Fitness Leaders are Needed More Than Ever
This is Debra Atkinson and you’re listening to the VrF professional’s podcast, brought to you by the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist. For trainers who want to make working with women in midlife their niche and want to own it with a hormone balancing exercise method that has worked for thousands of women since 2013.
Right now is the time to learn, create content and programs that grow your business. The world is at home. And online. And looking for you.
I’ll share the link to get more details on the trainers and health coaches we’re looking for to join our team.
How else are you spending your time now? Fitness leaders … and I mean that in every sense of the word: those of you who stand in the front of the room and lead classes, who do it one-to-one, and who deliver it face to face or online or by phone, and to those of you who lead those staff meetings and pump up everyone else’s tires even now when you don’t have answers because you’ve never had this problem before.
Who are you being right now?
Scared or Scrappy
Are you focused on the problems and how bad it is? Is it a mess? or an opportunity?
What do you talk about every day? Is it a bigger deal that you can’t get your hair and nails done or that you can’t help your clients in their time of need the way you’ve done business up until now?
Fitness leaders get scrappy. They learn to do what me and everyone else is doing right now and that is pivot. You do that by figuring it out as you go. The answers are there. You just can’t look to anyone else to find them.
You can’t expect to do business now the same way you did Before Corona (BC). You can’t even expect to do business after it’s over the same way you did so it’s time to get scrappy about that fact right now. Those over-packed group classes may not be packed again. Those shared yoga mats and TRX and battle ropes, and spinning bike handles may not appeal to your clients any more.
Sanitizing them – even if you can – is not helpful. Not in the world we’re in now that is governed by a respiratory illness.
What you did two months ago and the way you did business isn’t relevant right now. If you weren’t online, you potentially are right now, and yet are you doing this as a bridge? Or just doing what you can to get by? This is an opportunity fitness leaders are grabbing to create a hybrid business.
Needy or Creative
Are you spending time asking someone else for answers? Someone who also has never lived through a global pandemic?Why would you suspect anyone else would have the answers? They are in the exact moment you are in.
You may be reaching out to them because they deal with stress better. They’re more resilient. See that for what it is and value it. Try to understand why and understand that they don’t spend the majority of their time wasting energy on negative content or online “news.”
Then begin to get creative. What if you did know the answer already? What if you got creative with your time right now?
Companies that are used to making triathlon kits for elite athletes are sewing masks. Surely you can make some creative changes in the way you’re doing what you do that contributes as opposed to ignores what’s happening now.
Create a New Answer
What if you didn’t try to just compete with the noise online providing another one of thousands of workouts available right now?
What if you stood out? Why would you? What aren’t your customers and clients finding? What aren’t those millions of people who weren’t exercising before COVID19 and already fit finding?
Right now, they too are online more. Right now, they still are not potentially finding answers that serve them – who might be overweight, deconditioned, feeling awkward, depressed and alone.
How can you creatively serve them?
Seeing Problems or Problem Solving
If you’re focused on the gym being closed, the fact clients don’t want you to come over or to come to you you’re missing out. If you focus on people not spending money right now, you are seeing problems. You’re potentially seeing problems that don’t exist right now. Not everyone is not spending money. Talk to anyone.
People are Buying Both Wants and Needs
They’ve likely bought something in the last week that they wanted. It wasn’t a necessity. They placed an order on Amazon or somewhere else. There are people who are actually working more and making more – not because they’re content collecting unemployment or stimulus checks – but because they have a service or product that is needed right now.
Fitness leaders are problem solving right now. If you see a problem your customers have and you can create a solution appropriate for this time, you have a business. Your customer’s problems now are not the same as they were 2 months ago. Don’t repackage it and think that if it’s digital on Zoom or Skype you’re set.
Right Now or Forever?
That is a right now answer that won’t help you in the future. So I understand if you have to get something going on right now so that you have revenue coming in you may start with virtual classes and sessions you can charge for. Go deeper. How can you really create a more scalable service and business?
If you see the same kind of client problems regularly, and you can help someone with a low-ticket offer they can use right now, you’re much more valuable than that trainer who targets a broad audience.
If you’ve been told by anyone that you need to have a “broader appeal” you’ve been given bad advice. You want to have a niche and you want to be the best at it. If you run a gym or facility of any kind and want to serve a broader audience you hire more experts.
If you are in a geographically challenged area with a small population base, then you need first to be come the expert in one thing. You can add another area of expertise after that, and after that. But you can’t ever again be a trainer for “everyone.”
Every Client Has Unique Needs
A working mother of 3 who’s a cancer survivor wants a trainer who understands lymphedema first and weight loss second. You can’t train her like you train other weight loss clients.
A woman in menopause who wants weight loss can’t be trained like you train a 20 year old who wants weight loss.
Critical or Courageous?
If you’re being critical of someone who has more money right now, stop. You’d love to be in their place. Feeling secure and safe. And yet you if you get honest haven’t been willing to do the same degree of work to get there, take the same amount of risks, or lived within your means not beyond them.
There is nothing congruent about the fact you won’t do or didn’t do what it took to get to the same point – whether that was ask for help, learn a skill or learn how to save and keep your money once you made it.
If you say to someone “you don’t understand” isn’t it true that you delivered the message? You didn’t communicate it well.
If you’ve said, “I’m just a personal trainer” or “personal trainers don’t make that much money” then you’ve got the limiting belief that stopped you. No one else said that. I earned 6 figures as a trainer and director. You can earn 5 figures working 3 days a week (I’ll link to a recent show with Stu Schaefer in the show notes).
Everything you have and everything you don’t right now is the result of a choice.
What Did You Choose
Did you choose to live paycheck-to-paycheck? Did you ignore your profit-and-loss statement? Did you spend for support that you didn’t keep an eye on closely enough to know it was hurting you?
You made the choices based on the facts you had. If you can honestly look back and say you didn’t make the best decisions, don’t wallow in that. You can choose again right now to do it differently.
COVID19 is no one’s fault. None of us saw it coming. Never in history has this happened. Fitness leaders aren’t busy pointing fingers and feeling sorry for themselves. They’re productively exploring the problems people have right now and the skills, talents, and knowledge they have that could provide answers.
Fitness Leaders Show Up in Tough Times
Who you are as a fitness leader is what will determine your After COVID (AC). If you’re showing up, asking, and listening to your customers you can identify ways to be successful during and after COVID19.
Fitness leaders aren’t only calling someone else asking for help. Though they’re not afraid to ask for something specific. They’re calling offering help and ideas, sharing solutions that could grow into products and services.
And this will feel so much better.
You’re a leader. Lead.
