The Voice for Fitness Professionals Podcast

Fix Your Copy to Attract More Clients

You want fitness sales without being salesy.

Yet if you try so hard to be nonchalant you can actually send business away!

You share video after video of exercises.

Blog after blog with no call to action.

You write for the local paper but don’t put a link in your bio with a call to action.

These are all ways you lose amazing opportunities to use your awesome content to do the talking for you. There is always going to be a sentence or two that makes the difference between “that’s nice, thanks” and “where do I sign up?”

1) Meet your reader/your viewer where she is.

Not where you want her to be!

Mistake: Our brand new program starts next week! Here’s the link for details.

Fix Your Copy:

2) Make your reader feel understood.

Mistake: Here’s who we are and how we can help

Fix Your Copy: You’re probably thinking….

Fix Your Copy: Does this sound familiar?

3) Make a clear and logical next step your call to action.

Mistake: All of our personal trainers are ready to support your next step.

Fix Your Copy: Share your biggest question about choosing your fitness routine here.

Fix Your Copy: Join our free master class to get all of your fitness questions answered.

Tell the one person you really want to help exactly what to do next.

Mistake: Check out all of our group programs starting soon!

Fix Your Copy: Click here now to save your spot

Or

Click here now to download 5 recipes to get started now.

4) Be direct.

Mistake: I hope you liked this! Will you share it?

Fix Your Copy: Tag three friends who would love this for a free xyz!

Mistake: You’ll find other podcasts and blogs at www.Imawesome.com

Fix Your Copy: Link here to the resource mentioned in today’s podcast.

If you really believe you have something that can solve a problem tell her! Tell her exactly what to do next and why what she’s doing now won’t help.

Fitnessmarketingmastery.com/fix-your-copy

How Fitness Videos Can Grow Your Business

You know fitness videos get more views, traction, and cost less than other forms of marketing. You may not know how to stay consistent and make time to do it.

Here’s how to create fitness videos that make a difference in your business.

Batch your fitness videos

Batch every step along the way.

Research before you record. Choose a single topic and stick with it to create 5-6 videos that fall into that topic.

Think about the why behind you’re creating video. Are you creating fitness videos that attract more customers and clients? What specific client do you want to attract? Do you have a program launch coming up? What content would surprise, shock, and make a viewer want to know more? What content would give a viewer hope and a quick win?

Create a list of the videos you want to create. Create a list of the titles for those videos. Do a search of other popular content on that topic. Search key words you want in the title.

Create the videos knowing what action you want the viewer to take so you can ask for it. You’ll be able to include a teaser for the previous video and the next video, getting a viewer to stay on your channel consuming more videos.

Be concise.

Get right to the point. Break large concepts into short segments of 1-3 minutes. The shorter a video – as long as it’s engaging – the more likely a viewer will watch 100% of your video and that ‘s a big plus for your organic recommendations and growth.

Be concise with your start too. Get right to what you promise in your title. Then quickly introduce yourself and get right back to it.

Know what you want them to do next.

Choose one thing, not 2 or 5, that you want a viewer to do after they watch your video. Tell them to subscribe, or go to the link below (or on your screen). Suggest they go back to the previous video in the playlist.

Release Fitness Videos Natively.

Upload your video to Facebook, to LinkedIn, and to YouTube each directly from your phone. Don’t depend on uploads to YouTube and then share to the other platforms. Natively uploaded video is edging out shared from YouTube across platforms.

Stagger your release.

It’s tempting to share it all right away. However, this is one instance where batching won’t help as much as staggering your video share. Wait a bit to share the same video to Facebook and LinkedIn as you just posted to YouTube.

Keep the traffic coming to your website by spreading it out.

Plan your fitness video production.

From conceptualizing to recording if you don’t have the time set in your calendar it’s not going to happen. Start. Even if you feel like you’re terrible at it in the beginning, it’s not about you. It’s about how much you’re helping the viewer. If you believe you’ve got a message they need, then you need to be there!

See the show notes here: Fitnessmarketingmastery.com/videos

Need support growing your fans and followers so you can increase subscribers and sell more services?

