
Periodic Assessments or Meetings
Special Events

If you’re going to follow the same approach, at the point of sale you might educate them about the importance of eating supportively and introduce the solution.

During your assessments you can educate the client on what they might do to accelerate their progress and support what they were doing during their training.

You can use a simple script like this:

“Ms. Jones, you’d like to accelerate your progress, correct?

We both know that when you’re training with me you’re working hard, you’re getting stronger and you’re steadily improving.

What that tells me is that it’s what you’re doing outside the gym / camp that seems to be holding you back.  I know that you’ve told me that you seem to struggle with eating supportively on a consistent basis breakfast, so what I suggest is that you try a nutrition program that a number of our clients have had great success with called Personal Trainer Foods.

This will ensure that you are getting the right portions of protein and produce in a convenient fashion and you’re getting even better results from all the hard work you’re putting in. How’s that sound?”

Step 3: Executing The Plan Every Time – This is the one that most people miss.  So many trainers say that they’re going to make back end sales to their clients – but most never do.
You have to build these processes into your business.  If you can build foam rolling into your training sessions, you can build a simple sales script into a meeting or assessment.

Step 4: Making It Part Of The Culture – For our Wall of Fame and Testimonial books, we not only posted the successes of the client (Ms. Jones lost 27 lbs and dropped 2 dress sizes), but we also shared how frequently they were meeting with their trainer or what program they were in and we shared what ancillary offerings they were using.

You can do things like that when you highlight your client or camper of the week / month, provide the solutions they are using as handouts or in newsletters and have links to your store in every newsletter, on your website and anywhere else you’re share online information.

A few other tips for more Back End Sales:

• Make it easy to buy.  Keep your laptop around so you can help the client make their initial order – or, if you can’t do that, keep initial order forms handy and process the initial order for your clients.
• Educate your clients.  Provide them with articles, offer good content in newsletters and educate them on the benefits of everything you do or endorse.
• Practice what you preach.  It’s much easier to endorse something you believe in enough to use yourself.
• Only sell what you really believe in.  I’d never tell you to sell something that you’re not 100% behind, so do your homework and pick the products you truly believe will help your clients.

There are 4 Income Boosters for your Fitness Business.

Start down the list and start generating more cash for your fitness business today.

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

A Post On Hiring Personal Trainers by Pat Rigsby

In our live meetings we get a lot of questions about hiring personal trainers and other staff members so I thought I’d share some thoughts on the topic.

Hiring is tough.  I’ve been hiring people for almost 17 years now and also spent about 8 years recruiting college athletes – which I’ve found is almost exactly the same.

The first person I ever hired was a guy that I’d be comfortable calling my boyhood idol.

I fired him 3 months later.

I’ve also fired one of the guys that I’d consider among my 5-6 closest friends.

I’ve probably recruited over 1000 athletes and actually brought about 200 on to my teams.  I’ve personally hired roughly 100 employees. I couldn’t tell you how many I fired (a lot) – but in every case I agonized about it.

But what I have found is that the strategy that helped me enjoy success as a college baseball coach in large part through recruiting has the same type of success when hiring employees.

When I coached, we were the most poorly funded program of all the schools we competed against, so I was often forced to recruit players who weren’t the marquee prospects.  I quickly found out that if I recruited what I call ‘intangibles’ I did a lot better than the coaches who recruited the people they perceived to have a lot of potential.

‘Intangibles’ meant recruiting work ethic, passion, determination, drive.  If I could get players with moderate talent and those things – we would usually beat the teams who got the more highly touted prospects who often had poor work ethic, bad attitudes and a sense of entitlement.

In fact – once we started to enjoy some real success and a few of the highly touted prospects started wanted to come our way, I deviated from the plan that we’d built our success on and added a few of them to the team.

It was a terrible mistake that I quickly recognized and rectified as quickly as I could.

See, you can’t teach work ethic.  You can’t instill drive and determination.  Sometimes, as coaches our egos get the best of us and we think we can coach those things into people – but we can’t.  Sure – in some cases, people can change – but that comes from them rather than us.

But if you hire people who are on time, have great work ethic, passion for fitness, love being around people and helping them – you can teach them the rest.  You can teach them your systems.  You can steer them to the right education on exercise science and nutrition.  You can give them the pieces to the puzzle that they’re missing.

Every time I’ve deviated from this plan and hired ‘potential’ instead of those intangibles it’s backfired on me.

Back when Nick and I started our first training company I hired our first handful of employees.  One applicant who came in had a great resume – he had a Master’s in Ex Phys, had run his own gym at one point and had about everything you’d ever want to see on a resume.

