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How to bulletproof your training business:

Understanding the concepts in this article and then putting them into practice will accelerate success.

Pre-qualifiers to bulletproofing your business:

1. Personal experience and a strong grip and understanding of fitness

2. Passion and enthusiasm for helping others

3. Foundational framework that assit in rapid growth.

Our passion is driven from our own experiences:

It’s pretty safe to say that our passion for fitness is what draws us all to our profession; what we do saves lives. At the very least, it extends and improves the quality of life for those we serve. When the people you serve see your joy and enthusiasm, it become contagious. Sharing your enthusiasm for what you do is the easy part. However, channeling that enthusiasm into encouraging and inspiring your clients is equally as important! It becomes easy when you hold clients accountable and track their results.

Everyone loves to see the cold hard evidence proving that they have made progress! If you focus on these two things: producing results and sharing those results with your clients, you will find yourself on the road to building a bulletproof business. Most trainers and coaches don’t have what it takes to survive in today's competitive market. Passion and enthusiasm are both key to a thriving business, but achieving true success takes more than just spirit.

You need systems in place to organize the information you collect on your clients, and to streamline the delivery of the service you provide to each client. This is where rubber hits gravel in the process of building a business that is easy to manage.

We filmed this in partnership with Maxx Fitness. This approach sells training. This approach also retains the people you train.

Replicating success

Yes, we know you can deliver amazing results to a single client. But can you deliver equally as amazing results to tens or hundreds of clients over years? Decades? Most likely, the answer is no. This is where implementing the artificial intelligence of a system becomes necessary. Each client has their own personal motivations, issues and goals. It is nearly impossible to keep all of them straight without assistance. Each person comes with their own background and experiences. No matter how dedicated or invested in your clients you may be, you are not going to remember every detail about every individual tomorrow, let alone a month from now. All the personal information about a client that makes them tick, is exactly that … personal and entirely subjective.

Client Information Management (Specific to coaches and trainers)

Will you remember these things for years to come? Or will you forget the minute details that have the greatest impact? If you take the time to document everything, it makes all the difference in the world to the way you stay on point with clients over the short and long term. People need to know, like and trust you before they purchase training services from you. The best way to position yourself to be instantly trusted is to have a solid track record of client progress. If you don't have proof of success, it is more difficult to prove your worth; what are your clients supposed to base their trust on? However, when you have that proof you retain clients longer and gain referrals. I know there's a lot out there on the internet promising to put more people though your doors, but if you are not prepared to serve your customers at a high level, while delivering results, you will continue to struggle to keep people in your program. You want to build strong enough relationships with your customers that make them blind to anything else out there. Helping clients achieve their goals is fun and if you do it with enthusiasm everyday, it's an amazing way to spend your days. Yes, you are still punching a time card for money, but at least you love what you do and enjoy the quality time you spend with clients.

Client focused, result driven training:

It's good for you, it's good for your clients, it's good for your community, and that's how you get those referrals. I remember I used to write

notes in the edges of my client program cards: where they went to school, what sports they played as kids or didn't play at all, what works for them in fitness and what doesn’t...

When you consider all of these facts and the individual’s life, it becomes easier to communicate with them in a language that they can comprehend. Once you can understand the person, you are then able to use the information about their life as leverage to motivate them.

Back in ‘94 when I started training in Boston full time, the only “tracking systems” were paper and filing cabinets; there was a file on every client, and the longer I trained them, the thicker the file.

Being in this business is about being with people and building deeper connections, and if you're not documenting the details, these connections are harder to make … and even harder to keep.

Nowadays with technology advancements if you're not updating client information and pointing out progress, you’re failing.

One sure way to kill a business is to not document absolutely everything. In fact, it's a great way to destroy a business.

The cool news is documenting isn't nearly as hard as it used to be thanks to revolutionized technology. As my friend Travis Barnes often says, “systems save you time, energy, and money.”

You want to leverage systems to make your job easier. This way you can do more of what you love: building connections and building muscles ... and less of what my business partner J.T. refers to as “administrivia”.

Administrivia:

Definition: The organization and orchestration of essential elements that enable a business to be successful.

The problem with administrivia is it forces you to be a manager, and to do it right takes a lot of time.

I should say, it used to take a lot of time.

Luke and Yoda:

With all of your joy and enthusiasm for fitness ... Picture your client as the hero who's going to save the day and get fit and yourself as their guide.

Exactly like Luke Skywalker and Yoda: Luke wants to avenge the death of his Aunt and Uncle and needs to save the day by destroying the Death Star, but he can’t do it without Yoda.

I did this with all my clients but I didn't realize that this is what I was doing until Doug Holt told me to read this book Building a Storybrand.

It's a brilliant book and it completely applies to the personal training business. However, at the end of the day it's about the results in front of you and that's where you have to hold yourself accountable enough to track them.

This is what bulletproofing your business means because you then have documented proof to show that you know what you're talking about.

Taking the time to document a clients goals and motivations, frustrations and challenges, and anything else that can help you guide the client out of their reality to support them in building a new one. When you ask questions and document what is said, this builds trust. People love talking about themselves. All you have to do is listen … and document. The client should be doing 80% of the talking, while you do the listening.

Most trainers are amazing listeners, but few document in the way that is proven to simplify building their training business. People will fall through the cracks, won’t train longer than a few weeks or month. Mainly because they are not feeling the value. They may say that money is tight, and that may be true, but what they are really saying is “What I am receiving is not worth the money I am dishing out.”

This is how you solve your retention problem.

Retention:

If you're a highly regarded Trainer because you deliver results, then the proof is in the pudding because you have the numbers to back it up... At that point, people just want to buy your services; you don't even have to sell them.

People love to buy from, but they hate to be sold to.

You can bulletproof your business by positioning yourself as a leader in the fitness community so that once somebody knows about you, they want to be part of your program.

So your joy and enthusiasm for fitness and desire to help is all you really need ...

but don’t forget the system to keep your data organized and readily accessible.

Referrals:

Getting results and tracking progress works two ways to bulletproof your business:

1. It fixes your retention issue


2. It earns your referrals because of the progress you have helped others make is front and center in your business.

When you earn referrals like this, they don't require you to give away a free session. This positions you as an expert, and therefore there is no need to give anything away for free because you have a track record proving your worth.

If you do not have as strong of a track record, then please reference the article: “How to build your training business with one client.”

Bulletproofing your business is easy with the right perspective, approach and tools.