Tue, 28 December 2021
This episode is a countdown of the Top Fitness Marketing Podcasts of 2021 (and All Time). I couldn’t resist throwing in some that are huge standouts from prior years (this show is in its 9th season)! You can find the episodes at fitnessmarketingmastery.com, Apple podcasts, iTunes, iHeartRadio and anywhere you listen to podcasts. In true David Letterman style, which is what any self-respecting Iowa girl would do, here we go! The Top Fitness Marketing Podcasts of 2021 (and all time) #10 Why You Don’t Want Your Social Media to Go Viral #272 Shocker right? Why don’t you want your social media to go viral? I lay it all out here. It may be an eye opener about a number of other goals you thought you had that aren’t serving you. #9 Fitness Marketing in Less Time: How to Get It All Done The most precious thing you have is time. If you’re doing busy work constantly, chances are you’re not getting it all done and you’re not doing it well. #8 How to Get Results on Instagram Without Wasting Time If you’re using Instagram, you want more than to see your own brilliant pictures or REELs. You want engagement, and to grow your email list. #7 Is Passive Revenue Too Good to Be True? If you are new to or a stranger to affiliate marketing, this is your introduction. Revenue in your jammies is not an impossible wish. Just what and how do you do this though? #6 Do You Pay Yourself First? It’s a big question and it’s often not the first thing considered by a health coach or personal trainer. The dollar per session may sound good, but when you factor in travel, time, writing programs, doing all the things…. If you haven’t learned to automate… then this. Take your business further faster with less time in 2022. Continuing with the Top 5 Fitness Marketing Podcasts of 2021 [Seeing this on another platform? Link to the show notes for the links to all podcasts from the countdown: fitnessmarketingmastery.com/top-podcasts #5 2020 My Systematic New Fitness Client Process This is by far one of the most popular episodes. It’s clear you want help structuring a system to work with clients and deliver excellence as you set up your business. Here’s how to set up yours. #4 Start and Grow Your Menopause Coaching Services If you run menopause fitness coaching services or want to, this is for you. Do you know the difference between training a woman 50 and one 70? Between a woman in perimenopause and post? Do you know what triggers belly fat and hot flashes and how to adapt an exercise prescription that improves her flashes? Here's an inside look at how to be the go-to-authority. #3 Taking Care of You, Personal Trainer & Coach Business Plan This episode content came from my observations and conversations with female health coaches and fitness trainers and business owners who are intelligent women doing things they’d never be able to – or allow – their employees to do. If you’re overworking, underpaying yourself, operating with a schedule that doesn’t mimic what you tell clients to do… this is for you. #2 4 Steps to Create Fitness Marketing Videos Video is still and is always going to be king and queen. So, this episode coming in at #2 is no surprise. You know you should. You are. You want more success doing it. Help is here! #1 Are the Words You Use Costing You Customers? If you’re not in your customer’s head, heart and thinking and feeling like them, it’s going to be very difficult to support a “yes” decision when it comes to getting started with you. Chances are if you haven’t created your programs with that same unique slant you’re going to struggle to make programs they love and experience wins doing. Did you know there are 5 unique buying personas of female buyers? So even if you’re trying to reach women in their 40’s they aren’t all going to respond to the same words (or images). This episode will help. Resources Mentioned: |
Tue, 14 December 2021
Love or hate small talk, you can make small talk matter big! Here’s how to take the most benign questions and turn them into an opportunity to showcase your work in a way someone becomes intrigued by you and wants to hang with you longer. If you’re an introvert, I’ll bet you can relate to this. You end up at a party or mixer, not knowing anyone very well, and wishing you didn’t have to show up but knowing it’s supposed to be good for you. You dread that small talk and the feeling that your responses to questions are lame. Not anymore, my friend. First of all, I want to address the fact that if you are indeed an introvert, you’re not alone. Did you know? More of us in fitness and health are than aren’t. Many professional speakers and actors are introverts. Still, it’s like required reading. You’ve got to do it. Where to Make Small Talk Matter Big
And so many more!
They’re questions that are likely to come up during holiday parties, in Zoom breakouts, and at fitness conferences. The way you answer could be the difference between, “oh, cool,” and the start of a relationship with a new client or a collaboration with a new company or partner. Here’s what you’re not:
Why? Because it either means nothing to the listener or it means what they think it means. Why? Because whoever you’re talking to knows at least one person if they aren’t that person who needs and wants your services. Are you going to let that get away? Have you imagined what it would be like if the owner of a company said, I’d like to do this for all of my employees, could we work together on something that makes sense for both of us? Or you connected with a grocery store owner who said they’d like to start monthly fitness & health tips and want you to head that up? You just don’t know. Opportunities come, as long as you swim out to the boat. When you’re in front of people, make your words count. So let’s say this not that. Not, personal trainer. Say this:
For instance, Your response will be a question. That’s important. You know busy professional women in midlife who struggle with time and fatigue who want exercise for stress relief and more energy? Why a question? A question leaves an open loop. It compels the listener’s brain to answer. They usually will.
And with that, you’ve opened up a conversation. With a simple answer like “personal trainer,” you’ve closed it. In fact, if you’re uber qualified? So tell them, specifically what it is you do or want to. Dig into your niche with your answer. You’ll extend your reach far faster. Make small talk matter big. Cheers fitness & health pro! Whether it’s a holiday party, a New Year’s health panel, or something else. Small is big. Other Episodes You May Like: 6 More Ways to Increase Your Fitness Sales this Season
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Tue, 7 December 2021
In this series of weekly marketing posts, I’ll help you craft your content so that you can resonate with your ideal customers. I’ll choose an example of some fitness posts that are a good concept but miss the mark. Say This, Not That Fitness & Health Pros Now, there’s a whole lot more involved in a good post that gets engagement, a quality call-to-action, use of the right hashtag strategy, engaging with your audience after the post, priming your timeline before the post, and congruent consistency of content… but without this first very foundational piece, your post won’t be seen, discovered, or engaged with. So, let’s get started. Here’s where you could easily go wrong when you start your post intending to give help and support. How can that go wrong? Here’s how. When your topic or message isn’t targeting a problem that someone wants a solution for and isn’t stated in the way your customer talks about it, it isn’t going to get a big engagement. Don’t assume too much. Instead of this: “Tired of sit ups and crunches?” make it clear why NOT sit ups and crunches. That question assumes your ideal customer is indeed tired of sit ups and crunches. Ask, is my ideal client asking Dr. Google, What can I do if I’m tired of sit ups and crunches? If the answer is no, then you’re going to miss the engagement you want from a post and the time you’ve spent creating, editing the post, and the real estate you could have used better, is gone. Get to the root of the problem in the customer’s eyes and language. If someone isn’t tired of crunches and sit ups, then they skip this because it does not resonate with them. Work with women in menopause or want to? What Are They Aware Of? If someone is under the impression that sit-ups and crunches work, they aren’t looking for help with alternative exercises. (They may not be getting results, but also not be attributing that to the exercises they are doing). No one wants what they NEED, we want to buy/watch/learn about what we want. Say This Instead: Why sit ups and crunches will never help you shrink your waist (and what to do..) Biggest core exercise mistakes and fastest way to a stronger core/smaller waist (and what to do…) Why This Not That Message: Now, you’ve stirred curiosity. You’ve taken someone from thinking they were doing the right thing, to questioning it. You’ve got their attention. First, because you’re talking about the thing that is most important to them. And because the thing they really want (flat belly, strong core, smaller waist, less belly fat) isn’t achievable doing what they’re doing. Now they are going to pay attention. Resources: Marketing to Women Copywriting Course
Direct download: Fitness_Marketing_Mastery_-_SAY_THIS_NOT_THAT_CRUNCHES_AND_SIT_UPS_-_Edited.mp3
Category:marketing -- posted at: 3:00am MDT |
Mon, 29 November 2021
Rest assured; I’m going to give you 6 more ways to increase your sales this season. But I’m going to do it a little backhandedly. That is, I’m going to share why your marketing ISN’T bringing you more sales. These are six reasons why too many fitness pros are striking out when it comes to social media, or any marketing for that reason, and what to do about it.
Posting generic information that another fitness professional can post, you need to ask why. There are currently about 375,000 trainers in the US alone. Yet, keep in mind no one is restricted to training with a trainer “locally” anymore. I’ve worked with clients in Italy, Trinidad, UK, Australia as well as all over the US recently. Personal training is expected to grow by 39%. That is, the number of trainers, not necessarily the number of clients. Now, what’s happened during the pandemic? Big chains, medium and small ones are losing 2 to 5 trainers at a time right now because there are not enough clients to go around. There aren’t enough members coming back in. That doesn’t mean they’ll all be successful with online businesses. Either way, be the unique one serving the niche you serve better than anyone. Get press, get partners, get wise on social media strategies and then use them, every time.
Posts about random health habits for the holidays are generic commodities. What deeper layer can you provide that shows understanding of exactly what emotions your customer has during the holidays? Are the emotions excitement and desire to toss abandon to usual health habits to have pleasure? Is it fear of gaining weight and losing control? Is it a depressing time due to emotions of holidays past or losses? You can’t know how to help them if you don’t focus on what they feel and think at this moment. You also can’t do a post so inclusive that you target someone who is depressed and someone who loves the holidays in the same piece of content. You’re doing it again – trying to serve everyone all the time. That level of marketing forgets what really works, targeting one individual.
You have to know what works and toss the rest. What are the results of your digital ads? How many visits to a landing page and from unique visitors, how many sales? You have to track your conversion rates. On social, how many website clicks result from your posts? How much engagement matters too, but if you’re not moving them off social to your email list, what’s the point? Email is where you nurture and sell. Those are the people interested in real help and support.
Get to the answer within seconds. Whatever your title or image promises to deliver. Do it. No long bumper or talk about the show or anything but the thing you promised in the title that was so juicy it got them there. If you’re on a live and you wait “until a few more join”? and I got there on time? You’re wasting my time. So, start when you said you’d start. YOU should join early if you want to wait a few minutes to dive into material, but it is maddening for busy people or just prompt people when you ignore them in favor of the latecomers, or when you don’t just give me the info you promised before some long prelude.
It’s easy to think they need to know who you are and launch into years of experience or degrees. They don’t. And for that reason, they’ll choose a stranger who has simply been a fitness enthusiast for years, happens to have had good luck and next to no training if they get a quicker answer than listening to a dissertation about your background. There’s a place for it but don’t lead with it. There they are - a backhanded way of finding 6 ways to increase your fitness sales this season. I’ll link to previous episodes where I’ve shared others. Do you make any of these mistakes? Choose just one and change it first before you try the overwhelming task of changing them all. If you’ve felt like you just can’t understand why what you’re doing doesn’t work, these may give you the ability to see it. Other Episodes You May Like: What to Say to Close the Fitness Sale 10 Social Media Tips that Work for Fitness & Health Professionals
Direct download: Fit_Pros_6_MORE_WAYS_TO_MAKE_...._-_Edited_-_2.mp3
Category:marketing -- posted at: 8:08pm MDT |
Fri, 19 November 2021
We all have to deal with strong emotions and yet if you’re an entrepreneur you also have to figure out doing business anyway. If you’re running a business, no wait really, if you are the business, then inevitably you’re going to run into moments when life happens. You will have to both run your business and deal with the unpleasant reality that our loved ones are born, get married, break bones, have accidents, die, and you have emotions around all of it. You’ll move, have arguments, and break up. You’ll miss planes and get stranded. You’ll encounter technology not working. You’ll lose people and you’ll need to train others. You’ll get sick or have car trouble. You will have an old dog that needs care. All of those things will show you the leaks in your business. At least they did for me. Doing Business Anyway You’ll have to make hard choices and sometimes through all of that, you can’t control your emotions. Recently, I went through a tough time. I’m talking about it here because of the opportunity it’s provided me to see what needs to happen next for me. I also realized that much of what I default to doing to myself is not moving my business forward as much as it is a distraction and a comfort to leftover feelings of fear that may not be justified in the moment. Strong Emotions and Doing Business Anyway One of the last trips to see my mom, and it wasn’t pleasant. She’d struggled after her fall and surgery. She felt less stable. She was resisting moving to assisted living. This is all the emotions and decisions that any adult child goes through really. It’s not a surprise. But you definitely get it when it’s you. I was locked and loaded with a hot spot so I could work while I sat with her. And then that never happened. There’s just way too much to do. And she and I spent time quality time going through memories and journals. And that time was absolutely precious. But other moments of that trip were horrendous. There was a quarantine from covid the first day I was there. I got food poisoning and so for the last two days I was there I couldn’t see her. I then had a flight cancelled and was stranded for two days in Des Moines, Iowa, still recovering from the food poisoning. That was just the beginning of a downward spiral of my mom’s health. Fear I had fears at the beginning. I definitely did, and for good reason, really. I got down to very little in my bank account. My house was for sale but there were no buyers and it was -20 too near Christmas for anyone to really want to buy. It was then that I learned the habits I’ve kept for longer than they serve me. I roll up my sleeves. I go to work. I make things, I’ll say that too. Like you maybe, which is why I say this, I tend to create things. The reality is that I’ve become the most successful by slowing down creating and amplifying the marketing. I have award-winning content and programs that get rave reviews. So, what I really need is not another program, but more people in my programs. But we default to the old patterns… at least until we break them. Greif Most recently this has been what I’m dealing with. My mother passed and for the last couple months it’s been down hill and we knew it was on an accelerated path. I found myself not wanting to take care of other people, just wanting to be taken care of. When you feel like this you only have so much bandwidth to function. You’re not likely to be able to take care of everyone else in the way that you usually do. Juggling things that normally are nothing are much harder. So, if you keep having the same expectations of yourself, but aren’t able to have the same work habits as you usually do, it creates some friction. All of that leads to fatigue and it can get hard to take care of yourself. This one must be the hardest of all to handle. It’s unpredictable. It’s not a fever, a cold, or the stomach flu. It’s not a fight that you’ll be mad about and then make up from. Holidays You also have to think about the holidays. I say that now because it’s fresh on my mind that these will be the first holidays without my mom and it’s a fresh wound anyway. It’s not the first holiday I haven’t been able to be with her. We all experienced that during COVID. And I’d had others where that was true too. But I’ll be alone this Christmas and at Thanksgiving without that phone call to make where we pass it around the room. What do you do during the holidays? How do you automate during the holidays? How do you promote? It’s time to think about not just making things happen or attaching your “success” to how much money you’re bringing in, but to how you’re doing it. Are you bringing it in in a way that is sustainable, and you love? Or are you building a business you don’t love and want to keep doing? It’s so important to consider your answer to that. Sooner rather than later. Had I not had time to pause I may not have realized how much I’ve carried over habits I began when business was very different to now when I can build a sustainable business and do it with more thought. What’s the Bottomline? The biggest take-aways from this episode are that business will have ups and downs. Those are more predictable usually, though I think we can agree the pandemic threw everyone for a loop. But more importantly, life will have ups and downs. The way I describe ideal workout planning for women in midlife is that it’s a sweet spot of stress. Just enough, not too much not too little. So, if life is full of emotional stressors or financial ones, then the workouts should back off. It's the Same in Business The same is true of business. When you’re struggling with a lot of emotional stressors, or you’re trying to hit a big physical activity challenge yourself, it may not be the best time to push any business goals. Your business might plateau or even dip. Sometimes that’s ok. At least you want it to be ok. You want to know where your space is for your breakeven. Your burn rate. Like every month I know how much my team expenses are going to be. And I know how much equipment and platform expenses will be. I want a profit margin above that. If I’ve had a healthy couple months with a large profit margin I might expect things to be a little quiet and be fine with that, knowing my average is still up. Resources: Masterclass for Fitness & Health Business Black Friday Specialist Event [add to cart for details]
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Sun, 14 November 2021
To fill your health & fitness coaching business, you have to know what to say to close the fitness sale. Or, rather how to open a conversation. And it's not what will come out of your mouth first... unless you've rehearsed it after thinking about it. When you’re:
What should your flow be? (on the webinar? in the consultation call?)
So that you can: overcome objections before they come up and then if they do… Know what to say when they say:
So, It’s Your Turn: What do you say when someone asks, “What do you do?” So that you are not just a commodity:
You don’t improve by telling someone you’re an online personal trainer, or a midlife weight loss coach. You haven’t mastered this art of engaging prospects if you say you’re just adding adjectives like a midlife or menopause health coach. Even for my Flipping50 Fitness Specialists, I would never want them to answer, I’m a Flipping50 menopause fitness specialist. Not until far into a conversation. Know why? Because last year, there were no #midlifehealthcoach uses to speak of, this year there are hundreds calling themselves that. (some of them who go so far to steal client testimonial content and call it their own!) So what? Did it make someone better, knowledgeable, relatable so they can get the sale because they’ve called themselves that? Or stole a testimonial? No. The ability to transform your answers into something powerful that makes a listener say, oh, that’s me! Or oh, that sounds just like my wife! Or, that sounds just like so many of my clients! (Says my hairstylists/my dermatologist/my dentist) That is what gets you the next step. The curious other person who isn’t just waiting for the polite conversation to be over. Where it goes wrong In too many cases, when you say… oh I’m a personal trainer or a health coach, they just assume that they know you by their own personal experience with a trainer or health coach. There’s no need for more conversation. If you say Medical Exercise Specialist, Pilates instructor, Yoga Teacher, it’s the same. Nothing – not even an identifier of “midlife women” or “menopause” helps you there. You friend, are burying your opportunity not to tell people you’re award-winning fitness instructor, or international presenter, or certified or master degree holding.. which are all commodities and labels that mean nothing about your ability to relate to your next prospect. It’s not about you. It’s about them. You can build credibility without listing your degrees, certifications, and it definitely can’t be done by giving yourself a label. Resonate with You? If you want more, meet me for a special masterclass. I’m sharing 3 of the marketing mistakes I see trainers and health coaches unintentionally do every day. If you work with midlife women – and who doesn’t or won’t – they make up 80% of personal training clients, I’ll also be sharing 3 of the most common mistakes trainers – even experienced ones are making with their clients. (or themselves) ATTEND FOR FREE What I say. (in episode!) Can you describe yourself this way? In a way that makes someone say, oh that’s me? Not with a cold blank label that is generic? You're Invited:
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Thu, 11 November 2021
Who doesn’t need and want more revenue generating actions? Note I said actions and not ideas. My goal is not to give you a list of very good ideas. What I want you to do is treat this like a check list. It may be a reminder for things you have done and have worked but you just stopped doing. The first step is to not assume everyone already knows about you and they’ll come find you when they’re ready. Free masterclass with 3 biggest marketing mistakes and 3 training mistakes that miss with midlife women.
These are hot for good reason. Make it targeted enough it attracts and serves your exact demographic (That isn’t every possible customer in your geographical area. It’s the specific 66-year-old woman concerned about osteoporosis, getting weaker, gaining weight, and not wanting to be frail like her mother). The value is your follow up offer. Make it congruent with the challenge. It’s not just generic “personal training.” A package that feels complete and solves the buyer’s problems is what sells someone.
This is my preference. I like someone to be invested. It's already revenue generating from the beginning. The saying goes, when you pay you pay attention. It’s so true. Otherwise, it’s nothing but another email reminder or thing to have to do but nothing at stake so why bother? Someone misses a day and they’re likely to skip out altogether if they didn’t pay. Challenges don’t need to be a big investment though. Host it for $19 or $27 or $49 at most depending on the length of the challenge. Some challenge hosts will do a free challenge but also include an upsell to a better VIP experience, including maybe hot seats, or handouts, or additional materials or access to live presentations inside a group.
Make it a presentation that is news and noteworthy. Holiday weight gain realities vs myths. Where it usually comes from. How to eat more and not gain weight.
Yourself, invite a panel, invite a guest. But make sure you’re solving a problem. You’re giving a unique and tangible offer. Meaning 3 healthy family-proof recipes they’ll all love, 5 short workouts for holiday health (and sanity).
Just your house! Let them see behind the scenes! Your fans love to know what you do, and what works for you.
By appointment this year rather than a large social gather. Yes, it's like a sales appointment, but it feels different with this frame. And treat them differently. Give them favors, refreshments, treats that are unique.
Target podcasts that serve your same audience. Someone who does something complimentary, not exactly what you do. Reach out, introduce yourself, make it clear you’ve listened to previous episodes and understand what they want. Provide the 3-5 take-aways for listeners. Let the host know how you add value to listeners, and mention your own email list and social media following. It matters. The value of a guest is ...
If you own a brick-and-mortar business, I know it’s been tough. Don’t forget ways to help those who’ve fallen off the bandwagon to come back in. Think about their biggest objections. No ignoring that it may be safety, and the mask and vaccine situation. There may not be a lot you can do about that except nurture them. Stay connected. Be a source of healthy immune boosting habits that people can do at home if they’re not back yet. But what if it’s something else? What if ...
That’s not all though. Make an offer each time you post...
...There are so many ways to use a membership. Maybe it’s a way to add value to current training clients with extras like recipes, meal plans, workouts when they’re not with you, traveling plans that include tubing/bands/body weight only. Maybe there are extra perks inside your membership that feature discounts or a special relationship with select vendors (you have rounded up). It could also be a second or third step after a course or training so that someone who feels they’ve got this, can just stay consistent with support.
You know those questions you’re asked all the time? That’s a course. Are there people who want to go deeper on a topic but you just don’t have the time to do it one-on-one and can’t get a big enough group to participate at the same time? That’s a course. If it solves a problem, answers a question, it’s a course.
If you’re hosting events, whether presentations and panels or races, or open houses, it could be news. If it has a who, what, when and it’s relevant to the community, it’s news. Here's how...
When it’s time to grow, really scale, you’ll no longer be exchanging time for money. You’ll have programs you’ve proven to achieve good transformations for clients. You’ll know what words you used, the exact emails, and the social media copy that helped bring people to a yes. That’s when it’s time to start recruiting affiliates. Partner with people who need a program like you offer. The ideal candidate is someone who doesn’t do what you do but works with the same audience you do. What you offer has to be in their customers or patients’ best interest. Does your copy suck?Copywriting course so that you can write copy that works and speaks to your female buyers better.
You use products and tools or wear workout gear you love that you know would help your clients be more successful too. Why not set up affiliate relationships so you can earn money promoting them?
Much of the time these are people who just as before, serve the same audience that I do. But I also share my list with a friend I trust who does something similar to me, with a unique process different than mine...
Now is a good time to offer one no matter where you live. Indoors or out. How could you create a fitness “camp” for adults and allow them to flow from yoga to spinning, then weight training to foam rolling. Maybe there’s a place to serve them lunch catered in from a restaurant or food truck. This can be a great revenue generating strategy in itself. But at the event you can also upsell to training or coaching packages.
Who needs you? The answer is more people that you realize. What business needs a moral boost for employees right now? What business would welcome a stress reduction yoga session or joy-enhancing practice of meditation for its employees? Whether it’s during the stressful holiday season or any other time of year. What businesses did well during the pandemic? Incredibly well or were extraordinarily busy?
If you nurture your email list and you have a good offer, an email (or series of emails) should always produce sales for you. Be cautious about burning your list out by not only sending sales and promotional emails. Continue to regularly share valuable content (to them) in the same vein they subscribed to your email list in the first place. Then when you do make an offer, some of them will be thinking that this was perfect timing and will be glad to purchase it. This episode is filled with gold for marketing all year. Treat it as a checklist! Keep it close. Answer these questions for yourself: Which of these are most urgent for fast growth? Which of these do you want to implement in 2022 but need more thought to do well? I know what I'd tell you! (what I'd tell our mastermind members). |
Sat, 6 November 2021
Are you starting a new business as personal trainer? You’ll want to listen to this episode. I interview Jen Shaver who is in her second career. We hear here story of starting and growing her personal training business. My Guest: Jennifer Shaver from Fit with Shaver. She is a former endurance athlete who spent many years doing countless triathlons, 7 full marathons and 9 half marathons. Jen didn’t enter the age group world of running until age 33 but, once she started the only thing holding her back was her pain. During her endurance athlete time she was suffering from bulging discs, anemia and extreme joint pain because she didn’t implement several important factors into her training as she was aging. As a child of the 80’s she is a reformed cardio junkie and has changed her ways and her pain. New Career Jen is a former middle and high school Spanish teacher who has combined her love of teaching and enthusiasm for fitness together and has taken her talents from the classroom to online to help the busy midlife woman learn to make exercise work for their body, for their hormones and for their schedules. She offers a variety of online, at home strength training classes for the everyday busy woman with no extreme moves. Jen describes all of her workouts put the fun in functional training and are void of vomit-inducing burpees, crunches, and jumping. Just the functional movements that will lead to a strong healthy life filled with enjoyment and movement. She enjoys sharing her knowledge as a triple certified fitness expert to help women experience the mood and energy boosting effects of exercise. Her workouts are designed to make you feel empowered, not defeated. Questions we answer in this episode: 1). How did Fit with Shaver come to be? 2.) What exactly do you do at Fit with Shaver? 3.) What is your niche? 4.) What has been the hardest part of starting a new business/career? 5) What have you learned from starting your business to now? 6) What do you think makes you unique? 7) What has been the biggest “aha” about the business of fitness? 8) What do you want for your business in 2022? Connect: She’s Social too! Instagram: Fit with Shaver Facebook: Fit with Shaver Are you starting a new business as a personal trainer or health coach? Start right with this masterclass where I share the 3 biggest mistakes in training women in midlife AND the 3 biggest mistakes marketing to them. Resources: Masterclass for Starting or Growing Your Business Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist
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Wed, 3 November 2021
Avoid burnout post pandemic no matter what the reason you have it. Stop scrambling to compete with someone else. The best way to beat comparison mode is two things:
What are the problems they have and want solved right now? What do they know now and what do you want them to know? What do they feel now and what do you want them to feel? (all things you can learn in my Copywriting Course) Are you focused on a budget-minded shopper or someone who will spend whatever? Does your appearance, brand, and stance attract her or repel?
