You know everybody who’s ever worked as a fitness coach can relate to key ‘turning points’ you’ve witnessed in client’s lives that led to their health and fitness “breakthrough”. Generally it’s the point where they are fed up enough to say “I’m sick and tired, of being sick and tired” and then seek you out to make a change in their lives… once and for all.

Well that turning point is no different for fitness business owners than it is for their clients.

And today I’ve got a great story (and video) to share with you about NPE Member Mike Stare’s “turning point”.

As Mike shared his presentation for the Member of the Year Contest finals in Boston, Mike’s “turning point” was in October 2007 when his wife dropped by his office unexpectedly to let him know she was pregnant again with their second child.

Instead of being happy and excited, as Mike says he was “scared and worried about his damn business”.

He was working 60+ hrs/week, seeing clients 60% of his time, the other 40% seeing patients, and wasn’t spending any time working ON the business.

He was “a one man show”.

And not only was he stuck IN the business with his time, but he was stuck in a prison with the growth of his income.

He was collecting cash fees for each session when scheduling his clients next session, had no CC merchant account or EFT income, and his business was “stuck” at a meager $4-8K/month in revenue.

Mike made the comment that when first heard another NPE member talk about their businesses, and all the success they were having, he felt like a real loser.

But he wanted to make a change so he became a “Gold Member”… and as he says “quickly upgraded to Gold Plus, so I didn’t have to be a Gold member”.

Mike then went through our GOLD RUSH program, then next our DUPLICATOR Fitness Business Management program… and things really started to turn around.

He hired a part time admin assistant and a trainer.

Then soon a full time admin and another trainer.

He turned his Outlook contact list into a real database system with our ACT Database Management training program.

He raised his rates, committed to sending out a regular newsletter, and started implementing lead generation external marketing systems.

Put together several Strategic Alliances, and things started to really grow.

And right now he’s going through our DEEP CORE Fitness Marketing System program to crank that up even more.

Mike’s business (and his life) have completely changed.

His new schedule is training clients 10hrs/week, treating patients 10hrs/week, and 20hrs/week spent working ON the business.

His revenue is steady at $12-$14K/month and rising.

He’s DOUBLED the size of his database with over 700 contacts.

He has 3 trainers working for him, along with his full-time admin assistant.

He’s diversified his services to offer small group training in addition to private training.

He’s happy, built a solid foundation to build upon, and know’s exactly where he’s going.

It’s truly an amazing story.

To your success,

Ric

PS. What originally kicked everything off for Mike was becoming an NPE Member and joining a GOLD RUSH class last year (just 12 months ago). If you don’t know what the GOLD RUSH is all about, then I invite you to download a great report on Fitness Seminar Marketing and register for the Public Speaking Profits webinar we’re hosting on Friday 21st November, 2:30pm EST (Syd/Mel) at:

http://www.FitnessGoldRush.com

 

Hi everyone,

Today I’m sharing with you the second NPE Member of the Year Contest entry.

Shannon Willits is the owner of Pilates Sarasota, in Florida, USA and joined NPE back in February this year. And boy has she come a long way in that VERY short period of time!

In just 8 months, Shannon has totally transformed her business. She’s gone from being frustrated, burnt out, and on the verge of closing her doors… to record breaking months in revenue, accomplishment, and personal achievement including:

- Increased revenue a whopping 340% September 2008 over September 2007

- Has her marketing pipeline full, leading to a steady 3-4 NEW client consultations each week

- Full groups and classes for each time offered in her studio

- And… the word is out all over town that her facility is ‘the place to be’ for guaranteed results and pilates training!

Each month continues to improve for Shannon and she is now set for a tremendous 2009!

Here’s the products and coaching programs she’s gone through on her ‘rise to the top’:

Maximum Response Fitness Marketing

AUTO-CLOSER™ Fitness Sales System

DUPLICATOR™ Fitness Business Management System

ACT® Database Management System

DEEP CORE™ Fitness Marketing System

Cash Flow Surge System

In addition to investing in those products and coaching programs, Shannon became a Gold Member in February, Gold Plus member in May, and the day before the event became an AREA-EXCLUSIVE VIP Member!

So watch the video to see how she did it..

Best Regards,

Ric

P.S. We’ve still got 3 more videos… so keep an eye out!

