Answers to Some Common Fitness Business Questions

Hey there… hope you're doin' awesome… I just go back from a killer upper body workout… lot's of heavy pushing and pullin' … LOVE IT

This post covers some common questions I get from trainers…

You see, in my coaching programs I get some GREAT questions from my students… below I've posted some random small chunks and pieces of a few recent answers here to some questions you might have regarding your own business.

( If you're a coaching client of mine, you might notice one of your questions and answers in here… I took out specifics to protect your identity)

Most of these answers have been shortened for the purpose of this blog post

Question # 1 - If I'm just starting out, have a limited marketing budget, what's the best way to build my client base FAST?

Answer - Honestly, my sincere recommendation is face-to-face in the trenches stuff to get the clients, go sarging everyday and offer your program to 20 new people - offer to train them for free and tell them to pay you by getting you at least a few referrals a month ( paying clients)

If you talk to 20 people a day you should have no trouble getting 2-3 new clients a day

Make a commitment to yourself and me right now you will sarge for 30 days and offer your boot camps to 20 people a day… any day you don't do this consider a day you failed yourself and your business

Seriously, just go out their and sarge, hit the malls, hit the food courts, the bug book stores, the gyms, the hair salons

SARGE…. 30 Days will change your life

SARGE

Suck it up and talk to 600 people in 30 days in person

DO that and you're client base will EXPLODE

SARGE

SARGE

SARGE

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Question # 2 - I'm looking into getting a loan for ____________. Money is really low right now though I KNOW __________ is going to work.
So I'm not afraid of going into debt a little bit, and I'll really have more speed if I had money for the marketing materials. I remember in your kickbacklife bio you talk about your "shotgun to the head" approach where you maxed out your creditcards. Looking back, what would you do if you were in my shoes?

Answer # 2 - I've maxxed out credit cards and then made a lot of money… I've also drained a corporate credit line "testing" new stuff and lost my a**

If you've found something that works and you can multiply it, then using some credit is ok

However I wouldn't use it on things your aren't 100% sure on

Examples:

good use: A marketing campaign for location # one worked, you use some credit to run the same campaigns again on a bigger scale after they've proven themselves

bad use: You heard that running an ad on a certain radio channel or in a certain magazine can pay off big time, you drain your account to run the ad

Big lesson here:

Test something and if the ROI is good then invest in more of it… but DON'T use your line to "test" the waters or try something new

All that said, every successful person I know is a risk taker……….. but they've all gone broke at certain times as well

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Question # 3 - I'm trying to build relationships with the big fitness gurus… any ideas?
Answer - Ask…"What can I do for you? What can I help you with? Research? ______? _______?"… just a thought… he'll probably say nothing right now, but it doesn't hurt to ask… your best bet will be if you come up with something specific that you already have in mind… instead of asking a guest if they'd like something to eat, bake some cookies, bring out the plate and offer them a few

Also, figure out some cool things you can do FOR them and go do it

These dudes might say "no", and be ok with that… but it never hurts to ask

Oh yeah, and don't expect anything in return… just start the relationship off with the giving hand

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Question # 4 - My website is almost done, I'm just wondering what is the best direction to go in next?

Answer - Let's start here:

1. Get your assistant doing 12 Craigslist ads a day if possible using the strategy I showed you - using different email accounts - 6 in the morning and 6 in the evening - the closer you can get to this the more clients you'll get

2. As soon as your website goes live, get the facebook ads pointed to it AND the Adwords ads like I showed you

3. Make sure to register your site in the directories ( Yahoo, Botw, Gimpsy, Joe Ant) if you haven't

4. Get optimized pages written for your main cities and services, like…

( By location I mean your city and county)

Location Boot Camp ( throw in - boot camps, bootcamp, bootcamps)
Location Personal Trainer (  throw in - personal training, personal trainers)
Location Weight Loss (  throw in - clinic, clinics, center, centers, program, programs)

