One of the best directors in Hollywood today is Paul Thomas Anderson.  His films include Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love, and the new highly acclaimed There Will Be Blood… all killer films which P.T. created using his own play-book and not following any Hollywood rules (well a production company did make him name his first film Hard Eight instead of Sydney which is what he wanted to call it, but that was his first film and he had to play by their rules a little back then… we all gotta eat a little dirt when we get started)

There Will Be Blood is filled with great marketing and business lessons, and even though there wasn’t one likeable character in this movie it was still one of the best films of 2007.

Daniel Plainveiw, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, was about as serious of an entrepreneur as you can get and as business owners we can all learn from him.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying to build a great personal training business you should become a cold hearted bastard like Daniel Plainview and win at all costs without any concern for others. But I would like to acknowledge the singleness of purpose and complete focus on his mission that Daniel Plainview was able to commit to.

Take out the murder, the double-crossing, complete lack of concern for others and all that good stuff that makes for a great Hollywood movie.  Because that’s not the stuff I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is being able to keep the end so clearly in mind and absolutely refusing to let anything get in the way it.

Far too many health and fitness entrepreneurs are very wishy-washy about their goals, sales strategies, marketing systems and their business plans and live and in a completely reactive state.  This is no way to build a successful business.

Successful fitness business owners are willing to do whatever it takes to make things happen, they will go the extra mile, do things that sometimes can be extremely uncomfortable, and keep their mission in the front of their mind.

One thing I loved that Daniel Plainview did in the movie is how he brought the young H. W. along with him to close the deals, because he needed a cute face so people would trust him (Plainview was one ugly SOB)

I did a similar thing in my own personal training business a few years back.  Since I was a little chunkier than most trainers I felt I needed something to help me close the deals too just like Daniel Plainview did.

At the time Myspace was pretty new and it was a lot easier to reach people on it than it is today (now I think only about 20% of the profiles are actual real people)

Anyhow, what I did was contact every single model-looking female in my area that I could find and I messaged them offering to train them for free if they would let me use their modeling pictures along with some testimonials in my marketing pieces.

I got a great response from this and ended up training handful of figure and bikini-models to use in my marketing. And since I trained groups typically I would have one of these models in my groups. Now when a new prospect would come in they would see me training this figure model and would immediately figured that I was good because if I was training someone that looked like that I must be good.  I was immediately positioned as an expert in the prospect mind, even though I was probably 30 pounds overweight at the time. These models were my own little personal H.W.’s

If you haven’t seen There Will Be Blood and you can handle a dark story line then definitely check it out. True it has no likeable characters or redeeming qualities, but the level of entrepreneurial commitment Daniel Plainview goes after his oil with makes it worth watching.

Make More and Work Less,

Chris McCombs

Teaching Health and Fitness Professionals How to Market Personal Training, make more money ad work less hours