Have you ever wondered about coaching for personal trainers so you could accelerate your business?

Similar to coaching your fitness clients, coaching for personal trainers is an investment in faster growth than you can make on your own with a plan that accidental success won’t give you.

What’s accidental success? The handful of clients that find you, the clients you’re given because someone else left or stopped training and you just happened to be in the right spot at the right time – that’s accidental success. Unless you make something of it and renew, get referrals, and begin to attract on your own, you have no business model that is sustainable. 

You need the answer to this question:

Where will your next fitness client come from?

You have to have a predictable way to attract a predictable number of leads, that you can predict a specific percentage will become customers. If you don’t have a lead-generating vehicle in your business, you may not have a business. You may have a hobby that ebbs and flows without predictable revenue. That my friend, is not a business. Try it with your light company, mortgage, or kid’s pediatrician or college education. You are going to have to pay them on time. 

So this episode is all about coaching for personal trainers, the very very basics of who you need to be in order to attract clients. You’ve got to have behind-the-scenes pieces in place. If you don’t know who you are and “why you” you surely aren’t going to convince a client of that.

My Guest is Personal Trainer and Health Coach, Carrie Leonardini. Carrie graciously offered herself up for live coaching for personal trainers and health coaches we do here from time to time. 

We began with remodeling Carrie’s introduction. The bio she sent me needed polish! Carrie is articulate, experienced, and confident  - all qualities that her target clients would find attractive. She also likes to have fun and use humor.

This introduction she gave me failed to tell her audience anything like that.

As she has gotten older she has delved deeper into learning and growing in the knowledge of what it means to be healthy and fit and she loves seeing not only the transformation in herself but in her clients as well.

As a Personal Trainer and Heath Coach, Carrie is passionate about educating and encouraging women to take back their strength, health and empowerment. She has a whole body approach that encompasses mindset, fitness and foundational health. She’s a mom of 2 and currently resides in Northern California and is working to reach as many women as she can to help them achieve a life of health, wellness and vitality.

So…

#1 thing I would love to unpack with Carrie… is how to write an amazing BIO. (for introductions, website, social media)

Something that attracts your audience -  your ideal customer – we refer to as your avatar.

Don’t use words that don’t mean anything. “older” “what it means to be healthy and fit”

Don’t waste a word.

Build credibility –

• Years with experience 12 years
• Certified Personal Trainer
• Health Coach

Build authority –

• Published on women’s

Build rapport – use the power of three

• Have a quirky sense of humor
• Snorts she doesn’t laugh
• Sense of fun
• Reading personal development
• Being outdoors
• Learning

If working with moms between 34 and 50 years old is your target then be sure you’re talking to them like you’d talk to a girlfriend on the phone.

Describe them as if you were describing your best friend. You should know them better than anyone.

Committed, Dedicated, Receptive

Mobility, Weight Loss, Feeling

How do they want to feel?

How do they feel now? Frustrated, fearful, discouraged, ready for change

Make yourself distinct not generic. Make someone listening know in seconds if they would want to have coffee with you or not.

Say something! (Say everything in a way no else can say it).

SHOW DON’T TELL

Tell me if you have a sense of humor by showing it. Don’t say “I have a sense of humor” show me in a humorous introduction that makes me smile!

Tell me if you’re a geeky science girl.

Tell me if you are in the boat rowing with me.

Tell me you have personal method or step-by-step program.

For instance…. I’m a triathlete. But that might alienate me from women I want to help. So I tell a triathlon training story about having snot from ear-to-ear and being allergic to the chlorine in the pool I swim in and more. I laugh at myself and paint an anything-but-glamorous or sexy image of myself. I use an introduction that says I now swim in paperwork, ride the desk, and run my own business for the last five years far more than I do any endurance training. So all those women sitting behind a computer all day know I get them and I am not exercising all day. 

Top 3 Questions Carrie asked me for this coaching for personal trainers session:

1. How to reach potential clients the best when you work independently and don’t have a brick and mortar place to hang your hat?

That’s an opportunity not something holding you back.

Everyone is looking on line FIRST.

Get content out there – videos and blogs.

Know what problems you overcome for clients that a brick and mortar business can’t.

2. Which in your experience has been your best avenue to generate clients? Video, blog, in person, networking, podcasting….and where should someone who is only a year or two into their business start?

ASK.

