What Personal Training and Bank Heists Have in Common

There is a lot of money in this industry to be made in the personal training industry.  Unfortunately, very few personal trainers really tap in to the abundance of money that people are willing to just hand over to them in exchange for help them getting into shape.   

I liken building a successful personal training business to pulling a bank heist.

Almost every guy I know wants to be part of a bank heist, and when I was personal training almost everyone I know wanted my job… now it seems most personal trainers I know want my current job, which is basically owning a business and working part time hours when I want and where I want… but that's a whole different subject for another day.

If you think about it, there really are some deeper parallels between personal training and pulling a bank job.

For one, if someone is going to pull a bank job, they have to have a plan, a strategy.  They've gotta know exactly what they're going in to do and structure it out in such a way that they know exactly where and when every single part of the heist is to go down. You don't wanna do it the crack addict way of just running into some miscellaneous bank and waving a gun around.

Another parallel is that just like bank robbers take the bank by storm, you need to take your local area by storm and be in as many places as possible that your ideal client would look to get in shape or look for a personal trainer.  You need to be the obvious choice, have audience awareness and be right there in their face. You want to run your fitness marketing campaigns in as many places that make sense as possible.

Also, just like when bank robbers go in to a bank, they are the obvious authority in a situation.  I mean, let's face it, a machine gun in their hands has a lot of power.  Well, when you're personal training, you need to be the authority, and when people call up and ask about your services or come in for a consultation or a trial workout, you need to be confident about about your abilities and you need to act and convey absolute certainty that you can help them achieve realistic fitness goals.  You need them to believe that you are the best solution for their problem.

And here's one of the biggest parallels… you need is you need to go for the vault.  When guys rob a bank there's not a lot of money from the tellers, the real money is in the vault, that's where the millions are.  When you set up your personal training marketing campaign, you need to focus on the affluent, people who have a lot of money and can easily afford personal training, who aren't going to let the economy or the gas prices sway them from having the body they want.  That's the vault.  Go for the affluent, go for the people with money.

In my experience, the people without the money are usually a real pain in the butt to deal with… They are the clients who usually don't refer anybody and if they do refer somebody, it's usually to just people who are broke. They want to cancel their contracts early or if the holidays roll around or if their car breaks down, they need to quit training all together because they weren't ready for any kind of unforeseen financial hurdle.  I would forget about working with the bottom feeders and focus on the affluent.  Go for the vault, don't go for the tellers. 

Most importantly, whatever you do, don't get caught.  What I mean by this, is don't get caught by your negative thinking.  Focus on the job at hand and that's getting to the vault.  Focus on the strategy and then take action on it.  If they guys robbing the bank who get caught, they would most likely spend the next five years to the rest of their lives in prison. 

Any negative thought you have that tells you that you can't build a successful personal training business, is just basically like putting yourself in prison, in a mental prison that'll hold you back and hold your business back from where you want it to be and where you deserve it to be. 

Whatever you do, don't get caught by your negative limiting beliefs.

Now I'm not promoting or condoning bank heists in any way, in fact I'd bet the majority of the guys who pull those damn things are not only scum bags, they also ain't too bright. And when you DO get some guys who are strategic and know what the hell they're doing, you end up with a real bad situation like we had in North Hollywood in the mid 90's

In all honesty I just love really good movies about heists, like Heat, Dead Presidents, Killing Zoe, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Thief, Reservoir Dogs and Dog Day Afternoon.

However, being a business owner and personal trainer marketing strategist, I like to look for lessons and ideas for 'what to do' AND 'what NOT to do' in as many places as I can find em'… sometimes those lessons show up in the weirdest damned places…