Fitness Leaders are Needed More Than Ever

This is Debra Atkinson and you’re listening to the VrF professional’s podcast, brought to you by the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist. For trainers who want to make working with women in midlife their niche and want to own it with a hormone balancing exercise method that has worked for thousands of women since 2013.

Right now is the time to learn, create content and programs that grow your business. The world is at home. And online. And looking for you.

I’ll share the link to get more details on the trainers and health coaches we’re looking for to join our team.

How else are you spending your time now? Fitness leaders … and I mean that in every sense of the word: those of you who stand in the front of the room and lead classes, who do it one-to-one, and who deliver it face to face or online or by phone, and to those of you who lead those staff meetings and pump up everyone else’s tires even now when you don’t have answers because you’ve never had this problem before.

Who are you being right now?

Scared or Scrappy

Are you focused on the problems and how bad it is? Is it a mess? or an opportunity?

What do you talk about every day? Is it a bigger deal that you can’t get your hair and nails done or that you can’t help your clients in their time of need the way you’ve done business up until now?

Fitness leaders get scrappy. They learn to do what me and everyone else is doing right now and that is pivot. You do that by figuring it out as you go. The answers are there. You just can’t look to anyone else to find them.

You can’t expect to do business now the same way you did Before Corona (BC). You can’t even expect to do business after it’s over the same way you did so it’s time to get scrappy about that fact right now. Those over-packed group classes may not be packed again. Those shared yoga mats and TRX and battle ropes, and spinning bike handles may not appeal to your clients any more.

Sanitizing them – even if you can - is not helpful. Not in the world we’re in now that is governed by a respiratory illness.

What you did two months ago and the way you did business isn’t relevant right now. If you weren’t online, you potentially are right now, and yet are you doing this as a bridge? Or just doing what you can to get by? This is an opportunity fitness leaders are grabbing to create a hybrid business.

Needy or Creative

Are you spending time asking someone else for answers? Someone who also has never lived through a global pandemic?Why would you suspect anyone else would have the answers? They are in the exact moment you are in.

You may be reaching out to them because they deal with stress better. They’re more resilient. See that for what it is and value it. Try to understand why and understand that they don’t spend the majority of their time wasting energy on negative content or online “news.”

Then begin to get creative. What if you did know the answer already? What if you got creative with your time right now?

Companies that are used to making triathlon kits for elite athletes are sewing masks. Surely you can make some creative changes in the way you’re doing what you do that contributes as opposed to ignores what’s happening now.

Create a New Answer

What if you didn’t try to just compete with the noise online providing another one of thousands of workouts available right now?

What if you stood out? Why would you? What aren’t your customers and clients finding? What aren’t those millions of people who weren’t exercising before COVID19 and already fit finding?

Right now, they too are online more. Right now, they still are not potentially finding answers that serve them – who might be overweight, deconditioned, feeling awkward, depressed and alone.

How can you creatively serve them?

Seeing Problems or Problem Solving

If you’re focused on the gym being closed, the fact clients don’t want you to come over or to come to you you’re missing out. If you focus on people not spending money right now, you are seeing problems. You’re potentially seeing problems that don’t exist right now. Not everyone is not spending money. Talk to anyone.

People are Buying Both Wants and Needs

They’ve likely bought something in the last week that they wanted. It wasn’t a necessity. They placed an order on Amazon or somewhere else. There are people who are actually working more and making more – not because they’re content collecting unemployment or stimulus checks – but because they have a service or product that is needed right now.

Fitness leaders are problem solving right now. If you see a problem your customers have and you can create a solution appropriate for this time, you have a business. Your customer’s problems now are not the same as they were 2 months ago. Don’t repackage it and think that if it’s digital on Zoom or Skype you’re set.

Right Now or Forever?

That is a right now answer that won’t help you in the future. So I understand if you have to get something going on right now so that you have revenue coming in you may start with virtual classes and sessions you can charge for. Go deeper. How can you really create a more scalable service and business?

If you see the same kind of client problems regularly, and you can help someone with a low-ticket offer they can use right now, you’re much more valuable than that trainer who targets a broad audience.

If you’ve been told by anyone that you need to have a “broader appeal” you’ve been given bad advice. You want to have a niche and you want to be the best at it. If you run a gym or facility of any kind and want to serve a broader audience you hire more experts.

If you are in a geographically challenged area with a small population base, then you need first to be come the expert in one thing. You can add another area of expertise after that, and after that. But you can’t ever again be a trainer for “everyone.”