He came on board and it was almost like we (more me than Nick) kept trying to rationalize his (many) flaws and mistakes that were detrimental to our business.  We kept thinking that he had the potential to be a key player in the growth we wanted to have even though he hadn’t really ever shown anything tangible to suggest that.  Over time it became clear that I’d hired a person who was not ever going to achieve much and had values that weren’t consistent with the business values we had.  At the end of his employment with us he was trying to do all those little things that we all worry about with employees like trying to falsify sessions on his time sheet and trying to take our proprietary information to set up a business across town.

I’d looked at the potential – a glowing resume – instead of the facts.  It wasn’t that guy’s fault.  He was who he was – I wasn’t smart enough to recognize it at the time.

On the other hand – not too long after that we hired Melissa Brady to work part time at our Smoothie Bar.  My expectations weren’t anything big.  She was working in a medical office and wanted to do something else part time. She had a degree in music – no background in fitness.

But over time her work ethic and dependability became obvious.  Her passion for fitness grew and she got certified to become a personal trainer.  She soon moved to a point where she was training and serving as our part time office manager.  Though she’d never sold before – she soon had the best closing percentage for new sales on our staff.

Fast forward to now.  Melissa has been a tremendously important person in the success and growth of our business.  A true key player.  But you wouldn’t have known that by looking at her resume when she first walked in the door.  But she had the intangibles that everything else could build on.

So when you’re hiring – look for people who have the character traits that you want represented in your business. Not necessarily the credentials.  Remember – the employees are only necessary because there is too much demand for what you currently do – so they need to learn your way of doing things anyhow.  There is nothing wrong with having credentials (I am co-owner of a certification-issuing organization) – but if they come attached to someone set in their ways and unwilling to adapt to your systems – or if they come with a sense of entitlement – pass.

Get the right people on your team – then make sure they get the knowledge they need to be successful.  That’s the most effective way to build a team.

Dedicated to Your Success,

Pat

A Post On Building Your Fitness Business By Pat Rigsby

Recently Nick Berry and I were asked to contribute a chapter to a book called “The Only Business Book You’ll Ever Need.” This was an incredible honor as a few of the other authors were Brian Tracy, Robert Allen and Harvey McKay, all New York Times Best Selling Authors. This book won’t be on the shelves for a couple more months, but I wanted to share an adaptation of our chapter with you as it definitely can help you build your business.  Enjoy this sneak peek.

As an fitness business owner, you essentially accept the fact that you’re trading the security that comes with a steady job for the opportunity that comes with owning your own business.  But what if we told you that security and opportunity don’t have to be mutually exclusive?  Our experience is that not only can you have the best of both worlds, but you can do it more quickly and easily than you probably imagine by creating multiple streams of income within your fitness business.

About the time we launched our first fitness business together, our “The Only Business Book You’ll Ever Need” co-author, the legendary Robert Allen, released his best selling book: Multiple Streams of Income, which served as inspiration for us as we embarked on building our new personal training business. We were opening this fitness business in a town of just 23,000 people in Central Kentucky, not exactly a perceived hotbed for personal training, so we knew from the beginning that we needed to have multiple ways of generating revenue if we wanted this venture to be a success.  So instead of simply relying on selling one-on-one personal training services like most people who owned similar types of businesses, we created a number of different revenue streams, including:

• One-on-One Personal Training
• Group Personal Training
• Weight Management Programs
• Sports Performance Programs
• Dietary Supplement Sales
• Smoothie Bar
• Workshops
• Corporate Fitness Programs

This approach quickly propelled us to a point where we had over 400 clients in a town where utilizing the typical approach to this type of fitness business might have yielded 1/10 that amount.

And that’s where things really started to take off.  Soon, health clubs and personal training business owners were seeking us out to consult and share some of the strategies that we’d successfully utilized so they could employ them in their own fitness businesses.  These consulting opportunities opened our eyes to the vast opportunities that were available sharing our systems and strategies through information marketing and business coaching.

Over the next few years we developed a variety of coaching programs, information products and seminars helping personal trainers grow their businesses.  Most recently we launched two separate personal training-based franchises, one targeting the youth fitness & sports performance market and the other targeting the adult fitness market. Both are among the fastest growing fitness franchises in the world.

Once we’d positioned ourselves as industry leading providers of business coaching and resources for fitness professionals, we would be presented with opportunities to obtain ownership in other business in the industry where our expertise would be of value.  Now, along with our business coaching and franchises, we also have ownership in a leading fitness certification organization, an equipment company, several niche fitness information-marketing fitness businesses and a handful of other businesses, collectively providing us well over 100 different income streams.