Location # 2 Boot Camp ( throw in - boot camps, bootcamp, bootcamps)
Location # 2 Personal Trainer (  throw in - personal training, personal trainers)
Location # 2 Weight Loss (  throw in - clinic, clinics, center, centers, program, programs)

Continue doing for ANY city / suburb people would reasonably drive from

Then go on to these terms:

Location Workout
Location Exercise
Location Fitness
Location Health Club
Location Gym

Location # 2 Workout
Location # 2 Exercise
Location # 2 Fitness
Location # 2  Health Club
Location # 2 Gym

Again, continue doing for ANY city / suburb people would reasonably drive from

5. Fire links to those pages from Ezine, Isnare, Squidoo, HubPages USING your anchor text for that page

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Question # 5 - How I do I find a good web guy?

Answer: I like these guys, but I encourage you to shop around until you find someone you feel is a good fit

Here's what I do personally…

I use two web guys I work with ( not affiliated with each other) … that way I always have someone I can call for quick changes

They've both done work for me I'm happy with so I keep using them ( took me going through about 6 or 7 different guys over the years to find the two I'm happy with)

They build sites for me and make changes… I'll typically use whichever one I can get to fastest

The only thing I really do is add blog posts ( on the blog) but I'll have them do the rest… if there's something I need done with the exception of building a new site and it can't get done within a week tops drives me nuts… that's why I use two diff non affiliated services… so if one is busy the other guy can get on it

For online success, finding the right web guys is huge… nothing worse than waiting for some little tweak… I'm all about moving forward fast

I recommend setting up a similar situation for yourself with diff web guys who can get stuff done for you fast

When looking for web guy, it's important to make sure they are:

• honest
• reliable
• do what YOU want NOT what you think they want
• will stick to the time line you've laid out for them
• will fix anything they did wrong asap
• have some knowledge of current seo
• fair price

Craiglist is a good place to find web designers as well as personal referrals… and if someone isn't meeting your expectations or is lagging on you, drop em' fast and get someone better

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Question # 6 - What do you charge for personal training?

Answer - We train groups of usually six people at a time and we have different rates…

A one month agreement
A six month agreement
A twelve month agreement

ALL on auto-debit ( EFT)

Typically the the one month is MUCH higher than the other two and is only there to make the other two look so low

Prices we typically use per person are:

$59 per workout for one month
$49 per workout for the six month
$39 per workout for the twelve month

Then I take the cost per workout and multiply by the amount of times per week and then multiply by the amount of weeks per year then divide by 12 months

So a person going twice per week at 59 per session would pay $511 per month ( 59 bucks x 2 times per week x 52 weeks in a year divided by 12 months = 511

We like to get most people signed up on the 12 month

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Question # 7 -  On my site, do you think I would be better off to put some more appealing title tags to peek the visitors curiosity more and get more of them to click on my site.  For example, insead of a title tag for 'Temecula Personal Trainer - Personal Fitness Training Temecula' , maybe something like 'Lose Weight and Tone Up with Temecula Personal Trainer' ?

That would actually be the preferred method is to mix direct response with your main keyword phrases for that page… I just haven't changed mine cuz I rank # 1 for a lot so I don't wanna mess with them

In YOUR case I would do it, work your keywords in but make them benefit rich and even teaser like to "sell the click"
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Question # 8 - Do I need a lot of sites to rank high in Google for a lot of related terms?

I actually use mostly one site

On the home page my main keywords are in the title tag

In the footer of the home page I link to a site map

That site map lists all the individual pages that are optimized for each city / service term

My keywords are in the URL for the page AND the title tag

These are all pages on one site

What gets the pages to rank is: Keywords in the title tag, keywords in the content of the page, links pointing to the pages

The structure is a 3 tier site structure and looks like this:

Home page > Site Map > Individual Optimized Pages

You want a bunch of optimized pages with your keywords in the title tag, in the content of the page, and then send a bunch of links to those pages

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Hope you enjoyed this post, be sure to leave a comment in the comment section below

Also, if you'd like me to personally help you blow up your fitness business so you can have a lot more money and freedom in your life, then check out this program here