Guest Post by Craig Ballantyne

Here’s a guest post from my friend Craig Ballantyne… Craig is the creator of Turbulence Training and one of the most well-known and successful fitness guru’s on the planet. DEFINITELY check out what Craig has to say…

I was in Vegas for the first weekend of March Madness (for an investment seminar, long story for another time), and I was surprised to see how many people came from all over the country just to watch college hoops all weekend.

In fact, I wrote 99 percent of this post (with my thumbs on a blackberry) while sitting at the outdoor bar at Ceaser’s Palace (you know the one, if you’ve ever been here). The place was packed. As was every other bar on the strip (at 4:31pm on a Friday afternoon, no less).

Vegas seemed to be doing fine, if you asked me. Even the walk-up bar in the Miracle Mile mall had a line-up.

So as I sat there drinking a Blue Moon and trying to calculate how many margarita calories the drunk guy beside me would consume over the course of the day, it hit me.

The message I’d been looking to give you (after Chris “MF’n” McCombs invited me to write this blog post) was clear. And it’s a classic lesson Dan Kennedy teaches over and over again.

YOU create your own economy.

Kennedy says, “All weather is local”, and he means that no matter what is going on in Washington, on Wall Street, on Main Street, or in any housing market across the country, the only thing that matters is what YOU are doing to generate more business in “your world”.

So here are 7 reasons why there’s no recession for you and me…provided you do just a few simple things…

1) There won’t be any recession for you if you are even just a half-decent marketer who can play “follow the leader”.

Seriously, all you need to do is watch what the best guys are doing, fill in a few blanks, and you’ll generate more leads and more sales. Like clockwork.

Want to fill boot camps?

Study McCombs, Bedros, Hochman, and other boot camp marketing experts. They ain’t hiding anything. You should be able to create a six-figure boot camp on the free info they’ve given out…let alone what you could do by going to the Fitness Business Summit or joining Market Annihilator.

Want to sell e-books or run 6-figure membership sites?

Keep your eyes on what Ryan Lee, Vince DelMonte, Mike Geary, and myself are doing. As Yogi Berra said, “you can observe a lot by watching”.

2) There will be no recession for you if you focus on selling to your top customers.

The people that come to your boot camps over and over and over again trust you AND they want more tools in their toolbox to help them achieve their goals. If you know they’ll get more results by working with a nutritionist, refer them (and make sure you get a referral fee).

If you know they’d get more results by coming 3 times per week instead of 2, make sure you convince them of the value and get them in for the extra session and more profit for you.

Don’t underestimate how much your best clients believe everything you say.

If you have truly amazing resources that would help them, make sure you are telling them to get them…and lock in some type of affiliate or referral fee for doing so.

3) There will be no recession for you if you offer multiple reasons to buy.

Take a lesson from Vegas. They don’t just offer gambling, but entice you with the weather, bars, girls, shows, showgirls, attractions, experiences, and celebrity sightings. It’s enough to keep anyone busy for a few days and excited about coming back in just a few months.

So you need to convince your prospects about not only the convenience and effectiveness of your bootcamps, but you need to give them a “freemium” offer as another reason to join.

What can you do to get them in for that first session? Offer it free? Give them a nutrition consultation as a bonus gift?

A local trainer in my area organized a party at a local restaurant for everyone that completed her 6-week bootcamp. I thought that was brilliant.

You should also offer amazing gifts for clients who give you referrals. So just sit down and be creative for a few minutes and identify at least 5
additions to your offer to get people started in your camps.

4) There will be no recession for you if you are persistent.

If you’ve ever been to Vegas and walked the strip, then you’ve experienced the long line of about 17 guys snapping cards at you offering “ladies of the night”.

Now do you think they do that because it does NOT work? Of course not. They do it over and over again for 12-14 hours per day because EVENTUALLY it works on some poor lonely, drunken fratboy from Madison, Wisconsin or luggage salesman from Bellevue, Nebraska.

Of course, there is no reason to be as annoying as those skin peddlers, but you do need to keep asking in order to receive. And take a look at tip #3 for ideas on how to spice up your offer and make it irresistible.

5) There will be no recession for you if you’re exciting to be associated with.