 

Here’s what Fitness Business Success Looks Like. Their names are Mike Stare, Shana Ross, Coach RB Berry, Shannon Willits and Conor Kelly. They’re the five finalists who competed for NPE’s Member of the Year at last month’s Mega Training Workshop in the US. You’ll see them telling their stories from the stage, in front of what is probably the largest live audience any of them have spoken to.

Today I’m pleased to share with you the first of 5 killer videos NPE has provided.Conor Kelly, from Toronto, ON, Canada, was first up on stage in front of the big crowd. And he represented himself, and the Canadian flag in a BIG way, as you’ll watch.

Here are the programs Conor has participated in here over the last year:

GOLD RUSH™ Fitness Seminar Marketing System

AUTO-CLOSER™ Fitness Sales System

DUPLICATOR™ Fitness Business Management System

GOLD PLUS Membership Program

Conor also owns 2 info-products from our up-coming web store:

Cash Flow Surge System & Physicians Referral System

And he’s in NPE’s DEEP CORE™ Fitness Marketing System current coaching course, has pre-registered for GOLD RUSH™ 2009 course, and he’s applied for all 3 of NPE’s NEW VIP AREA-EXCLUSIVE Programs.

Congratulations NPE and Conor on a fantastic year… and we know you’ve got an even BIGGER 2009 ahead!

Ric

You know that when you work out consistently, you make strength and stamina gains.

When you stop working out, your muscles quickly begin to atrophy and your stamina regresses – the gains stop and, in fact, the process reverses itself.

Well, it’s the same with your marketing. While you’re proactively marketing, you get results. But if you stop marketing – your results stop – and you can actually see your business atrophy.

Some fitness professionals I talk to tell me they don’t need to proactively market their businesses because they have the number of clients they need to generate a solid income, and they get the occasional referral.

To me, this sounds very much like a “job” – not a business!

It’s like they’re content just collecting a paycheque and have no ambition beyond that. In my mind, the purpose of having a business is to challenge yourself. To make your business the vehicle for creating the life of your dreams.

And when you become complacent about marketing or content with the status quo, you are essentially giving up those dreams. To me, without a challenge, business becomes boring, monotonous and repetitive.

I know that everyone is different. I know that my goals are not the same as everyone else. And I’m not trying to project my goals onto you. So you’ve got to ask yourself:

“What are my goals? How much do I want to earn? What is the vision I have for my business and for my life? Is my life supporting my business, or is my business supporting my life?

If your vision, like mine, is to challenge yourself in business the same way you challenge yourself in the gym, then I want to help you do that.

Because it’s been my experience that you are either proactively growing, or you’re atrophying. There is no middle ground. If you abdicate your marketing responsibility, you place yourself and your business in a tenuous situation.

What if three of your clients suddenly quit? Do you have a way to replace them quickly? If not, you could find yourself in a depleted cash-flow situation that is a harbinger of business failure.

Marketing Is Like Investing – Diversification Is Essential

A good analogy is to consider the stock market. Is it wise to invest your life savings in one stock? If that stock goes south, you could lose everything you’ve worked to build.

If you are counting on your existing clients to continue training with you indefinitely, your position is incredibly insecure. Diversification in the stock market is analogous to having marketing systems in place to bring you new business. If one stock under-performs, you know you have others which will make up for the loss, or at the very least, protect you from disaster. If you have proven marketing systems in place, the sudden loss of a few clients will not result in business failure.

In order to protect and grow your business, you’ve got to be proactive to keep new prospects coming and your sales growing. But not all action is effective action. It’s important that you know ‘what’ to do before you start doing it. Just like you teach your clients the correct ways to exercise in order to get results – I want to show you the correct way to market to get results.

Here are five proactive steps you can take to get business-building results.

1. SET WEEKLY AND MONTHLY SALES GOALS

Before you can get somewhere you need to determine what your destination is. I know, you’ve probably heard this before, but it’s very true. If you don’t have any idea of how much money you want to earn each month from your business, it will be very difficult to actually earn it because you’re lacking focus.

Do you want to generate monthly sales of $4,000? $12,000? $20,000?

Whatever it is, it’s important that you set it as your goal. Once you know how much you want to make each month, then you can figure out how much you need to make each week. Want $7,000 a month? You’ll need to generate sales of $1,750 each week.