Literally ASK for the business. Think of three people you need to contact and do it. Today.

Passive marketing that’s always there is something you have to do… but it’s not going to bring you business.

Pick up the phone and call at least one person you know you can help every single day.  

3. Knowing what to focus on each day in your business that moves the needle forward so over time you have the domino affect from your consistent habits/practices.

ASKING a prospect to become a client every day.

Get out of discomfort.

Fill yourself up to the point you can work on more passive streams of revenue right now. So gradually you can create a lifestyle and work schedule you want. 

Look for speaking gigs every day.

Carrie also added this to me in our correspondence before we recorded this episode:

Writing is not my gift

Here’s the coaching for personal trainers tips I have for you if you’re thinking the same. Stop saying it.

You have to write.

You have to stop telling yourself anything negative about writing.

• Talk it and transcribe it if you don’t write well.
• Read Stephen King’s book on writing.
• Start getting better. 

Connect with Carrie:

Facebook.com/takeyoursheback

Interested in coaching for personal trainers or health coaches for yourself?

Connect with Debra via:

Fitnessmarketingmastery.com

 

Looking to attract women between 45-65? The Flipping 50 Specialist offers a certificate program PLUS templates and tools for your business and support marketing and positioning you as the expert. Coaching for personal trainers and health coaches is a significant part of the Advanced Specialist program.

Personal training clients don’t tell you everything. But if they could, this podcast might describe it best.

Allan Misner was your client. At one time he topped the scales at 250. He’d tried and failed many times. Today, he is a National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) Certified Personal Trainer and a Functional Aging Institute (FAI) Certified Functional Aging Specialist. He is the creator of the thriving 40+ Fitness Community, providing one-on-one and group fitness coaching, nutritional guidance, and personal training for clients over the age of 40.

I asked Allan for insight only someone who has been that client and now creates solutions for them could know.

Insights from this episode:

1. Know that: Anyone asking for help is being incredibly vulnerable and you want to respect that. You haven’t heard it before from that client even if you’ve heard it before.
2. Learn their language and use it.

If they use slang, you use slang. If they’re more proper, you be more proper. Your personal training clients are each different. You may have a method but it only works if you can relate to them.

3. Be able to justify every exercise that you recommend.

You should have  a reason why they do every move that is tied to their ultimate goal. Why are you having them sit or stand? Why are you having them do it on a machine or using free weights? Why standing on an unstable surface?

4. Get them in an area where they are comfortable.

When they’re feeling vulnerable they aren’t feeling safe with you. Who wants to return to a place they don’t feel safe over and over again? Your personal training clients give you their trust, for a short time, and you can earn it for longer. 

5. Explain why they’re doing the things they’re doing.

They (as well as you) need to know. When they can connect the dots between where they are and where they want to go and the steps you’re giving them being the solution to closing the gap your personal training clients will keep coming back and stay motivated. 

6. Be interested AND interesting.

Show interest in them. You are a part of their lives. For you it may seem like one of dozens of clients. But for them you are their only personal trainer. They want a connection with you that feels like a friend or family. It’s possible to do that without breaching professional boundaries.

“Conversational is the new professional.”

7. Be one of the five people they most want in their lives.

Be one of them that lifts them up. In your personal training clients lives you are in a unique place of influence. Where else can you leave every single customer feeling better when they walk out the door than when they walk in.

8. Have fun.

When you’re having fun your personal training clients have fun. That’s something we all want to rinse and repeat.

Allan’s new book: The Wellness Roadmap

Available at Amazon in hardbound, paperback, ebook, or audiobook. 

40plusfitnesspodcast.com/flipping

Social Media: 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/40plusfitnesspodcast/

Twitter: @40plusFitnessPodcast

A lucrative fitness career is not based on a degree (or another one) or a certification (or six more). It's not about luck. 

It’s about risk. 

About 35 years ago I told my parents I was changing my major from graphic design (they understood) to physical education (no one really understood yet).

About 30 years ago my step dad asked me, “just what is it you’re majoring in?” while I was in grad school, studying exercise and sport psychology. Again, he hadn’t a clue about what I was doing in school or about how it was going to help me once out of school (and off the payroll)!

I talked recently with Sara Kooperman of Sara’s City Workout. She mentioned what it was like - around the same time - telling her parents she was going to open a gym and teach aerobics … with a law degree. 

That’s a risk.