Vegas is fun. People associate Vegas with good times, excitement, and life-long memories. That’s why people will still go to Vegas even if money is tight.

And it doesn’t take a psychic to know that Chris McCombs is going to be swamped and surrounded by people at the Fitness Business Summit.

Why?

Because he’s kinda cool. People like Chris. People want to do biz with Chris. People want to chill with Chris. You need to have your clients feel
that way about you too!

In my business, I provide transformation contests. This takes the boredom out of fat loss and puts a lot of excitement and connection into something that most people dread. Add in a little personal TLC from me, and that’s just one of the reasons why people love Turbulence Training and my membership site. They keep coming back for more and it’s like we’re one big happy fat loss family. I love changing lives and they love transforming.

Be exciting. Make your boot camp something worth talking about! Have theme days. Throw in challenge workouts. Bring your own music day. Throw parties. Run your own Transformation Contest that connects people beyond the bootcamp. Change their lives!

And don’t forget to also just be your super-cool self. But don’t be another clipboard-toting, windpants-to-your-nipples, super-nerd personal trainer.

The world don’t need no more of those.

6) There will be no recession for you if you build your entourage.

If you’ve ever gone to Vegas for a bachelor party, chances are you guys saved up for one big night at the club, got a booth or bottle service, and lived “the life” for one night.

You know the instant power you get from having your entourage behind the velvet rope in a private booth where the club staff and all the people on the dance floor treat you like celebrities. And won’t you go home and tell everyone about how great that was? Darn right you will…which is why you must create your own entourage and special experiences in your boot camp.

Now like Chris, I’ve studied almost every single info marketer alive today, and most of the experts these days are using phrases like “herd” or “tribe” to describe their customers. But I don’t like either of those, so…

I started using the term, “Entourage” because there is less of a hierarchy or guru status in the “Entourage” and more emphasis on the celebrities you create. As a result, your “new” celebrities get more recognition and end up giving you more referrals.

For example, with my Transformation Contests, we get 3 winners every 3 months, and these folks become instant celebrities in the world of
Turbulence Training.

Now instead of having only little old me out in the world telling everyone how good TT is, I have over a dozen “self-made” celebrity clients who people will listen to a lot more than they will listen to me!

So celebrate your best clients. Give them special treatment. Get them to tell other people and invite referrals to get in behind the velvet rope of
your bootcamp club and give them an unforgettable experience.

7) There will be no recession for you when you systematize your business to work 24/7 for you.

Vegas is one legal loophole from being organized crime. I mean, that place is obsessively-compulsively organized, from the casino layout to blackjack dealer changeovers, the guys that run Vegas know that the more organized they are, the more money they make. And that’s a big lesson for you.

You need to have your blogs optimized for the right keywords. You need to have your ad words running 24/7 to get all the local boot camp searches. And you need to have assistants doing all the dirty work for you, so that all you do is show up, run the camps, and collect the cash.

Whether you hire stay-at-home moms or barter with your boot campers, get all of the menial tasks off your plate and systemize your business for maximum return from minimal effort. That’s how the casino kingpins do it to keep the money rolling in 365 days per year.

Bottom Line…

There’s no recession when you create a powerful desire for your product and the emotional benefits it offers. People want to party and feel good – that’s why Vegas rules. Vegas offers excitement, the feeling of superiority and exclusivity, fantasy, escape, memories, experiences, and an opportunity to satisfy deep emotional wants and desires.

But people also want to transform their bodies and look like your best success stories. They want to stop feeling bad about their everyday lives
(that’s why they go to your boot camps to get a new body to take to Vegas!). So stop looking at your bootcamp as a workout and start looking at it as a way to deliver a powerful, “I gotta tell people about this” experience.

Do that, follow these 7 steps, and offer your prospects and campers hope and an escape from reality. Deliver tons of social proof by featuring the celebrities in your entourage, and you’ll attract more clients than free slot machines run by topless showgirls handing out free cold beer.

This has been a guest post by Craig Ballantyne. Check out Craig’s blog at MakeMoreMoneyOnline.com where Craig pulls the curtain back and shows you all kinds of ways fitness professionals can make money online using cutting edge marketing strategies.