Every Client Has Unique Needs

A working mother of 3 who’s a cancer survivor wants a trainer who understands lymphedema first and weight loss second. You can’t train her like you train other weight loss clients.

A woman in menopause who wants weight loss can’t be trained like you train a 20 year old who wants weight loss.

Critical or Courageous?

If you’re being critical of someone who has more money right now, stop. You’d love to be in their place. Feeling secure and safe. And yet you if you get honest haven’t been willing to do the same degree of work to get there, take the same amount of risks, or lived within your means not beyond them.

There is nothing congruent about the fact you won’t do or didn’t do what it took to get to the same point – whether that was ask for help, learn a skill or learn how to save and keep your money once you made it.

If you say to someone “you don’t understand” isn’t it true that you delivered the message? You didn’t communicate it well.

If you’ve said, “I’m just a personal trainer” or “personal trainers don’t make that much money” then you’ve got the limiting belief that stopped you. No one else said that. I earned 6 figures as a trainer and director. You can earn 5 figures working 3 days a week (I’ll link to a recent show with Stu Schaefer in the show notes).

Everything you have and everything you don’t right now is the result of a choice.

What Did You Choose

Did you choose to live paycheck-to-paycheck? Did you ignore your profit-and-loss statement? Did you spend for support that you didn’t keep an eye on closely enough to know it was hurting you?

You made the choices based on the facts you had. If you can honestly look back and say you didn’t make the best decisions, don’t wallow in that. You can choose again right now to do it differently.

COVID19 is no one’s fault. None of us saw it coming. Never in history has this happened. Fitness leaders aren’t busy pointing fingers and feeling sorry for themselves. They’re productively exploring the problems people have right now and the skills, talents, and knowledge they have that could provide answers.

Fitness Leaders Show Up in Tough Times

Who you are as a fitness leader is what will determine your After COVID (AC). If you’re showing up, asking, and listening to your customers you can identify ways to be successful during and after COVID19.

Fitness leaders aren’t only calling someone else asking for help. Though they’re not afraid to ask for something specific. They’re calling offering help and ideas, sharing solutions that could grow into products and services.

And this will feel so much better.

You’re a leader. Lead.

Before I begin the interview that you don’t want to miss, I want to check in with you about how you’re doing. It’s a strange time. You may be flirting back and forth with both feelings of lack and feelings of abundant opportunity. There will be changes ahead for all of us, particularly all of us in the fitness industry.

For those personal trainers who have more than passion, who have tools, who have a plan, and who have a purpose they are committed to the future could be brighter than ever. That’s my belief. Never more than right now has health, wellness, and the exercise that HAS to be present for those to happen, been more important. The world is not only listening it is participating.

So however small your own business or training practice was, you are in a perfect position to take control of your future and have an influence far greater than the one you may have imagined when you began this career path.

This podcast is brought to you by the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist certificate. The changes we’re observing right now in the world mean that those 46 million women in menopause right now are seeking solutions, online, and finding the experts that offer an answer to imbalanced hormones. If you know the formula for adjusting a woman’s exercise based on her signs, you have a business opportunity that not only changes her life, but the lives of the three generations she influences. Learn more about getting started at fitnessmarketingmastery.com/programs.

And now I cannot wait to share my guest with you! He’s a bad boy and secretly I love that about him!

My Guest:
Stu Schaefer is the 20-year veteran trainer that other Personal Trainers use when they want to learn how to quickly and easily get clients and build their business so they never have to worry about money again.

At 13 he went to jail and was on the cusp of throwing his life away… but he overcame his struggle.

After earning a Full Ride to The Leeds School of Business, and becoming a bestselling author at 21, he spent the last 14 years helping thousands of trainer go from ordinary to extraordinary… and create their dream business! 

His work is so successful he has appeared on FOX, NBC The CW, and radio programs across the country.

Questions we answer in this podcast:

Why do most trainers fail?
After seeing the effects of COVID-19 is online training the only way to go?
What is it that you teach trainers that is so different and unique?
What is the first thing a beginner trainer should do if they want to be successful?
What's the most important thing a seasoned trainer can do to grow their business?

Connect with Stu: 
https://thesixfiguretrainer.com

Get Social with Stu:
https://facebook.com/thestuschaefer
https://twitter.com/schaeferstu
https://instagram.com/stuschaefer

Have you created a program and announced its for sale to the sound of crickets? 

It happens. It's all in how to package it, price it, position it. Don't miss this next Voice for Fitness Professional's podcast interview with Stu Schaefer.