Instead of competing and worrying about what someone does, do your thing. No one can compete with you being better and ahead. Remember why you’re doing what you’re doing and what parts you like and do more of that. If what you love is teaching fitness, say you love it as much as I love researching science and breaking it down into applicable actions, then figure out a way to do more of it. You’ve got to do the basics of choosing the right audience, knowing how to reach them, understanding how to create a funnel. But then you can and should do the things that light you up and less of those things that make the light go out. Keep it simple instead of buying all the things you very likely don’t need. You don’t need a YouTube channel and a podcast, and a blog all at once. Two things inform how you create valuable content. (By the way content that you share via email – if you’re still focused on social media first, you’ve got it backwards. Content starts at your website. Then you share it with your social media posts. You always, always, want to bring people to your website.) Resources Mentioned:
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Sat, 30 October 2021
If your free fitness consultations fail to convert, you’re not alone. Here’s a look at why and what to do about it. It’s not a body composition assessment or a movement screen. It’s something that once set up doesn’t require you to lift a finger. But it will make every single one of your consultations more productive. Helping Hand? First, I want to say this. We love to help. Fitness professionals and health coaches love to help. We overdeliver. And that is a quality that makes you such a warm coach. However, you’ve got to have boundaries. You have a business. You’ve got to find the clients who do want to do the work. Those who expect that you wave a wand and they reach their goals easily make the relationship an energy drain and usually get the least amount of progress. That said, it’s not only about conversions. I always enter a consultation with the frame of mind that the person I’m talking with will get value from the call even if they buy nothing. If they don’t take a next step, or don’t do it right then, they will get value. Passionate About Fitness To you givers, though I say this: always ask. You must ask for the sale in order to get a yes. Sure, there is that 1/100 who will interrupt you and ask how to get started. Honestly, that’s me. When I’ve gotten so far as to do a consultation and I know what the bottom line is and the value of whatever the transformation is to me, I may interrupt and say, “Look I’m ready, how do I start?” What that means is during your consultation you should slip in a chance to by early for those fast-action takers. You can talk people out of doing it by making them feel aggravated and going on too long. How to Fix Your Fitness Consultations Fail to Convert Rate A survey (or application) so you can pre-qualify them. You can make it a part of your process.
Who Do You Serve BEST? Remember, not "everyone" is your people. If you want high-quality clients who pay a premium price and expect premium service, you too can expect that they give a premium effort. The way someone books this consult shows you exactly who they are. I’d rather work with lawyers, realtors, professionals who are serious about doing the work and who can follow directions. Push back at the beginning means a rocky coach-client relationship for the duration of coaching. If you’re applying for the Fitness Marketing Mastery Build Your Business (BYB) Mastermind for instance, I have personal trainers, health coaches, studio owners attend a masterclass first, then apply/enroll. They then do a call with me. If either of us has reservations about moving forward or whether the mastermind is right for them, they’re refunded, before they ever see materials and content. Once they do see the current content, the library of 2021 mastermind content they get as a bonus to begin building Black Friday, the additional bonuses to start generating revenue the next weekend… I do not refund. I do guarantee, if someone shows proof of doing the weekly work, that they will increase monthly revenue by $5000 or more or I will work with them until they do. What should you ask on the survey? Ironically, it matters less than there is one. There are a few pre-screening questions you want, but they are not absolute. Ask questions that get them reflecting on why they want and need this.
Be sure you collect their name and email address in the survey. That way from the calendar booking you can open the survey and see responses before or while you’re on that call. Reference the survey on the call Customers, or prospects, hate filling something out that you don’t look at. They’ll be super put off. I’ve done it before. I’ve had too little time to open it. I’ve been on the go and have to conduct the consultation from my phone in my car or at the gym. Not ideal, but I don’t miss appointments and weather, traffic, all can interfere with the best of intentions. Do the best you can to screen those responses prior to calls. A put-off prospect is not someone who is in a ready-to-buy state. If they’ve been trying to lose weight for 10 years… mention it. “If you’ve been thinking about it for so long it’s pretty important to you. How much would you say you think about it daily?” That was worth the price of admission to this episode, by the way. You’re welcome. Joking aside, that is a question to tuck into your arsenal. As obvious as it is, many trainers and health coaches don’t realize the impact of a question like that. There are a handful of others that are similar. You make the person so aware of how much of a problem, drain, focus this is for them, they are ready to learn about a solution, YOUR solution, since they’re in front of you. Stay out of the weeds They got on the call. They have a reason. They have expectations about what’s going to happen and the outcome of the call. So, lay that out at the beginning. And stick to the purpose of the call. It’s to share the options and get a yes or a no. Period. It’s not to show them how smart you are, or how much you know or can tell them. Help them make a decision in this meeting. Set it up that way from the beginning.
Resources: Menopause Business Specialist Masterclass Mistakes You Make with Menopause Clients Tools You Might Like Referenced in this Episode:
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Tue, 26 October 2021
You may think social media doesn’t pay the bills. But it could. In fact, there are plastic surgeons, physical therapists, and fitness pros who got checks from YouTube during COVID that kept them going when business was shut down. And in fact, it can be a huge source of organic traffic. It is for me. I grew a YouTube channel to almost 130K organically. Still today, 8 years later, people that join my programs will tell me, “I’ve been following you for a long time on YouTube.”The social media tips that work here I know because of my own, my colleagues, and my coaching clients’ success with them. Are You Making This Mistake? But it’s easy to just throw things at social so you can check that box off. That’s the kind of activity you’ll use to prove social media doesn’t work. So if you’re using resources (time, money, and energy) to be on social media, here’s 10 social media tips that work. Aside from the fact that video wins over everything else, I’ve got some social media tips that work. Social media requires strategy. What you post on Instagram doesn’t go on Facebook. The same hashtags on Instagram that help you get found (if you use enough and they’re relative to your post), will actually hurt your reach on Facebook. Blindly just being on a platform is a waste of time and resources. Here’s a few tips to apply no matter what platform you’re on to do better with engagement and success. You’ve got to be measuring the right thing. The value of saves, shares, then comments and likes on Instagram should be clear to you. Is your content something your ideal customer wants to share? Have you solved, or started to solve, a problem so they want to keep coming back? 10 Social Media Tips That Work
Social Media Posts Need Words That Work The right words matter. With every post you have to be thinking about what you want your ideal client to think, feel, and do after seeing it. In order to do that you have to know your customer better than anyone else. My Audience, For Example I know for instance that my fitness and health pros feel frustrated that they aren’t making as much traction as they want to. They’re spending a lot of time doing what they do but they aren’t making a great living doing it. They don’t have the freedom financially or the time freedom they want. They don’t feel comfortable with the marketing and the sales or the business decisions that make them more than just busy, that make them a true business. I know many of my fitness & health coaches work with women in menopause and don’t understand why they can’t get their own weight and belly issues resolved let alone their clients. In fact, some of my Flipping50 mastermind members are fitness clients themselves first. So, with all that information about my audience, when I post to social for them I know what will resonate with them. I know both what they already feel and how I want them to feel. Optimistic, there are answers, and I cracked that code 9 years ago so they can benefit right now. Resources Mentioned: CopyWriting for Marketing to Women course Flipping50 Fitness Specialist Masterclass
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Mon, 4 October 2021
Having to get things done can either be the best or worst thing for productivity. Some perform well under the gun, others not so much. If you’re in a habit of waiting til the last minute, in other words, you’re probably a perfectionist, here are 3 tips to help you get things done easier without the cortisol-escalating adrenaline rush that may not produce your best work. You’ve got programs and workouts to write. You’ve got blogs, articles, videos to create. You have follow up emails, or cancelled appointments to reschedule. When does it all happen? Well, some things have to happen at the optimal times and others can happen whenever. Once you figure out when you’re most creative so you can schedule the things that require the most brain power, then these will tips come in handy. I’m sharing what I’ve learned and how I cope when my attention-span wanes. You can’t go from 0 to six-figure months randomly getting things done. Here’s how I did it. The absolute worst thing for productivity to do is to open another word document and start a new idea thread. And I try to do it all the time. It’s usually an equally important or urgent task, so I can justify it. So, if I don’t keep a list of what I need done and when and then translate that into blocks of time weeks before that I will focus on that thing, I’ll get to the last minute with too many things on my plate and nothing gets done. Even though I know I do this, it still happens. So, here’s how I handle it. The publishing calendar I create for myself has a block of time every week to work on something due at the end of the month. When I get started on it weeks before I’m the most creative. https://www.flippingfifty.com/getstronger Ready for Resistance If you’re a creative like I am, I resist doing the work I’ve put into my publishing calendar sometimes because it feels like I’m backed into a corner. I have to remind myself that I can still have latitude with the treatment of the topic, and what I use to engage my audience. A creative mind- like so many entrepreneurs have – hates to be put in a box and told to do a certain thing! I never work well like. You know when you go to meetings and people are put into groups or individuals are asked on the spot to come up with something? I don’t perform well during those! I need to go away, get quiet, play with the ideas and then come back to it. Then I love to share. But I’m often a blank for my own work. We Can't See the Nose on Our Own Face That’s why hot seats work so well for me and others! It’s why we do 12 of them in the accelerated 12-week Build Your Business mastermind course. You and I can see someone else’s problem so much more clearly than we can see our own. So, instead of saying, here – work on this and then share your answer during sessions, you just present your problem/challenge/question and other’s brains can go to work on it. That ends up freeing your ideas too. It’s a win-win-win. Everyone involved gets something from hearing the problem, hearing answers from others who aren’t emotionally attached to them, and you get to put them all in your pot and let them marinade for you. The second worst thing for productivity is to make myself work through a longer block of time than my brain wants to focus. Your brain will wander at about 90 minutes and your productivity takes a nose-dive if you don’t take a break. A productive break is an exercise break. Clear your head, increase circulation to your brain. The Western world has done this forever. Those 8-9 hour days and 10 and 12 hour shifts, really do not lead to more productivity. You know how we most-recently know? The pandemic proved to companies that when people are allowed to work at home (most likely with more breaks) they got more done! People were happier. Many companies considered not bringing people back in, or doing so only in limited capacity and allowing people to choose. Sprints vs Marathons While it (at home) doesn’t work for everyone, if you have a job that requires creativity, problem-solving, it most likely is best to work in short sprints of focus and then leave a project and come back to it. Here’s how I avoid the #1 worst thing for productivity – I take myself out of my environment. I do it in two ways:
Worst Thing for Productivity May be Too Much Forced Productivity! This kind of “white space” is sometimes missing from trainer’s days. It’s an old cliché that you’ve got to work on your business, not just in your business. Meaning that you can’t just schedule your training sessions all day and leave no time to develop the business plan and systems. You’ll sink fast. You’ll paint yourself into a corner so busy with clients that you are “too busy” to focus on scaling. You can’t scale one-on-one sessions. Unless you can keep raising rates to $100 and $150 and $200 per session, and get clients to pay it, at some point you’ll be aiming at too small a pool to make that work. When do you work best? When are you most creative? When can you think and focus best? Work Best For me – and most- thanks to cortisol, it’s morning. So, I’ve made two changes in my business life over time.
Productivity an Issue for YOU? Is it that you don’t know which tasks are the highest priority? Or is it that you can’t focus due to too many distractions? |
Fri, 1 October 2021
Are you marketing to active older adults? Successfully? Did you know more than 2/3 of them – especially women - don’t think advertisers understand them? While this episode touches on marketing, we dive into just what supports older adults most. There's gold in using the science and facts to educate and allow it to work for you. My Guest: Currently Pete lives in Carlsbad, CA where he is an education consultant for Core Health & Fitness, the parent company of Nautilus and StairMaster, as well as a content creator for both the American Council on Exercise and the National Academy of Sports Medicine. Questions we answer in this podcast:
Other things to think about for marketing to active older adults:
Successfully marketing to active older adults, or anyone, starts with doing your research. You have to ask questions not just imagine that you know who they are, what they want. That, perhaps, is the most important piece. People buy what they want not what they need. As fitness & health coaches it's easy to see what people need and try to sell them that. Two things help bridge the gap. Help them understand what they need in a way that makes it what they want. And compromise so you give them what they want. Connect with Pete: He’s on Social: Twitter: @PeteMc_fitness Resources Mentioned: Pete’s New Book Ageless Intensity – sure to become one you reference and recommend!
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Wed, 22 September 2021
How would you like a Facebook ad formula that works? Yes, please, right?! No matter if you’re brand new to paid advertising, only thinking about it, but haven’t done any yet, or you’re a veteran but have noticed a huge change (for the worse) recently, listen to this episode. It will help you think about thinks in a way that makes it far less mysterious. When I first began running ads I would have loved to have a Facebook ads formula. I was fortunate enough to have access to a mastermind group and expert resources to begin. This is one area few personal trainers or gyms feel good about. There is always the question of whether or not you’re spending too much, not enough, and what to change or test to get better results. This episode will help you identify a plan. My Guest: Jono is an award-winning international speaker, bestselling author, podcast host, the co-founder and director at Fitness Education Online and the admin of the one of the largest Facebook Groups in the world for Fitness Professionals (Fitness Education Online Community). Jono is the current Fitness Australia Educator of the Year and a former Exercise New Zealand Educator of the Year Finalist. Questions we cover in this episode:
Facebook Ads for Fitness & Health Pro Example from the show Initial investment = initial sale $500 ad spend $10 leads Close rate 10% $500 cost of program (start of customer value) Zero percent of local businesses run effective Facebook ads. -Jono Petrohilos Formula for $5 leads
No: no smiles, working out/working hard, exercise photos, too professional, really fit and good looking
e.g. 12-week challenge kicks off 8th of August TOWN location. Click for more.
There you have it, the perfect Facebook ads formula for health & fitness professionals Connect with Jono: www.fitnesseducationonline.com.au FB Group: www.facebook.com/groups/fitnesseducationonline IG: www.instagram.com/fitnesseducationonline
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Fri, 17 September 2021
Whether you sell fitness & health services by webinar, phone, or in person all of these tips will help you get there. First, before the meeting: Set the stage for it being about how we’ll work together not if.
On the call. Set up…take charge.
What if they want to know if there’s any other option. Ask why. And if it’s price: Let’s look at what parts of the program aren’t important to you and what we can remove from the service to make that make sense. That can create a fear of missing out. No one wants less of the service. What they want is all the service and to pay less. So, when you paint it like that, they often find the money. Before What You Say to Sell Fitness & Health Services Most important… what are you doing to get people into your funnel: to your calls, consults, webinars? Do you get qualified leads? The ones ready to buy, start, get results? Here’s how to write copy… which is everything you say, write, and speak on stage or in videos that either attracts or repels people. If you can’t help people take action, you can’t help them. To sell fitness & health you really have to have a good product, really care about people, and give value that wows your customers. Resources Mentioned: |
Fri, 10 September 2021
There are two parts to how to present your fee or make an offer and they are:
So, I’m breaking this down into two podcasts because when I went to unpack it I knew I’d leave you hanging and leave important considerations out if I didn’t. Present Your Fee ABCs In this episode of how to present your fee it’s about where you’re going to do that. I’m talking about your customer journey from the time they find you and follow you here. The cost of your program or service also matters here. In general, the more expensive your services the longer time you’re going to spend with a prospect before you make the offer. So, before you go too far into thinking about how to sell, make absolutely sure you know who you’re selling to, whether you’re selling a low cost item – usually less than $100 or you’re selling a higher ticket item, $1500- 4000, or a more custom product $5K and up. Here are different platforms you can use to sell your services: Low cost products can be sold via email. The higher your price point, or the less time your customer knows you, the more likely you’re going to want to sell one of these ways:
Which One and When? A phone consultation can follow a masterclass. A very small percent of customers make up their minds right away and buy on the spot. It’s about 15%. The higher the price point that number shouldn’t go down as long as you’re attracting the right people to your list. Someone could make a phone consultation appointment with you from your website. Ideally, you’ll do pre-booking screening, so the customer is qualified and legitimately considering your services and able to afford you before booking. Say you host a webinar or masterclass to sell. About 15% of those fast action takers are going to decide right then. But many more will need more time and more follow up emails. One of those emails could offer the opportunity to book a free phone call with you for those on the fence. If you’re seeing clients in person now you can also present your fees and close in person, or there’s always zoom. One Offer If you confuse you lose. Give one good choice. When they’ve made that you can build an upsell but don’t present two different products in one email or one masterclass or you’ll no sales. Big Clubs Big Mistake Big clubs who launch numerous fitness programs at one time are constantly at risk for this. They just vomit the list of paid programs and hope the right customer will find the one they want. But they can’t nurture that customer based on what they’re thinking if they take that approach. A whole lot of people who aren’t the ideal target are also getting that email. So, if you aren’t already, segment. If you serve both men and women, segment. Sure there may be times you have something that works for both, but you want to be sure when you’re talking about menopause you’re sending that email to women in their 40s – 70s. Keep It Clear Decide your ONE offer and make that offer irresistible. If you’re collaborating with someone make sure you’re selling one thing that the customer has to decide on. Nothing more. It’s always possible for you to make a special consideration if someone reaches out and says, I’d like to do it, but I just need x, I already have y, can you work with me? A single option, a single price, and I won’t teach irresistible offers on this episode. Do let me know if you’d like a review of how to do that. Don't Miss it!
Resources: |
Wed, 1 September 2021
In the year and a half we’ve had it’s nice to hear a fitness business success story. Hang onto your hats because it sounds too good to be true. But founded on listening to what was already working, first for them this sister act created a community that love them and what they’re doing. Sisters, best friends, coaches, and most importantly, moms! Both Ashley and Jocelyn are NASM Certified Personal Trainers and Certified Nutrition Coaches, also holding a B.S. in Health and Fitness Management. The Lavender Sisters created TLL Fit to help busy moms step into their power and become who they were always meant to be, inside and out!
Listen to this fitness business success story and create one of your own. Are you using the right words to attract your ideal customer? Have you truly defined who it is? And do you know what motivates them to buy. Find out the 5 female buying personas and a dozen word families you can use to create your emails, posts, blogs, titles and sales pages that (ethically) help your ideal customer say, YES! It’s how I went from $0 to 6-figure months after gutting my fitness business life at 49. You’ve got this.
Questions we answer in this episode:
Key in fitness business success stories generally all start by having a clear customer journey from getting to know you and buying from you, again and again. Once upon a time your first step for ideal customers was…
TLL Fit offers fitness challenges to kickstart healthy habits and also 1:1 fitness and nutrition coaching. How is your business different or what sets you apart?
And the last question I asked this fitness business success story is this:
What have you learned from being in business that you feel is helpful to share with other entrepreneurs?
Connect:
https://www.instagram.com/the_lavender_lifestyle/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/TLLFitCommunity
Direct download: Lavender_Sisters__Fit_pros_-_Edited.mp3
Category:marketing -- posted at: 3:00am MDT |
Fri, 27 August 2021
This fall fitness is on shaky ground if you're running a gym or studio. These are uncertain times for people. A confused mind doesn't do anything. That could mean changes for those who are doing virtual sessions or memberships as well. This episode is all about how to launch fall fitness programs and promote packages in a way that respects the moment people are in. If you need help understanding promotions, creating offers, and presenting them in ways that are anything but sleazy, salesy, or pushy, click here to learn about how to ethically connect with your clients. Launch Fall Fitness Promotions Things to consider before you begin promoting:
How to respectfully promote right now:
Planning a Launch A launch has multiple parts. The mistake most fitness professionals make is waiting until a program goes on sale to think of marketing it. But the bigger the price tag the longer the runway should be. First there's the subtle launch when you're considering what your customer needs to be thinking and feeling in order to buy. What do they need to know. Then there's the more direct pre-launch where you let them know you're:
When you launch:
When you close, it's firm. They have to trust you and word travels fast when you don't honor deadlines. Need help finding the right words for your promotional emails, posts, pages, headlines and subject lines?
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Tue, 24 August 2021
Fitness professionals…Are you teaching multiple fitness classes a day online? Running personal training sessions online and doing the workouts with clients? Feeling beat up, exhausted, tired all the time? All the while juggling….
In the past two weeks, I’ve heard all of those. Many of them from the same person. You can’t sustain a life or income stream by doing that. If you go down it all crumbles, right? It’s beyond time to work smarter… and it’s easier than ever There is a way better business model. It’s not just that the 1990s called and wants what you’re doing back. It’s time to let go of limiting beliefs you have about online training. And… it’s your time. There has NEVER been a better time to create something as a solo entrepreneur that serves people, uses your skills and talents without burning you out. Listen, first get this: Health coaching is a multimillion dollar a year industry. And access to classes does not have to be live. Be honest.. have you been correcting people in your class on their form? Really giving them feedback? Then there is VERY little different from the perspective of your customer between a recorded session (that allows them to pause and rewind) and live. The convenience of having access 24/7 so they aren’t dependent on you at a certain time is a WIN for them. A benefit you can charge them for. If they love you, they love you. Let me back up and talk about health coaching again. I began health coaching back in 1995 and raised my rates when I went from meeting clients in person to meeting them on the phone with the convenience of being in my home or traveling when I did it. When I stopped training completely (by then I was only doing 2-3 sessions a week at most anyway) 3 years ago my 50-minute personal training sessions were $100 while coaching is about $300 per 50-minute session for one-on-one. When I do a group I make $500-700 per session. If a group didn’t reach that revenue I’d either cancel or we’d look for a few more participants. Why Do One-on-One But I don’t even do one-on-one anymore except for a handful of professional women I love to work with. Because I can’t afford to. A group coaching program triples my hourly revenue but even then, managing a business that brings in 6 figures a month means that my time may be more valuable spent elsewhere. When I do it because I enjoy it, I’m in the comfort of my own home or in a hotel or with my mom. I have an online business. Most people have no idea what that means. You might hear it and think that means I’m a personal trainer delivering one-on-one sessions online. Not ever have I done that. Not once. What Does an Online Business Look Like? Here it is. Yes, I’ve been a personal trainer, medical exercise specialist, strength and conditioning coach with all the certs… yoga, Pilates…. For years. But I’m not doing it daily. I’m not even doing it weekly unless I’m launching a new program. Even then, I often don’t need to create a new workout, I can use pieces of prior programs. It’s all there! So, I’ve created programs once…. ONCE. And sold them for years. I’ve put thousands of women through them for $97 - $249 and then they go on to do the next thing, I’ve also already created once and sold hundreds and then thousands of times. And so can you. I laugh when trainers say my Flipping50 Fitness Specialist course is more expensive than most. Whatever you’re thinking of doing with it … you’re thinking too small, my friend. You no longer have to think about the people within a 25-mile radius who will be willing to drive to you. You don’t have to wonder if people will show up for your 4 o’clock class. Since 2020: Fitness Has Changed Fitness has changed for fitness professionals. It’s become convenient for consumers. They can choose from anyone in the world. Don’t let that scare you, because most fitness professionals don’t spend time getting to know and care about their customers. They don’t polish their communication and marketing skills. They don’t know how to write copy. But you can. If you’d like to learn more about how to do that… And how to promote that so you aren’t lost in the sea of trainers, health coaches, Pilates and yoga instructors, and barre classes available… all online vying for the same customers right now… Then I encourage you to take a step. Step I First, register for the 5-Day Build Your Business bootcamp to grow your business. It’s the start of growing your presence, your confidence, your clarity about your message. If you’ll commit to yourself and your business for 5 days, you’ll have the process that’s grown my following to over 200,000 women in my niche, who then join my email list, who then join programs. Wherever you are in your process of starting, growing, or scaling your business so you don’t have to do everything personally or physically and finally can have freedom and health you’re teaching others to have… in order to get a change, you have to change. Step II Next, if you work with midlife women, register for the Flipping50 Fitness Specialist course. This month you get a complimentary Marketing to Women Copywriting Course with your purchase. If you’re worried about the cost, you and I need to spend time together so you understand how to make the single sale that pays for that and then keep doing that over and over again. We’ll do that with a virtual conference late fall to help you outline the business – and the life with freedom – you want. Links to Resources: 5-Day Build Your Business Bootcamp Marketing to Women Copywriting Course
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Wed, 4 August 2021
If you make either of these two biggest fitness marketing mistakes post pandemic, it will cost you. You’re going to make them totally unintentionally. I mean of course, right? Why would anyone intentionally make a marketing mistake? Beyond that, though you may think that yes, you’ve got these two bases covered and realize after listening, no you don’t. One way you know this is worth a listen is you’re attracting the wrong kind of people. Another way you know this episode is worth your time is you’re not getting any engagement on your social or your content marketing. If you confuse, you lose.
