This is post is from my awesome friend/coaching client and Super-Trainer regular contributor Jeff “Sherminator” Sherman. Jeff THANK you for the unsolicited kind words. As much as I would like to take credit for your success, it’s you my friend that took massive action and put the advice to work. I look forward to see many more best months, best years,etc….

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Hey it’s Jeff Sherman, Hope you are doing great and you’re killing it in your fitness business. First of all, I want to thank Sam for everything he has done to help me grow my business. A lot of the stuff I share on here has come from him.

I hired Sam as a business coach in October 2011 after attending his mastermind. I have to say, it is the best business decision I have made. I had just moved into my stand alone indoor boot camp location. I had a lot of my members pay in full for the year so I could get enough money for the build out.

So in October, my EFT had dropped to just under $6,000 gross. It was just enough to break even at the end of the month. But with Sam help, I have been able to increase my gross revenue by an average of $2,000 every single month and I am going to share with you exactly how we did it!

The first thing is simple, accountability! We go into business so we don’t have to answer to anyone and do our own thing, but it is easy to get sidetracked and push deadlines back. Not with Sam as your Coach (hired boss). He will definitely hold you accountable and get you to meet your deadlines. This is by far the most important aspect.

Next was to track and systematize everything. There were a lot of “holes in my bucket” that needed to be filled. I was able to cut back on my expenses (all the membership sites I was a member of and never logged into, other services I wasn’t using anymore, etc.) by tracking where all my money was going. This alone saved me about $600 a month.

I also created a flow chart. Everyone should make one of these. You have to know these numbers if you want to grow your business. This is a simple spread sheet that tracks all the new leads, one week trials, new members, and cancellations.

That’s it, it’s that simple. The cool thing about this chart is that you can glance at it and know where the weakness in your business is. If you don’t have a lot of 1 week trials you can look and see if you are getting enough leads. If you have enough leads then they are not quality leads or there is a disconnect from when you collect them and when you get them to come in.

If you have a lot of 1 week trials but are not getting enough new members then you know you have a  conversion/sales problem. If you are having a lot of cancellations then you know you have a retention problem.

My goal was to net 10 new members each month at an average of $197 per month. By using this simple form, I could just look at it week to week and know what I needed to work on.

The other thing I did that really helped move my business forward was to automate and systemize my entire business so I could free up my time to work on 3 things.

1. Generating New Leads

2. Making Sales

3. Educating myself on how to generate more leads and make more sales

The other thing I did was hired Neil to do all my SEO and get my website and blog ranked. It was a little pricey but I had faith in Sam and went for it. I hired Neil in January and committed to it for 3 months. After the first 3 months I was on the first page of Google for most of my keywords but I still wasn’t getting the response I needed to pay for the SEO.

I was going to quit but Sam talked me into giving it another month. I’m glad he did because that fourth month I started getting a lot of calls from people finding me on Google.

So to make a long story short, in the month of May, everything that we did finally came together and I had my biggest month ever! I got 10 new members from Google at $197, I had two paid in fulls at $1,970, I ran a 6 week transformation contest and signed 15 new people up at $297 ($4,500), I ran a Groupon and sold 409 at $39 (roughly $8,000), and tested a direct mail piece (300 post cards) and got over 10% response rate!

Here is the breakdown of my month:

$16,000 EFT
$4,000 paid in full
$4,500 six week transformation contest
$2,600 first of 3 groupon checks

For a total of $27,100

So here are some action steps so you can do the same:

1. Track every penny you spend for an entire month.

2. Automate and systematize your business so you have time to work on the things that will drive your business forward the fastest.

3. Create a flow chart and know these numbers; new leads, 1 week trials, new members, and cancellations. Set a goal for number of Net New Clients (new clients – cancellations = Net)

4. Hire a coach or find someone that can hold you accountable.

That’s it for know, hope there was some useful information in there for you. Don’t forget to leave me a comment and let me know what you think.

Jeff Sherman is a Baltimore Fitness Professional

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OK, it’s Sam here again wanting to THANK Jeff again for the kind words and mentioning my coaching program and my Ninja SEO friend Neil. I get asked all the time about my coaching program. The truth is as much as I love helping other fitness professionals blow up their business I can’t take on more than 10 people at a time. (This is not some scarcity tactic I know you’re a reader of Super-Trainer and are more intelligent than that). I literally have 24 or so different revenue streams and about a dozen or so businesses. So as of right now I have one spot available on Tuesdays (the day I do my coaching calls) at 8am PST.

To Learn more about my coaching program visit www.7figuresam.com

My Ninja SEO friend Neil (mentioned in Jeff’s post) is responsible for my site KILLING it on the search engines. Neil is NOT TAKING anymore SEO clients at the moment as he is already bombarded with just my “inner circle” friends. We even made a website to launch to the fitness industry BUT with the word of mouth are busy as H*** already. Will keep you posted

www.PersonalTrainerMarketDomination.com <====== Checkout the site for entertainment purposes BUT DO NOT ORDER AS WE CANNOT TAKE ON MORE WORK AT THE MOMENT. BUT DO CHECKOUT THE SCREEN SHOTS OF MY WEBSITE KILLING IT ;)