Now we teach thousands of fitness professionals around the world to employ the ‘multiple streams of income’ approach and how simple it is to integrate into a fitness business.  While you may not have an interest in building a fitness business that looks anything like ours, the ‘multiple streams of income’ approach will work in your fitness business too, perhaps even better than it’s worked in ours.   Really it simply starts by answering these two questions:

1. What ‘problems’ do your current offering(s) create?
2. What opportunities do your current customers / clients / patients present?

By answering those two questions you’ll easily be able to identify potential income streams for your business.  Let us give you examples of how we might have answered those questions in our personal training business.

What ‘problems’ do your current offering(s) create?

One-on-one personal training is potentially too expensive for many consumers so offering small and large group personal training allows those than can’t afford one-on-one personal training similar benefits while being available at a much lower price point.  Also, personal training focuses on the exercise component of physical improvement, but there are other factors than can impact someone’s success while trying to achieve fitness goals like nutrition, supplementation and recovery.  By offering weight management programs, supportive nutrition solutions though our ‘smoothie’ bar, dietary supplements and workshops, we can address the other factors that will help our clients achieve their fitness goals more quickly and easily.

What opportunities do your current customers / clients / patients present?

Many personal training clients are either business owners or business decision makers, so they can open doors to opportunities to provide corporate fitness programs or off-site weight management programs at their companies.  Additionally, many clients have children and / or are in positions of influence (teachers, school administrators, coaches, etc.) for the youth population and would see the benefit in, and help promote, youth fitness and sports performance offerings.

Hopefully you’re already getting some ideas for income streams you can develop based on those two questions.  Another great way to get ideas for potential income streams is to simply look at other businesses and see what they do.

Here are a couple examples:

Automotive dealerships don’t just sell cars.  They do repairs. They do preventative maintenance.  They offer financing. Some dealerships even provide things like detailing or car rental programs.

Amusement parks don’t just offer rides and attractions.  They sell food and refreshments.  They sell a variety of retail products from theme-related attire and toys to sun block and sunglasses that visitors might have forgotten to bring.  They also offer paid parking, photographs taken during guest stays, and many have their own hotels that guests can utilize during their visit.

There are thousands of businesses employing the ‘multiple streams of income’ approach, so learn from the successes they’re having so you can create your own.

Once you’ve determined some general ideas of what other problems you could solve for your clients or the opportunities that they could create for you and your fitness business, then you need to decide on the models for your income streams.

Basically there are five types of Income Models you can implement:

1. Service Based
2. Product Based
3. Coaching / Consulting Based
4. Information / Knowledge Based
5. Affiliate / Referral Based

Each of these Income Models has it’s own set of benefits and drawbacks and some may be more appropriate than others for your business, but you should have no problem choosing a couple that you can integrate into your business and add additional revenue – in some cases almost immediately.

So let’s take a look at each of these Income Models in greater detail.  We’ll share an overview of the model and an example of how we’ve integrated it into our own businesses.

Service Based – This is typically the easiest to add to a fitness business, as it often requires little set up and relies primarily on you or a staff member utilizing skills that you (or someone on your team) possess and will be of benefit to your clients and typically compliments your primary offerings. The upside to this type of Income Model is the ease of start up and integration into your personal training business.  The downside is that it’s time and skill intensive.

When we had our first personal training business, the easiest and most obvious Income Model for us to integrate was a Weight Management Program.  This program was basically a nutritional education program delivered by our staff members that helped our clients reach their goals faster and was the perfect compliment to the exercise based coaching that was our primary offering.

Product Based – Product based models are potentially very simple to integrate into your fitness business as well.  The upside to the product based Income Model is that it usually doesn’t require any special skill to offer products beyond some basic product knowledge and this model isn’t as time intensive as the others.

The first potential drawback to the product model is the fact that most products or similar competitors will be offered in other retail outlets so there isn’t as much price elasticity as with the other models.  The other drawback to the product model is that it usually requires an upfront investment for inventory.

Our initial use of the Product Based Income Model was through selling dietary supplements to our personal training clients.  Our clients were regularly investing in supplements to help them reach their fitness goals and often consulted with our staff when choosing what supplements to purchase, so it became obvious very quickly that we should carry our own line of quality supplements and direct our clients to purchase from us.  Not only were there financial benefits to this, but we also now could direct our clients to products that we knew and trusted.  A great win/win.

Coaching / Consulting Based – Coaching / Consulting Based Income Models are great if you’ve established a successful fitness business and are willing to share your business systems and knowledge with other entrepreneurs.  The primary benefit to this Income Model is that the potential financial upside of business-to-business coaching /consulting is typically much greater than providing services to consumers. The other real upside is that it allows you to leverage what you already know and do in your own business by sharing it with others.