Analyze:
And then apply this to the following to avoid two biggest fitness marketing mistakes Big Fitness Marketing Mistake #1: No Specific Audience The other day I reviewed a business website and social media platforms as part of a social media audit. It was hard to know who the ideal customer was and if I couldn’t tell as a fitness marketer looking for it, how could anyone? Just because you’re focused on a certain age and gender (demographic), it doesn’t mean that that everyone in that demographic wants the same thing. First, there’s your niche. Are you about food, exercise, mindset, hormones, weight loss? What is your specific niche? But that’s not even enough. Here's an example: Take women in menopause. Many are married, but an almost equal number are single. Are you talking about dating? About traveling alone? Or about family vacations? About drinking wines and trips to Napa? Some (I’m one) wouldn’t enjoy that at all because they rarely and then barely drink. Some women have a conservative view of menopause, what’s happening and possible, while others are thinking about doing triathlons after retirement. Who are you talking to? Women in perimenopause are more likely to have kids at home full time jobs, and a unique set of problems, compared to women just post menopause. There’s a subset of women in post menopause who did have children later … so who are you talking to? Define it very specifically. And realize, they need to feel “like you.” If your images, videos, and copy doesn’t resonate with who they are or want to be, you miss the opportunity to help women looking for you. Bottomline? Narrow your niche. Know who they are and who they are not. In the Marketing to Women Copywriting course, I shared 5 unique profiles of female buyers. Not only from an interest standpoint, but from a motivation to buy angle. When you dive into that you’ll create copy that resonates so very much with your audience. The fitness copywriting tips will improve every single fitness marketing outreach you make. Big Fitness Marketing Mistake #2: Making It About You Once you’re a brand: a Jodie Foster, or Simone Biles, someone cares about you and what you’re doing. But until you have that brand recognition what really matters is how you tie any post about you to them. It’s always about them. Know before you post what emotion you want to evoke. How do you want them to feel by reading/watching/viewing your post? How could it make them feel? Is there any way what you’re posting could evoke a negative reaction? Consider it. We can’t please all the people all the time, but you do want to consider if you could cause more of a disconnect than a connection. If your post puts you too far up on a pedestal you may want to consider if there’s another way to tell the story you’re aiming for. Make Changes to Avoid Big Fitness Marketing Mistakes Maybe the photo works if the copy changes, or vice versa. If you’re stunning, for instance, sharing how vulnerable you feel at times, or if you’re thin, lithe and fit, sharing how and when it wasn’t always this way, can connect you better to someone who is not there yet. Here’s an example of a flat vs. a connecting post: Original Post copy: “Women in their 60s have served and cared for others so much. They find it hard to care for themselves. You can’t pour from an empty cup.” New Copy: I see you there, beautiful giver. Serving and caring for your family and your friends. I see you wanting to continue doing that for decades. Wanting to enjoy retirement – or rewirement – and your decades ahead. Can you pour from an empty cup? What fills you up? With your wisdom of care for others you’ve suppressed your own needs for a time, but you know. What is it for you?
----- This new kind of post reaches her. It reaches her instead of teaches and preaches™ or just states a problem. It asks a compelling question that a reader will answer in her mind. Never forget one of the most powerful words in marketing is you. Whether you say it or write it or imply it, speak to one single “you.” There you have it. Two biggest fitness marketing mistakes that you can avoid. If you’re a solo entrepreneur, you can pivot quickly and make your next post already better. Resources Mentioned in this episode: Marketing to Women Copywriting Course
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Sun, 18 July 2021
It’s December 8, 2013. Tears stream down my face as I remove family pictures from the great room in my home... The year before… I had a comfortable 6-figure income, no debt, owned outright a 4200 sq ft house I loved, a Lexus, retirement funds, and no worries about paying my son’s tuition let alone where my next paycheck was coming from. If You Think It Was Easy for Me My house was not even under contract, and every belonging I had that wasn’t with me, sat in boxes in the middle of rooms in that 4200 square foot house I loved. I waited for a buyer, but temperatures are below zero for weeks, reducing the number of buyers looking. Circumstances that started when I handed in my resignation letter January 16, 2013, started a cascade of 8 major life changes that occurred over 14 months. I could have only predicted two. I quit (safety, security, and a regular paycheck) on purpose, on a mission, and my son was going off to college. The other 6 – some I’ve hinted at here others matter a little less, but here they are. A 10-year relationship fell apart, as it turns out it was entirely built on false pretenses, and I’ve learned that painful reality over and over again for years, my financial situation changed dramatically based on investing everything – time, energy, and money into a business(stubbornly trying to do it myself). Living the Struggle I went from mastery in everything I was doing every day to totally learning from scratch how to build a business in a different way, I’d moved away from immediate family and friends, and suddenly had much less in common with them (who else did I know after all that was in a 100% online business? Um, no one. My family once again did not know what I was doing. I’m not sure they still do to tell you the truth. They say things like, “you can do that from anywhere,” with no idea that this is more than about posting to Instagram from my phone daily.) If You Want to Get Untouchable Fitness Copy I’m going to share with you how to do that. You can imagine we can’t possibly cover everything that goes into the programming, the pricing, marketing, selling … the what you say when they say “… “ details you need. At the end I’ll share with you the last chance to get support this year. I have a passion for up leveling the fitness industry. Copywriting for Marketing to Women Workshop LIVE July 21, 2021 3-6pm Pacific Miss it? Try clicking on the link and we’ll have something special for you.
Think your fitness marketing never works? It will. When you tap into your magic, and your customers. Register for this workshop and let me show you how easy it is. |
Sat, 17 July 2021
The best lessons for fitness & health coaches are always going to come from making mistakes. Let’s face it, if you get it right the first time, you got lucky. You need to know why. So often that comes from doing it wrong, realizing what can go wrong, so that you can avoid it and plan for it next time. Even with an experienced team, you’ll have mistakes. Sometimes it’s because of the experience. They aren’t looking at it fresh and meticulously like something they take ownership for it the first time will. It’s time to make a change. It takes a village. From behind the scenes to get it ready, and keep it going, to the partners who promote you, and ask you to do lives on their platforms, to the team members who are invested in the breakdown of a launch or event after and get to work on completing tasks. For your affiliates, find like-minded business partners. For your team find people to hire that you both like and agree to be accountable for the measure of success of their role responsibilities. When mistakes happen it’s easy to get upset but when you genuinely like the people you work with it’s easy to forgive when it blows over. What Did You Expect That said, you need to have a clear expectation and see when someone isn’t meeting your needs and is overstretched or can’t support your backend the way you need it. Sloppy mistakes and lack of willingness to report on measures of success is either a lack of understanding, lack of ability to do the job, or lack of motivation for what they’re doing. Decide what you can fix. It might be communication, instruction, and it might be the wrong WHO to do the job. If you have someone you’re grateful you have, ask them what they need to succeed and what could distract them from doing the work you have to have done. You’ll depend on others more and more if you want to grow and grow. For us hard-to-delegate I’ll-just-do-it people it’s a big and necessary step. Things will break and mistakes will be made. Expect it, anticipate it, and you can get best at preventing it. Writing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) is a start. But holding a person accountable to doing them is the important part of operations. If they skip a step or complete it incorrectly, your business suffers from the mistake. Once you’ve created SOPs you need not only to have them checked, but it has to be visible. An individual who is following instructions behind the scenes is not holding themselves accountable for their role. That just doesn’t work. Hire responsible people who want to do a great job, be held accountable, love checking off that they’ve done a task and are on track. Then everyone can celebrate it together. People are watching, listening, and reading your content if you’re consistently adding value. A few people will buy after first meeting you, some will buy when a source they trust introduces you, many more will follow you for months, or even years, before they decide to finally buy. Play the long game and it will pay off. Your emails should offer so much value that people want to open them and stick around. Email promotion after promotion without any value is not enough. You can email frequently and it’s okay as long as you offer value. Mailing infrequently is a surefire way to fail. So, if you’re worried about emailing frequently, what you already know or fear is that your emails don’t offer value, you don’t know what to say, or you don’t have buyers on your list. Decide which of those is causing the most reluctance and deal with it.
These 5 lessons for fitness & health coaches are all important but none potentially more important than the last. If you want to make a major change in your business and be a personal trainer or health coach, but be THE personal trainer or health coach, then you need the ability to do this. Put yourself in your customer’s place and make it the basis for any and all content you create. The only thing that matters is what she thinks and feels. Put your personality into your content. Put facts into your content. And put emotions your customer can identify into your content. I hope these 5 lessons for fitness & health coaches were helpful. Especially if you’re having a tough day! When mistakes happen it hurts! It’s your business and if a team member makes a mistake, they aren’t the owner, though you may get lucky and find someone who treats it like it’s their own, they will likely never care as much as you. There is nothing different about making $5000 a month and making 6 figures a month when it comes to relationships with your customer. So, if you nail the conversation now, you’ll be on your way. If you don’t have the right message or clarity about what you do, who you serve, so that you can create more happy customers, then consider this. Resources Mentioned in this episode: Marketing to Women Copywriting Workshop https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/copywriting Hurry as this live event will close July 21, 2021.
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Fri, 16 July 2021
Is hiring help on your radar? Are you at a point you need to hire? The start of relationships is always yummy and exciting. The middles are riddled with hiccups and speed bumps, and the ends are either mutual or explosive. Here’s what I know after 37 years of private business work, as the individual being managed, as the manager, and as owner. You know what it takes to write a good ad for support? It takes copywriting skills. It’s not that different, hiring internal customers vs attracting external customers. Over 20 years ago when I first labeled our staff members internal customers in a then mid-sized health club,it changed the way I led them. [Mind you, I still had a lot to learn. For instance about the different personality needs. I assumed too often- and still do - that people are like me. That is I get my satisfaction from accomplishment, finishing, I actually don’t love praise from others because if I feel myself it was well done that’s so much more to me and if I don’t that kind of external praise doesn’t land on me well. They're Not You But I tick differently than others. And so do you. For instance, I assume people will get the job done that they say they will, or we will communicate about it ahead of time. It would never occur to me to change a date or deadline without advance notice. But mostly, I would just get it done. I know what I can get done realistically and I don’t promise more. Not everyone is like that. I Never Knew External acknowledgement is one of the most important things to most people. To someone like me, that’s a shock, so I have to really effort to do it, without if feeling fake. And it’s not that I don’t appreciate the job, but when the job expectation is to complete it, on time, working well, that feels to me like making a huge fuss about stopping at a red light]. I’ve been involved in private businesses from health clubs, to financial planning businesses (very lightly and by way of marriage), and my personal fitness business since 1987. I’ve stepped into leadership titles often before I was a leader because that’s how we did it in the fitness industry early on. Know what I mean? If you were hired and promoted fast, you do. Don't Make the Fitness Industry Hiring Help Mistake Teaching fitness, and being a responsible rockstar employee that showed up on time, never called in sick, then often got you promoted to “director” or “manager.” But.. it’s an entirely different set of skills. There was a need to set a standard, a set of guidelines, and expectations for job success and what would lead to termination if those expectations weren’t met. I’ve conducted thousands of weekly and monthly meetings, some effective, some just chit-chat in my eyes that employees loved. So you’ve got to balance the task-minded, focused with the what your hires need. Again, a need for clear communication about needs, and goals, and task-at-hand so that none of it is forgotten. You’re a New Leader? Or maybe from the aftermath of 2020, you struck out on your own. Suddenly you’re the owner, entrepreneur, and you may wear all the hats for a time. As you do, if you don’t create systems (the steps for the actions you take every day), you’ll struggle to delegate when you hire. I’ve got systems I created in 2013 however and I have yet to find someone who can do them as quickly as I can, so I still do them too much. I see them sitting in the little file that says “systems” dated 2013. That’s a delegation problem. That’s on me. At some point hiring help is mandatory for your growth. Compensating an A-gamer who gets things done on your timeline, meets deadlines, is proactive and intuitive, and careful to check and test anything before releasing it to the public is asking a lot. But not too much. Not if you’re clear from the beginning. If you have someone who doesn’t want to be contacted when something they’ve built goes wrong and wasn’t checked & tested, you’ve got a problem. But if you failed to share the details for measures of success and expectations in reporting, it’s on you. Business Differences and Similarities The dynamics in each business are different. From a small one-location fitness center, to a partner-owned studio, to a multi-location business with annual growth of a department that had to work within a whole and 8 team members around a conference room table every Monday, to a small solo-run financial planning business with 4 individuals and a region of dozens of agents… each was different and yet so very similar. You as leader have to be clear. And I for one, wasn’t. When I started hiring new people to help with tech and customer service, I wasn’t clear. And because of it I learned a lot of lessons. So.. in case you’d like to be spared some of those, take this message now! Successfully hiring help hinges on clear expectations and measures of success. When you do that you find the right person for the job. You’re finding the right “who” to perform rather than filling a what (a person to fill a position who has the skills). You have to have both. Doesn’t that ring true of any program or service you offer? You’ve got to describe with complete clarity the expectations for the customer. You share with them what you’ll deliver in terms of transformation(benefits), and the way you’ll do it (features). Similarly when you’re hiring help, you’ve got to be clear. There’s been a shift. If you want to level up a team, the best way to leap a hurdle of hiring help is to stop writing job descriptions alone and be clear on the measures of success for a job. Successfully hiring help hinges on clear expectations and measures of success. When you do that you find the right person for the job. You’re finding the right who to perform rather than filling a what (a position). How do you get clear? In a special Q and A during the Copywriting for Marketing to Women masterclass I’ll answer how to write a better job description to avoid headaches. In addition to the 5 Templates you’ll get, I’ll share a template for creating a killer job opening so whether you’re hiring someone to help you build a campaign funnel, manage your social media, assist with your household needs so you can take care of business, or something else, you have the best shot of getting a match you’ll both say “I do” to. EXCITING OPPORTUNITY It’s really exciting when you step into leadership for your own business. Are you thinking like a business owner who already makes what you want to make? Who already has the influence you want to have? It’s easy to play small and realize one morning that what’s not working is you. Hiring Help Gets Easier with the Right Words It’s also easy, oh so easy, to flip the mindset shift, and get on with hiring help in a most effective way so your days are far less stressful and you have the creativity you need to without having to keep a thumb on deadlines for everyone else. Every week… the measure is there. Every day between meetings and check ins team members know what has to be done and their role in doing it. Clear messaging internally and externally is a big part of your start, your ability to grow, and your ability to scale a business. When you’re hiring help it’s crucial. Ready to get clear on messaging? Learn more. July 21 I’m sharing a 3-part 3-hour copywriting for marketing to women workshop. I’ll present and you’ll craft messages during as well as take 5 Templates with you for use creating your daily, weekly, and monthly content. The bonus template is based on today’s content, hiring help. Register to save your spot as I share the 5 profiles of female buyers, how to emotionally propel them into action ethically when you have a product or service that improves the QOL. Resources: fitnessmarketingmastery.com/copywriting
FAQs about the copywriting workshop: A: Yes, so you can "workshop" in your own time. (and replay this later to create killer content for your upcoming programs!) Q: I'm not even sure about my offer yet, will this be appropriate for me? A: Absolutely. No matter where you are, communication is important. You can use the right words to identify what your audience wants. Even with a small list, (or for growing a list), copywriting is a skill you can't succeed without. |
Thu, 15 July 2021
I don’t personal train anymore. Want to know why? I don’t work one-on-one any more except in a coaching relationship. I never exercise with a client. And would not advise you to be doing that if you’re coaching someone online. That’s a ridiculous service job that takes you back light years. Imagine exercising for 6-8 sessions a day. That kind of thing last happened in the 80’s as the norm. It carried over into the 90’s for those “addicted fitness instructors” who ignored the well-known risks science had discovered. (My master’s thesis, in fact was about how to avoid exercise injuries from “aerobics.”) You Don't Have to Repeat Past Mistakes But trainers did it. During the pandemic trainers who never would have done it meeting in person with a client did it when meeting virtually with them. What was that about? Discomfort. Lack of confidence and belief in what you were doing being enough. That is something valuable to acknowledge, and to deal with. You are no less valuable training a client while they’re at home in their living room than you are in person. The exercise done to proper fatigue is just as valuable for them. You in fact monitor them less keenly while you yourself are doing the exercise. Upgrade your services by making sure you’ve given tips to them instead. Provide a more accurate cheat sheet for them as well as homework between sessions.
But you exercising all day is a super quick way to burnout, reduce the value of your time, and trash your body. Why would you want to send the message to a client like that? You’re their role model, right? Do What You Love But that’s not why I don’t personal train anymore. I can’t afford to. My time per hour would price me at a ridiculous rate. If I’m not making $500 an hour it’s hard to justify time spent training when I’ve got other things to do in my business. Fitness professionals today don’t “exercise for a living.” They support others exercising for a living. There is a big difference. I have a gym owner friend who says, and has for years, “I sell sweat for a living.” In my opinion, that’s a functional mindset issue and a message to staff and public that loses clients and trust. What he really sells is hope, optimism, and inspiration. Inspiration Not Perspiration And so do you. You can stand out online in this crowded market, even if you don’t personal train as we know it anymore. It’s not hard. There are a lot of copy cats making it easy to be unique. Pay less attention to what someone else is saying on their social media. Pay more attention to what your customers are saying. Respond to that. Know your customer better than anyone else. That is good copywriting. And if you’re not good at it now, you can get better at it. Right Message Right Time Here are 5 examples of where you’ve got to be good at it:
And I’m giving you all 5 PLUS a bonus template
Those alone are worth the registration for my Marketing to Women Copywriting workshop July 21. I’ll share what I’ve used to grow from $5000 a month to 6 figures a month. Using original content only you can create and everyone will want to copy, but can’t. Think outside the box. Think about how you can really do what we all must do to be in business, solve a problem.
If you can get a clear and compelling message to the audience you want answering those questions you can create thriving business.
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Fri, 9 July 2021
People are texting asking me if they can promote my program to their group. Carole, who I met a few years ago at an event we were both attending and we’ve been friends on Facebook and see each other annually otherwise (except for COVID). That’s it. But she knows what I do. She knows me and she knows her audience. She knows they need what I have. And she’s seen me promoting. I’ve been in lives on Instagram and Facebook on my own timeline and been a guest on a mutual friend of mine’s timeline. I’m advertising in Facebook and she’s probably seen the ads. Typically, you will reach out to others. And I have. I have 3 others promoting for this launch. But Carole is not the only one, another friend asked last week and she and I did a live for her audience Thursday night. So that’s 5 people actively promoting to their audiences who share my target customer. When you successfully grow your email list all the time so that you can launch to your own list (and not burn the same people out selling the same product), and then… You have others who have a significant sized list email and promote for you… You will not only grow your sales… You will grow your email list… You will grow your social media following… And you will have another chance to sell something more or sell something the first time to these people. Texts and Emails can become overwhelming at times. But I’ve always got room for these kind. Your homework: List 5-10 affiliate marketing partners that you would love to have promote you List 5-10 affiliate marketing partners that you could promote (the lists might overlap) Start nurturing those people. Like their social media posts, comment, share Think of someone you know they should meet and ask if they’d like in intro And? Register for the copywriting for marketing to women workshop! https://www.flippingfifty.com/copywriting |
Sat, 5 June 2021
You don’t really want your social media to go viral! What? If you’re hoping, wishing, even trying to create a video that will go viral, (come on, even just a little bit?) I’m about to convince you otherwise! With the hope that you can then:
You’ve no doubt heard that “riches are in the niches.” Meaning, that if you have an “everybody” approach to who you serve and how you market, your message doesn’t hit home for very many. It’s why Flipping 50 Fitness Specialists do so well. It’s a niche. It just happens to be a niche where now women are contacting me, saying they’d sponsor/scholarship a trainer who lives near them with the course just to be sure she gets a trainer who knows how to help her menopause fitness. Let’s talk about some of the very few ads that appealed to a broad audience. What Do Folgers and Budweiser Have in Common? Remember the Folger’s commercials? It’s Christmas morning and one of the adult kids sneaks into the house having finally made it home from the army or some weather-delayed trip? He’s found first by a little sister, then the parents. And hey, it’s the holidays… that may be one of the rare commercials that spans ages and genders. Superbowl commercials, the ones with the Clydesdales and the cute dog, do a pretty good job, as they should – it’s a wide audience of men and women at every age, everywhere tuning in for different reasons. You Don’t Have Superbowl Reach Then there’s you. Your ideal customer is not “everybody.” And there’s a big difference between a brand-loving ad and an ad that gets a specific customer to buy a specific service you offer that solves a specific problem. If you run a big fitness center, you may want to work on ads that feature an emotional return right now (just post pandemic as I record). And it could appeal to a broader range with a “Cheers,” or a coming home kind of angle. Remember that one person at a time is seeing your ad. If it’s not specific to the problem she wants to solve, promising the transformation she wants, featuring the clear message she feels speaks just to her? She’s may not even click on your ad image. Can You Afford Loyalty Only Now? However, those big broad ads do something you don’t want to do. They are just trying to win your hearts and loyalty. My guess is that you want and need to make sales from your messages. So being the “center of it all” is kind of not helpful. (Sorry, not sorry to someone who needed to hear that). You really need to tell one person seeing your post the one thing that moves them into action with you. If you convince someone to get active, start their pandemic comeback but you fail to show them why it needs to be with you? You may be selling the competition who does get that message to them clearly. People aren’t looking for “something.” They are looking for “the thing.” Imagine This A big fitness center with dozens of trainers has trainers who work specifically with midlife female clients. That those trainers are also seen working with men, and older adults. Then there’s a boutique studio owner/trainer and an online trainer who both work exclusively with women in menopause. The woman in menopause will decide between the online and boutique studio owner based on their preference for in person or online and price may be a factor. But it also may be a matter of who has the stronger brand. I want to work with the best and if I can have the best virtually, I’m going to choose that over mediocre in person. What about you? I worked with a functional doctor in Austin Tx, while there were probably 12 functional doctors within 20 miles of me right here. Why? I wanted the best. The Austin-based doctor gave me far more value for free than a local doctor ever did. I knew that the service after we began working together would be amazing. You are competing with the world right now. You’ve got to be better at marketing with value than you ever have in your business life before the pandemic. Why You Don’t Want Your Social Media to Go Viral Let’s talk videos. Because YouTube is a search engine, it’s got the most potential for virality. Is that the right word? When a video goes viral though think about it. In my life, I would have seen it, my family members – older brothers and sisters would have seen it, I would have shared it with my son. Say it’s one of those humorous videos shared about triathletes. It’s funny for triathletes, for their coaches, for family members or ex-girl or boyfriends (who could have made the video). But that’s a wide variety of people who aren’t going to buy the thing you might be advertising for, right? That’s young and old, men and women, athletes, non-athletes, you get the idea. It’s not about viral it’s about value. -Sunny Lenarduzzi Sunny’s quote comes from a podcast I recently listened to and I’ll link to the Entrepreneurs On Fire hosted by John Lee Dumis episode. There were several mic drops in the episode. Let It Go Viral So, sure, let your social media go viral but don’t aim for that. When you offer value to your ideal customer, the one for the program that you’ve created exactly for that person, you’ll have immediate gratification in more leads and more sales. If you’re still living in the land of objections:
I encourage you to answer these:
If you have no idea how to write emails that get open, get clicked, and get customers… If you leave the copywriting for your website pages to someone else… If you know the gap between number of people landing on your sales pages and the number of people actually buying your services is huge (or if you don’t actually even have that statistic??) My Fitness & Health Coach Copywriting Workshop is just for you. Respond here to be added to the invitation list. It was a bonus for the May purchase of Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist (advanced) and it’s a part of the BYB Mastermind, but you can attend too. Just send your request for more details and we’ll share it with you. If you’re coming here after it’s over the recording will be available. You don’t want social media to go viral. You do want your ideal customer to find it valuable. Another episode You May Like: 3 Reasons Your Social Media Isn't Working Would you like a fitness copywriting workshop invite? Send us a message. |
Sun, 30 May 2021
In this episode, I cover 3 Reasons Your Social Media Isn’t Working. If your social media isn’t working, don’t give up. Get up, dust yourself off. And let’s do more of what is working right now. Post pandemic marketing strategies have changed. What worked 2 years ago, won’t necessarily now. What works today won’t necessarily in 6 mos. or a year. What always does work is letting your customers decide what, and where, once you decide why you’re posting. If social media isn’t working for you right now, with more people online than ever before, it’s time to regroup. Everyone is On Social Friday afternoon I got my haircut and colored. Every person in the chair including myself was head down staring at their phones. Saturday afternoon I swam at the gym pool after a workout. Between sets guys and gals are staring at their phones, and at the pool? Same thing. I was the only one with a book or magazine in North Scottsdale, I think. I think it’s safe to say the majority of those people weren’t creating or sending emails for work. (Okay, entrepreneurs, I get it, sometimes yes, but it’s rarer.) They may have been texting but for sure the 2 ½ hour average use of social media in the past two years hints that we have an opportunity, but only if we’re standing out. Smart and beautiful is not enough. You have to have a voice. It starts with your bio. The introduction of you to your audience on your website, your social media “about” section, the intro you do at regular intervals on your social media posts. It also includes the intro you hand to a host of a podcast or at your media appearances and guest speaking gigs. If you’re not even sure where to start so that you’re not just a list of certifications that anyone else can say, and your audience doesn’t even care about, I’ve got just the solution. How to Avoid a Boring Bio is a quick little worksheet that will help you not sound like everyone else! It’s Not Clear What Your Followers Will Get from Following You – There’s no theme other than you Imagine that you decide you’re going to target midlife women. Your content includes:
That’s a lot of variety. And if I really want fitness content, I’m going to follow a fitness expert. If I want recipes and food, likewise, I’ll search for that. If I want menopause-related content I’m probably interested in eliminating signs and symptoms, hormones, and science. If I want to remodel or choose a vacay, I want to find an influencer who is sharing home flips or beautiful travel images. Unless you’re established as must-follow celebrity it will be hard to identify an audience who wants to jump around from one thing to the next. A lack of value right up front and frequently
A fellow presenter posts regularly in multiple accounts about bikini fitness contests, being a fitness model, life with Hashimotos, and about fitness in menopause. That’s a lot going on in her posts with a really diverse amount of information. She’s not getting traction. The growth of her accounts and the engagement is very low, compared to some less-educated, less knowledgeable, and far less beautiful influencers. Followers would have a hard time knowing why to follow her though. She might do better having multiple accounts with just one clear focus. Brand those distinctly. Don’t cross over. A lack of conversation that’s meaningful for your audience
“It’s not hard to eat healthy on vacation… just choose xyz.” Comes across a little teachy and preachy to someone who says, “It’s hard to eat healthy on vacation.” What if instead you flip it, and say, “It’s easy to fall off during vacation. Here’s how I cope.” Trust me I used to make this error. I’d post without realizing my message that I feel 100% better and enjoy the vacation so much more when I do choose well, didn’t come across that way. It came across more as, “I’m strong, you’re weak, and not committed,” and… if your audience really needs you… they’ve left. They aren’t going to share that they gained 10lbs eating at the buffet on the cruise every day or sucking down margaritas, chips and salsa in Cabo. The only ones who are going to like that are the ones already doing it just like you. So, think about why you’re posting, who you’re posting to, and where they are in their heads before you create a post. What's Next? There’s a lot here. I’m not a fitness marketing expert. I’m a fitness marketing surgeon. If you want to take the next step to bettering your fitness marketing, there are several ways I can help.
