It amazes me how nearly a third of all my program orders come from international customers – usually from Canada, Australia, and the UK, but I’ve had orders from Italy, India, South Africa, and Nigeria, just to name a few.

So to all of you folks, you might know that we have a holiday over here in the states called Thanksgiving.  The story goes that pilgrims were thankful for the help they got from the Indians, so they had a meal to commemorate it yearly.  This was before they wiped out the Native Americans, took all of their land, and left them with zilch; well I guess we at least we got some casinos out of it.

Hey, in the western world today, we live under MULTIPLE, major hypocrisies.  You have a choice of being one of the sheep, or waking up to it, and realizing you have the power to shape your own life.

So anyway, back to Thanksgiving, NOW the holiday is an occasion for everyone to get together with family and pig out at levels that no human ever should. My Thanksgiving was a good one – I have a food hangover raging right now as strong as anything I felt from a night in Vegas.

(My brother actually told me about something people are making these days called a Terbaconduckin.  This is a duck, cooked inside a chicken, which is then shoved inside a turkey, and then covered in bacon.   I guess this is a fitting bastardization of an already questionable holiday.)

And related to this holiday, we now have a few more traditions that have sprouted up.  The Wednesday before Thanksgiving Thursday is now the biggest party night of the year, especially here in New York.

And the day after TG is called Black Friday, where everyone goes shopping til they start dropping.  The department stores have massive sales, and if you’re not careful, you may get yourself killed fighting over that Gucci sweater.

 

I’m going to hit the mall in a bit to do some shopping for a wedding I’m gong to on Sunday.  But not only that; I love to take in the environment and all the energy and glutony.  We have one of the best malls out here right on Queens Boulevard, called Queens Center Mall.   It is the highest earning mall in the country in terms of revenue per square foot.  And I’ve been to malls all over the world, even the super-malls out in Dubai (I went skiing in one of them on a full size ski slope – on real snow!); but I’ll take Queens Center any day.  There’s nothing like a high class mall in the middle of the hood.

But before I head out, I wanted to put together an article for you on one of the most important subjects that I’ve come to understand:   about being thankful, giving thanks, and overall counting your blessings and living and acting every day on that energy.

Now, if you’re a reader of Super-Trainer, you know that I’m not into motivational stuff too much.   I’m hard on the motivational writers most of the time, just because I feel that they get the order of success completely wrong.

Sure you can psyche yourself up, but nothing works better than positive ACTION. It’s easy to feel good about yourself and motivated AFTER you’ve take the steps to make positive change.  Otherwise it’s bullshit and will just wear off.

There’s a fact that I’ve only shared with my program owners up to now; that  success is very simple.  Just create HOT offers for your target market, convert them, and keep them for life – very f*cking simple.  You don’t need to attend a Tony Robbins seminar – just go through that process, and do it fast.

 

For example, have a money, BETTER THAN RISK FREE offer for your bootcamp, call your local coupon circular ad rep and place a full page ad (which is most likely hitting your target market of overweight housewives), ask about some flexible payment terms, and then make sure you have someone very competent on a SALES SCRIPT to convert the leads once they come in.

And preferably, you are driving as much of the traffic as possible to your website, where you have personality content, relationship content, demonstration videos, a blog, credibility and authority indicators, and TONS OF TESTIMONIALS (split-testing has yet to find a point where you can overdo testimonials – so the bottom line is the more testimonials, the better your website conversions).

And having a killer website that delivers on everything I mentioned above multiplies the effect of any ad.  It turns a simple 50 word ad with a strong offer into a monsterous one hundred page sales piece, and almost makes selling unnecessary.

Your job still isn’t done yet.  Once they show up, you need to have a wow experience that converts the leads.  This can be done through a systematized conversion process that you map out for every client.

In my studio, I used to handle the majority of the sales, and I used to always chuckle when someone would come in for one of my offers, thinking they were going to get the better of me.  They would come in on of my risk free trials and three session promotions, thinking they were going to get a quick tune up and trouble shooting (which is the way I positioned these offers).

But they would be so wowed by professional service, care, expertise, and a fun vibe, that they would all get hooked.  I foolishly didn’t track it, but damnit, my conversion from my offers to full price training was as close to 100% as you can get. 

Again, this was achieved through a process that was managed by checklists. This checklist was on every new client sheet.  DO NOT assume your employees will remember this or get it right on their own.  If its a system that is managed through a CHECKLIST, then it will happen and you’ll get the results to show for it.

Now once the customer has joined, you want to make sure they stay with you for life, and continue to refer to you (and if possible, you want them to become more valuable to you the longer they’re with you).  This is a very detailed subject which I’ll leave out for now, but is covered in extreme detail in my programs.  If you own any of my programs, you know that a running joke I have is that sometimes half of them are built to teach you retention and referrals.

While I sell them to you with the promise of marketing strategies and profit explosion, anyone that is making any money in this business will tell you that all of that stuff becomes nearly irrelevant if you have your retention and referrals down pat.  You will never have trouble making money in this life. (And you may even get bored by how easy it is as I did, and seek out bigger and more challenging adventures.)

Where were we?  Oh yeah, I was badmouthing the motivational gurus.  This is one thing they just won’t tell you, that my process above will work no matter what field you’re in, and bring you a lifetime of profits.  When you think of the crazy stuff they make you do, like dances, congo lines, walking on hot coals, or how motivational nut-job James Arthur Ray killed something like 4 people in a heated tent on one of this motivational retreats, it just makes you sick.  I plan to one day expand my audience because I think more people should hear about this.  I think those unfortunate folks would have really benneffited from hearing this before they went on the trip into the Arizona desert; that the motivation can come simply as a result of right action.  But for now I’m all yours.