Book a chat here: http://www.scheduleyou.in/ZzFwszm

Got Your Continuing Education Credits Planned for 2019?

No matter when you’re listening to this episode, continuing education and rejuvenation is always timely. As we record at the beginning of February though it’s a time when fitness pros are looking at annual con-ed budgets and live conferences, continuing education, combining get-aways with business building and that brings me to my guest today.Before we dive in.. today’s episode is brought to you by the Flipping 50 Specialist program, training fitness pros and health coaches to be experts at hormone balancing exercise prescription especially for women in peri-menopause, menopause, and long after menopause.

Janice Jaicks is the founder and creator of FitnessFest Conference and Expo, AquaCon, Spring Cleaning for the Soul Retreat, and Desert Swim School. Janice has been teaching swim lessons and water fitness since 1985. She has trained hundreds of instructors in the field of water exercise all over the country.

FitnessFest is a continuing education conference for fitness professionals and has been serving fitness and health pros with events in the Southwest since 1998. In 2018, FitnessFest added four new cities to its schedule (in conjunction with TheFitExpo). FitnessFest has worked with several Native American communities and their diabetes prevention and treatment projects for the past six years.

Mover and Shaker in Fitness Continuing Education  

This woman is on the move as a leader in the fitness industry. Like a handful of other amazing female fitness leaders identifying a need and then taking it on as a personal responsibility… I brought her in because I’m involved as a presenter at FitnessFest in April.

This event is truly a jewel. It’s big, the offerings and sessions (we dive into here) and the customer service is big… but the feel is small… they know me, and I think you too will love it and so without further delay… Janice Jaicks!

Questions I asked Janice:

• Why do you do this? You’ve added 4 new cities… when many others might be looking to retire, you’re recharging! (which is the FLIPPING 50 Philosophy) …what’s lighting your fire?
• How old are you?
• What sets FitnessFest apart from other conferences?
• What are the dates and location and what do you have lined up for this April’s event?
• What are the most popular continuing education workshops at your event?
• Are there also pre-cons?
• Are there tracks to deep dive as well as the option to get a broader experience?

Learn more or request a brochure:

www.fitnessfest.org/arizona

Rates increase Feb 28

Host Hotel: Sheraton Mesa – Save your room now!

Get your continuing education live and get rejuvenated too!

Must Read Books for Fitness Trainers & Fitness Entrepreneurs

Tuesday morning this week I was staying in a hotel in Dallas. I went down to the “fitness room” where there was a treadmill, a bike, and an elliptical along with some dumbbells.

It was small, dark, low ceilings. I thought… I’ll go outside and run. I stepped out unprepared for the temps and decided this would be a short one. I rounded the block and saw LA Fitness. I promptly went in and used… a treadmill, bike, and elliptical.

Seriously? I laughed at myself as I walked out realizing what I’d done. I tell you this because it relates to our episode today. The environment made it easier to get a harder, slightly longer workout.

Environment matters.

Welcome to the [first] Book reviews episode. This is the place to be if you’re looking for must read books – to read or listen to – that will build you up, grow your influence, expand your understanding… whether you want our cliff notes or you want to pick up the book yourself… we’ve got you covered.

First, my co-host for these book reviews:

Tom Durkin, Owner, operating manager of Ames Fitness and Fitness World Ankeny both located in the Midwest and CEO of Health & Fitness Management. He has 40 years in fitness industry sales, management, and ownership with over 2000 books in his personal library. Began at 200 and 300 training clients at two businesses and increased to 900K visits and 58,000 personal training sessions, 315 employees at the present time.

Questions we cover in this episode:

• What must read books are we talking about today and who are the authors?

Willpower Doesn’t Work–Benjamin Hardy

The Power of Habit: Why we do what we do in life and business– Charles Duhigg

• How influenced are you – or should others be – on “best seller lists”?
• How much does the author’s background, credentials, and experience matter to you in your selection of what to read next?
• What made these titles must read books?
• What are three take-aways from each book?
• What stands out from Willpower?
• What struck you about Habits?
• What if anything missed the mark on this/these books?
• If you had to recommend a top 10 must read books to on habits of successful people… would either or both make the cut?