Stu Schaefer is the 20-year veteran trainer that other Personal Trainers use when they want to learn how to quickly and easily get clients and build their business so they never have to worry about money again.

At 13 he went to jail and was on the cusp of throwing his life away… but he overcame his struggle.

After earning a Full Ride to The Leeds School of Business, and becoming a bestselling author at 21, he spent the last 14 years helping thousands of trainer go from ordinary to extraordinary… and create their dream business! 

His work is so successful he has appeared on FOX, NBC The CW, and radio programs across the country.

In the next episode of the Voice for Fitness Professional's podcast I interview Stu Schaefer and you're not going to want to miss this. If you want to create a lucrative training business without going digital (once this is all over) Stu did it. 

It's going to require getting over your money issues. And we talk about that on the show. Stay tuned... it's coming this weekend. 

Stu Schaefer is the 20-year veteran trainer that other Personal Trainers use when they want to learn how to quickly and easily get clients and build their business so they never have to worry about money again.

At 13 he went to jail and was on the cusp of throwing his life away… but he overcame his struggle.

After earning a Full Ride to The Leeds School of Business, and becoming a bestselling author at 21, he spent the last 14 years helping thousands of trainer go from ordinary to extraordinary… and create their dream business! 

His work is so successful he has appeared on FOX, NBC The CW, and radio programs across the country.

Marketing for personal trainers during COVID19 has changed. So many fitness businesses are simply stalled. Trainer are worrying and waiting to find out what’s going to happen. You may be worried about whether you have a job when this is over.

 

That’s no way to spend this time. If you’re serious about loving fitness and your fitness career, worrying and waiting will not help you.

Fitness businesses and personal trainers who’ve never been online are making mistakes. They have no idea what they’re doing or why they’re doing it. You may feel like I just described you. That’s okay.

Right Now Marketing for Personal Trainers

Now is the time. You’ve got to do it strategically and realize the value of right now for establishing your future in the business.

You can create leverage with this 3-step plan for marketing for personal trainers during COVID19.

While it’s true every trainer, fitness instructor, yoga teacher, and strength coach everywhere is doing videos online right now, your customers followed you for a reason. They are loyal to you. They want leadership from you. And if it’s working for them they will share it with others.

Ready to Stop the Worrying and Waiting?

You’re going to do these 3 things. (Step #2 actually has to come first.)

1) Create a video a day and get it out there

Do it live (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or all three simultaneously).

In every single video you’ve got to create a call to action (CTA). You ask them to comment, to share, to use your hashtag, to add emojis that describe their day. Always ask or instruct viewers to do something so you create engagement.

Download the live and upload host it on Vimeo or Wistia.

Embed that video on your website.

Email your clients and full email list (separately) to tell them about the video creating an email that is appropriate for each.

2) Before you begin plan.

A lack of strategy is the reason your social media or any marketing doesn’t work. If you (or your boss) has ever asked, does it even work? Is it even worth it? The answer is yes. It does. If you have a strategic plan.

If you’ve just created a bunch of workout videos… that can be used in no particular order (meaning have no particular progression) they’ll get no particular results.

Right?

If you believe that any random exercise will get results then you should just advocate your clients go follow random videos on YouTube, right?

But you don’t.

You believe that there is a start and a next step and a next step and so on. And that proper form matters.

And that a person has to understand what and why as well as how.

And something about the way you do it is unique.

Marketing for Personal Trainers now Distinguishes You

Focus not on random exercise videos for strength, or intervals, or core, but solve a SPECIFIC right-now problem for your clients.

Consider a variety of things but plan them. Will you include stretching, strength, corrective exercise, mindset, nutrition?

Don’t know? Do your first video as a chat. ASK your clients via the video and via email or text. “What do you need right now… What is your biggest challenge?” is a powerful question. Let them tell you what their problem is. Then decide how you’ll solve it.

Start. Do one a day for the first week. Look at what’s most popular, commented on, shared and adjust based on that.

3) Start planning a low-ticket offer.

You need to give first. Right now you have a skill and you have knowledge people need. Serve and create rapport.

But what you have is valuable and needed. Create something small that is easy for someone to do right now. Small is relative to what you usually charge.

Are you a trainer who usually charges $60 a session? Create something that solves a problem people have now that is $19 or $27. Maybe it’s a e-book or a 7 day challenge.

Do you have $297 programs? Maybe you do a virtual group program for $47 for 8 weeks for right now. People can do something like that once they get to know you. If you’re solving a problem they know they have and they’re looking for an answer to they will.