Never have to say your marketing on social media isn’t working again. And stay tuned, I’ve got a special episode coming up for you about viral social media. And it’s so not what you’d expect I’d say. |
Tue, 25 May 2021
My content was stolen last weekend. An Instagram post I’d shared on February 6, 2021, was almost verbatim copied… by another midlife health coach, who after using my post as if it were her own in which I shared a client conversation she took and used as if it were her client, and then also used the copy below the graphic almost word-for-word. There's More But it gets better. Just after using the copy she plagiarized, she pitched her program declaring that her goal was to help someone reach their full potential… by coaching with honesty. I don’t quite know what to think about it still. I wanted to believe it was an honest mistake. But how could word-for-word be an honest mistake. Someone would have to be so naïve to think that stealing someone else’s words is ethical. I found it hard to believe a midlife woman, who wants to be coaching midlife women, doesn’t know the foundational core values of no lying, stealing, or cheating. Here’s What Makes This Potentially Very Risky In using my client testimonial as her own, and the copy I wrote, she was promoting her own program. Profiting from this type of behavior makes it a worse offense. So, when you have content that others admire, or think works, or wish they’d said, you too will have this happen to you. It will happen. In this episode is what to do. My choices were to…
I chose 2 and 3. I have yet to do #4, and I don’t have time to focus on being a watchdog. That kind of negative energy doesn’t serve you. But sometimes you have to choose to make an example. This is one of those times. The Message: My Content Was Stolen I messaged her in Instagram. I posted on my Facebook page and shared it to my personal page. I used it to both gather feedback and to share with my community that this likely happens all the time. To someone, not to me. There are a lot of copycats out there. By the way it’s a new teaching for our mastermind masterclass about how to create copy without being a copycat. It is perfectly okay to curate – that is share, repost, and credit – but it is not okay to copy and steal. If you know your customer better than anyone you should never need to or want to copy. Fitness pros and health coaches, do your homework, it’s easy, enjoyable and fun to really connect to your clients. To her credit she responded to my message. She accepted responsibility. And asked me to remove the post I’d made about her stealing the content. At the same time, she didn’t offer to remove the one she’d posted using my content. I have a proposal for her so we can discuss it, use it as a way to identify ethical practices, honest mistakes, and truly unethical ways of “collecting” marketing copy. Other posts of this copycat have begun to be “suspiciously similar” to other experts. She doesn’t herself seem to have a voice. If your website or other content was stolen you have some options. First, though for many of us will be in this spot I was initially. And that is, a desire to understand it and how it could happen. Will We Ever Know Why? The thieving coaches and trainers (if they are, and aren’t bots) either:
And last unfortunately, know enough to know your copy is good and that they need good copy. So, it will happen, friend. If you’re here, I think it will happen to you. I’d like to make this one thing clear before I point out what other options there are if you’re content was stolen, or you find that true in the future. There is Room for Every Authentic Voice I created a Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist course and host a mastermind and masterclasses in order to help trainers and health coaches’ market themselves better. I want my students to be successful. And I can do that because there’s no way that one of us can serve all the people who need help. I teach you how to use your own voice, tell stories, and elevate your audience members with marketing. It’s what I try to do every day. It is one of the reasons after 37 years of experience, I still am very closely tied to every message I share. I’ve created it. Written it. Gathered messages from my clients and students. That real, authentic, truthful content I share is mine. Not borrowed, or stolen, or made up. So does the world have too many health coaches? Fitness trainers? If the health statistics tell us anything, and I believe they tell us everything, there is room for you. As long as you use your voice, your unique personality, skills and talents to connect with your clients. You Can Only Authentically Market You. Start. No one will copy a copycat. But they’ll follow and use your content. That’s not to say that like-minded people serving the same or similar audiences, don’t come up with similar ideas or read the same research they’ll share. But never verbatim. Our personalities, our way of teaching and communicating are unique. It’s that uniqueness that makes you marry who you marry, not your best friend’s spouse. It makes you choose the outfit you put on and send the other things back in the dressing room. And it makes you appeal to customers you will love working with and supporting their transformation. Attracting them based on someone else’s words and stories is not only wrong but it’s going to backfire on you. So, what you and I need to do is know what course of action you take if you ever have to say, my content was stolen what do I do? Copyright is real. What is copyright? Not ironically, we are diving into that in June with two lawyers expert in copyright, Trademarks, domain, and legal aspects of your website in the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Masterclass. Too few fitness pros start with the legal business parts and instead dive into service and delivery. Copyright Legality Copyright begins when you use something. You say it in public speaking, write it, use it in product titles. Your use of it first and repeatedly makes it yours. Back in 1998 a US law intended to update copyright law for electronic commerce and electronic content providers. It criminalizes the circumvention of electronic and digital copyright protection systems. That’s known as the Digital Millennium Content Act. It’s unethical. Is it illegal? If you used someone else's copyrighted material and commercially profited from that use, you may have to pay him monetary damages, and court may prohibit you from further using his material without his consent. A federal judge may also impound your material and order you to immediately destroy it. Your Content Was Stolen? The DMCA, or the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, protects creative works on the internet and contains the legal foundation for rights management in digital works. It covers things such as articles, videos, and photographs. The DMCA protects both copyright owners and internet service providers (ISP), otherwise known as online service providers (OSP). To warn would-be content thieves away, you can use a DMCA Protection Badge on your website. (this content from: https://www.upcounsel.com/dmca-protection also mentioned in resources below). DMCA is all about getting your stolen content taken down. More Explanation It’s a little like copyrighted music. If you’re found using copyrighted music without a license to do so, once upon a time in gyms that came with a hefty fine. What DMCA will do is help get that content taken down. If your content lands on a scammy website, you risk association with it. Email Example The same can happen with emails. Say you’re unknowingly emailing bots or spammers who’ve signed up for your email list. (Yes, this is a thing). If you fall into a spam trap set up by these bots, then Google reviews that as you sent spam and you risk far-reduced delivery rates, something none of us wants. If you haven’t yet grasped that your email list is gold, and you have to scrape it regularly it’s time. If you already have poor delivery or open rates, Google knows at the least; you don’t clean your list. You’re sending people something they do not want. How Do You Avoid Committing This Error Yourself? If you love a post, don’t “copy” it and make it yours. Repost it. Quote the individual who said it. Interview the person. Engage and interact with them. Ask permission to share the post (and tell them specifically how you’re going to do it). Add your own interpretation and you both win. If you have followers, they’re there because they like what you’re doing, how you think, how you teach. Your voice resonates with them. If you don’t have a following, that’s a red flag that potentially you need to do more you! I’d love your questions or comments on this. Has it happened to you? What did you do? Have you witnessed it? Do you think, OMG, you might have made this mistake in the past and now know better? Resources Mentioned in this Episode: https://www.upcounsel.com/dmca-protection |
Sat, 22 May 2021
Doing that weekly fitness marketing plan is a must. Whether you decide you need to post four times a day on Facebook, or just once, once a day on Instagram or just every other day, it has to be done. Deciding on the image the text, any call to action, and all as a part of a strategy, not a random plea for attention, takes time. How long does it take? As long as you allow. Every task expands to the time it’s allowed. So, you decide. You have to decide. Decide right now. In this post I’m going to share the approximate time it takes to:
Whether you are a fitness or health coach, marketing is something left off every certification and every physiology and kinesiology degree program. Marketing 101 with the four Ps is not going to help you in 2021. I once suggested to my son who was contemplating changing majors to marketing that if he did, I’d encourage him to drop out. I was going to bring him with me to conferences and enroll him in the programs I’ve worked with to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars in the last 8 years. Start thinking about marketing as small parts of a whole. You need to think about your big goals for the year, the quarter, and the month. That gives you a better goal for the week. You’ve got to be tracking the right numbers. Tracking Weekly Fitness Marketing Progress What’s your scoreboard? How many people engaged with you last week, compared to the week before? How much growth did you have? How much traffic came to your website from the social posts you shared? Again, comparing it to what you did the week before is important. Because marketing is one of the most important things you do in your business, and you’ve got to do it and do it well. (Frankly, polishing your marketing should come before your next certification, your next hire, or your next program starts). Marketing is always research that confirms what you’re selling is something people will buy. It confirms whether the message you’re using to describe it resonates with the ideal customer you’re targeting. Marketing First, Delivery Second But I’m not going to spend time exploring the importance of marketing in this episode. You know that. I mention that however to get you thinking about how little you spend time interviewing and testing marketing skills, or even writing the job description to a marketing director for your organization compared to how much time you spend hiring a trainer or front desk manager. If you’re doing the marketing yourself, how much time and resources have you dedicated to learning how to do it, compared to getting certifications and reading books about the services you should be marketing better? That might be a touchy subject but someone listening needs to hear it. If you suddenly task your personal training director or yourself, personal trainer or health coach, with writing emails, ad copy, creating social media posts, and you’ve never studied it? How could that turn out well? Weekly Fitness Marketing Here is a rough estimate for weekly fitness marketing tasks:
Notice that the fewer the words the more time you want to spend. And you’re going to repurpose content. Research you have for a blog, will be used to create social media posts. You’ll weave that content into videos. In reality, I know for me and my friends who do research-based blog posts it can take four hours to do all the tasks. But I don’t have to do every step. I create the topic and the bullet points. I can outsource the research links for the post. Get efficient doing what you do best. Set up alerts for new research. Keys to cutting down your weekly fitness marketing time:
If you want help with weekly fitness marketing content and copywriting across your business, you can learn more at a special session for trainers and health coaches who help midlife women. During Women’s Health Month, we have a special presentation and open doors for the mastermind. It ends June 1. Stage your comeback, your start or your growth with messaging that is on target for this moment in time. |
Sun, 9 May 2021
How would you like to get twice as much done every day? In half as much time as it normally takes. Well, listen, I’m not going to talk about Tim Ferris’ 4-Hour Week. I think we can all work 4 hours a week if we want to. We just might be broke doing it. Most of the wealthy – and healthy – entrepreneurs I know (in the medical, health, and wellness fields) work considerable hours. Is this you? They do the things others aren’t willing to without complaining about it. They’re choosing to serve their chosen customers. They have goals. And they commit to reaching them. Not because it’s easy or effortless. There’s another catch. They do the most important things first. They have taken the time to determine what those priorities are. If you struggle with that, the most important steps for building your business, I’ll add a link in show notes for you. If you serve midlife women, you want to serve them optimally, and stand out in a crowded marketplace vying for the attention of women over 50, this is for you. There is a masterclass you want to attend as early in 2021 as you’re hearing this. It’s becoming more and more urgent that you get ahead of the crowd. More Than Playboy or Playgirl Lifestyle So, I hope you get already that this episode isn’t suggesting that you can work half days and then go golfing or skip the communicating with your audience the rest of the day. It’s not like that. But if you’re here so that you can accelerate your progress and yes, take the occasional vacation, or work less when you take work with you, then stick around. The last plug on the productivity tips coming up in this episode is this: you’ll have fewer errors and regret your work less when you learn to work in a way that serves you. I’ve got questions for you. Think of it as a quiz. The real evaluation of the quiz is not in the right answers. It’s in the quickness that you can answer the question. Do you know the answer to these questions?
Do You Know Yourself? I hated the typical workday schedule in private business and universities. I always felt like I was working all day, but I wasn’t getting anything done. I was following my intuition before I ever knew I was following my intuition. In high school, I got up early, (somehow, I was still always late for school) but I got up early! That’s when I would work on the school yearbook or other projects. In college I continued getting up early. Irritatingly early, for half a dozen roommates in small dorm rooms, I’m sure. It’s Not Just the Workplace There are no interruptions at 5am. Or few. Very few. Until there was. In 1995 I was introduced to my first real interruption. That first morning after we brought our son home from the hospital, I had a rude awakening. He was not going to be sleeping in for me. Quiet time evaporated for a while. Yes, totally worth it, but it made me realize how much that time was sacred for my productivity (and sanity). A couple years later when I began working for a university and a gym both. When I had to be at morning staff meetings or taught 8am classes that came after handling kiddos, puppies, and workouts, I would get up even earlier so that I didn’t miss my productivity. I’d work for a couple hours, then workout, then get the flow of “get ready” and finally show up to be “at work.” When I was training for Ironman distance triathlons, it didn’t matter if I needed to run 9 miles before my son had an early tee time, I’d get up a couple hours even before that in order to work first. (So early that for night owls, you might have been coming home when I was getting up!) Like Willpower, Daily Productivity is Limited Because I knew if I didn’t, I’d lose the productivity. That time can’t just be shifted somewhere else in your schedule. The work you put out if you’re not working on your personal schedule will probably be crap. After a day I just described hauling my son to golf tournaments, I could answer emails and phone calls, but I could not write, create programs, or edit content. What About Your Morning Workout? I used to be a morning workout person. Now I will if I can, but I can workout later and I can’t get the focus and concentration later, so it always wins. If I’m at a conference and know I want to get a workout in before it starts in the morning, I rise and work, then workout, then start the day. You need to know you. What’s the biggest killer of productivity? A Monday morning staff meeting. What’s the second biggest killer of productivity? A staff meeting any other morning. What’s the other productivity killer? Interruptions and distractions. Just like you don’t want to have an open door with people walking by or stopping in, you don’t want to have 14 tabs open or your phone beside you vibrating and buzzing. Ask for specific thought-requiring tasks or set them for yourself to be done in the morning. More Secrets to Get Twice as Much Done Collectively? Are there common denominators? Based on hormones yes. Cortisol is higher in the morning – if it’s at optimal levels – it feeds your focus, concentration and productivity. Suggestion: Create an unspoken rule in your business that those first couple hours in the morning should be as uninterrupted as possible for your admins and copywriters, and marketing staff or managers working on programming and scheduling. Move meetings to the afternoons!! When you block that productive time you want to be sure you are inspired and have ideas that you can implement. How do you keep the creativity flowing? Ideas for Ways to Boost Your Creativity
You get twice as much done in ways I don't The way you boost creativity to get twice as much done in half the time is different than the way I do. The books you choose will be different. You may choose to listen instead of read. The exercise you do may be different and you may find you are more creative in a group with people around unlike me who has to have some uninterrupted quiet time (and a mug or two of matcha) to be in my zone of productivity. Above all, be sure the things you’re getting done, matter. There’s a lot of busywork out there that can make you temporarily feel good. You can fool yourself into thinking you’re working hard. But if it’s only helping you fill your hour up and not amplifying your revenue and the way you scale it, it’s not what you want to be getting better at. Sometimes, saying no to opportunities means you can say yes, to productivity and profit. Resources: Fitness & Health Coach Masterclass (if you want and need to grow your business) Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Tax & Legal Masterclass Bundle (ends soon) My Matcha – my secret productivity weapon
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Wed, 5 May 2021
So you're posting regularly you're using Instagram, maybe Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, all the things, but results are dismal. Nobody is really liking, nobody's really commenting and nobody's really sharing and if you're on Instagram, we're going to talk a little bit more about Instagram specifically, Nobody's saving, which is like the gold standard. So, here's why, and what you can do about it. So literally what I want to share with you is what I've been watching and observing in certain exercise professionals: trainers, bodybuilders and health coaches on Instagram. I'm watching their accounts, and what I've seen is great post great content, they're beautiful images, and nothing. There's really very little interaction, engagement, and there's a low number of people actually even liking it. So that’s kind of level one.
We're not seeing that happen in a lot of accounts that I'm watching. Are You Legal? Got Tax strategy for your HEALTH & FITNESS business? 7:15 today we're talking about hashtags. Your hashtag strategy has to be very, very specific to the post, not to generically what you're trying to read. The algorithm on Instagram is getting smarter and smarter, and what's happening is it's looking at your posts, the images and or the videos that you're posting, and it's also looking at the copy the text that you're posting, and then the hashtags that you use. If they're different. ..They don't even apply to what it is that you wrote in your message? The algorithm and Instagram is confused. It's not going to help you get discovered. Get It Right So if you're creating great content the images and or great videos, you want to make sure that everything there is congruent, the pictures the videos, the infographics that you're creating, together with the copy that you're creating, and the hashtags, most importantly. Those latter two, so you can put a beautiful image that catches somebody's eye and then makes them come in, look, and your text and your copy may not actually be completely representative, just because you're talking about eating correctly, choosing, you know what you're eating and using the discipline and the knowledge that you need. BETTER IMAGES You may not show somebody sitting down to a plate of food you may not show food at all, but it may be an image, expressing this is how you're going to feel, you know like someone on vacation or on the beach, arm spread out up to the world full of energy, that kind of imagery is still appropriate, and probably a better idea than just one of food, but when you go to your hashtags…they have to be congruent. You want to make sure that if you're posting something about getting started with exercise and beginning personal training and what that personal training experience should be like for someone. 9:32 If you're posting hashtags that are unrelated to the text that you added, The algorithm is confused, is not going to help you any get discovered. And here's a secondary thing that I've just learned from my Instagram guru and I'm going to share this insider tip with you. [And if you want more information and how you actually take the course that I took and get access to this a woman who is sharing so much great content and updating us all about what we need to be doing, DM me in Instagram or email us at debra@fitnessmarketingmastery.] 10:11 Multiple Images for Social Media Traction It's important that you realize that if you add an ability to scroll so multiple images and pictures. If you add that, that scrolling with hashtags… and scrolling is helpful because it keeps people on your timeline for a little bit longer, it will boost the engagement of the people who are already following you. However, what's new now is that those hashtags that you're using won't help you get discovered by new people on a multiple carousel multiple image carousel well they're where they scroll. So realize that you want to have different kinds of posts, and sometimes you're going to want to have just one video, or one image, not scrollable. ONE IMAGE or VIDEO for Social Media Traction That's when you really want to do your homework on your hashtags, and when I say homework, you've got to look them up and look up, you know, to find out. Are you really going to be found using those hashtags. So if you use “#fitness” for instance, unless you are like me, Arnold Schwarzenegger that everybody recognizes, or that Jillian Michaels, who is going to be known for fitness, you know, lesser known people potentially like you and I today are not going to get so much traction, if we use that because it's got millions and millions of hits. So you want to go deeper and say #fitnessforwomen #over50 You want to look at hashtags that illustrate that and see how many searches, and how many hits of that are there and make sure that you're doing a range that is reasonable. Hashtag research for Social Media Traction You want to have a wide variety of ranges, some smaller some medium size and some bigger in every post that you do but very related to what you're posting about. So let's go back to my example. So you're talking about the personal training experience what it's really supposed to be like, how it takes the guesswork out of what you're doing, how it is about strength training it is about cardio, it is about stretching, but it's about it for you, and no one else but you. It is very individual, and it is not just a group program that appeals, or is targeted at really no one in particular thing that's what you're talking about that's your soapbox, then use your hashtags. Wise Hashtags You want to make sure that you have, say, #FitnessAfter40 You want to make sure that you have women's fitness, and that's a big one, by the way, but #womenshealth, a smaller one, #womenswellness is smaller one. So think about doing your research on post like that. But if you simply put happy, or you put something like versus active aging. If you appeal to an older population that's going to be a good idea, but if you're doing that you wouldn't want to put in the same hashtag set, you know, fitness after 20 or fitness at 20 Right, because those are conflicting, you've got to be in that same spirit that same audience would be attracted to any and all of those hashtags, and maybe using them to search for solutions. So if you're talking about your virtual training, you might put #onlinetrainer #onlinehealthcoach, #onlinewellnesscoach For Local Business For social media traction within a geographical location use geo tags and hasthtags. #bouldertrainer #scottsdalecoach #iowafitness If it's used just 500 or fewer times, I always skip it. But if it's used 1000 times 10,000 times 5000 times. Take a range of those types of hashtags, that's actually going to help you. Make sure it's related to the exact content that you're sharing. It can't be a reach. It really needs to be are these words that you've used so if you've ever used keyword kinds of research in say posting your YouTube videos. It applies here to the keywords that appear:
Do Your Homework Think about what we're women search for when they're looking for core exercise, they're probably going to put something like core exercise for women after 50 So think about, literally, if you were her, and you need to know her that well, better than anybody else, when she's alone, frustrated left to her own devices. What specifically is she typing into Dr. Google, so that you will come up your title, your description your tags, and similarly on Instagram, your copy in the post your selected hashtags, and potentially the image, but more so if that's an infographic. TAX & Legal Strategy Master Class Bundle 50% off right now. Price increase May 5. (and still totally worth it!) If you don’t know the answers to these, join me as I ask… and you can send your Qs if we still have space.
Register now. You’ll get the recordings even if you can’t join live. The cost of consulting with one (let alone 2 lawyers who know health & fitness inside and out) and a tax strategist for more than two hours is at least 2x the registration fee and 6 times the early bird. |
Thu, 29 April 2021
Every fitness & health coach should ask a tax strategist questions so they can plan sooner rather than later for expansion and growth. You want to save that money you’re making! Ever wish you could ask:
You’re in luck because during May and June Fitness Marketing Mastery and Flipping 50’s Build Your Business Mastermind Masterclass is hosting two lawyers and a tax strategist so you CAN ask your fitness and health coach questions. Plus, if you’re stumped for what to ask, I’ve got you covered. I will asking. |
Wed, 28 April 2021
What do you wish you could ask a lawyer about your fitness business? It’s your lucky day because I’m going to share some questions with you. 16 Questions to ask a lawyer about your fitness business
There you have it questions to ask a lawyer about your fitness business and answers you should have. You may not be able to be able to budget everything you want to do now, but informed decisions will set you up so that when you are ready you'll know what's next. You're Invited! Join the Build Your Business Mastermind Masterclass in May and June for a sneak peak at the mastermind with two sessions: legal ease and tax strategy. |
Tue, 27 April 2021
How do you use research as your fitness marketing secret weapon? Create an engaging opening: High impact during menopause? Are you thinking that might get you hurt? With the wrong start and progression, it might. If you’re extremely fragile, or have co-existing conditions, it’s also not advised. But for other women transitioning through menopause, you need to look closely at what you’re doing, and what you believe. Often a statistic, a contrarian statement, or a question are engaging. Ask, would it go on a magazine cover? Results of the study are published and expanded on at flippingfifty.com/high-impact-exercise Research is definitely your fitness marketing secret weapon. You can use it to:
Share some, but not all, content from the study as a tease Results from a 2021 study featuring postmenopausal women with osteopenia – intended to be 18 mos. which was cut short due to COVID (6 mos. Short). Researchers suspected that for Bone Mineral Density [BMD] results the last 6 months when training would have been most intense, would have reflected even greater changes.
Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Quotes are Golden for social media Researcher’s reminder: “The most prominent bone decline might occur during the 3-year phase of transmenopause…one year before and two years after the final menstrual period” Hip Bone Mineral Density increases didn’t have as much opportunity for change because the most intense training was cut (COVID). *Strength & Power results & differences were also believed less than expected because of abbreviated study (COVID). Share Insights and Opinions: Yours The unintended early termination of the study due to COVID was unfortunate, but still offers positive effects of high intensity exercise, as suggested in other emerging research studies. Your menopause and post menopause clients are not delicate and even with osteopenia can, and potentially should do high impact exercise. For your own high impact exercise… build your business model with a plan that’s proven to work. Find research about your ideal customer, share it as your fitness marketing secret weapon. |
Sun, 25 April 2021
When they want it, you want to help them, but they say they can’t afford your personal training program, what then?
When someone can’t afford your personal training program you have options. You could provide a “scholarship” for all or part of services. You can do a “trade” with a client based on thinks you truly need done and skills they possess. That’s in addition to the aforementioned solutions. The key to making this work is practice. This has to feel natural. If you've never said it before, and you're not used to having a fluid conversation related to the best program option for a customer you can't expect it to feel anything but awkward when you do it first. Other good questions to ask:
Are you (as the trainer) open to a payment plan? You may decide no, or want to collect the money up front before training. Often that's not possible because you want someone to start now, not in two months when they're paid. I've found that unless you use a collections agency, paying over time really is not usually a good plan... unless: you work with professionals (lawyers, doctors, realtors). If you have a large ticket item, (more than $5000) then yes, you should at least divide payments in to two. Know Your Customers Decide your target market before you start. When you know who you're dealing with you know how you can support them best and what price positioning you want and need to do. Your model may be many people for a lower price, or fewer people for a higher ticket item.
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Sat, 24 April 2021
Are you stuck when it comes to what to do next in your fitness & health coaching business plan (or rebuild)? I’m going to share 5 MUSTs for your health & fitness coaching business plan in this episode. (Legal & Tax strategy masterclass bundle) Use this as a checklist. You won’t do them all at once. You probably have some done. You’ll work on others. Getting these things done is your job. It won’t pay you until you have them done. So don’t do this a little bit at a time, spend a full day, or every evening doing them until they’re done. If you’re a trainer or health coach, nutrition or yoga instructor who works for a gym or studio, stay with me. You still need these pieces. And if you work for a small business owner – or a medium-sized one, he or she may need to hear from you how to support you. You’re a profit center for the business. If there’s a way that helps you and them both, they’ll consider it when it’s presented right. 5 Musts for Your Fitness & Health Coaching Business Plan
The answer to what to do to next to build your fitness business should be more clear. You’ve got to have a website to place the lead-generator and the email capture on. To have the email capture form and the email sequence for after they get it, and sales emails when you’re ready to make an offer, you’ve got to have an email provider. So virtually nothing happens online without:
Reach More People, Easier Than Ever It has to be as easy for them to communicate and pay you as if they walked in, shook your hand and gave you cash. And it can be. In fact, it can be better. You just eliminated the commute. It’s antiquated to think in person training or coaching or exercise is better. It’s an option. But done, baby is better than perfect. I’d rather order groceries online and have them delivered. Fast, easy, time savings of more than an hour. I’d rather bank online than in person. Click click. Deposited and transferred. Convenience is Winning And I’d rather pay for fitness services monthly via my bank account and meet with my coach online. In 2020, I saved 40% of my expenses by not flying, staying in hotels, attending conferences, and having to board my dog. That works. So don’t you think that in person is better. But Your Clients are Different, Right? I hear you… saying, “but my business is different.” “You don’t understand, my customers are different.” Than what? Anyone in the world. Reality is, you’re throwing up obstacles because you don’t want to change. Check your imposter syndrome. Sometimes we’re as scared by success as we are by failure. |
Fri, 23 April 2021
How do you know what freebie to create that your ideal customers will find irresistible? Get to know your customer better than anyone else knows them. KNOW THEM BEST Know what they read, what they watch, what they think when they stare at a menu and what they think when they’re trying on swimsuits. Know what they’ve tried, what doctors have said to them, what their friends are doing and what they think about personal trainers and health coaches. Know what they tell their spouse about what they want and what they don’t share with their spouse. Think about what they want and the transformation they want. Think about why they want it. And why that’s important. Avoid this Mistake What won’t help you know what freebie to create? Don’t think about what they need. Because although they probably do need some corrective exercise and they do need better shoes or a tracking device for their health measures, if what they want is weight loss, you don’t want to stray far from that. At this “dating” stage of the game you have to give them exactly what they want. The purpose of your freebie is to connect so that you can continue sharing more about what they need. Push Pause But most of the time if you start trying to create something, just anything, or make it something that you know they need, it won’t work. You know what freebie to create easiest if you interview at least 2 dozen of your ideal customers. That will tell you the areas they’re struggling with most, what they’ve tried, and what worked and didn’t. So, start interviewing. Stop guessing. Even if you think you are your ideal customer, you’re not. You, my dear are too close to it. It’s been too long since you were clueless. My Best Freebies What I realized is that my health coach and training clients were burnt out from social media time and not getting enough traction. I created a Style Guide for Health & Fitness Professionals so they could delegate some or all of that. Then I created a 5-minute blog post step-by-step guide. I was constantly telling my audience to create content but they were so short on time that too was something not getting done. With content being the #1 thing that brings people to your website, getting these done is a must if you ever want traction. But take it from someone who knows blogs can take hours… hours to research, draft, correct, collect images or insert video into… you don’t need that cornerstone content ALL the time. Hence, my 5-Minute Blog freebie. I constantly rank in the top 10 for key words I aim for. And when we learn I rank 11-20 for 30 more words, we go to work making small tweaks so that I’m in the top 10. That’s how I get found first when someone types in a question to Google. And that can work for you too. Interview, Don’t Guess Establish 5 or 6 questions (I’ve hinted at them here and I’ll add them to the show notes) that you ask every one of your interviewees. Your GOLDEN interview questions:
There are additional details. Once you’ve collected all the responses in a spreadsheet, look for the common denominators. Did everyone say weight loss? Or belly fat? Or muscle tone, or something else? Now You Know What Freebie to Create … almost That’s when you start crafting a freebie. What would give someone a quick win, and what is also of course related to the core product or service you offer? Before you actually create it, think about the content. Create a rough draft of the content that should be there. Narrow it down. Make it the absolute best content in the shortest possible time for your ideal customer to consume. If you overwhelm… which is so likely to happen… you’ll confuse. A confused mind does nothing. So, make it a simple 3 tips, 3 exercises, 3 products you love, 3 recipes, or a breakdown of a good warm up or a perfect workout. Now it’s time to decide, what’s the best way to deliver the content? Is it a one-page cheatsheet or checklist? Is it a pdf? A video? A webinar? Now it’s time to create it. And believe me, you won’t think this right away, but something they consume in 5-10 minutes is far more likely to work. They’ll be able to consume it quickly. They’ll be able to start implementing it right away. That means you still have their attention. A couple freebie ideas: A grocery list and a video so they can make a recipe with you that solves a problem for them. A pdf with images and instructions for stretches to decrease posture issues from sitting at a desk all day. A sleep tips & resources guide for a better night sleep. IDEAS Got your wheels turning? Now it’s up to you.
Good to go! I can’t wait to hear what you create! Head over to Canva, one of my favorite graphics editors, or to Fiverr.com (and if you reach out I am happy to share with you my favorite gig for creating ebooks/pdfs and covers for them)/ Resources:
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Thu, 22 April 2021
Your fitness & health coaching website pages are the hub where people first meet you. Over 9 years ago it was true that whether you had a brick-and-mortar business, an online business, you delivered to your clients (as I did in the 90s and early 2000s), people will first find you or next go to your website before they’ll pay you. Your online presence matters. Today post-pandemic, that’s more important than ever. You can’t set it and forget it. Who hasn’t done that? Listen, I get it. I’ve got three websites, for my presence as a speaker, a fitness professionals business coach/consultant, and for my consumers, at Flipping 50 where I also offer the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist certificate course. And Sundays, are as good a day as any to review those sites. Maybe it’s not Sunday for you, so pick a day. Then review your site. 4 Fitness & Health Coaching Website Pages You Need There are 4 fitness & health coaching website pages that you absolutely need. They’ll make your fitness and health sales easier. You may at some point have multiples of each. But more isn’t better. When you have one thing you want your customer to do it’s easy to tell them that. Once you have more, you may overwhelm and confuse them with choices. A confused mind can’t make a decision. That decision they won’t make is to purchase. Show and Tell Not all of these pages need to be visible to the public from your navigation tab. There are reasons why you wouldn’t in some cases show all those pages. You’ll share some of these pages in posts and in emails but not just let people randomly visit them. You use these pages, to capture email addresses. You use those emails to share more information when it’s appropriate. But here they are. I’ll dive into each one in detail.
Content Start Now Make sense? If you’re overwhelmed, start where you are. Remember that functional is better than attractive and fancy. It’s so easy to invest in a “pretty” website that doesn’t function and confuses. Your son or daughter can build you a basic website. Beyond that, start making money. When you have more to invest you can spend more. What you don’t see above is this… do you have a way to collect money? And do you make it easy for a customer who wants to work with you or apply to work with you to spend money? Now, when they’re looking at 11pm at night in their time zone? Make it easy to buy That moment of impulse is one you do not want to let go by. If you don’t have a “shopping cart.” Have a simple way to book a session where you’ll collect the fee in person. Have a Venmo account you give them. Have a PayPal account. Have a way to let them do a transaction when they want to do it. Fitness Business Support | Legal & Taxes Masterclass Bundle https://www.flippingfifty.com/taxmc
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Wed, 21 April 2021
You have to get emails delivered before they can be opened. They have to be opened before they can be read. And they have to be read before they’ll click to anything you’re selling or asking them to do next. So, I’m going to break down how to get better results at each step. You have to fight to keep your delivery rate high. So many marketers, scammers, and bulk email senders are making it harder and harder. But, never forget that email is still the number one way you’re going to nurture and then sell your customers. So what do you do in order to get emails delivered? Get your emails delivered:
Get your emails opened: Create better subject lines – May’s Newsletter, or Mondays Motivational Newsletter … are not it. Think front of the New York Times, cover of Cosmopolitan, for inspiration. Questions work well. Peak curiosity. Shock them. Use a statistic that involves them. Spend 80% of your time on the subject line and 20 on the content. Get your email click rate higher:
Email or CRM (Customer Relationship Managers):
Terms:
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Tue, 20 April 2021
Storytelling for fitness and health coaches gives you a way to bridge a relationship with customers you otherwise won’t have. You are Too Good to Be True Say you’re fit, athletic and always have been. Say you’re happily married, and have the grown kids, a big house and your husband’s the big breadwinner, so you enjoy big vacations and no stress. Or you’re thin, have your hair done religiously, live alone, have no one but yourself to schedule around. You always put make up on before you leave the house and you work out daily even if it means doing it at 5am before work. You never eat anything “bad” and there’s no junk food in your pantry. Can people who need you really relate to you? Not unless you tell a story. You’re too good to be true. They think they’re too different than you. Storytelling for fitness and health coaches is a big asset. And it’s free, fun, and everyone has stories. Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist… offer BONUS I recently gave a master class about the connection between libido and exercise. It goes far beyond looking good and feeling good. If you’re interested in the connection between type, timing, of exercise and hormones for libido, the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist is just for you and the clients you want. Headlines Matter The subject was: Here’s how my stepdad said “the date is over” Inside I told readers how my dad would flash the landing lights at about midnight, and definitely more feverishly if it was after midnight. So, my date and I sitting on the couch would get the message it was time for him to go. Then I launched into the details of libido then and now. Emails like that, not only get opened (remember that’s because of the subject line), but they get responses. People write in things like, that took me back to high school. That’s exactly what you want. Storytelling for Fitness and Health Coaches connects you Your story is not about you. It’s telling a story that allows your reader or listener to put themselves in the story. Stories connect you to an audience like facts and research – that are also important – can’t. But guess what? They remember the stories. They remember you told them. Because as the saying goes, people don’t remember what you said, they remember how you made them feel. How to tell your story: Start by collecting your stories. Just think about ones you always tell at family gatherings. These might be the ones you have to live down and have since you were 12! Just do a dump and spend 10 minutes writing the details out of stories that come to mind. Even pieces of stories. Don’t filter them. You’ll figure out later what you’re going to do with them. Categorize each story by the emotions you felt when it was happening. Think about emotions your ideal customer goes through. What are they feeling before they start to work with you? What are they feeling as they start to work with you? After they work with you what do they feel? You want a lot of stories. And you want to follow them all the way from beginning to end so you can:
The Moment You Know At the end of 2012, I knew I wanted to leave my job and start something bigger. I’d already started to pull away from traditional, safety, and security. It had been a big deal for me to quit my position as a Senior Lecturer in Kinesiology at Iowa State. I loved it. But I no longer had the hours to do that and manage personal training department at a multisite gym. I wanted to have a bigger impact, faster and the path to do that wasn’t clear, but I trusted it. Then 4 years later after creating systems and seeing what worked (and didn’t) I wanted to share it with more fitness professionals. I quit. Show Them: I've Been There While building courses and an online presence… I have felt completely lost, been easily distracted, not known which thing to do first, second… and which things I needed to stop doing. And I figured it out. I learned how to ask for help. I joined courses, master classes and masterminds… not one.. many of each over the next 7 years. I now know which ones I could have skipped and which gave me exactly what I needed. Invest in Yourself I've spent over $200,000 in masterminds, training, and courses in the last 7 years. Much of it before I had the actual $25,000 to reinvest on masterminds. You have to do a small amount of investing in yourself and put yourself on the hook. I was comfortable before I quit. Very comfortable. That’s what made it hard to quit. But I believed there was more… more influence on changing the fitness industry, on changing lives of fitness professionals who care, and helping more of the population improve their quality of life. Fast Forward (But It's Not an Overnight Success) But today? I’m making 12x the monthly revenue I was at that very comfortable place. I can live anywhere in the world I want to, I have amazing colleagues and a network of people I’ve connected with from all over the world. I’ve lived in Boulder and Scottsdale … and am choosing right now where I want to go next. And so can you. It’s why I started the BYB Mastermind Masterclass series for Flipping 50 Fitness Specialists and others who want to grow their business, originally, and why I brought it back in 2021 to help coaches build and rebuild their business. |
Mon, 19 April 2021
Know you should charge more and raise your coaching rates but afraid you’ll lose clients if you do? Here’s what happened when I raised rates. (Listen to the podcast) In the first week I attracted 2 lawyers, a realtor, an entrepreneur, and a financial planner who purchased without ever talking to me. I lost clients who were overly concerned about every minute, and got ones who focused on the transformation, the ones who do the work and own up when they don’t. How to Raise Health Coaching & Fitness Training Rates
Rate raising becomes a big launch opportunity when you approach it like this and treat your current customers like VIPs you’re letting in on a secret. Keep Promoting Just don’t neglect to continue promoting your services after you raise your rates. It’s important that you address any imposter syndrome. It’s natural to feel uneasy raising health coaching rates. But you’ll be surprised how it gives you more confidence to do it and you’ll upgrade your service as a result. Go High Enough Make it worthwhile for you to go to this effort to raise your rates. Meaning, if you don’t double them, at the least make it noticeable. I raised coaching rates by $200, then $300, and then by $500. That was the equivalent of between 20% to 25%. When you add the increased revenue with grade A clients there’s a lot to love. You can do something similar when you discontinue a product. You’re using urgency to your advantage but it this case it’s not a short term same, it’s real. REGISTER HERE: Flippingfifty.com/taxmc
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Sun, 18 April 2021
Your fitness business needs a minimum of 5 legal documents and probably more. But here’s a start. What not to do: Just go online, Google terms of service, copy and paste and use it on your site. You are not protected. You have no idea if your services and products are all included. Here are the 5. Think of this as your checklist for what you have and what you need on your website. Don’t panic; but do start putting your next legal step on your radar.
Terms of Service In this document you include everything about delivery, what they have and don’t have after purchase, access, and the refund policy is also often here. Each product or service you have may have a unique clause. My membership for instance, is an automatically renewing subscription until we’re given notice for cancellation. We specify when then cancellation must come or we can withhold a portion of the refund if we choose to on a late cancellation. Refund Policy People will pursue refunds even if you’ve clearly stated your refund policy. It will still take time and time is money. It’s also stress and takes you away from what you should be focused on. But at the least if PayPal or a credit card chargeback do occur, you have recourse. You can show the service or product terms agreed to, that you did your part, and 4 out of 5 times I’ve “won.” Though it’s never a sweet victory. The customer is still angry. Often, I was too in the beginning. I’ve softened. Usually, a customer is confused, stressed about something else in their life, upset they didn’t keep track of their purchases and it was never about you. Affiliate Disclaimer Sharing any equipment or products you love? Maybe from your Amazon store? You have to tell them in plain site that you’ll make money if they use your link. I have a resources page. I highly recommend to our Flipping 50 Fitness Specialists that affiliates be a part of their business! There are products and services that make your customers more successful. If you’re recommending them, why shouldn’t you get some credit? You should. But you do have to have a disclosure statement on the web page, or in an email when you share. Privacy Policy Everyone wants to know you don’t share their information with anyone. You don’t store their credit card information on you website. As an extension of this you may also want to tell them if you’re using cookies on your site. Disclaimer If you are posting images of exercise, or videos, or even discussing how to create a workout, a disclaimer is important. And yes, you should be doing all of those things. But you should do so under the umbrella disclaimer that “Not all exercise is appropriate for every body. The advice on this site is in no way a substituted for medical advice. Before starting this or any exercise program seek the advice of a medical professional.” Legal documents shouldn’t be an afterthought. Have them updated regularly. As you add, delete, or change your services, so too should your legal documents change. Other Items You Want Legal Advice on:
Lost in Legal Document Mumbo Jumbo? In May and June as a part of my Mastermind Masterclass series I’m hosting not one but two lawyers who specialize in these details (as well as Trademark and copyright types of questions). For a special early bird rate, I’m opening these two masterclasses to the public, and if you want in, just respond to this email. I’ll shoot you the rate (we don’t even have the order form filled out yet – but you’ll get first dibs on asking your questions if you’re in early). And I’m also hosting a tax strategist. You can get the two masterclasses together for one low price, and one major relief for a business that’s truly in good shape. GET TAX & LEGALLY STRONG: https://www.flippingfifty.com/taxmc (for the tax & legal masterclass bundle: early bird through May 4) |
Sat, 17 April 2021
Do you really need to be list building when you think you need to be training clients, and writing workouts? Do you really need to be learning how to write better copy on the sales pages you have (or need to create) so that you can sell the products and packages you have now? Do you know if you need list building, or more products or to raise your rates? Many fitness professionals love training. They love people basically. They feel good doing training. They love sharing what they know about fitness to help clients. But they also want to have a home, a family, a life and time outside of the work they love. Busy Isn’t Productive You can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame. -Mary Morrissey You’re doing lots of things. You’re busy. You can easily fool yourself that you’re doing meaningful things but look up at the end of the week or month or 6 months and know the truth. You haven’t made any more money. You may have gained clients, but you also lost them. You’re in the same exact spot with no time to take off, no two weeks of vacation, certainly not paid, and you don’t really jump out of bed loving what you’re doing. Where do you need to focus?
Almost all fitness professionals can improve in each area at least a little. We all want to be doing what we do better and more effectively, right? But there’s one thing that will make the biggest difference for you right now. Do you know what it is? List Building Isn’t Sexy List building for many is not very sexy. But it is the real estate you own. List Building or Dumping Members? Unfortunately, too many fitness businesses think of it as a place to dump their members when they join. So, they can email them spammy emails about more ways to spend money with programs. That’s not a model that works very well. If you’re not giving your email subscribers something to look forward to in your emails, a recipe, a gift, a workout, a research study, a statistic, why do they need you? The Harvard Wellness newsletter or the Google can give them more support and fewer sales pitches. Episodes you also might like: Show up When You're Not Selling Fitness Services Always Let Them Know You Sell (without selling!)
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Fri, 16 April 2021
If you could increase every fitness sale by 15% or 20% would that make a difference in your bottom line? Of course, it would. Have you ever gone for a massage or booked online and had the option of adding a scalp massage, or an eye treatment? The massage itself was $85 or $100 and the add-on was $10 or $20, right? That was my recent experience for a birthday massage anyway.
There you have it, 5 more ways (I’ve shared others) to increase every fitness sale. If it works with chocolate cake, it will work with health and wellness right now. But only if you ask. The biggest key for you, is doing this “upselling” so that you’re not exchanging more of your time. You make it easier for your customer to succeed at the core service they purchased by offering something they need to do that. But you create it once and sell it many times so they use it on their own, or with prompts from you during their sessions. If you’ve never created this type of passive income that gets your customers much more actively engaged in your business, and have no idea where to start to create something of value, join me for a masterclass about building your business. It’s the start of how to learn more about serving women in midlife. More episodes you might like: |
Thu, 15 April 2021
Shareable fitness content gets you more likes, comments, and um, shares. But more than that it gets you more exposure. When the right people (your ideal customer) shares, saves, comments, or likes (in descending order of importance), you get more love from your platform. First things first. Are you on the right platform? If you have no audience, no followers and more of your tribe are on Facebook than Instagram and you’re killing yourself on Instagram, you’re wasting your time. There’s only so much time. You don’t have time to waste right? So the post creation, posting, responding to your comments and asking questions to engage… you likely have other things to do today. Make sure the time you spend (and yes, you need to be there) on social is giving back to you. Now, let’s talk shareable fitness content. I’d be willing to bet that you have some posts that you thought were juicy, thought-provoking, and deserved more love but got the cold shoulder. Am I right? If that’s true don’t be afraid to go back to it and repurpose it into one of these ideas. What’s shareable?
Why they’ll share?
Make it specific: not “everybody” friendly. Here’s why… if you want to grow a niche and a strong following, you are talking to one demographic. A large gym? Having multiple accounts would be smart. Time consuming? Yes, but guess what? The time you’re spending talking to no one specifically now is a huge waste of time getting you nowhere. Give your accounts to the trainers or people who work with a specific demographic. Middle and older women, young moms, and young men are a best start. Resources I use:
Never steal. If you look at someone’s post, you love it and you share it, take note. What about it did you love? And realize you’ve just been marketed to in the best way. Someone gave you something you find useful and want to use again. Do that for your tribe. |
Wed, 14 April 2021
Need a fitness marketing goldmine to kickstart better results? You already have it. Frequently asked customer questions are an amazing (and easy) source of content to create. You’ve probably answered the same questions dozens of times if you’ve been in business serving the same demographic for very long at all. What you’re looking for is not the generic:
But you’re looking for the questions that your best paying customers have or had before they became customers. Things like this are a fitness marketing goldmine:
Other fitness marketing goldmine sources are those Q and A sessions you offer (you are offering them right?) Nervous About Q and A Sessions? If you’re nervous about doing that, or afraid of getting a question you can’t answer, you’re not alone. Let’s deal with that before I go on. No one ever has all the answers in the universe. Right? So, I want you to know that at any moment you might have to say, “I don’t know the best answer to that right now, but I’ll find out. Thank you for asking.” Authentic. Second, I want you to know that you’re controlling the questions you answer. Do that in two ways. Have a list of questions you’ve already rounded up. Come prepared. That will get the ball rolling and you’ll be comfortable because you have been able to prep. Then, you won’t necessarily be able to answer every question on every Q and A session. So, if you have someone doing it with you who can screen the questions great. But most of the time you’re doing these solo when you start and you are taking the questions. Have two screens, the one you’re live on and the one you can see comments coming in on. There’s often a delay and you don’t see the Qs in real time on Facebook. Then also go back and look at that or have a team member do so a couple days after. As others watch the recording, there will be new questions. Don’t let the questions asked that you answered in the video bug you! Take those added questions as a sign, they are hot topics. Repurpose that Fitness Marketing Goldmine You can take that very video you did and splice it into several posts. You’ve got content to rotate into your social media that can support your marketing for weeks. But it’s not just creative content that you’ve tried to copy from someone else. It’s literally the best possible kind of content coming right from your ideal customers. Know the Right Questions Don’t settle for less. Don’t be tempted to come up with questions they should ask. Even if stating their questions out loud makes you cringe a little. Here’s what I mean. Prospects often think that they know more than they do. They still have old ideas about exercise. They might say, “I’m tired all the time and can’t lose weight. Which should I do, xxx or yyy first?” And I’m thinking, neither of those is a good option for you based on what you’ve just said. So, the question you ask might make you feel like you want to correct it even before you ask it. That’s okay. Ask the question the way the individual asked it. Then answer respectfully. That could be the moment of truth bomb that makes someone realize they don’t know what they don’t know. Summary: Did you do a Q and A? What were the most FAQs? Break them into single questions and answer in posts. |
Wed, 14 April 2021
Increase your fitness business now so that when more and more people are vaccinated, gain confidence, they have it in you. Push that re-entry up by weeks or months by being there, being transparent, and having conversations. Host Educational Zoom Classes
Host Lives on Facebook and Instagram Quick Tips for Energy or Specific Problem Solving Instead of “drink more water” make it HOW to do it, how to make it easier, tips and suggestions from trainers Instead of “prioritize sleep” make it about HOW to do it, sleep hygiene tips that work, a a guided relaxation session Publish more content-rich articles that you share in email and social media than “posting to post” empty memes that go nowhere (especially not back to your website). What Must Happen to Increase Your Fitness Business Now?