The people you surround yourself with influence your habits, your ability to examine your habits, and ability to change your habits.

Our next must read books:

Dark Horse – the guy that doesn’t do the standard education or path

Great By Choice– by Jim Collins

Boost Productivity and Creativity and Your Business

Motivate adults to take more activity breaks for reasons other than fat loss, looking good, sleeping better.  You may be able to leverage your business clients – and swing some corporate coaching gigs because activity supports creativity and productivity.

No one is encouraged to take vacations, personal days, rest, or get a massage. At least not without a little teasing or guilt.  Accomplishments and work is rewarded far more today than vacation, rest, rejuvenation.

But there’s a wealth of information available proving that the breaks you take from the grind are where your breakthroughs will happen.

Albert Einstein’s breakthrough insights on relativity came not while at his desk but while riding his bicycle outside.

A creativity moment is not uncommon among exercisers. It’s no surprise that many writers tend to also be runners – or is it runners tend to be writers ?

Following exercise brain waves enter an alpha state associated with a reflective, clearheaded state of mind that is ripe for new ideas.

Could that be sabotaged by constant listening to podcasts or conducting phone calls while you’re working out? My guess is that the typical millennial (and my apologies to millenials who don’t) who is scrolling through emails, Instagram, and Twitter between sets is not getting any creative breakthroughs.

Boost Productivity and Creativity

Exercise could be a game changer – not just for longevity, and disease prevention, or fat reduction, getting into those back-of-the-closet clothes, but for reaching career goals. For men and women in midlife stressed, pushed, crunched for time, the break could mean avoiding breakdown and having breakthrough energy.

It’s longstanding knowledge that exercise decreases stress. This is so very related. Exercise is often the very thing we humans may not do while we’re in the middle of a final or important project because of the need to finish it.

Breaks Equal Breakthroughs

We never realize, or acknowledge that the longer we stare at a computer screen, sit in the stacks of library studying, pull together lesson plans for the semester, we’re failing. We could be avoiding the very thing that will help increase the quality and decrease the time it takes to finish the task.

Similar to the rest between fitness sessions being where the body actually gains the fitness… it’s not the actual doing of the research, the pulling together of the presentation or the notes for the report that makes it great. It’s in the breaks for physical activity (and of course proper sleep and food) that the ideas happen. The right passage for this chapter or that section, or the slogan for an ad campaign come to life not because of pushing hard but because of allowing that work foundation to then flourish when you’re away from it.

Remember fitness won’t happen in the presence of overtraining. So too could productivity and creativity suffer in the presence of overwork. Major projects aren’t born out of pushing through as much as planning, working, rejuvenating, and reworking with better ideas.

Intuitively we know this. You write an email or an article. You don’t send it. You come back later proof read, edit and then send. The time away is what lets you get it right.

Examples

Google is known for establishing campuses for employees that supposedly encourage them to stay longer. Yet, Google creates playful environments, and bike shops within it’s buildings where employees can tinker on bikes, they feel encouraged and supported to be active not in small ways but big ones. Dedicated space and tools are provided for bikers in the active bike community of Boulder. Showers are on site so employees can ride to work or take midday rides to free creativity.

A 2014 study by scientists at Stanford University showed that walking significantly improves certain types of cognitive efforts involved in creativity, specifically convergent thinking, such as the ability to come up with solutions to a problem, and divergent thinking, which involves conceiving open-ended, original ideas.

Chronic Stress

Chronic stress in the presence of overwhelming schedules, projects, responsibilities, real or assumed, results in HPA axis activation constantly. HPA being the Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal axis I discuss related to adrenal fatigue and true not just feelings of burnout but physical burnout. Before that physical tipping point however is where a lot of clients – particularly midlife clients – exist.

It actually reduces cognitive performance, reduces thyroid function, creates blood sugar imbalance, disrupts sleep, and lowers immune function (along with many more physical changes).

I’m highlighting the cognitive and mental changes that really occur in spite of the tendency to state there’s not time for exercising because there’s too much to do. As if spending more time on projects will actually get more done. It seems that the opposite is true. Taking time away from constant focus for short mental and physical breaks- or mental while physical breaks – is proven to be more effective.