It was then for sure! There weren’t fitness businesses on every block or hundreds of thousands online yet. It wasn’t common knowledge that we all need to exercise. Today if you’re a high school student who wants to be a personal trainer no one looks at you like you just said you want to work long hours and be broke. If you’re 50 or 60 and decide you want to switch careers and be a health coach or trainer people will think it’s cool not that you’ve lost it!

Still it might feel risky. A lucrative fitness career doesn’t just come automatically with a degree or a certification or because you personally look fit.

Creating every new project elevates the game so the nervous feelings or insecurities you feel are a part of your success not signs of failure. 

Random Conversations

Someone just two days ago said hello to me in the women’s locker room at Rally sport where I personal train and train personally. She recognized me and asked me to remind her my name. We were literally 10 feet from the steam room where we met the very first Saturday I was at Rally. Exactly 16 hours after I drove into Boulder.

She said, “you made it.”

I said excuse me?

She said, I wouldn’t want to be moving into Boulder in these times. It’s a tough town. It’s expensive.

I was quiet. I didn’t know what to say.

But I was thinking.

There wasn’t a choice. I didn’t have a choice. I never thought it wasn’t going to work out. It hadn’t crossed my mind there was another option but to do it. 

Don’t think I didn’t consider other things, but for other reasons. There were other opportunities, not alternatives because of a dead end.

Had I not HAD to take risks and make things happen I don’t know what would have happened. 

I think… less. Just less.

I would have been comfortable. I would have been FINE. And by that I do mean the acronym. Fucked Up Insecure Neurotic and Emotionally disturbed. 

I would have gotten resentful and small instead of growing so much more. I would have missed moments that changed my life and others around me forever.

There were hard things. Incredibly hard things. But nothing about my life will be the same because of them no small things will matter the way they once did. I see people better. 

Weasel words that get in the way of a lucrative fitness career

If you’re giving yourself an out, a possibility that it won’t work here’s how that shows up: 

You say,“try it.”

You’re going to try it.

As opposed to you’re going to do it.

You won’t come up with the best answer right away. You may have to try different things… different headlines, different images in your marketing, different sales scripts even different exercises in a session, but that should feel like a strategic testing process. 

That’s just part of the steps anyone goes through to define the right answer to a new problem.

You don’t have to.

You have a spouse who’s really the breadwinner. You are just doing this because you love it. You’d do it even if no one paid you.

You may think these are good things, even be proud of them. Yet, they hold you back.

Invest in something (yourself for one). Take a risk. You’re not really reaching potential until you create something. Be an answer to a problem.

I didn’t have a choice. I sure didn’t imagine putting my house on the market, moving two states away, living in a relative’s lower level bedroom, and folding towels at the front desk as life goals for my 50th year on the planet.

Do You Give Yourself an Out?
But the alternative was non-existent. I didn’t want to have a “job” or stay in the same small (-minded or otherwise) business or town. Taking a risk was far better than the safe alternatives that were making me nauseas. 

You need to get there. 

If you’re not uncomfortable you’re not growing, not much.

If you’re lying to anyone else you’re really lying to yourself. 

You can have a lucrative fitness career that isn’t just a “job” or a hobby you do when you’re not doing what’s really important, or safe, for you.

You do have to take a risk to get there.

I encourage you to ask some tough questions of yourself. How safe is your current fitness career status right now? How much risk are you taking?

Ask the Hard Questions
Do you love where you are or do you wish you had a more lucrative fitness career that was also more fulfilling?

What are you going to do about it?

If you’re just starting out, how willing are you to take a risk? Are you looking for that safe position working for someone else with insurance so you’re fed clients? But might be also tempted to complain that they’re taking all the profits? How ironic that the business willing to take the risks should also take the biggest profits? 

It’s not an accident. No one is really out to take advantage of you. Even you don’t believe that. Businesses that stay in business take care of everyone. There is opportunity for you to do well and have a lucrative fitness career. There’s never been a better time to be in fitness. But the competition is growing. You want to be better and heard above the noise. 

You don’t want to be another choice. You want to be the choice. 

Want to talk?

P.S. If you're thinking, I don't want a lucrative fitness career, I just want to help people. That's noble. But nothing will enable you to help more people than having a lucrative fitness career. They're not mutually exclusive. They actually have to co-exist. 

Links to resources: 

Fitness Careers You Haven't Considered