With all of that being said about the motivational guys, positivity, motivation, and goal-setting still has its place (especially goal-setting, which you can’t live without).  That’s why this Thanksgiving, I want to talk about everything we have to be thankful for.

And to all my readers from all over the world, take this as an opportnity to consider all of the reasons you have to be thankful as well.  Call it having “an attitude of gratitude”.

One thing I’ve picked up is that the most successful and positive people I’ve met in my life have this undying attitude of gratitude ingrained in to them.   They are just some of the most positive people I’ve ever met.

Now I consider myself a positive person – I actually get irritated when I talk to negative people and try to get away from them as fast as possible.   So imagine how shocked I am when I’m around people that even outdo me.   For example, one of my best friends Marco who’s a multi-millionaire from his construction business at the age of 29, leaves me dizzy sometimes with his outlook.  Nothing ever gets to him or effects him or his mood in any way, and I just have a hard time keeping up.

 

This is a big lesson to me and should be to you about the absolute bulletproof, “I could eat a baby dragon and not blink an eye”, type of mental fortitude it takes to be an around the clock results getter. Any of the negatvie shit getting in your head at any moment is just slowing you down – at any moment – belive that.

So, what do you have to be positive about?  What do you have to be thanful for?  Probably a lot more than you think.  Here’s a short list:

– Be thankful for your strengths.  No matter who you are, you have incredible strengths.  The only problem may be that you may have been forced to do stuff you’re not good at, as I have for most of my life.   Whatever your strengths, milk them to the fullest. If you look good on video, throw tons of it on your site.   If you’re good at writing, have a blog, write articles, and advertise.  If you’re very high energy, do large groups.  If you’re more reserved and stoic like me, hire a high energy staff to do the training for you while you pull the strings in the background.  Do whatever works – your purpose in life you should be to do NOTHING you are not good at, and become world class at what you ARE good at.

– Be thankful for your customers. In fitness, I don’t see this enough.  I think one of the reasons why is when you do all of the training yourself, you become somewhat resentful of your customers.  So your first job should be to get leverage in your business by hiring some staff.  At that point, you will begin to love and respect your customers for what they really are.  They are the people that pay you. They pay for your car or cars, home, vacations, time off, for your children’s upbringing – everything.  They are very important people, and if they ever sniff for a second that you are not appreciative of them, you’re finished in this business – never forget that.  Your customers as a whole should get more love from you than anyone or anything in your life.  I know that’s a lot to ask from you, but that’s the key to mastering business – that’s the sacrifice you must make.

 

– Be thankful for the fitness industry. With shakeweights, Ab Circle Pros, and all the other ridiculous joke products and scams out there, along with what’s happening on shows like The Biggest Loser, if you can’t make money in this business, I feel sorry for you. The biggest turning point in my life was when I realized that people actually pay for training – once that distinction was made, it was on!

I got good at it, I realized I could do it on my own without a big box gym, I formed a partnership with one gym, then a chain of 42 gyms. You can get far with balls and hard work, but it wasn’t til I had my own studio that I had the money and freedom I wanted.  That was because I put systems into my business, marketed my ass off, and used the web as the hub of all my marketing.

– Be thankful for your family. I’m not a believer in all of that stuff about cutting your family off if they’re dragging you down. That’s “cult leader” type advice that you should be wary of.   If you have your own purpose and pursue your purpose, you should have no problems with your family at all.  People are built-in with the ability to know real from fake.   So if you get your own “house of cards” right, they’ll begin to respsect you for it. I have issues with my pops as I’m sure every guy does, but I can let it go because I first of all don’t let any of that negative crap effect me, and I’m so on my purpse that it has no time to enter my brain.

I’ve never had a therapist, but I read enough about psychology to know that our upbringing shapes us.  If you had a tough upbringing as I have, come to terms with that in your own time, whether talking it out with your spouse, seeing a therapist, or studying the subject like me.  But you don’t need to air it every time you see your family or hold resentment and hostility for it.  Realize when it all comes down to it, everything is YOUR FAULT.  You are the alhpa and omega of your own life, so begin to take action and you will be able to change every aspect of it.  With the information, programs, role models, and coaches you have access to today in the internet age, nothing can stop you.

– Be thankful for your friends. But if your friends are a negative bunch, get away from them.  Sometimes you’ve got to be a loner.  Deal with it.  Building a large and immediate social circle is easy when you have value, so build value in yourself and you’ll be surprised by how many people are dieing to be your friend.

 

You’re in fitness, and you’re good at it, so be grateful for it.  Push it to the limit.  Stop looking for the bigger and better thing and just push THIS THING farther. Milk it for everything it’s worth.  I’ll help you.

When you have an attitude of gratitude you have more belief in yourself to do the uncomfortable things that you need to do on occasion to grow your business.  You become more fearless.

Have “the talk” with your clients, where you raise your rates, cut them to 30 minute sessions, start to group them, and/or fire some of the problem ones.

And with the time you free up, you will now have more time to invest in yourself, have more time to do little things for your clients, and have more time to grow your business and seek joint ventures – even more reasons for grattitude.

See how it grows on itself?  That’s what happens – it’s why the rich get richer and the poor have babies.  Can you possibly imagine wealth, success, and other radiant people not being attracted to someone with this kind of attitude of gratitude?   Absolutely not.

Hey I guess that crap in THE SECRET was true, even if some of the authors were quacks.  Okay, nuff said on that.  Being thankful is what this holiday is about.  Chew on that for a bit, while I go shopping. Take care.