Chronic Stress and Fight or Flight

With stress and unwillingness or inability to apply better health habits, you can easily create your own threats in your mind where none actually exist. By telling ourselves we can’t exercise because of a big project or crisis at home… or maybe this is you working on a new program, writing your 26 New Year’s clients workouts for the week. We actually create the health issues that create the inability to focus, concentrate and do our best (and fastest) work.

That spirals into thoughts of losing clients, losing jobs/getting fired, or failing school. Recently, a client had committed to strength training twice for about 30 minutes each and going to bed at a specific time as her homework. When she checked in at her session she’d done no strength training and she’d blown anywhere past bedtime by 90 minutes to 4 hours. She got adamant about making herself miserable for the next 4 months of her teaching were going to be hell. No suggestions were helpful. There was a reason each of them wouldn’t work for her and her situation was different.

The Opportunity

I encourage you to offer a challenge or invite clients to a study. Find a company you can work with on measuring the ability for exercise to boost productivity and creativity. Create a simple assessment tool – a quiz from managers or from employees or both. Find out starting ratings on the quality and quantity of work and stress levels, perceived creativity and productivity. Then have them exercise regularly regardless of schedules and see what the change is after a period of time.

Additional resources:

https://news.stanford.edu/2014/04/24/walking-vs-sitting-042414/

“When I’m still the mind can race. When you race – or run or swim – the mind can watch and be still.”

This post is the annual countdown of the best fitness business podcasts of 2018 from Fitnessmarketingmastery.com/bestof2018 They’re the most downloaded, most listened to, commented on of the past 12 months.

List from the links here at fitnessmarketingmastery.com where you can also access the show notes and resources mentioned in the show. You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes to hear them all conveniently every week.

#10

Using Lab Tests and Nutrition Coaching to Grow Your Business 12/11/17

#9

Planning Content That Fills Your Fitness Programs 1/27/18

#8

5 Quick Ways to Buff Your Fitness Brand 2/20/18

#7

7 Professional Secrets of Personal Training 5/29/18

[with a free workbook]

#6

How to Get More Personal Training Clients 6/11/18

#5

Two American Council on Exercise Fitness Professionals 7/15/18

#4

How to Choose Your Next Fitness Conference 9/19/18

#3

4 Ways to Get More Fitness Clients Faster 11/19/18

#2

Annual Planning Steps for Your Personal Training Business 12/11/18

#1

The Best Way to a Lucrative Fitness Career 12/2/18

There you have it, the best fitness business podcasts of 2018.

What’s coming up in 2019?

Fitness Business Book Club

We’re doing a book club. Every month we’ll review a new book and essentially give you the cliff notes on it. So you can either decide it’s a must read, or we’ll save you the time and give you the highlights and takeaways.

My co-host for the book reviews has been an operating manager and owner in sometimes up to six fitness centers a day, running meetings, interviewing, hiring, designing facilities, and making fitness businesses profitable for 40 years. You’ll hear both our sides of the books and how you can use them for your own benefit no matter what role you have in your business success.

Fitness Business for the Over 50 Market

I’m also going to dive into more content surrounding how to help your adults over 50 and grow your business in doing so. I’ll be talking about hormones, lab testing for DNA, micronutrients, as well as hormones, and how you can be a part of the future of fitness and health coaching that will change the way you personal train.

Fitness Business Marketing

And as always I’ll be sharing best practices with you about improving your marketing success so you can grow your business with social media, email marketing, new revenue streams, and simple business tricks that can leverage your knowledge and skills.

2019 is going to be bright. If you’re listening to this at the end of 2018, I’ll see you next year! You have an incredible opportunity to make a difference and create a life and a business you love. I’d be honored if you join me right back here as we roll out the best fitness business podcasts of 2019.

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

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

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

You need the answer to this question:

Where will your next fitness client come from?

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

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

My Guest is Personal Trainer and Health Coach, Carrie Leonardini

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

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

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

So…

#1 thing I would love to unpack with Carrie… is how to write an amazing BIO.

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

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

Don’t waste a word.