The Time is Right

When you’ve given and served the time is right to make a low-ticket offer. You’ll want a funnel that makes it possible for someone to buy something more too. That “upsell” might be a get-started goal setting private session with you, it might be a nutrition plan to go with your low-ticket fitness plan. Your upsell might be weekly private coaching. The goal is to make the upsell feel like the better-results option or the done-for-you option, or be a complimentary part of the program. It should make it easier to do the program and get results.

There is a time to sell. Now is not time to avoid selling. It’s time to do it with consciousness. Be appropriate and aware of the problems that exist now that didn’t 5 weeks ago.

Your clients shouldn’t be doing the same thing they were then.

Show notes: https://www.Fitnessmarketingmastery.com/COVIDmarketing

Right now the fitness industry is full of trainers and instructors flooding the online space. No one was prepared for COVID19. And yet, becoming an online trainer was a good idea before this pandemic. It wasn’t crowded for any single niche.

Note: I’ve been an almost 100% virtual personal trainer & health coach for women in perimenopause, menopause, and post menopause, focused on hormone balancing exercise since January 2013. In March of 2013 I created my first online course. I offered my first online marketing and sales training course for trainers in August 2013. My advice is to jump in. Do not wait. This many years later it is easier, and it will get more crowded if you wait. Be first. Be best. But done is better than perfect.

My business model is hybrid – providing live retreats for women, fitness pros, and live workshops and speaking. The beauty of hybrid is that a trainer isn’t defined or limited by circumstance. A hybrid trainer is able to adjust to the needs of a client and provide online, in person, training sessions, programs, nutrition coaching, tele-sessions on an as-needed basis. The content gets delivered on the platform that works best at the moment. You’re not limited as a trainer by geography or technology.

In 2019 I launched the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist certificate to provide the training for other trainers and meet the huge demand for 46 million women in menopause, growing by 6000 every day (ACOG, 2019). As a part of that training I offer an online build your brand & business program for trainers and health coaches. Now has never been a better time to 1) already have leverage online 2) create your online strategy 3) leave random or “someday” options and commit to business that is either hybrid or 100% online.

For trainers who have an interest in becoming an online trainer this is the time to pivot. For trainers who want to continue doing training in person this is the time to develop online training tools that support customers and leads. It is the time to develop an online presence if even by showing up regularly, not necessarily to contribute to the mass of “exercise” options, but to be there supporting and creating community. This doesn’t mean spending your life on social media. But it means willingness to research what your customer needs right now. What is the biggest problem your customer faces?

Now is the time to plan. Create a strategy that is informed from homework about the clients you want to target. If you currently had been serving clients face-to-face in a wide array of ages, conditions, and goals, that won’t equate to an easy target online.

You need to focus on:

1) Who you want to serve

2) Who you need to be

3) How you help them and

4) What’s unique about you and them

Before you try to add “online trainer” into your website or social media bio, spend some time really focusing on the business plan and model.

The Process

Becoming an online trainer will all but guarantee you become a better trainer.

You will learn how to market and promote and serve your customers in a way that boosts your value.

What are we and aren’t we talking about?

I’m not only talking about delivery of your services via teleconferences or Skype or Facetime. That virtual training simply changes where you are and may increase the convenience of delivery for you or your client but is still an hour-for-a-dollar method of training. You hit a limit to the number of hours you have to train.

Does it offer a little more freedom than face-to-face sessions? Yes, but it may actually end up being less than the amount of revenue you’d otherwise make. You still have to be in a quiet space with control of your environment. Your kids can’t be coming in and out of the room. Without celebrity status or a bestselling book your clients may not want to pay you as much for this service. So more clients paying less money unless you’re talking a LOT more with say an online bootcamp you’re doing live is not an optimal model.

Will virtual sessions now help you recover income otherwise lost? Yes. You can conduct Skype, Zoom, or Facetime sessions with your clients scheduled just like any other sessions. Unless your business model is stuck and you refuse to figure out how to it this way, there is a way. Most of the time the greatest learning and fastest forward progress happens because its needed and necessary: not because you’re ready.

Why is Online Training (and Coaching) So Beneficial?

There’s no income ceiling if you strategically create programs.

It offers you a way to make passive income if you’re sick or on vacation.

You can train anyone from anywhere anytime.

You can have as much hands-on or DIY as clients prefer and you build.