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Mon, 12 April 2021
Do you need to upgrade your audio and video to do social media and zoom meetings? Is it lights, camera, audio and action or are you stalling? Your images, and video quality do matter. The right lighting makes all the difference. Here's a random collection of tips that you still have to do when you upgrade your audio and video. Start now and make whatever you're using better! Tips to upgrade audio and video presence online
Below are a few of the worst mistakes you can make:
Tips to enhance video:
Most of all... know the "look" you're going for and do it. Whether you're on a plane taking a selfie with a "fan" - the first time this happened to me three years ago I was so surprised... and humbled. Here's why... I'd been in a super big hurry, worked til the last minute, left for the airport essentially in a baseball cap and old sweats (not really but you get the idea, no shower no makeup). Of course that's when it happens! Kind of a fail for my brand though it was very authentic! If you always use a filter... do. If you never do, don't. But don't be sometimes using and sometimes not. If you always do close ups, do. If it's always food or people or ... you decide. Call the shots. The content you use the message you share should be so strong they'll tolerate a poor audio occasionally. But make it the absolute exception. Sometimes that killer content you'll have to kill to stay on the quality brand you want. Resources:
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Sun, 11 April 2021
How do you show up when you’re not selling fitness services? (this is list-building) But it’s not salesy, spammy, sleazy promotion. If you wouldn’t say it in a conversation with a stranger, don’t say it. Honestly, this is likely the biggest downfall of every fitness professional and fitness center. It’s almost balls-to-the-walls during a promotion and then it’s… crickets. What's Between? So how do you show up between selling fitness services? Keep sharing! Keep sharing that content that they love.
Selling your fitness services is something you’re always going to do, make no mistake. But how you do it changes dramatically. In a recent episode (episode 9 of this April 2021 streak) I shared how you do that. I recommend you go back and listen to it. Imagine this from your customer’s viewpoint. You got them involved in your email list by offering something for free. Brick and Mortar? If you’re a fitness center or studio and you’re not doing this, you’re only automatically adding new members to your list and emailing them when programs open, you’re missing the boat. You could be growing that list and your relationships with prospects long before they buy from you. It will shorten your time to selling if you do a good job because they’ll already be experiencing tremendous value from you. The only way to do that is to segment lists. You have lists that are for your women in midlife, for your older adults over 65, your young moms… because you have to have a very different conversation with them all. The Whole List This past year there – to give you an example – there would have been many times you may have wanted to email all your people. Updates about COVID, open/closed status, safety, immunity and exercise... applies to everyone. And that’s easy to do by simply choosing all your tags. But the biggest mistake when it comes to email marketing (that is any time you’re sending an email) is sending everybody everything. Look, if it comes from my brother or niece, I’m going to open it no matter what. But if a business is sending me something I don’t want or need, my first stop is “unsubscribe.” Then you’ve lost your opportunity to sell to them. Always There Always Giving We have to show up when we’re not selling fitness services by having the right conversation with our prospective customers. You’ll know you’re doing a good job at this because your open rates will increase. Your unsubscribes will decrease (but unsubscribes are not bad when you’re cleaning a list of non-buyers or people who would never buy what you’re promoting. |
Sat, 10 April 2021
Should you collaborate more than you are? Earlier in this daily tips streak (episode 2 – it’s that important) I talked about the power of collaboration. Are you collaborating? I collaborate with people who serve the same people I do. I collaborate with people who compliment what I do. My collaborators are OBGYNs, essential oil experts, protein researchers, fitness association founders, sleep experts. Who should you collaborate with next? If you’re resistant to this:
For me collaboration doesn’t come naturally. The reason isn’t because I think I know it all. I’m sure I’ve confirmed I don’t! But it’s the personality quality in me that’s like, get it done. I want to think about it in the morning and implement it in the afternoon. I want to be responsible for the outcome and results. I’m a big believer that you have to do it the first time before you can improve it. It will never be great… if it isn’t first good, even mediocre and done is better than perfect. Getting It Right Means Starting Because it’s only when you’re giving it to your people, your tribe, that you’re getting feedback about what works. I recently added a colleague to one of my programs and asked her to go through it. Right away she gave me feedback and I implemented a change immediately. Now, thanks to her I’m contemplating an even bigger change. While you may not think about this as your response to who you collaborate with, it is! Of course there are other ways. Collaboration – whether now or in the future – is going to require nurturing relationships. How Do You Nurture Relationships?
So, who would it be natural for you to collaborate with for both you to benefit? Start a list, and then nurture it. If you belong to a mastermind, it’s been one of the best things I’ve ever done to join multiple masterminds. And you hear guests on my podcast, know I have contributors to my books, and I create content for their membership sites as well as ask them to do the same. I also affiliate for them and them for me. Resources: Facebook.com/groups/fitnessmarketinginsiders Q and A masterclass about the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Prior episodes you may like: |
Fri, 9 April 2021
Even when you’re not selling things, you want to let them know you sell things. You’re a business, after all. Look, if you’re watching what some social media influencer does on social media and mimicking them, you may lose. An “influencer” doesn’t have the same business model as you. You have products, services, packages. No, you don’t want to sell on social media. But you sell the idea that you sell. How Can You Let Them Know You Sell Things? (when you’re not selling)
I was just talking about a Quit Sugar challenge a friend of mine is doing and to introduce the problem to my audience -and help them feel like they are not alone – I told a story about a client I worked with for a long time who was a grandmother. She’d buy bags of candy for dozens of grandchildren for the Christmas stockings and Easter Egg hunt and May Day. And she bought extra. She stashed them in her desk and work and she’d polish off an entire bag of chocolate eggs in a day. Now if you got lost in that example, come back to why I told the story. I did two things by doing that. Yes, I comforted someone addicted to sugar reading it. There's More But with that story I also told my entire email list – again- that I coach private clients.
Especially if you’ve got big gaps between program launches – twice a year, for instance, it’s important that you’re growing your following and email list so that you have more people to sell to when launch times happen. Send to the Right People If you have programs starting all the time, be sure you have segmented your list. Otherwise you’re sending them content that has nothing to do with them, and it’s a promotion, and they’re wondering too often why they want to have this piece of useless information cluttering up the inbox.
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Thu, 8 April 2021
Alienating your ideal customers? It’s easier than you might think to fall into this trap. You want to teach them and give them the clear instructions of what they should do! You mean well! But it comes across as teaching and preaching. Instead of alienating your ideal customers you of course want to be nurturing them. Here’s how. Raise them up. Lift them up. You crave it and I crave it. So does your audience. I teach a concept in our mastermind I’ll share with you right now. Raise & Praise vs Teach & Preach™ It’s human nature to avoid messages that feel like lectures, sermons, or our parents enforcing rules. We run towards positivity and encouragement. It can be a challenge to know which you tend to use. You may not even realize you do it. It’s important to consider whether your content is answering a burning question for your audience and solving a problem for them. If it’s not, why will it have relevance? People find us for quick wins. Providing a lesson or teaching won’t do that for them or do any favors for your business either. Go back to basics.
Read 5 of your recent posts. Answer these questions: Does the post start with a question or a statement? Does the post tell someone to do something or discuss a problem they have? Does the post jump to an answer or explore why there is a certain belief or behaviors they default to? Does copy in the post text copy or compliment the image? Does the image peak curiosity or tell the whole story (so there’s no reason to stop scrolling)? Your answers when you look at them all combined will reveal your default and why you might not be getting as much traction with posts. There may not be anything wrong with your message. It could be your delivery. How to avoid alienating your ideal customers? Raise them up. Avoid preaching. At some point if you’re working with a client you need to take on that persona of an expert who gives advice. But while you’re romancing a prospect you want to raise them up by coaching them with questions. Resources: Facebook.com/groups/fitnessmarketinginsiders Next Q and A masterclass about the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist |
Wed, 7 April 2021
Let them see you, the real you. If you’re hiding behind perfect images, perfectly showered and made-up you, and it takes effort, and you have to be “camera-ready” all the time, you may struggle to grow. Are there accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers with that type of post? There are some I suppose, but if you look for the icons who don’t actually have celebrity and an identity already, there aren’t nearly as many. There’s a lot to be said. A few recent posts that have gotten greater attention for me: (It’s important to note that I don’t automatically share the same posts, and I don’t even share the same images and posts to Facebook as I do to Instagram. I keep it different and unique to the platform about 95% of the time. Those who follow me on Instagram get the photo-centric content IG is known for. And they’re treated to different content than someone on Fb sees.)
With all the women who likely have the same tinted images in their photo albums, that wore the same scratchy cheerleading outfit, and remembered when French braids were all the rage.
Let Them See You: Authentic You I point out these things to make sure that you know that in none of these, except maybe the high school senior picture was I “picture perfect” or at least retro perfect. The best I’ll do most times is change from pajamas to a workout top, and sometimes not even that. My point is that perfect isn’t my point.. or yours.
I don’t workout in make-up. Do you? Personally, I laugh at women who do. If I happen to have make-up on and I’m going to the gym, I wash my face before I start. And I put my message before my insecurities. Trust me, I’ll be on and you’re looking at your reflection but I don’t let my mind go to something like, oh, honey you could use a little mascara or lip color. Whatever I’m going to say is much more important to me than that. Who Are You? That may or may not be the “you” that you need to show. But what is? If you can find the setting, the clothing, the face… that’s ‘real’ and be that most often, they’ll hear your message more authentically. Let them see you. Other Episodes you might like: |
Tue, 6 April 2021
My formula for social media has been shared at International Council on Active Aging, SCW, and in my private mastermind and consulting client meetings. I mentioned this yesterday. The quick 411 is this. You need content, called cornerstone content on your website. And every time you’re creating a blog, a podcast, a book or a video, you have half a dozen new pieces of content. Here it is by the numbers. I create a podcast a week – and sometimes two during this year when podcasts are just so much easier to listen to than blogs are to read. This month of course is special, it’s a streak of 30 days to provide ideas and inspiration to take action on. So, for illustration purposes for my Flipping 50 audience say I have two podcast posts, and an exercise video weekly.
You don’t want to sit around and plan social from scratch. Use the content you have to inspire posts by using slices of it. Resource for your bios: Link.tre Resources mentioned:Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Learn More About the Mastermind
Leave a rating in iTunes and a question or comment there or below in the show notes at fitnessmarketingmastery.com/podcast Steps for Success in your next social media post plan: 1) create cornerstone content or go to that existing content that gets you the most traffic (Google analytics tells you) 2) pull the juicy quotes and statistics from it 3) create graphics or find images - and they need not be specific. For instance, an engaging nature picture or image of you could intrigue your viewer to read your text. Tie it in, but you don't have to match it! |
Mon, 5 April 2021
Social media content is a burden for many fitness pros and companies. It’s either tossed to a staff person who really has no idea how to get growth and engagement, or it’s your baby and you have limited time. It does take planning, and you know I’m a fan of creating your pillar content first. You need blogs, articles, videos (and the transcripts), or podcasts on your site. It’s from that I teach a 365 formula for social media. You chop that content into little pieces and use it like little soldiers to bring people back to your website. You don’t want a relationship with them solely on social. Always bring them back for the real goods. More on that tomorrow. Today though, I want to illustrate how this helps you create those pillars you’ll always talk about on social media. Simple Social Media Content Generation You probably already have four or five pillars you always talk about. But every week as you or your VA are planning content, you’re going to be looking for ways to make it come alive. You need ways to generate simple social media content fast, but it’s got to be good! Don’t waste that real estate or risk someone seeing it and not being interested enough to stop the scroll, like, comment, save, or share. Look at your insights. They’ll tell you whether you’re reaching an emotional level or not. But say you’re sharing health tips like catching up on checkups, especially in this year when a lot of women let them go. Instead of just a generic tip, why not use:
That’s using a relatable story that will hit home a lot more than just a question about what health checkups you’re due for. Keep doing this and keep watching your insights. They’ll improve if you’re focused on talking to ONE person. |
Sun, 4 April 2021
Doubt that fitness marketing works, or at least what you’re doing does? I’ve grown organically from you YouTube channel (and grown that organically). But I am not always sure and neither are you that it’s still working without asking. So here’s how. In a birthday post recently… I shared some funny, odd, things about my background, not all related to fitness or being a coach or research-driven wellness pro. At the end I asked people to tell me how we met. They did, and many of them said ... youtube. Trust me there was a lot of blind faith posting when there were hardly any views on posts. When I recorded with a really bad microphone in a really bad basement bedroom where internet was an issue. But over time, my consistency and on target message got through. And it can for you too. Proof Fitness Marketing Works… and changes lives A woman also told me in March that her husband had passed March 5th. Before he died he made her promise to keep working with me because he knew how much it meant to her. She had first “met” me there. Then did a course, then joined my membership. And 4 years later she’s still a member and such a helping hand to other members. It’s amazing the reach you have and the impact of a free video, if it truly helps people. Other episodes in this series you might like: Resources mentioned:Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Learn More About the Mastermind
Working with women in menopause? Not getting results? Or maybe it's you! You and I are not immune to hormone change! Visit my home page, watch the video and if that resonates, I'll send you exactly how to start working with women who are definitely actively seeking hormone balancing fitness specialists! |
Sat, 3 April 2021
If you don’t take a stand what will make your message memorable? Demand attention by having a real opinion. Are you worth listening to? In today’s social media climate, no one is going to listen to the same old same old. While you want to be likeable you might be trying so hard that you’re not sharing anything memorable. Slow down to make your point and really have one. In another post I’ll give some examples how you can make simple guidelines and fitness principal reminders come alive. In this post I just want to share opinions that are getting a lot of engagement. The trick is, to make sure you get engagement that is from the people you want to attract and repelling to those you don’t want to attract. For example, right now or in the past year have you shared anything about vaccines or masks? And your personal view on them? That’s an example of how to take a stand. 3 Examples of how to take a stand:
And finally...
What would you die on a hill for? What are you "for?" What are you "against?" |
Fri, 2 April 2021
Six years ago, I started writing my third book. I got the idea (first collaboration, because this was not my idea, I have David Newman to thank for that of Do It Marketing) to ask an expert to contribute a short piece to the end of each chapter. I had my chapters written and wanted to include them because their expertise was deeper than mine. So, for sleep, for instance I asked The Sleep Doctor, Dr. Michael Breus to contribute. Well during our interview he said, you’d be perfect for a health summit group I belong to. He introduced me. I attended. At the same conference I applied to join the mastermind and I’ve been a member ever since. Power of Collaboration I have belonged to several masterminds – at one time. And I have run masterminds and began one again in 2021 because trainers and health coaches are struggling. Struggling to find voice, build a brand, and stand out in this noisy online world. I have over the last year increased revenues by 37% and in the last quarter by 54% and none of that happens alone. Now, you don’t know where I was last year. But let me say it this way. I was very comfortable 8 years ago when I quit my job. Very comfortable. And in December I made 12 times my average monthly paycheck from 2013 employed by someone else. It Takes a Village You can’t do that kind of thing alone. My goals for 2021 are bigger. And it’s largely going to be due to partnerships, helping others grow their reach and ability to change lives and asking them to help me. One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is to ask for help. Be willing not just to give but to ask for help. Asking, what do you see that I might be missing? Or telling someone you are struggling is hard. I’ve been there. Can You Ask for Help? I was at a low place one year in particular. It was time to renew my mastermind or give notice I was leaving. I knew by then the power of the group. But I was financially still struggling, still building from zero and we’d just suffered a huge tragedy in our family. My niece’s husband had been killed by a drunk and high driver riding his bike. He left 3 boys ages 3, 6 and 9 and his high school sweetheart. It was very fresh and I was between a rock and hard place. I couldn’t take financial or emotional hardship. In the end, I already told you I’ve been a member for 5 years, so you know I renewed. And it was the smarted thing I’ve done. Business growth brings inevitable personal growth. The right mastermind ends up being your closest friends. I’ve had interventions from my mastermind mentors and friends and given some myself. Give and Take While doing something for someone else probably comes easier, I encourage you to ask someone for help today. Where aren’t you making progress that you need help? Ask. |
Thu, 1 April 2021
Think you need to do more? So, 27 certifications later, you could be tired, out of cash, and still not have anyone really paying you for all of those “credentials.” Have you gotten stuck in the certification, workshop hamster wheel? You just keep going around in circles. You’re taking training after training but then you don’t actually have the business model before you do? You don’t get that kind of training in most certifications. You get possibilities. All the Things? Here’s the thing: most successful 6 and higher figure fitness professionals do a few things really, really well. They don’t do all the things. You can’t make a business out of barre and yoga and boxing, and Pilates, and nutrition coaching. Why Do More Doesn’t Work You probably won’t make that 6 figures by serving everyone or even women of all ages. Sometime soon you won’t even be able to serve just women in menopause. You’ll need to serve women in menopause with arthritis or osteoporosis or who are endurance athletes. Find the few things you do and the best way to find them is find your people. Decide who you serve. It’s not what you do it’s who you serve and what they tell you they struggle with. Even in a small rural area, you want to pick a niche. The world is now your platform. We’ve seen it in the last year if you didn’t believe it before that. Narrow Your Niche Some people would say, I don’t have that luxury of narrowing my niche because I’m in a small town. Not any more. And I don’t think ever. You can train everyone… but you’ll really just train your friends if you’re doing that, and the people they tell about you. But if you want to be an expert, to create a system or method, and make it serve many more so you have a bigger influence, you choose your people. Narrow it down and serve then so well they don’t want anyone else. |
Wed, 24 March 2021
New personal training revenue streams are a welcome topic in 2021. If it was a tough year for you, there’s light ahead. But chances are with vaccines, increased feelings of safety, people are going to opt for more of a hybrid exercise style for a long time. They’ve invested in the at home equipment. They’re not just going to let that Peleton and the $49 monthly membership collect dust. Plus, they’ve discovered they can and it’s convenient. They like it. And they’re getting results because it’s easier to fit it in. I think they’ll come back. We’re social beings. But having a hybrid option and many more revenue streams in place will post-pandemic proof your business. That’s going to be good in any economic struggle. Fitness will always be essential. People seek positivity and movement. We are essential. But be prepared with options for individuals and for yourself. 10 New Personal Training Revenue Streams
Between active sessions or instead of them
massage therapist, nutritionist, acupuncturist, stem cell physician, dermatologist
To teach any above
Partner, small group, and large group
For a discount, for coaching, for a family healthy mission
Rebounders, treadmills, bands, tubing, stationary bikes (you provide the workouts), weighted vests Resources mentioned: Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Learn More About the Mastermind
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Wed, 3 March 2021
Hiring a team seem too far off? This episode is about how to make your life easier, run a business better, and learn valuable lessons about communicating right from the beginning... even with one. If you struggle with delegating (hello, join my support group), this is for you. If you’re a “I can do it myself faster” kind-of-gal, I get you. And you can. Until you can’t. My Start Listen, in December of 2020 my business made more than 12 times what I made in 2012 working very comfortably for someone else. It was right about then I began to spend 100% of my time building my own business, now Flipping 50, (and Fitness Marketing Mastery) with two arms to the business – supporting women in midlife with smarter exercise endocrinology - and teaching fitness professionals how to market and grow their own unique niches. When I started? My revenue dropped to below zero. No more debt-free, dispensable income. Instead, hours of learning, taking courses, attending very different kinds of conferences, and no revenue coming in. That winds you upside-down really fast. So fast I had to sell my house… and that’s a story for another day. Doing What You Have to Do But for the first 3 years of that business I did it ALL. And I mean all. The email delivery system set up, hiring the website design, and overseeing that. Getting clients, creating social media, figuring out how to start – launch – promote not one but two podcasts. I wrote blogs 2-4 weekly and podcast episodes, and created the graphics and infographics. I’m tired! And you may have needed to do that. But here’s what I wish I’d have known. Sooner. That my time is more valuable than that per hour. And once I had a system, handing that off to someone else would have been smarter use of my time. Truly to be a business, an influencer, with a mission, you can speak what you are about to someone else in a way they can support you. Not Hiring a Team Just Yet? So, you’re not hiring a team yet? Okay, no worries. Here’s what you can do. Fiverr.com is a service and it’s pronounced (“5-er”) like the number. I’d been using it for a year or so when my son was going off to college in 2013. I told him you could have anything done for about 5 bucks. Editing papers, resumes, cover letter preparation… and so can you! Some jobs are more than that but it’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s so easy to start. You’re out very little if it doesn’t work, and you can ask for edits. Why Fiverr.com?
Here are 10 ways to Fiverr it if you’re not yet hiring a team:
That’s just to get you started. From that you can probably think of 10 more. Just think about what you’ve spent time on in the last 3 days that really isn’t something that is:
But before you go Fiverr.com to replace hiring a team, make sure that you don’t just go there and go shopping. You’ll go down a rabbit hole. You’ll lose an hour thinking of all the things you could create, and how cool it would be. Don’t! Like going to the grocery store for our clients, you’ve got to have a list. Know what you need. Is it website design, or editing for your ebook? Is it graphics for your social media? YOU want to have already created the list of business assets and the next steps you need. You want to be sure that you really NEED vs have a Nice to Have when you’re starting out. It’s easy to spend money! Make a Profit or It's Really Not a Business One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been eliminating all the “extras.” I’ve gotten really good at distinguishing NEED to have vs NICE to have in my business. If you’re just getting started, you want to stay lean while you put money into places that will make you profitable, not just there, or even creating revenue if there is no profit margin. Try fiverr.com here: http://www.fiverr.com/s2/2851b750ff Ultimately, hiring a team is going to be a step you’ll take. But for now, this is a perfect baby step that will teach you how to lead and manage projects. Whether You're Solo or You've Got a Team If you love, want, and need business growth tips for your fitness business… and you serve women in midlife … I have a special invitation to an upcoming Masterclass to help you overcome the biggest mistakes trainers & health coaches make in:
Save your spot: https://www.flippingfifty.com/specialist-masterclass
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Thu, 25 February 2021
If you’re taking the time to post but need to more social media engagement, this is for you. Wondering how you stop getting a handful of comments on a post and start getting some traction? After observing hundreds of posts and giving feedback for consulting clients about why what they’re doing isn’t working and how to get better results, I realized the majority of mistakes are just unintentional glitches. What is this Post About? So, this post is all about how to make Intentional corrections to what you’re doing. You can boost your social media engagement. And it doesn’t just take throwing money at a post, in fact that easy, sleazy way of boosting a post with money? Will fail you every time while Facebook gets rich on it. There’s only one reason to boost a post, and that’s to test it. Then if it’s working you go into Business Manager and create a real campaign to get real results. That, is an entire other podcast, actually a master class and you do need to create ads, friends. If you’re serious about using Facebook and growing a business, you’ll need to. But first… what you post has to be worth it. Boost your social media engagement organically before you move on. Start Here No matter who you’re targeting, talk to them not at them. But first…
Okay, now that we’ve handled that, let’s move on. Ask a question every ideal customer (even a stranger) can answer easily These become easier to respond to when they become polls. In Instagram or on Facebook you can create a poll. Use stories to do it, or create a meme that does it for you.
Yes or no
Home or Gym And in those two questions I increased the level of engagement. In the Yes or No “poll” it’s an easy answer. In the home or gym question, someone could have to add an answer they type in. Be thoughtful about strangers. These are prospects. They haven’t even joined the ranks of your leads yet! They like to vote but they aren’t going to spend a lot of time doing so until you’re someone they already know and trust. You can try telling them, you’re taking a poll, and you’ll share the results. They’re going to want to benefit from taking the time. People do love to share their opinion, but they have to have some reason for doing it. Additional questions to boost your social media engagement
How to Stir Up Emotion I’d love to hear your experience. Did you work with a personal trainer?