Set your goals, and then compare your actual weekly and monthly results with them. Don’t worry if you don’t reach your goals right away. As long as you are proactive, each week and month you will get closer and closer until you meet and exceed them.

2. SET WEEKLY AND MONTHLY PROSPECT GOALS

In order to achieve your monthly sales goals, you’re going to also have to meet monthly prospecting goals. The more prospects you attract to your business, the more new clients you will get. One of the great features of a personal training business is that you generally have built-in repeat sales. But this feature can lead to marketing complacency and put you in a precarious situation should a handful of your clients stop working with you.

There’s no getting around it, you can never stop attracting prospects to your business. If you stop prospecting, your sales volume will decline when clients inevitably leave you.

Obviously, not all prospects will become paying clients, so you need systems in place which consistently generate a certain number of new leads. Only a percentage of prospects will convert to clients. If you convert 20% of your prospects into paying clients, then you need five prospects to generate one new client.

You’ll have to determine how many new clients you want to generate each month, and then determine how many prospects you’ll need to attract to generate that number of clients. That will be your monthly prospect goal.

3. CREATE AN EFFECTIVE PROSPECTING SYSTEM

In order to attract prospects to your business, you’ll need to give them an offer they can’t refuse. You’ll have to create an enticing prospect generator, also called a lead generator. I teach my Members to offer free “insider” information reports, or low-cost front-end loss leaders.

Each prospect responding to your lead generation offer should then be plugged into your database for multi-step, sequenced contacts with a free newsletter, postcards, personal phone calls, article reprints, testimonial letters, etc. As you bring more prospects into your marketing “funnel” – each contact you make with them can result in sales or referrals.

You need to attract new prospects with an enticing lead generator and then follow-up with those prospects to convert a percentage of them into paying clients. It could take up to seven or more contacts before you convert a prospect into an appointment or sale. If you only follow-up once, you’re missing out on 90% of your potential sales.

Compile a set of pre-written follow-up letters ready to be personalised and printed off your computer. With your prospect generator and follow-up letters, you now have an effective prospecting system.

4. GENERATE MORE NEW CLIENTS

Once you have established a consistently reliable prospect generator, you need to follow-up with those prospects over and over again to convert them into clients.

Your prospects will buy from you only when they are ready to buy — not when you want them to buy. Some of them may be ready to buy now or within a week. But many more will not be ready to buy for a month, or six months or perhaps a year.

If you are not uppermost in your prospects’ minds when they are ready to buy, they will most likely buy from one of your competitors rather than from you.

Studies show that 70% of prospects inquiring about a certain product or service DO NOT buy from the first company they inquire with. Not because the first company has an inferior product or service and not because of price. They don’t buy from the first company because the first company failed to follow-up.

As you can see, I put a lot of emphasis on follow-up. Frankly, the lack of follow-up with qualified prospects is the single biggest marketing mistake fitness professionals make.

Selling Is About Relationship Building

In the personal fitness training business, relationship building is more crucial than in most other businesses because of the comparatively high cost and intensely personal nature of fitness training. In order to get a prospect to commit to pay you $1,300 or more for a 12-week program when there are so many other options available to them – including doing nothing at all – you must develop a relationship (or be a supremely talented “closer”). The prospect must get to know you, like you and trust you. And that comes from consistent follow-up demonstrating your credibility, reliability, and commitment to the prospect.

There are many ways to follow-up with your prospects. But you want to make sure that you follow-up as a welcome guest, not an unwelcome pest. If you follow-up with an annoying approach like, ‘Are you ready to buy yet? Are you ready to buy yet?’ you will convert very, very few of your prospects into clients.

The newsletter I talked about in my previous article is only one of the ways you can follow-up with your prospects. Your newsletter offers valuable tips to your prospects. Along with your tips, you will include information about your services and special offers.

Always provide your prospects with useful information that is related to your products and services, and you will be welcome and not avoided.

You can follow-up periodically in-person, by phone, by fax, by postcard, by letter, by e-mail, etc. With enough prospects on your follow-up list and solid offers, you will convert a certain percentage of your prospects into clients each and every month.