Accountability is Still Key

Customer service between sessions is still and all-important part of your value. Clients who need accountability (which is about 98% of humans) need your personal touch. You still have to show up. You need to coach them, have check ins, have Q and As and in some way be there for them so they do what is available to them.

Online Training Revenue Streams Beyond the Old 1-to-1 Model

• Online education courses
• Online exercise courses
• Online group live stream

What Doesn’t Change

You still have to choose a niche. You can’t serve “everybody.” If you’re still marketing mass bootcamps for all ages and men and women without pre-qualifications and specific outcomes, you’ll fail. Going “broad” like this in the future will guarantee your failure.

Can you imagine people wanting to be in large groups where they share battle ropes, and TRX, and dumbbells, and mats while they’re sweaty?

The overwhelm of prospective clients is real. They can’t distinguish between one program or trainer and another. If you’re a so-so trainer, that’s good. If you’re a highly skilled expert trainer, that’s bad.

A 60-something woman may think her daughter who just graduated from college with a degree she paid for can help her because after all she’s a beginner and need the basics. Never mind the osteoporosis, arthritis, hip bursitis and rotator cuff issues she has.  Unless you clearly distinguish yourself and create a message that a customer gets at hello, you will be lost in a sea of trainers scrambling right now to get an online presence.

Online Fitness Service Options

• Private-personalized programs one-to-one
• Non-personal written programs (in pdfs or videos)
• Non-personal video fitness programs
• Hybrid online and in-person training
• Live Video Workouts online (Skype, Facetime, Zoom)
• Live Online group training

Examples of Information Products to Add

• Nutrition programs
• Stretching specific sessions
• Golf/Ski conditioning
• Yoga for bikers/runners/hands-free/osteoporosis

Membership Models

Once you have begun and learn what’s working a membership model with subscription is the way of the future for many. Though we don’t know exactly what will happen post COVID19, we do know that things will change. Health is important. Quality will have more value than ever. 

Software, Course-Building, or Word Press

• There is trainer-specific software that is already built. You’ll need to fit into the model that exists and the options available.
• Consider course-building sites like Thinkific, Teachable, and Kajabi.
• You can build a membership site within a word press site using tools like Memberium and Learn Dash to create a course experience.

You have options. Before you go shopping for the options to build something lay out your plan so you can create a customer experience. Once you do that you’ll best be able to choose the products that will create it.

The biggest mistake? Trainers tell me, I know I have to get a website up. If you too are saying this before you even know who your target customer is, that would be a bigger mistake than not having a website.

Whether you deliver in-person personal training or online personal training this is the absolute most important and most often skipped part of every struggling fitness business. Especially now. Any fitness business can have a certain level of success due to novelty or newness or the vast offerings. Or at least could at one time.

If you want to survive and thrive during and after COVID19 you can. You can't however wait it out. 

Find a Niche and Serve

Today customers who are more overwhelmed by facilities and amenities that they don’t use are less likely to go to a big umbrella gym. The bigger it is and the less time a customer has, the mere walk to the locker room and back to find a classroom is a time inconvenience. An older adult who has to climb the stairs or even use the elevator to reach the track or an exercise bike may decide it’s all too much if that’s all they want to use.

So your specialization and your specific message are more appealing than ever. Define your target market. Learn what options already exist for them. Identify a gap and determine if there is great enough demand. Decide the model you want. Then plan the customer journey before you shop for how to put it together.

You want to create the ideal program and offer in your head and on paper before you ever start a website, a membership area, or start creating videos.

If you want support and step-by-step coaching on creating, reaching, an offer customers love schedule a breakthrough with me. 

When you’re ready, these are your steps:

Identify your ideal customer  - Begin attracting the right person who has a problem is actively seeking solutions, and has urgency around it and willing to invest in it. Spend the most time developing this so you can evaluate how many customers fit this niche and the 4 criteria that make this niche a wise one.

Learn how to create rapport with anyone  - in your emails, on your website, on the phone, and in person so you can put them at ease and learn what they want. There are word you want to avoid and words you want to use, and a right time to use them.

Generate leads that grow your business – Learn the marketing tools that work right now. You want to create leads that grow your email list every day automatically.

Create Offers – Learn how to create offers that convert customers and that position you as a trainer of value not a trainer of discount. There are 16 parts to making an irresistible offer.

Client Care – You’ll learn how in person, online, and hybrid trainers win the loyalty of the clients with the best follow up, accountability, and customer love strategies. A small percent of people today have any brand loyalty and 50% switchdue to poor customer service. The good news is 93% of customers will make a repeat purchase when there is excellent customer service.