How I Make Money

Hey there, I hope you're doing great… first off, I want to thank you for being a reader of my blog… without my readers this blog wouldn't exist… or if it did, the only person reading it would be my mom (=

I get people all the time asking me what I do for a living, and my typical answer is usually close to one or more of these…

"As little as possible"

"I work at home"

"I own a fitness training business"

"I'm an information marketer"

"I'm a blogger"

"I'm an internet marketer"

"I own websites"

"I help fitness trainers make more money and work less hours"

"All the above"

… and those are all truthful… but I guess it doesn't explain much… I'll try to use this post to do a better job.

Today I own a few businesses in the fitness industry that generate just under seven figures for me… and fortunately I don't have to spend too much time working, which is cool cuz' lately I've been really focused on spending time with my family ( Sarah and myself our expecting our third child right now BTW) … and I've also been spending a lot of time focused on lifting and on my spiritual path.

Work is important, but for me it needs to be part of my balanced life… I don't want to spend my day just putting in my 8 hours like somehow the majority of the world agreed to do.

I never liked spending my day at a typical day job… it seemed I was…

1. Just trading an hour for a dollar ( or eight dollars … or ten dollars… or… you get the point)

2. Working to make someone else rich

3. Living by someone else's values

I've always known a day job bothered me WAY more than most people… probably 100 times as much.

That's probably why I was a marijuana trafficker in my early twenties, which I was actually pretty good at, but I ended up getting busted and living in a cell for a while and realized a life of crime wasn't for me anymore…. I'll get my criminal fix living vicariously through Scorsese and older Tarantino movies these days… but that's about as close to a life of crime as I wanna get…. everyone usually dies in the end of those movies anyway.

After I got busted I ended up working a bunch of minimum wage type jobs… the only I enjoyed was being a bouncer throwing drunks outta bars… but there wasn't much future in it.

Since I was really into working out and was pretty damn ripped at the time… personal training seemed cool, cuz it was in line with my values and interests.

So I went and got a job at a big corporate gym and couldn't stand it… it felt like like I was a shady used car salesman trying to push training on the members.

Enter Business Number One

Soon I went off on my own, got certified and started my own training business… about that time I met Steve Hochman who turned me onto group training and human billboard marketing… thanks Steve! You're the man.

Within a very short time I was making six figures as a trainer. Along with human billboard marketing I figured out how to get clients from the internet… pretty soon I had WAY more clients than I could handle, even though I trained 6 people per hour with the group training, there's no way I could handle all the clients I was getting… especially from the internet… some days I'd have as many as six new clients in just day.

So I started hiring trainers to work for me… and I split the money with them 50/50… basically my websites pull in the traffic and get interested people to call in and inquire about training, I have appointment setters answer the calls and close the calls into appointments with the trainers, then the trainers sign the clients up, my corporation bills the clients and I pay the trainers 50% of the billed dues. Clients are put on EFT and usually on 6 month or 12 month agreements that continue on a month to month basis after the term of the agreement.

I ended up hiring 15 trainers in my area and was able to completely quit training myself.

These days that business generally takes less than an hour or two a MONTH of my time and generate a nice six-figure income for my family.

It's pretty much outsourced like this…

My link builders build links to my site to help with traffic and search engine rankings.

My websites pull in people from…

• Google Organic
• Google Local
• Google Adwords
• Yahoo
• Bing
• Facebook Ads
• Craigslist

The appointment setters take the calls from the people who found my websites and schedule the appointments with the trainers.

The trainers train the clients.

And my wife Sarah and rock star assistant Del manage the business, and handle all the customer service, admin and billing. ( I can't tell you how great it is to have a full time kick butt personal assistant… not a virtual one, but one right there… mine works out of our home)

Today I pretty much just own the training business, and I consider it the perfect lifestyle business… or freedom business if you will.

With the right marketing and systems in place, the thing pretty much just runs on it's own… I set it up with all the feverish OCD my soul could muster, and it's been ticking like clockwork ever since.

(BTW -  If you want to get a non-stop stream of training clients from the internet, I have a program where we walk you through it all step-by-step… just click here to check it out)

Enter Business Number Two

Now, my next business is my information marketing business… where I help fitness entrepreneurs make more money and work less hours… and there's a few facets to this one.