The potential drawback to the Coaching / Consulting Based Income Model isn’t really a drawback at all. It’s more of a pre-requisite.  To ethically coach or consult you should have experienced some success in your own experiences. If you’ve successful gotten a certain type of client results over and over – and have a systematic approach that others can model, then this approach is very powerful.

We first employed the Coaching / Consulting Based Income Model by teaching other personal trainers and health club owners how we’d successfully built our personal training business.  This Income Model eventually merged together with the Information / Knowledge Based Income Model and evolved into our two franchises: Athletic Revolution International and Fitness Revolution International.

Information / Knowledge Based – In the Information / Knowledge Based Income Model you simply document what you know and do successfully and package it to be shared with others.  There are many advantages to this model.  Some of the biggest are the fact that you can develop information products to offer to people that normally couldn’t be your clients due to geographic constraints, so essentially the whole world is potentially your market.  There is great leverage with this type of Model too.  You can create a product once and sell it over and over again.  Typically the margins on offerings in this Model are very high too.

If there is any downside to this Income Model, it is that while your market is no longer limited by geography, the same goes for your competition.  When offering an information product or program you will be competing for your prospect’s attention with many more marketers than you would typically face when just selling products or services locally.

We began with the Information / Knowledge Based Income Model with two different offerings at about the same time. One of our offerings was directed to other fitness business owners sharing our systems, strategies and tactics for building a successful personal training business.  The other offering featured my wife, Holly, and was a consumer product called Fit Yummy Mummy, which was a fitness program specifically designed for moms.  In both cases, we simply packaged the things that we’d done successfully in our own fitness businesses and shared them with people who could benefit from the knowledge, but couldn’t work with us face-to-face.

Ultimately both of these initial products laid the foundation for new fitness businesses that have each become category leaders in their respective markets.

Affiliate / Referral Based – This Income Model is very simple to integrate into your fitness business as it basically just requires you to find a product or service that you can refer your clients to, which is complimentary to your offerings.  The upside to the Affiliate / Referral Based Income Model is the fact that it requires very little work on your part to generate additional revenue.  The ‘partner’ that you are referring business to will provide the service or product while paying you a referral fee.  The downside to this Model is that you are putting your relationship with your customer in the hands of someone else.  If they provide an inferior product or service, then you will suffer the ill effects of that. Therefore, if you employ this Income Model, be certain to only refer only businesses of the highest quality.

We initially utilized this Income Model by referring our personal training clients to a massage therapist.  The massage therapist provided a quality service to our clients that we did not offer and paid us a referral fee for every client we sent.  In addition to those benefits, the massage therapist also referred their clients to us for our services to make this a great reciprocal relationship.

By determining what problems you could solve for your clients or the opportunities that they could create for you and your fitness business and the income models you can employ to address them, you can not only add tens of thousands of dollars to your bottom line and better serve the people you work with, but you may also lay the foundation for new fitness businesses that enjoy even greater successes and profits than the one you have now.  We certainly have.

Dedicated to your Success,

Pat

A fitness business owner success story by Pat Rigsby

Each month here at FBI we’re going to start recognizing a Fitness Business Owner of the Month.  We hope to not only recognize fitness entrepreneurs for their successes but also to inspire other fitness pros to move forward in their business endeavors.

The winner will not only get a public ‘pat on the back’ in the form of a post like this, but they’ll also receive a 1 hour coaching call, free admission to the live event of their choice and a product of their choice from what we offer here at FBI.

Our January Fitness Business Owner of the Month is Greg McClellan, Owner of Elite Athletes in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

Greg and his business Elite Athletes have been in operation for over a year and a half and in that time have grown to serving anywhere from 100-225 clients with a team of 3 full time and 2 part time trainers.

They offer one-on-one, small/large groups, sports specific training and nutrition coaching with their primary market being youth fitness & sports performance.

Greg is a great example of the opportunity the fitness industry offers.  In just under a year in business he’s grown to over 100 clients and has a staff helping to deliver his services to create leverage in his business.  He’s not only employed multiple streams of income into his business, but he’s also tapped into one of the true goldmines in the industry – youth fitness / sports performance.

So Congratulations Greg!  I’m excited to name you Fitness Business Owner of the Month and look forward to giving you your well deserved prizes of the coaching call and the product from the FBI collection of resources as well as seeing you at a live event of your choosing soon!

If you’d like to be considered for next month’s Fitness Business Owner of the Month, please contact our Customer Experience Manager, Lee Ann Salsman at leeann.fcg@gmail.com for an application.