Have you ever worked with an online trainer? Did 2020 make you do it? Follow up! If you’re forgetting that social media is a conversation, you could be missing the best way to increase your engagement. As soon as you post, you need to be available to engage. Go in and like and share your post from your business to your personal profile if you are your demographic. You can’t set it and forget it. If you’ve got posts scheduled, that’s fine, but be aware of them and add comments to them yourself! The more action the more traction. You can start it. If you have those few customers who follow you whatever you do, and engage with you, use that to your advantage. When they comment, respond back. Use more than 4 words to do it, and end with a follow up question. Each of those things matters to the algorithm. And be sure you don’t just have your 5 kids like your post… because if they’re boys and you’re targeting women in midlife for instance, you’re going to be shown to more people like those first responders. It’s not going to go very well for you is it? Try tagging a few friends who are in the demographic you want (who are okay with you doing that). Don’t Make This Mistake What You Do on Facebook is Not What You Do on Instagram. Or is it? I’m guessing if you’re simply automatically posting every Insta post to Facebook it’s not working very well. That’s because these are two different platforms. You’re going to say things like “link in bio” in your Instagram, and you’re going to use hashtags, that hurt your reach on Facebook. (Did you know? More than 4 on Facebook, maybe even any at this point, really decrease your reach there?) There you have it, literally some real questions you can ask, and answer, and follow up on to boost your social media engagement. Questions about how to boost your social media engagement? I’d love to hear them. But remember this… you should spend a very small amount of time on social media. It is not your content. Your content comes from your website. The social media is giving that wings and wheels so you get that message out and bring them back to your website. Do What Only You Can Do You and only you can do live video. But someone else, for a lot less $ than you should be earning per hour should be doing your social media graphics, and quotes from that content. I call that system Social 365 and I’ve taught it at 3 major fitness association conferences (ICAA, SCW, and FitnessFest). Most fitness pros start with social instead of ending there to bring people back to their site. Know your platform. I’ll link to my book Health & Fitness Professionals Guide to Social Media Marketing (Healthy Learning). Yes, any social media guide can easily be outdated by the time it reaches print. It’s why I wrote this one to be inclusive of the questions you need to ask of all your marketing and of all platforms now and in the future. (link to prior episode) Resources: Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Build Your Business MasterMind
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Wed, 17 February 2021
If you’re a female fitness business owner, even a solo personal trainer, and I would include, one working for another business, this is for you. Because 2020 rocked all our worlds, nowhere as great as fitness face-to-face and restaurants, and hotels and airlines… you may have realized you put all your eggs in one basket. Attracting customers was easy because in fact you didn’t have to do it. Someone else fed them to you. If you established a reputation of helping your clients get results, you initiated some attraction. But when that model got taken away, and even now still when a very high percentage of customers are not looking to return to the gym any time soon, you realized, uh-oh. This Episode is for You This episode is both a little tough love and a little how to take back power that was yours to have all along. You have the most power if you can sell. There are superficial titles that may make some of your fitness icons look successful, but news flash… if someone has more than 2 or 3 titles …. They don’t have more revenue. And they definitely don’t have more time and freedom. So, know what you want. The limelight is okay if that’s what you want. Just realize it may be a swap for the finances and the freedom of time and energy to live your days in charge of your own schedule. How Female Fitness Business Owners excel at sales When you feel like you can’t sell or promote your own services or products, you have a belief problem in either your services or yourself. You’ve got to:
Everyone sells. Everyone. Some do it so easily because they truly believe what they sell helps people. When I was selling for someone else, selling the services of trainers who worked for me, it was so easy. When I went from taking clients who came to me easily and filled the limited slots I had to selling my products for 100% of my income, it changed everything. It in fact, rattled me a little. You falter, you shrink… temporarily. Or at least I did. Then you either pick up your big girl self and get on with it or you go find another job working for someone else for less than you want, for hours you don’t like, and give up freedom and potential to make whatever you want. When you work for yourself as a female fitness business owner, you create money today where there was none yesterday. You can decide to create a package and sell it five minutes later. There’s nothing in the world as powerful as that. How do you get there? Flex your muscles. Start doing live social media. You can start with recorded sessions but once you do them and realize video is king, queen, and prince and princess of social you want to do lives. But how, you ask? What are you going to say? (Link to prior live social media episode) Most women do well when they start storytelling and teaching. There is a difference however in teaching/preaching and raising/praising. Teach in a way that is not condescending.
Do you hear the change? My bet is that when you aren’t selling with confidence, it’s not that you don’t believe in what you’re doing. It’s not that you don’t believe in yourself or your ability to help. More often it’s that the way you’re trying to do it, backfires on YOUR ability to feel integral around it. It feels wrong but you can’t put your finger on it. Am I right? I would love to hear your comment on this - below the show notes or a rating and comment in iTunes if you’re on an iPhone. You’re a Badass Female Fitness Business Marketer Waiting to Hatch Look at the scripts or bullet points you prepare for yourself. Rewrite them in a way that you feel like you are supporting and backing up a customer who has been frustrated and shamed by programs and trainers in the past. Review the content in the show notes here. My hope is that it will help you start to automatically convert your messages into those that connect you with the right audience. More resources: Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist Fitness Marketing Mastery Build Your Business Mastermind Mentioned in this episode: Previous episode on Live Social Media
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Sun, 14 February 2021
Live social media sessions are the best possible use of your marketing time for so many reasons. You can repurpose them
But, if you don’t plan what you’re going to talk about based on your followers, fans, and prospects asking, What’s in it for me? You could be wasting your time. Social media lives that feel like a blind date may not hold enough attraction to get me there. Live Social Media Strategy Are you asking people to show up for live social media sessions without giving them a reason to show up for lives? If you’re Jillian Michaels, the president of Lifetime Fitness, or CEO of Club Industry… maybe you’ll get lots of people showing up because you announce you’re going live at a date and time. But if you haven’t got a lot of followers, established a reason why you, or a topic that is JUICY, or given a call-to-action beyond “this is free, you should come” then you’re making a cardinal mistake. Sharing that you’re going live with your email list will help, if they’re also on that platform. It will get more of your buyers there and that will help tell the platform to show your content to more people like them. But if your buyers aren’t on that platform – aka – big mistake to try to use Instagram as your number one platform if your current customers aren’t using it as their ideal platform yet. Be Careful Sending Customers Backward Without a Plan Why spend time and energy promoting a social media platform? When they’re already your customers? I’d say that’s a silly waste of time when you’d want to be thinking about how you upsell those people and keep them busy doing your program instead of taking them back to a relationship on social. Now if they’re there…. Great. But you want to be giving your paying customers more exclusive material, more step-by-step systems to reach success. Tell them what’s in it for them. It's all they care about.
In fact, when I do monthly webinars for my customers that’s exactly how I lay out the content on the page. My team requests that content, I add it to the form we’ve created and they’ve got the layout and system down. I’ve been doing webinars monthly for 6 years and before that for 2 years I did them weekly… yes, weekly. And I do a separate one for my membership. That’s a crazy amount of practice. And that’s only one arm of my business. When you add the fitness pros master classes I do onto that? I’ve done close to 300 live master classes. Easy Entry with Live Social Media You don’t have any barrier with social media like you do with webinars. You don’t need to use zoom or gotowebinar or be comfortable with them. But you do absolutely want to be as organized as if you were doing a masterclass/webinar. This is your first date. A blind date. The question you have to answer is, will there be a second date? Use a Proven Model Take a look at any syllabus from a course – university or CEC – it doesn’t matter. Or the “blurb” used to advertise a course at a conference or a program you signed up for. That detail is important… if it got you to sign up, it’s likely got some good strategy. It offered and teased some good content. Now, who knows whether the content was GOOD. The point is the marketing was good. Good enough to get you to invest time and money and energy in doing it. Most of the things you and I are going to choose to spend time on we’ll make decisions based on level of importance. And maybe convenience. So, if I see you’re live and happen to be following you, I might check it out for a few seconds – yes, a few seconds. (that’s another podcast… about getting on and getting started ASAP – no chit chat) But if you go to the effort – and you should – of promoting a “live” at a certain day and time, then you want to make sure you’ve thought about that schedule. Will they stay? Is this a time when your audience wants to be on social media? I can tell you the best times for my customers – not you dear business pros – but my customers… and that is late afternoon at best, very early evening for East Coast, or it’s early in the day on the weekends. Do you know when your customers want to be online, and when they’ll show up? Are you consciously thinking about what’s in it for them? I hope I’ve given you some things to think about in regard to your live social media strategy. Spontaneous? You of course, may just want to do it, jump in and get comfortable. Then get more organized and use what little intel you got from those. But to help calm your own nerves and boost your own confidence… have a list of things you’re going to talk about. Have 3 questions about a topic you’re going to answer. It has to be organized for you… and for them or you’ll never be able to attract customers and build authority in one niche. Remember the key to success is going deep not wide. Resources: Building your online marketing strategy master class link Social Media Marketing for Health & Fitness Professionals
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Wed, 10 February 2021
You know you need an email service, often called a CRM (customer relationship management). You can’t send from your gmail or your yahoo account if you plan to have a fitness business, be a business woman, and scale a business. This episode is to help you go from “tell me more” to “how do I sign up?” Before you ever jump in to setting up what’s known as a funnel you need to know your customers inside and out. So, this episode jumps in somewhere in the middle of the story… and I want you to know there’s some homework to do before you get here. I’ll link to a few prior podcasts and blogs in case you don’t know that customer like you know your best friend. What You Need to Know to Use Your Email Service Optimally
Why Email Is the Way Your email service can help you meet more people and care for them easier, effortlessly, and find the best customers while allowing those that aren’t a good match to know it and move on. Ultimately, that’s what you want. There’s an abundant amount of people in the world who need exactly what you have to offer. You are the wrong match for some people and jobs, and for others you are absolutely perfect. There may be things about your job you love more than others. This email service should be one you love. If you’re reluctant about it, I’m willing to bet, dear trainer or coach, that you’re thinking about it all wrong. You’re getting stuck in the its-new-and-I-don’t-know-what-I’m-doing… and we can’t be good at something we’ve never done before. But if you instead think of the emails you’ll write, as if you were having a conversation with a client, your ideal client. And you write to that client. Then, copywriting becomes FUN. Copywriting is For Winning Email Service Want a little info on an upcoming copywriting masterclass? I’ll put some details in this email so you can tell me more about what you want and decide if it’s a good fit for you. I’ll help you write everything from your emails, to your website sales pages, and your product descriptions, to your video scripts. Everything you say, and write is copy. Is yours working and consciously written for a fit or not? Click for details on the copywriting clinic Show notes will be at fitnessmarketingmastery-dot-com / email service |
Sat, 6 February 2021
Are you a medical fitness professional or want to be? On this episode I catch up with founder of the Medfit Network about the 2020 and what’s a head. My Guest Beyond COVID we are still facing a chronic disease, obesity, opioid and mental health crisis. This is an opportunity for the fitness & healthcare professionals to up level their education and services to be the front line of healthcare by aiding in the management and prevention of chronic disease. This is a time where they can expand their offerings and services to the largest, fastest growing demographic in the US (the world). Questions we answer in this episode:
~Lisa Dougherty, Medfit founder Connect with Medfit: https://www.medfitclassroom.org/ 60-day free trial membership https://medfitnetwork.org/promo/
Fitnessmarketingmastery-dot-com/medicalfitness |
Wed, 3 February 2021
Burnout among personal trainers is up. Are you at risk? This post shares a new study published in the Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research – ahead of print version. I’ve written for the fitness industry for over 20 years, published in places like Fitness Management, IDEA Health & Fitness Professionals, and NSCA’s Strength & Conditioning Journal. While I was still lecturing in Kinesiology at Iowa State University, I often found statistics from the Labor Force demonstrating very high job satisfaction among fitness professionals. I have to include that this was at a time that more fitness jobs were still part time. Fewer individuals were actually training at even the 32 hours lumped into full time work. Many included were fitness instructors teaching a few hours a week, and personal trainers included in those statistics were self-declared fitness professionals. Full Time? Today, or pre-pandemic, more trainers are employed full time. Many trainers are at risk for job-related addiction which often goes undetected and because of that is promoted. Consider it yourself, what’s the stereotypical trainer like? Chicken and broccoli? Protein shakes, Lululemons, always exercising and eating perfectly? Never misses a workout, often puts clients ahead of family or friends. Allows clients to dictate work schedule. Sound familiar? Reasons for Burnout Among Personal Trainers Work-related stressors for trainers during the pandemic included:
Those stressors likely spilled over burnout among personal trainers personal lives. Financial burden and new home life changes affected all of us as home became work, gym, leisure time, and school for all of us and limited our additional sources of social support. I’m including results from abstract in the show notes as well as the link to it. My goal is to provide you with options and suggestions for you and for your team that have been proven to support burnout. Starting Your Own Business? Surround Yourself with Support In times when you may or may not be able or choose to gather in person, I hope that these will help you. One thing that definitely can, in a time for many they’ve taken a risk and begun their own business is knowing that while many suffered losses during the pandemic, for others in fitness 2020 has seen a huge growth. It’s for those willing to remember that where there is a problem and a solution, there is always a business model. If instead your burnout comes from work addiction… where you’re a trainer who finds herself (or himself) constantly reading, watching, taking courses, in addition to doing your own fitness workouts, seeking the best nutritional advice, and never breaking for your personal interests beyond your career vocation. What hobbies outside of fitness did you love, what people have you stopped spending time with, what activities do you love and lose track of time doing? Pre vs Post Covid Results Seventy-one subjects completed the survey before March 2020; after which, a worldwide pandemic (i.e., COVID-19) occurred possibly affecting employment workloads and work-related stress. Thus, post hoc analyses were conducted to assess differences in burnout scores pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19. Within PTs, 33.0% reported personal burnout, 29.6% reported work-related burnout, and 17.4% reported client-related burnout. Higher levels of burnout, across all scales, were observed in those who were PTs, women, unmarried, living alone, would not choose to be a fitness professional again, and took the survey post-COVID as compared to their respective counterparts. Findings suggest that fitness professionals are not exempt from the stressors associated with personal and occupational burnout. Strength and conditioning coaches and PTs may reduce the risk of burnout by increasing social support, continuing education, and allowing for personal-care time with the intention of buffering these factors. Social Support
Continuing Education
Personal care/Self care
Modify for the Times I’m an 8-time Ironman. I’ve been swimming for 30-40 minutes a few times a week and doing a 30-minute weight training session a couple of times a week along with a lot of walking. Train for the energy you need instead of training as if you’re not in a pandemic, don’t have stress. For women especially, less is more if you want to avoid hormonal disruption that actually leads to sleep issues, and weight gain. Burnout Among Personal Trainers Burnout among personal trainers is up and job satisfaction is down the greater number of hours you work or perceive you work even if you’re not earning money. This is a pivotal time in history and in fitness. You have a unique and never to be experienced again opportunity because the pandemic has created additional problems that require solutions for those who are willing to go beyond just providing online classes and training via Skype and Zoom. Are you ready to create multiple sources of revenue? Be somewhere else and still be providing value and earning revenue. Click here for details.
Resource: Snarr, Ronald L.1; Beasley, Vista L.2 Personal, Work-, and Client-Related Burnout Within Strength and Conditioning Coaches and Personal Trainers, Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: January 22, 2021 - Volume Publish Ahead of Print - Issue - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=burnout%20among%20personal%20trainers
Direct download: 2021-01-26-t04-47-43pm-final-mix.mp3
Category:Personal development -- posted at: 3:00am MDT |
Sat, 30 January 2021
Finding it impossible to do your fitness marketing? Here’s how to get it done in less time. You’re the trainer, the bookkeeper, the advertiser, the marketer… and then you’re the chef, the cleaning lady, errand runner and oh, yeah trying to stay fit to walk the talk. Have I about covered it? So, I’m no different. And I don’t want to tell you that I haven’t had times when I did wake at 3 and probably slept by 8 or 9pm in order to get in a workout and be the golf mom, the manager, the trainer, coach, and all the things. And I thought I loved it. In truth, all of that was a lot of pushing, pushing, pushing and maybe proving… or trying to, prove something to myself or someone. So, no matter who you are, if you’re an energizer bunny - and I mean really… without the caffeine and the adrenaline rush of attention or pressure of deadlines, or fear… you really are, great. But if you’re exhausted by all that action that you can’t see traction from this is for you. Here’s how I finished a month of podcasts in 2 ½ hours this morning. I had brief outlines and bullets, already waiting. When I get an idea I add it to a list. It may never become a podcast or blog. But it might be a post or talking point for a consulting client. So I fleshed it out, decided what details like resources will make it more valuable to listeners. I add the intro and outro in case we’re promoting anything like the business building mastermind & masterclass series right now. I allow no more than 30 minutes each. Since I’ve already had these ideas marinating on my desktop, this was plenty of time. When I walk or run ideas come up and I just add to them. Any task will expand to the time you allow it. So don’t. I repeated the final steps for each. Then I get into my recording space and turn on and go. I try to record start to end and have the least possible amount of editing. For an urgent timely message, I’ll skip the music and go from recording to postproduction in the same day. Listen, you don’t listen to a podcast for the intro and outro music. At least I don’t. You listen because the podcast gives you concrete applicable steps you can take or helps you feel like you’re not the only one in the world going through what you’re going through! Music is overrated! Later today I will load these up into my host, Libsyn. Then share show notes on my site. But listen, that’s copy and paste work. I can do that late in the day when I’m firing on fewer cylinders like I am early. It’s actually relaxing for me to do that. And next month when I’ve got support, that is one of the things I’ll hand off. A support person you can hire for $10-20 an hour should be able to load up at least 3 in an hour, check for mistakes and allow you to either earn hundreds more doing something only you can, or to relax and do nothing. Create the social media posts ready to share for release date. Again, down the road to do your fitness marketing in less time this is just a system you create. But you don’t have to do it. Not once your time is so overscheduled that what you really need is a break and time and space. There you have it how to do your fitness marketing in less time. Broken down into one specific task. But it works for everything. I tell this to my customers all the time. When they say I hate cooking! Or I don’t have time to cook! It’s because they are overwhelmed with the whole idea of ALL of it. But.. in these steps:
...it’s not overwhelming and other people can help if you let them. So it is with you in order to do your fitness marketing in less time. I hope this was helpful. Whether or not you have a podcast. That’s not the point. Resources: |
Wed, 27 January 2021
If you offer a free consultation to get more clients, you may have any one of these problems:
Then there’s what if you don’t make a sale at the consultation, if that was the purpose of it, what you do next with that lead. Stop the Anti-Sales Chatter Let’s be clear that I totally understand none of us wants to be salesy, pushy or sleazy. So, since I didn’t even mention that ‘til now, I want you to do a selfcheck here on how you even feel about this whole episode title and the topic of sales. Unless you’re going to work for someone else, and even then, if you can’t sell, you’ll never be in charge of your own destiny. People who can sell, run the world. The people you can help need to buy your services. Improving your success at any step of your consultations will help your business. Improve your success at every step will boost your business significantly. >>If you aren’t a part of a mastermind or a sales and marketing strategy group so you review: how you get leads
…it’s time to be sure this is a part of your business, every week. The earlier in your business you start, the sooner you realize, if you didn’t ask anybody to become a client today, no one can say yes. Before you even take any of the suggestions I’ll list in this episode, I highly recommend that you start tracking your statistics. Look at your insights. Listen, you can do that on a platform like Facebook or Instagram that you don’t even own, so if you’re not looking at every move you make in your own business, what are you doing? Track these things:
You or Your Team? If you personally don’t do every – or any - free consultation to get new clients for your business track anyone on your team who does. Should they be? Or should they have additional training? Average closing percentages in the business are about 40% for consultations. But if you do a good job of preparing people before they get there, I believe they should never be lower than 50%. Look, most of us did not go to school to learn sales, or persuasive language, or copywriting. I’ll bet that the courses and continuing education that you’re taking are all about conditions, and training strategies, or joints, or something you feel lacking in as opposed to something that will help you get the clients you want to train with that knowledge. Don’t be the best kept most educated secret. It takes sales: do well at marketing and the sales is easy If you’re not a part of a group of people supporting you to grow your business, your profit and identify how to keep the money you make by being smarter about expenses – so that you don’t out-educate yourself, instead of marketing yourself, find a way to fix that. If you want to be in charge of your own future, and the revenue and profit you make, you know how to sell. You’re good at it and you enjoy it. If you’re not there you can learn. It’s the path to helping people. If you have a money relationship that is damaged, you’ve got to fix it and that’s another episode. If I could have shared that message in thousands of trainers that I’ve met from university teaching, managing personal training department, and presenting internationally, it would be that. Yes, of course, you’re passionate about the workouts and the learning more as you should be, but the presenters you envy and love … don’t even have the life and freedom you want. Make sure you’re following someone who both loves their life and has built the business. Is a free consultation to get clients a good idea? It is if it works. But look closely at who books and how long they’ve followed you and been looking. A free consultation is a big, huge, first step for someone who is intimidated, feels like a failure, and doesn’t want to be judged. So that leaves about 15% of the population who are already quick decision makers and they’re ready that will be most likely to book a session. If you’re not careful with them, you could talk them out of it. They’re already annoyed that they can’t get started and couldn’t figure out how to buy what they wanted. So, it’s clear you have to be clear. What is your objective for the free consultation? And what is the message you send the potential customer about this free consultation? If you don’t send them a message about this being the time when they decide WHICH way they’re going to work with you and take care of all the details of getting enrolled, but that’s what you intend? Then they may expect a free session that will show them what they need and how to workout so they can do it on their own. What Happens If They Feel Misled? Imagine how they feel if they don’t get that. Not likely that if you shock them at the session and there’s no exercise, or assessment, that they don’t get what they wanted they’re going to be excited about working with you after that. Imagine instead that you’ve asked exactly what they want at the session, so that you can give it to them. What if you share with them the exact process of how the meeting happens and the objective, and what they’ll leave with before the meeting. Then you remind them of how you’ll spend time during the consultation during the first few minutes, and then you summarized the session at the end. How will they feel after a session like that? If you’re nodding your head, you get it. We all like to know. Clear expectations make a huge difference in our satisfaction of an experience. So, those big signs and invitations for a free consultation with a trainer or a health coach or nutritionist are a big mistake. Give them some description. Start with who this is for, who it’s not for, what you’ll learn, and what you’ll take away. 10 Parts of a Free Consultation to Get Clients 1 Free vs Fee Paid – flat Paid – and applied to first purchase 2 Preview & Screen A survey before they can book 3 Reminder Email, text You’ll contact if they don’t arrive on time 4 Overview The way these sessions go… Ask permission 5 Middle The more they talk the better Problem Agitate 6 Pre-Close If I could … Would you like help with that… 7 Close Would you like my help with that? Take care of the details Here’s what to expect next Many of my customers ask to add ___, do you want to do that too? If you’d like to I’ll add that for ____ off. Or you can get it later, if you want to think about it, at the regular rate. 8 Follow Up – immediate Same day for either a thank you, or for the links to complete transaction 9 Follow Up - a couple days A down sell for those that didn’t purchase and a check in for those that did It wasn’t the right time to do ____, I do have this group/program, starting and I have some spots left, and I thought of you 10 Follow Up – long term nurture Is now a better time? Are you still interested?
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Sun, 24 January 2021
Make money in your jammies, they said. Passive revenue, they said. Are you participating in affiliate marketing yet? or unsure of how to get started? Have you begun to do any affiliate marketing yet? Affiliate marketing for health & fitness coaches is a natural, especially now! It’s probably easier for you to list the clients who didn’t want to know what they needed for home exercise than to list those that did not ask you. I’m in the process of reviewing all sources of revenue – something I do before the last quarter of the year to determine what I need to do more of, less of, start or stop in the next year. But now given we’ve all got to do taxes I’m diving deeper into revenue sources outside of my products, services, consulting fees, and speaking fees. Free and Easy Passive revenue is not too good to be true. Every month it’s so nice to have that extra money drop in. It’s not like I have a specific revenue goal, unless I’m helping an affiliate with a specific launch and they are doing it through me and only me. And that’s rare. Early during the pandemic I rounded up a blog post of all my favorites. I shot video of those items explaining why I liked them, what they were helpful for, and how to use them. Amazon was sending me gift cards (my choice for payment) regularly. I also gained a lot of subscribers by layering the YouTube videos in the blog and pointing from each individual item back to the blog. It was relevant and timely. Choose Affiliate Marketing Partners Wisely That’s exactly what every one of the affiliate partners I choose is. Skincare you may be thinking, how is that relevant? Well, in my book I talk about hormone disruptors that interfere with fitness efforts. If you’re putting a lot of toxins on and around your body, they’re going to sabotage my audience. So, it’s very relevant. At least for my brand. If you’re gorgeous or have amazing skin… your people may be asking what you use. That makes it relevant too. I encourage you to make a list. If you are your demographic, list the things you use on a daily basis. If you are not your ideal customer, then list the things you wish they would use, and need to know. And know, sooner or later someone will ask if you want to partner with them. I always ask two things before I say yes:
My Favorite Things: Affiliate Marketing or Not! These are just a few but some of my favorite products to share with clients. Everything you see here and I share, I know, love, and trust it before I share. I use it, own it, and or know the program and the company – often the owner has been on the Flipping 50 podcast.
I also share programs that serve my clients:
Remember again that the whole point of sharing anything – including programs with your customers and audience is to HELP THEM! Customers are already trying to crack the code… on something! Hormones, emotional eating, or for you and I Instagram, or YouTube ads, and I don’t do it all. I teach marketing strategy, consistency, and messaging. If you want an expert to teach you how to create an ad or get the best engagement on Instagram you want an expert! If you work with seniors for instance, you might be sharing senior cell phones, alert buttons, chair lifts, and yes, they are online and if they’re not the sons and daughters seeking solutions for them are. Start with Amazon? An easy first step to get started with an Amazon store front as an Amazon affiliate. For me and likely for you when you find yourself answering the same questions over and over, it’s best to create a page. They ask you what scale you use, what weighted vest, what tubing or bands, or if there’s a brand you like. I share it all on a resources page. Not all things there are affiliate, some are simply things I love and use or am asked about so very often I share them there. Test Options for Passive Revenue I also love to share the process I use with clients to get them better results and derive a better program for them. I do DNA test result overviews and lab overviews. It’s important to stay within your scope of practice. I tell clients the purpose is to teach them how results can help them make decisions, help me create specific questions for their health care provider, and what it might mean for exercise based on other clients results and examples.