A lot of my friends teach health, fitness and fat loss with their info-product line… but I like to teach marketing, sales and business since it's something I'm so passionate about… I mean I LOVE to talk about this stuff.

Ok, so for my info biz…

1. First, I have a blog ( the site you're on right now) where I give away lot's of free content to the fitness industry on a regular basis. The blog is a critical part of my info business… as it's my main channel of communication between me and my subscriber list, and it's the beginning of my marketing funnel for a large number of my new customers… and the blog is out there working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, whether I'm sleeping, working out, watching a movie… doesn't matter, the blog is working for me.

2. I then have a line of information products that I promote on the blog and to my email subscriber list. From lower cost products to ones that are all the way up in the thousands

3. And then the top 1% of true dedicated fitness pro's often ascend up to one of my coaching programs, where I work with them personally via phone and email to help them reach their business goals.

4. And I also promote a "few" people's affiliate products… and usually when I do I'll make quite a few sales, and when I make sales I make nice commissions… affiliate marketing is probably one of my easiest income streams. I only promote products I truly believe in, and there's VERY few peoples who's products I'll promote… but when I do, the commissions are usually pretty nice and it doesn't take much more than an email to make em'… when I started promoting affiliate products I thought it would be a small chunk of extra change, well today it's an additional six-figures of income that requires little more than sending out a few emails.

So to sum up the info biz … it's pretty much structured like this…

People find my blog > Some purchase my products > The ones who are dedicated to making their business succeed ascend all the way up to my higher-end private coaching programs… and on top of that I do a few affiliate promotions here and there.

Now my info business is what I really LOVE doing…  I don't know ANY info-marketer who doesn't truly love what they do… the money is great, and the hours are super flexible.

For example, I not only get to help a ton of people, but I have no set schedule and can work where and when I want.

AND… my entire info-business takes about 2-4 hours a day, and I work on it about 4 days a week, with the exception of a month or two a year where I'll put in some long hours like when getting ready for a launch or something… and then there's about 3 months out of the year I take completely off with the exception of answering about 30 minutes of coaching emails every few days.

And what's really cool is that … the entire business can be run from a lap top and a cell phone.

Info-marketing is BY FAR the coolest gig in the world, and a great way to either make millions OR just make a few extra thousand a month doing a few hours of work here and there on top of your training business … I have lots' of friends who also kill it with their own fitness and nutrition ebooks, videos and courses… and not one of em' would trade it for anything in the world.

( In fact if you're interested in making extra money every month working about an hour a day on top of your training business… then check out Craig Ballantynes Online Second Paycheck System for fitness trainers interested in passive income… it's not gonna show you how to get rich, but it WILL show you how to add an additional income for working VERY few hours.)

So that's pretty much I how I make money… and how do I spend my time?

Well, I usually spend a few hours a day doing one or more of the following…

• Blogging
• Creating Content
• Writing Copy
• Scripting Sales Videos
• Working on Lead Gen Funnels
• Improving Sales Systems
• Creating and Nurturing Win/Win Relationships
• Big Picture Strategy Stuff
• Occasionally Inspecting Delegated Work
• Learning ( Studying Info-Products)

Luckily, I love doing most of that stuff, and it's the true 5% of the most important things that need to be done in my businesses for it to be the kind of businesses I want em' to be…  FREEDOM businesses

Besides doin' all that stuff I'm usually either hanging out with my wife and little girls, lifting weights, reading, riding my harley, going to church, hanging out with friends, watching movies, etc.

For me, money and business is all about freedom, I could care less about power and flash – and I want NOTHING to do with bling… I do it all for the freedom.

If I can help people, do what I love and at the same time have the money to work where and when I want, live where I want, spend the majority of my time doing what I want and not have to worry about money…. if I can see my kids grow up without spending the day at some job I hate… then I'm on the right path.

I have nothing against long hard hours at some job that's just a job, and have put in many long hard myself and still do from time to time, AND I think long hard work is a highly commendable way to make a living…

It's just not my way…

One thing I'd like to mention before ending this post, is that none of this would be possible without the incredible team of people I work with. I have systems and procedures in place, but having the right people to implement them makes all the difference in the world.

Hope you enjoyed this post… I'd love to hear your comments below…

And here's that link again to Craigs system for fitness trainers who want to create passive income.

Click here to check out the Online Second Paycheck System