At a time when online training isn’t just a cool thing to try but is fast becoming the dominant career path for personal trainers everywhere, the need to distinguish yourself and be different has never been greater.
Unfortunately, most who venture online do so for two main reasons:
[1] Their face-to-face business didn’t really work out too well
[2] They find an online blueprint model that promises an easier life making money whilst they sleep
There are two problems here. One, if one’s physical business didn’t prove successful there likely exist underpinning reasons as to why not that will also likely show up online too. And two, copying a standard model for online will not likely make doing business online easy at all.
People are often encouraged to develop an online offer to attract current clients and their friends and family, but this isn’t really a business model. And borrowing a blueprint or proven method that is, in fact, sold to the masses for £147 is like copying the latest sales approaches of a gym chain to pick up clients. The world has become way too small to be a copycat.
<<<What you need, in my opinion, is a unique approach and one that doesn’t sell fitness, doesn’t sell personal training, doesn’t sell coaching and doesn’t sell anything at all>>>
YOU NEED TO SELL A SOLUTION, ONLINE. And selling nutrition downloads, and recipe ideas and exercise programs and fitness videos all packaged into a “program” is not selling a solution and, therefore, can only be sold at a competitive price. And as such will be cheap and, therefore, leaves little room to market it properly.
Eventually this approach will drive the price down to the lowest common denominator and end up just like personal training today, sold at £15 per hour in some gyms.
The more you automate, the more you go group, the more you disengage from the people you coach, the more you spend MORE time on social media "selling" what you do versus committing to "doing it", the more you move away from fixing problems and towards trying to make money.
A word on free Facebook groups. Everyone knows they are no more than a method of marketing. Join this free group and benefit by accessing free stuff is code for let me try and build know, like and trust for free until it’s time to sell you what I do and why I am inviting you in, in the first place. And people know this now.
Let me cut to the chase.
The problem MOST people struggle with is not following through on their good intentions. They struggle to remain focused and committed to their goals although most, in fact, rarely have well-constructed goals in the first place, they actually simply struggle to follow through on their ideals and wishes. It’s NOT they don’t have ideas about what to eat. Most don’t want to spend more time cooking and so they don’t really need more recipes. It’s not that they don’t have or can’t get a fitness plan – fitness regimes to burn fat fast are downloadable and free all over YouTube and Facebook.
The problem they have is that they can’t seem to help letting life get in the way of them making sustainable changes to their general activity and fitness efforts and they keep resorting back to old ways of eating and drinking. That’s it! Nothing more to it.
The BEST solution you could possibly provide, therefore, is a “coaching” one. Not personal training just called coaching. Not automated, not group, not designed to lever your time – but a coaching solution designed to help them follow through!
Don’t take the easy option. With a Facebook £47 a month membership to access live content, free downloads, and post your meals etc. you offer no reason whatsoever for people to choose you, other than the people who already know you, who choose you just because they know you. But they’ll run out.
Instead, create a program to solve problems and charge properly for fixing them and the money will come. How does this show up? Well, first such an approach has real-time contact. And if it is to deal with what stops people following through it needs to be something like a series of Zoom or Skype Calls with a way to keep people accountable, and resources behind the scene to help people when they need help. Life Coaches (good ones) sell their solutions at hundreds and even thousands of pounds and ex-EiF Coach Kim Raine, for example, sells her 6-week one-on-one Slim from Within coaching at £700.
Imagine someone stuck and frustrated with their weight, health and fitness. And you gave them all the programs, education and nutrition downloads they could possibly need for free. The truth is they still wouldn’t get a result. The power of your coaching is life-changing. It activates your resources and brings fitness and healthy eating to life.
Sell a solution with the right number of 1-hour coaching sessions at the front end and right amount of accountability calls and check-ins, however you do them, as they progress. Integrate the right education and resources so they are built-in and we have a solution.
The benefit of someone choosing you, of course, as a coach as opposed to a standard life coach is that you are a certified personal trainer and nutrition guide as well!
Darren T