Things That Didn’t Work or I Said No Even passive income shouldn’t make you compromise your mission. There have definitely been some failed items sent to me to try that either weren’t successful or weren’t something I could even speak positively about. My agreement with a company is always to offer negative feedback to them and positive feedback if it’s right for me to promote. Some of those products include: a lower back support, a painful pair of sandals, an equally painful pressure point mat. Lesson Learned The biggest lesson I learned and I’ll pass on to you is that if you’re not sure, I’d pass. The lack of authenticity if you don’t love it, will deem it ineffective. And it takes time to vet those things. So I would definitely pass if you aren’t going to promote it a lot or you don’t love it. If you want to go and look at some of your affiliate marketing options, you can also start at an affiliate center – it’s like a hub for affiliates. Some of your favorites and mine like Power Systems, Perform Better, and Road Runner or JumpSport for instance use the platform to operate their affiliate programs. 5 Easy Organic Ways to Start Affiliate Marketing Now You’ll Love
Some months I have a few hundred and others it’s a few thousand extra dollars to the bottom line. Like anything you do want to plan your promotions to make the most of it. In the mastermind group we’re running this year, I’m sharing exactly the things I use, especially the ones that help my clients solve problems they’re asking me about. Your Own Affiliate Program Creating Passive Income for Others The flip side of affiliate marketing for someone else is creating your own affiliate marketing program. Do you sell a program or package that you can afford to gift a percentage of to a partner? Consider if you had to advertise for that customer what the cost would have been and that if the referral comes from a friend it’s likely to be a great customer. Don’t give your time away however. A small percent is given if you’re giving away your time coaching or training. On digital programs the percentage is usually 40-50%, or sometimes a flat fee. You may not yet be ready but think about who you would partner with if you were. Start building relationships now. Learn more about getting started in the Mastermind at one of 3 levels while this crazy perfect storm is yours. Resources: https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
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Wed, 20 January 2021
So, imposter syndrome. First of all, let's define it, it's that feeling when you're ready to go live but you have this feeling or thought of what's everybody gonna think? what are they going to think when they see this? What if they knew that I don't know all the answers? What if I'm live and somebody asks a question that I can't answer? Those are just a few of the questions actually that came up this week. In the last six days I've been doing a build your business boot camp for fitness professionals, primarily females helping other females in midlife that may not be your niche, but the things I'm about to talk about with imposter syndrome belong to all of us. You’re Not Alone No matter what level you're at, one of the things that I want to assure you of before I go any further and help you break through the imposter syndrome that we can all feel is that everyone does experiencing it, everyone experiences it at every level. And what I mean by that is if you're teasing yourself and imagining that when I get to that place, maybe you're looking at someone else who appears to have all of it together, or all have their shit together. And you're thinking when I'm in that place in that position, then, then I'll have confidence, then I won't have that imposter syndrome because really that's what imposter syndrome is all about. You lack the confidence in yourself. You Do Deserve It Somewhere deep down you don't believe that you deserve it. Now, that's a topic for a lot more than a 20-minute podcast, and there's really one I give you here is something really short and sweet to take away, and some tips to maybe listen to, or habits and routines and rituals to get into before you go live. That will get you up. Excited enthusiastic and remind you, who you are. It actually is very helpful to talk about a topic that makes your blood boil a little pain. If you feel that there's an injustice. The World Needs Your Voice Among those fitness, quote, unquote, professionals who really aren't qualified, who really can't help, who are making mistakes because of not intentionally, but because of a lack of education. Do you know, quick fix, crackerjack box certification that really is a weekend certificate. That doesn't allow them to really be working with some of the people who've got special injuries special conditions and need TLC. And you know, that what's between you and helping that client. And the person who got them, who's helping that client is very likely being in the right place at the right time with the right message that my friend is marketing. Get Angry So, if it upsets you that someone who's unqualified can win that customer because they have the better marketing strategy. Okay then think about that before you go live. Because if you don't get your message out there. Strong enough, you don't get your message out there, frequently enough. And you don't get your message out there with enough heartfelt clear conviction. You can't win clients. And if you can't win clients you can't help clients, and if you can't win and help clients, you can't win revenue, and you will then convince yourself that you are an imposter you can't make any money doing this and you have to get a quote unquote real job. Is that where you want to go. So, wow, that went downhill quickly didn't it. Everyone Has It So let's back up, back to this place. First of all, everybody feels imposter syndrome, on a regular basis. I would guess, daily, if they're actually putting themselves out there and listen here's the thing, maybe this is the gauge of whether or not you are actively doing enough in your business. And that is if you don't feel imposter syndrome on a regular basis, you're probably not working hard enough At outgrowing your current comfort level. Get Uncomfortable You're not stretching yourself, you're not reaching new people, you're not being the first one to walk into the room and stick your hand out and be the one approaching someone instead of waiting to be approached. And what I encourage you to do is if you've got a mentor somebody that you really respect and you can open up to about questions you've got, knowing you don't have to have all the answers without certain person. I would ask them, Do you ever feel this way? Everyone Has Imposter Syndrome Here's what I know, from mentors. When I first began spending the kind of money that I do now for masterminds. When I first plunked down my first $20,000 for a mastermind on an annual basis. First of all, I had never joined a mastermind for anything less. I just went right for the top, pretty much the way I went from doing a sprint triathlon to doing an Ironman distance, most people work their way up. I was all in. And when I did that, the first day of the first mastermind of the year. I walked into the room, and I literally met that coach at the door and I said, Okay. Have you ever felt like a really small fish in a really big sea? And she said, all the time, she said I put myself there on purpose, said My goal is to always be the most naive person in the room. I want to be surrounded by people who were smarter than me, who I can learn from it doesn't do you any good to be surrounded by people who know less than you do, or who know just the same as you do so that you can share ideas back and forth. To Grow You have to be surrounded by people who have a difference of opinion, who have different experiences, and who can help you grow and stretch, because they don't always think that everything you say, is correct. And it's very uncomfortable, but I still do that, and it's now five years later, I'm reaching out to even more groups and doing the very same thing. So being the quiet person on the call or on the video really doesn't help you at all. Getting Over Imposter Syndrome How do you get over it though, because saying you're not alone, not so much helpful when it goes to the lights on, that cameras pointed at you, and somebody is waiting for you to talk. I want you to remember this, that it's about them. And I first gave you that one tip, if you can think about something that gets you upset. Like, There are so many marketers out there, winning people over by their quick fixes by their fast game z sales the, this is going to work and you're going to lose 14 pounds in 14 days, you know there's a lot of that out there in January, but listen there's 11 more months in the year and it happens all year round and you know it, and soda why. Think about those things. What’s Your Why Because if you don't speak up, if we don't have more voices out there saying the right thing, then it is the squeaky wheel, right, get the grease. It's true. The message people hear over and over and over again. Are is the one that they're going to respond to. If you go dark and you go quiet. There's not much response on the other end right? It’s About Them So, think about those things and then remember, it's about them. When you're about to go live if you start all getting up in your own head about what are they going to think, you know, are they going to think you're trying to be some big thing you're in your own head. You're in your own ego worried about little old you and your quote unquote reputation will listen sister, maybe brother, I don't know who's listening, but maybe you think a little bit too much of yourself. Maybe you don't have a reputation and maybe they're not even thinking about you in the first place. And the whole goal of you going live is not about you. It's not whether your hair is actually bleached as blonde as you want it, or your teeth are as white or your hair is combed correctly or not sticking up. It's about the message that you're about to tell them how strong, are your conviction in that message and getting it across. Be Human Do you know that it doesn't really even matter if you get a little tongue tied, while you're on a live video, because that's human people actually need to be able to relate to you. So if you take 10 takes to get it perfect. You're probably never going to be satisfied with any one of them. You're always going to be imperfect, that will never be good enough. And all those messages my friend said gently with respect, are about something in your past, somebody didn't think you were good enough and gave me that message. Somebody was always critical of you. I don't know who it was, but they're not here anymore. What Do They Need? And now it's up to you to shake that off and think about the people on the other side of the camera, and make it about them. What is it that they need to hear from you. What is it that they need to hear from you right now today before they go sit down on the couch instead of taking a walk before they go to the cupboard and get something with a barcode, instead of going to the refrigerator to get something that was recently alive, what do they need to hear from you. Right now, today. Define You’re Why The next thing to help you get out of that imposter syndrome is really to think about what is your why. And a little secret. So I'll share a little piece of one little inkling that we did on the five day build your boot camp challenge. And that was having a riveting go on and talk about their why. Because, what is your why is the reason that you will be there in the first place, you'll be reminding yourself as you reconnect with your audience, they need to like you. Yes, but more so they need to believe that they're a little bit like you that you're like them. You can't be up on a pedestal and perfect. Isn't that ironic. The reason that you're going to stop yourself that you're feeling imposter syndrome is because you feel like you have to be perfect, you have to know the answers to every question in the universe that a client might possibly ask you. And if you don't, or if you don't have a degree and you don't have a certification in this and that thing you feel like oh I'm not quite ready I can't really do that, you know, it's crazy, because nobody has all those things. You’ll Never Have All the Answers Nobody ever knows all the answers in every instance in every situation. And you wouldn't expect that of anyone. Think about your mentors, the people you most respected, whether they were your professors or your major. Professors you're maybe parents maybe they were friends of your parents. Maybe it was someone in your church, those people that you really respected in your life Do they really have all the answers. Did you ever hear them saying you know I'll have to find out. I'm not sure about that one but I will get back to you, because that's a logical answer for intelligent people, to give. You'll never have all the answers, and you don't have to be doing it perfectly. listen. Didn't you have an overweight coach at some point during junior high or high school or even call it mean, they weren't perfect, but yet that didn't mean that they couldn't be a winning coach. Remember your role. you are not there to do it perfectly. You're there to interpret it perfectly for someone else. Find a System, a Method, a Blueprint It's called Personal Training, it's called health coaching but it's one on one. And that really means you're not telling them the way you did it, or how you would do it and what would work for you. You're telling them the path the blueprint to get them there. So it takes the pressure off of your need for perfection. But let's come back to the number two thing that I gave you. Number one was it's all about them number two is, what's your why go into that tell it. Why are you here, why are you not a teacher or a plumber or a nurse or a doctor or a foot salesman bicycle repair. Tell Your Story Why are you not one of those things instead of a health coach or a personal trainer. If you can get into that mindset about well here's my why this is my why, because I know you've got one, you've got one is probably emotional. Maybe it's because of what fitness did for you how it lifted you up when things are dark. Maybe it's about saving the life of someone that you love. Maybe it's that someone you love with sick, and with the right help and how they have this information they wouldn't have been, I don't know what your, why is. But I know you've got one. What If You Never Do It? And if you could tap into that right before you go on, even tap into that as the first thing you do when you go on, you introduce yourself you tell them what you're going to talk about. You tell them your why and then you launch into what you're going to do. Okay, number three. I want you to think about this. This is putting fear in you. For something that could happen. If you don't do this. So this is what I call that could have been me. You don't want to be in those shoes of somebody who, in a year or two or three or five see someone else who took a risk who took a chance. And look at them and say, that should have been me. You don't want to be in those shoes. But unless you get out there, take a risk put yourself out there and start getting clear on what your unique and distinct messages. You’re the Only You Look, we all may be talking about core exercise or functional movement, but you're going to describe it in your own unique way with a unique tone of voice that is a mind. It isn't somebody else's. And you're going to resonate with someone listening, because it's you. So if you ever heard Marie Forleo heard of Marie Forleo. She's a fantastic marketer. She's a fantastic motivator. But one of the things she will say, in her show in her preamble and her PostScript is that you're sharing, only the gifts or the gifts that only you can share. And that is the whole point. But if you don't get started, potentially, you will still be there in that moment you felt that haven't you somebody invents something and you think, Oh my gosh, I had that idea so long ago. I should have done that I should have done something with that could have been me or you see another trainer. And they've established some kind of credibility or maybe sense of sense of shame, however big or small it is, but you might just have a little bit of envy or jealousy. Well, harness that that's a piece of your that could have been me, or that should have been me and you don't want to be that person in five years thinking. Had I done this, that could have been me. review imposter syndrome. Number one, remember this, we all have it. And you have it now. And you will when you level up, because as you level up, you will sure you'll gain competence, but you'll only have the competence when you're looking down as you're looking up to the people and the peers and people you aspire to be, like, later you will still feel like I don't quite belong here yet. And there will always be just a little bit of that.
Got Comments? All right, if you've gotten comments or questions, or you just want to admit that right along with me. You too, sometimes have imposter syndrome. But you're going to commit to not letting it stop you from doing what you need to do to help the people that you know you can help. Leave a comment below the show link at Fitness marketing mastery.com, forward slash imposter. What are you waiting for, the world needs us right now, more than ever.
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Sat, 16 January 2021
Trying to get results on Instagram? The platform that's becoming a search engine, a resource for answers your clients are looking for? My guest is the founder of Capture Social Group and the Social Butterfly course. She's become a social influencer with a message and created a proven way to do it over and over again for her clients. Theresa Depasquale is a prior fitness pro and gets you. She's been where you are and understands the day to day list you have. CEO and founder of Capture Social Group, Theresa began her career as an entrepreneurial fitness expert. In 2012 She started her Instagram page and used her business acumen and marketing skills to quickly dominate the social media space by successfully building multiple large, revenue-generating brand pages on Instagram. Her own personal brand page @TheresaDepasquale has over 230k followers and is still growing today due to its motivational and educational content. With over 10 years of online branding and social media experience she’s worked hard to master the art of online branding and social media strategy and has become the go-to for many high-level clients and companies providing one-on-one consulting and programs to help them successfully build their brand online and to grow their reach and credibility. In this podcast we answer:
So if you:
Learn more about the next course: https://www.flippingfifty.com/social
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Wed, 6 January 2021
In this episode I share top episodes to grow your fitness business in 2021. From solving superficial problems you can handle today to identifying where you can change bigger systems and strategies for the long game, you’ll find a trove of answers. Every one of these episodes I’m sharing was released during the pandemic and relates to the “new now” in our fitness industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re totally digital, you’re offline or you’re doing a hybrid, you’ll find marketing and other strategies at the foundation are very similar. Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist & Mastermind Details When You Can’t Get Fitness Clients I share 7 questions to ask yourself when you can’t get clients. I also shared the mistakes I made early in my career when I wasn’t getting the clients I wanted. And trust me I still make that mistake occasionally. In fact, fairly recently, a 20-minute consult turned into an hour-long session and I knew in the first 10 minutes it wasn’t going to work out. But I was so mystified I let her keep controlling the conversation. That’s a story for another day. If you’re not consistently turning those interested people into customers I share why that’s probably true and what to do about it. Branding for Fitness Professionals | Personal Trainers In this episode.. and if you like it, you should join me in an upcoming fitness pros master class to learn more about playing the long game. You don’t develop a brand with pictures. Or a logo. You do it with a message. One that breaks through the repetitious crap that people are tuning out because they hear it so often. I had a great time talking with a photographer who CAN however get you killer photos and can do the whole package. We dished all things branding and building the business that stands out… instead of blends in. If you find yourself buying the same tights and the same jackets and doing the same poses… as everyone else… are you being you? Cause everyone else is taken. You are just throwing yourself under the bus. There’s only one you. Identify what and who that is. Pssst… you’re going to have to be real, be who you are when you haven’t showered and made up sometimes. No Time to Build Your Fitness Business? Step- by- Step There is never going to be enough time to do all the things you add to your to do list. You can’t do them all and have a life and love it. So you have to work hard and focused when you’re working. Then you have to stop working and have the life you’re doing the work for. Sadly, if your work becomes your life or you hold yourself back from a career you really want saying you can’t because of your family, will you train boys to love strong women or girls to follow their dreams? In this episode there’s no judgment about what you want but before you listen I encourage you to be honest with yourself. It’s easy to use your family as an excuse not to go for it. That way you don’t have to put yourself out there, you don’t have to worry about what people will think or if you’ll fail or make mistakes. You don’t have to learn it all and ask questions and feel vulnerable. But you also won’t satisfy that you inside that knows you have something… you have a purpose and this is it. Are the Words You Use Costing You Customers? Of all the podcasts to help you grow your business in 2021 this is one of my favorite. Words, meaning the ones you use in copywriting matter. And copywriting is everything. It’s what you say, what you write. It’s the way you start an email and the way you finish it. It’s the words you write in a text. It’s the way you introduce yourself and tell someone what you do.
If you’re not testing it all and looking at the analytics, you should. What would 10% greater open rate do for you? What would more smiles at the front desk do if you’re in a brick-and-mortar business? That greeting is copy. You’re either using it or not. Listen to this episode and you’ll get curious about why you love certain restaurants. It may not just be the food. They may train their staff so well that you’re feeling the effects of copywriting. Taking Care of You | Personal Trainer & Coach Business To grow your fitness business in 2021 you have to work smart and so you are simultaneously taking care of yourself. Have you figured that out while you’re getting up early, training over lunch and in the evening? There are 3 parts to planning your business success. And that three-legged stool requires them all. Start and Grow Your Menopause Coaching Services in 2021 You can and should know every detail about hormones and exercise. You need to know why exactly late day high intensity is likely to throw a menopausal woman under the bus. But without the knowledge of how to attract, and keep her for the long run you’ll never build a sustainable profitable business. And look, what’s the point of having a fitness career that doesn’t even pay the bills if it were all you had to rely on? It’s too many hours, starting early and going late, squeezing your own workouts into minutia to really be a healthy lifestyle for many trainers who really make it a career instead of a hobby. And yet it’s too easy to make a living equivalent to a hobby. So listen to this ‘cast about what you need to know how to reach them, enroll them, and how to measure your success.
Steps to Create Fitness Marketing Videos If you want to grow your fitness business in 2021 you’re going to create video. You’re going to create videos for programs, for courses, for passive revenue streams that make clients more successful when they work with you. You’re going to create video ads, and live video to talk to your clients. You’re going to create coaching videos and interview videos and demonstration videos. If you’re afraid of the camera or don’t have a plan, this tactile episode will help you do the things that make a video better even before you turn on the camera. The Dirty World of Fitness Conference Content Here’s what you have to ask yourself when you go to a fitness conference, read an article, post or listen to a podcast just like this one. Has this person – the source of the information – done what I want to do? In similar situations to mine? Consistently over time? What proof do you have of it? I revealed some interesting tidbits from behind the scenes of fitness presenters that are only too happy to get up on stage and teach business of how to make more money. Yet, they have never had to make the money, they’ve always collected a paycheck. So if you’re a trainer who wants to create money where there never was money, you are going to want to make sure you have a legit business success teaching you how to do it. That is not one who’s not made mistakes, one who has, and has stood back up and can help you see the path because of it. Past Fear | Grow Your Personal Training Business in 2021 Does fear stop you from pursuing your fitness career dreams? You want to present internationally? You want to be a fitness influencer? You want to be the one they think of when they think of your niche? You want to earn more? You want to offer that unique program? You want to run your own business? But you don’t know how? And that scares you so you don’t take actions to learn it, share the dream, speak the things no one else is willing to say. If you see something that you know isn’t working and you think you could do it better, you have a solution, and you know it… but you’re quiet? Who can you help? If you know these feelings and thoughts… thinking… that should have been me. That could be me. Then listen to this episode. The State of Fitness During the Pandemic |Business in 2020 This episode released in October may have surprised you. We thought everyone had gained 15 pounds and been watching Netflix eating chips and drinking more wine. But not everyone, in fact not a lot of everyone. I can vouch for our Flipping 50 members. Many of them are in better shape now (and were in October than when Covid19 began). But there are things we should be worried about since the pandemic. My guest shares information from a poll of over 10,000 people about their exercise during the pandemic. There you have it, 10 short listens to help you grow your fitness business in 2021. Need support? For more support all year, learn about the fitness business mastermind designed for heart-centered, skilled trainers and health coaches who are tired of not being the one that did it. The one that said yes to now being the best time to start. This moment is not coming back. This one post- pandemic, new year, new awareness of the need for health, immunity, fitness and mental wellness.. through fitness. |
Sat, 2 January 2021
Do you pay yourself first? Meaning both do you pay yourself a wage and do you give yourself time off to recover and time you plan to workout exactly the way you’d tell your clients to? This post is just for you. Because most trainers who have started their business in 2020 don’t yet have the business side of things down. How to pay themselves, how much, when, whether that’s moving money from one account to the other or it’s a business check… first steps first. Let’s talk about how much the job you’re doing is worth and how can show up to do it best. Pay Yourself First As a fitness entrepreneur I would bet you fall into one of two categories. 1 – You don’t pay yourself enough. You take a payment from your business only if you make money and you move it to your personal account when you need it. You pay yourself less than you would pay anyone else for the same job you do. You will workout before anything else, there’s no way you skip that but you’re not as disciplined when it comes to running your business 2 – You don’t give yourself the same disciplined exercise and nutrition support as you do your clients to get. You get caught at your computer, returning emails and phone calls and writing your programs … and don’t eat, don’t get up often enough, don’t workout the way you should, drink too much coffee…. And you promise yourself that tomorrow will be better, that when you catch up, or when you make enough money it will be different. If they’re not perfect descriptions for you, they’re very close. How do I know? 37 years of doing it myself. One or the other or both. And even if I have made huge leaps and bounds… 2020 put me right back a few steps. In fact, today… this year I’m committing to two things myself, I pay myself first… 1)with workouts. No more .. work straight through from 5am to 11am or noon and miss the workout I wanted to do. … and 2) with support staff. I paid myself crap for much of 2020. As we all did, I cut expenses everywhere I could to balance the months where panic was evident and spending from customers was down. But… as business took off (and it definitely did) I continued to do jobs that could have been done by someone for $10-15 an hour instead of the value that I have in the company. You Can Afford It: You Can't Afford Not To You may have always wanted to hear this from someone… the sun rises and sets with you. But in your business, it’s true. Yet, it’s not the podcast production, or the blog posts or the scheduling of clients or social media posting… it’s in the vision and the programs and products only you can make and the team of support that only you can lead. No one else on your team should see themselves as a visionary of your business. You’ve got a problem if that’s true. You hire a team to implement the things that you can’t. Within their scope of practice – say technology – they can tell you what’s possible when you’ve described to them what you want, but YOU and only you, call the shots. So.. if you aren’t sure how to not do it all… and you aren’t sure
Then let’s change that. Now Is the Time If you have the skills, the heart, and the desire to help without the marketing and sales skills your business will be just a dream. Or a nightmare… lots of time money and energy but not much to show for it. It’s something you like to call a business but truly couldn’t survive if that’s all you had to depend on to survive. I know how that feels. And I know the mistakes… I’ve made them. You don’t need another certification. Even after you get it, or another degree, you need to market, to sell, to have visibility and a voice.
You're Invited Meet me Thursday evening January 7th. Whether you want to work with women in midlife where I’ve made my niche, or you have a niche you love, the ability to
...are skills every fitness entrepreneur needs. I’m going to host a 5-day challenge so you can grow your social media reach – organically – you won’t spend a dime on it unless you choose to. Stay posted on that… it happens in the next two weeks. Paying Yourself First: Where do you start? For paying yourself you’ve got to look at what you’d get paid if you were working at another comparable employer. If you buy your own insurance or would if you didn’t have a spouse you were covered under, you want to factor that in, too. Look around a little as if you were seeking a job. What are the offers you’d consider? Is it hourly? Salary? Commission? What is the compensation package and then determine if you’re paying yourself that kind of wage for the time that you’re putting in. If not, something has to change, my friend. You need to raise your rates. You need to sell to more people (that is if you have the time) You need to create an online program that stands alone or that is a compliment to your one-on-one training Or you want to do a combination of all of the above You Won't Lose Clients Now don’t panic. If the best answer for you is raise your rates because you’re out of time, and the reason is you’re in demand, there’s a good chance that when you raise your rates you not only get better clients, but you also get a bigger waiting list. It’s just how it works. Everyone wants the best. If your marketing messages your quality and that matches the rate you position yourself with, it can work beautifully. You’ll find potentially you’re no longer attracting those most likely to drop out. You’re attracting business owners, lawyers and realtors who are busy. They do the work, and they show up for appointments. Making Time for Your Self Care This one is going to require delegating. Either someone who does it faster than you, or can do for less per hour than you’re worth what you can do. For you to remember what it’s like not to be tied to your phone or have a laptop constantly with you, you’ve got to give up some control. That’s it right? That’s the reason you won’t delegate. Because if you go back to the hourly rate you’re worth – whether it’s $30 on average or it’s $50 or $95 that you could be earning in a session and instead you’re creating graphics for social media posts? That’s crazy when you could hire someone to do that for $8 – 15. But you’re saying they won’t do it the way you want them to. They could. If you create ONE important piece of content called a Style Guide.
Resources Mentioned in this Episode: Fitnessmarketingmastery.com Scroll down to the style guide template to download |
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