5. GENERATE MORE SALES AND REFERRALS FROM YOUR CURRENT CLIENTS

Your golden list is your list of clients. These are the people who know you, like you and trust you. They are the easiest people to sell to again and again. And they are the most likely to provide you with referrals.

Make sure that you have back-end products or services that you can sell to your clients. Find more ways that you can help them achieve their goals with better products and services.

Provide your clients with special offers that they can’t resist. And consistently “program” your clients for referrals.

If you want your clients to buy from you again and again, and to give you referrals, treat them right. People want to feel special and important, and they like to do business with people who make them feel that way. Treat your clients like gold, and they will reward you with their business and their referrals.

Another big mistake Fitness Professionals make is believing that the sales process ends once a client signs an agreement to work with you and pays her money. That’s wrong. Just like you follow-up with prospects to convert them to clients, you must follow-up with clients to convert them to higher levels of profitability and, most importantly, to champions of your business. A champion is the single most important asset you have – it’s the client who refers to you (champions your cause).

I’ll say it again, just so we’re clear: people do business with people they know, like and trust. Give people an opportunity to get to know you, like you and trust you and they will spend their money with you. Don’t chase clients, build relationships.

At our recent PT Road to Riches superconferences, I covered the issue of phone messages and how important it is to have a really compelling one for your business. In this short video, I give you three tips on how to do this. Watch it now. Ric

Hi All,

We had our last gig here in Perth on Friday and it was great to see a really good crowd in out home town.

We’ve had lots of positive feedback about the superconferences already and we heard from some of our members about how well they’re doing when they implement our strategies. A couple stand-outs were Leonie Berger in Adelaide and Laurie Maximilian in Perth. Check out their videos regarding the Maximum Response Fitness Marketing System and the Auto-Closer Advanced Sales System and the respectively.

Those who attended will now be able to implement a heap of new strategies just like the one we shared in the post of May 19. In fact, in Adelaide on May 22 we heard about one member who had already got moving on that one as soon as he read about it on the blog and had some results before he even got to the seminar. Now that’s what we like to see! Action!!! And you can let us know your results by posting comments here or if you’re a member, on our online community.

Ric

Hi Folks,

Just at the airport on our way to Adelaide for tomorrow’s PT Road To Riches so all I have time for is to show you Trevor from New Level Fitness winning the iPod at a fantastic seminar in Melbourne. If you haven’t booked for Adelaide already, it’s pretty much too late, except maybe for Perth. You might still be able to get in — call AIPT on 1300 13 84 34.

Onwards to Adelaide and Perth!!!

Ric

Hi All,

Well, we thought our superconference in Brisbane was great… until we got to Sydney! The Parramatta Leagues Club was an excellent venue but far more importantly, everyone networked with lots of other fitness professionals and walked away with heaps of great ideas for their business. I don’t have a lot of time right now as we’re furiously preparing for our big Melbourne event (which will be over twice as large as Sydney), so I’m just putting up three videos from Sydney.

The first is of me explaining how to work with other businesses to get referrals and you’ll be surprised which type of business I talk about in this video.

The second features our Gold Member, Sue Smith, of “Launch Into Fitness” who’s an ex-intensive care nurse, explain how adding a guarantee to her services has helped her and her views about marketing and how it’s not just about money.

Thirdly, we have our the winner of the iPod packed with heaps of pre-loaded marketing gold content.

Before I go I need to mention that we’ve had to get bigger rooms in both Melbourne and Perth and therefore have more room. So if you haven’t booked yet, please call AIPT now on 1300 13 84 34 or visit www.PTRoadToRiches.com. Don’t miss out on these!To your success!Ric

PS Here’s an email we just received:

>dear ric
>
> i would like to thank you on a great learning experience yesterday 19 may at the sydney conference.
>
> it was an overwhelming experience for a new business owner like myself. the quality of information recieved was >excellent. unfortunatly i had to rush off at the end of the day as i had a session at 4 30. after i finished my session i had an >inquiry in my pt buddy session that i advertise in the gym i work in and with the tips fresh in mind i was able to close the >sale with no problem by offering a complmentary session.
>
> i would just like to thank you again for the great experience i already feel much wiser from just that one day
>
> good luck with the rest of your seminars
>
> regards
> scott peterkin
> s.p personal training
Campbelltown NSW

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick hello to show you some of the footage of the event on Friday. This is just a snippet of what you can expect tomorrow in Sydney and the rest of the events this week.