Build credibility –

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

Build authority –

• Published on women’s

Build rapport – use the power of three

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

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

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

Committed, Dedicated, Receptive

Mobility, Weight Loss, Feeling

How do they want to feel?

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

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

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

SHOW DON’T TELL

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

Tell me if you’re a geeky science girl.

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

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

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

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

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

That’s an opportunity not something holding you back.

Everyone is looking on line FIRST.

Get content out there – videos and blogs.

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

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

ASK.

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

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

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

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

ASKING a prospect to become a client every day.

Get out of discomfort.

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

Look for speaking gigs every day.

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

Writing is not my gift

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

You have to write.

You have to stop telling yourself anything negative about writing.

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

Connect with Carrie:

Facebook.com/takeyoursheback

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

Connect with Debra via:

Fitnessmarketingmastery.com

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

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

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

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

Insights from this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Be interested AND interesting.

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

“Conversational is the new professional.”

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

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

8. Have fun.

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

Allan’s new book: The Wellness Roadmap

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

40plusfitnesspodcast.com/flipping

Social Media:

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

Twitter: @40plusFitnessPodcast

Got that annual planning done?

What do you wish was different right now – so you can change what you’re doing and not repeat this same situation next year? That’s the subject of this podcast and you can get the worksheet to help you get started, or re-evaluate your plan for 2019.

1. What should you be doing more of?

What do you love doing in your business? (What are you going to spend more time doing in 2019?) Your annual planning should definitely help you there.

2. What should you be doing less of?

What do you hate doing in your business? (What do you need to/or want to stop doing as soon as you can?) You’ve both got to give up things you don’t like, and potentially some you do when you’re annual planning because there are things that ONLY you can do and you want to leave yourself some time to do them well.

3. Use your numbers during annual planning (so you’re planning to be successful)!

What earned you the most money? What bombed?  Do you need to revamp the program or is it the marketing? Your revenue – your expenses = your total net (before taxes).

For me this is an eye opener every time I do it. Some of those little projects I’ve created I’ve forgotten about promoting. So no surprise that they didn’t do well, except, it is a surprise. When you’re so busy that you forget to promote something? Clearly something needs to go!

4. How much do you want to make in 2019?

See a clear vision for how that’s going to change your life or your family’s life. What will it make you able to do more or less of? How will it ease burden change your family dynamics?

5. How are you going to make money in 2019?

What are the big things you’re going to promote?

If you’re listing things that you sold this year and the revenue you want to earn isn’t what you did earn, then you’ve got to decide if you’re going to promote the same programs more, increase your rates, or create more programs.

Just a hint – a lot of fitness experts create create, create, create,  but fail to promote enough consistently to get those programs off the ground. More programs might be more confusion for your customers. Create ONE awesome program and promote it like crazy! First. Then build a “what’s next” program.

This is one area where even though I do promote and I’m on top of the need to market, I need help actually doing the marketing. I dream about a working vacation so I can just focus on doing nothing but creating promotions for a week. Sick, right? When really I should hire someone who is doing this on a weekly basis.

6. When are you going to promote them(those money makers)? (When do programs launch? When do you start the promo period?) Add these to the calendar. They are hard dates that have to happen.

7. What are you going to let go of? Most likely there’s something whether it’s an idea, thoughts about yourself, or it’s actions that you can’t do any longer if you’re going to rise up.

8. Who do you need to be?

What kinds of self-care do you need to be doing? What kind of standards do you need to have? If you see yourself as someone earning a million dollars, how do you need to be every day to do that? Start waking up as that person as soon as possible.

P.S. Download the worksheet here. 

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

It’s about risk.

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

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

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

That’s a risk.

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

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

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

Random Conversations

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

She said, “you made it.”

I said excuse me?

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

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

But I was thinking.

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

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

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

I think… less. Just less.

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

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

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

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

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

You say,“try it.”

You’re going to try it.

As opposed to you’re going to do it.

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

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

You don’t have to.

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

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

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

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

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

You need to get there.

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

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

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

You do have to take a risk to get there.

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

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

What are you going to do about it?

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

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

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

Want to talk?

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

Links to resources: 

Fitness Careers You Haven’t Considered

Flipping 50 Specialist