Check out this email from one of the attendees at the Brisbane gig. You could be next.

“Dear Ric,

Yesterday was great, it finally gave me the clarity & the ” reflection in the mirror” that I needed to make a very decisive and pivotal next step in my career.

I think it’s more about having the self belief to go through with what I always knew was possible but was too afraid to pursue. Leveraging off your systems and knowledge has erased the self doubt and replaced it with an inner strength and confidence about my future.

It struck a chord with me regarding wasted advertising money. I was once associated with a Bootcamps organisation that was all about the hard hard and very manipulative sell. I used to have to run in the parks at 5:30am and hassle the people who were exercising into joining our bootcamp. I actually got pretty proficient at my sales spiel and clipboard, whilst running up the road next to the early morning joggers! I only got paid $35 if I sold a membership - it was really tough! After I signed up 50 people - and 3 other trainers signed up 20 between them, we really had a great contingency of people training with us. After a couple of more 4 week camps like this, the directors decided that they were really goign to launch it into the big time and put a double page spread in the Sunday Mail - full colour and everything!

But I think the sales people at the paper SAW THEM COMING ! $10,000 later! my boss told me that he wanted me to sit in the office on the sunday to wait for all the calls that were going to come in. Do you know how many phone calls came in that day and on the following week and the weeks after ???
……….
………………
………….
…………

ZERO!!!!!

That $10,000 was a lot of my own hard work running after people and doing someone else’s dirty work…. And it made me realise even though the boss ie “The Manipulator” thought he knew it all… he really didn’t .

I think that is my big message to myself, that I never want to give my control away of my own business and my own effort and go back to a franchise or working for someone else. That’s why I have decided to really capitalise on the beauty of the Sunshine Coast by training outdoors and at peoples houses when it rains and having my own team of trainers who can service the women who love the outdoors and don’t want to join the gym.

The other main pearl of wisdom that i took away from yesterday - was to not be all things to all people. And yes i’ve heard it before - but it only seems to have sunk in now !… but I train guys who want to bulk up, guys who want to get fit for rugby , women who are 40kilos overweight, women who want pilates and core strength,,, but my niche is women who enjoy training and are quite self motivated but they are 5 - 15kilos over weight and they want to sculpt their bodies. I am spreading myself too thin with those other clients. My USP is that I’ve done it myself, after 10 years I finally lost that hateful 15 kilos and am now working towards going to World Championships for Natural Bodybuilding.

My only regret Ric though is that I have spent the last few years knowing that there MUST be a better way and there was no one to show it to me. I have really floundered in and out of sales jobs, personal training, working for the in laws and seriously I’ve been lost. I actually really resent, quite bitterly unfortunately, all those years I spent at school, and those out of school where people ( and my family ) just told me I had to get a degree and a good paying job before I was really making progress.

I’m really looking forward to showing them that they were wrong

Thanks again”

Bianca Aiono

look good feel great

personal training

 

How’s this venue for the Sydney superconference? We are so pumped to be giving you this amazing information tomorrow. and I can’t wait to see you there.

 

Hi Folks,

I really want you to watch this short video clip of Susan Sheehan and her response to the PT Road to Riches seminar in Brisbane on Friday. Some of you might be wondering what you’re going to get from the day and I think Susan sums it up nicely.

We’ve got another video here from one for our Gold Plus members, Jeff May who was also at the seminar, explaining what a difference our program has made to his business.

Here’s the story of a guy who’s had a life-changing experience after applying the tools and strategies we taught him. In just nine days he has completely transformed his PT business. Don’t just watch this next video - really listen to the words and emotion that Joel Scutt uses. This is an inspirational story.

Sharon Simmons was the lucky winner of the iPod door prize that you too could win just from attending the event. But it wasn’t just an iPod, it was fully loaded with well over 20 hours of marketing gold.

We could have shown you so much more stuff from the day. We had so many people telling us what a great time they had. So come and experience it yourself at one of the events this week. We’ll be in Sydney on Monday, Melbourne on Wednesday, Adelaide on Thursday and Perth on Friday. www.PTRoadToRiches.com

Love to see YOU there! Ric