That's what I call a stack of cash.

Here is the formula to getting rich as a fitness professional:

1.  Do marketing that yields you a net return on the investment (once you find it, do tons of it).

2.  Build systems to handle inquiries, sales, and training.

3.  Hire people to do execute your system with no involvement from you.

4.  Retire and live at the beach.

Easy huh?  Nothing new to you I’m sure.  Knowing what to do is never the problem.  It is always the ABILITY TO EXECUTE.  That is and has always been the deciding factor.  Any new-b entrepreneur has a good idea every few months.  An advanced,  hundred million to billionaire entrepreneur can mentally breakdown and construct a new business opportunity in their minds in a matter of minutes …

IDEAS DON’T MATTER – IT’S ALL ABOUT YOUR ABILITY TO EXECUTE ON THEM.

This ability isn’t something you get overnight.  It’s something that you learn, practice, and eventually master.  You’ll then be able to make money so fast that you’ll wonder where it was hiding all those years.

Whoa, we’re getting ahead of ourselves.  As you probably figured out, a major limiting step in this entire process will be your ability to find, hire, train, and delegate to the RIGHT people.

Let’s talk about that now.

In part two of this series on HIRING, I’m going to share with you an excerpt from THE SIX-FIGURE TRAINER MANUAL that covers this subject on a level that any trainer that’s facing this can appreciate.

In the chapter titled THE SUPER-TRAINING SYSTEM, we talk about how to turn your entire training business into essentially a group training business, and grow your group training sessions in size while still maintaining high rates and individual attention.

Here are three excerpts pulled from that chapter – ignore them at your own risk:

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Managing an assistant is a good learning experience for you too. From this book, you’ll understand that I view Personal Training as the beginning part of your journey in the fitness industry. It’s not just the money or the achievement of success in the gym that’s the most rewarding; it’s the potential the job has to help you grow as a person. Managing your assistant is a major part of that process. It will teach you the responsibilities of being a leader, a mentor, and setting a good example. No matter how simple or stress free the career path you eventually chose, you’ll still have to manage employees and take a leadership role at some point. The Super-Trainer System will be your first taste of that. You might make some mistakes in the beginning, but it’s all part of your learning process.

Even if you're the best, it's still important to have someone good to fall back on.

Having an assistant that’s familiar with your training style and standards also gives you an added dimension of freedom. When your assistant trainer has mastered your techniques and principles, you can leave them in charge of your clients whenever you decide to take an extended holiday.

This arrangement takes away one of the major drawbacks of being a trainer, that if you go on a two week vacation, almost all of the progress your clients achieve vanishes! Especially when you’re an outstanding trainer, your clients become even more dependent on you. This creates a situation where it’s hard for you to take any extended time off, knowing that when you get back your clients will be shell of themselves. In these situations, you can put your assistant in control with instructions to work toward the same goals and maintain the same intensity with your clients while you’re gone. This allows you to take the occasional two, three, or even four week vacation. This isn’t something you can do more than twice or three times a year, but having your assistant allows you the option without having the progress you and your client have worked so hard for go to waste. Your clients will be happy to train with your assistant while you enjoy your much deserved vacation, and you don’t have to charge them any less for training for the training while you’re gone because it’s still of the same “brand”. You may want to pay your assistant slightly more for this time that they’re captaining the ship on their own (optional), but the true reward for them is the experience of training a high-level client load by themselves.

In my experience, they’re grateful for the responsibility and do their absolute best job to maintain your standards and not let you down.  Having this peace of mind that your clients are covered is something that almost no professional in this type of field can afford, but it’s something that the Super-Trainer System allows you. Almost everyone else is harmed by the fact that any time they take off interrupts the normal routine and consumption patterns of their clients. Once you’ve gained this client and got them “hooked” so to speak, you never want to allow anything to break the momentum you’ve gained, and a vacation by you will do just that. In that regard, having an assistant gives you a huge edge. It also gives you the ability to earn close to your usual income even while you’re traveling, a huge advantage as well. You’re vacation can basically be paid for by the work your assistant is doing while you’re gone.

Finding An Assistant

Truly good help is hard to find.

How should you find this assistant? Like I mentioned, finding quality employees is a difficult process. The way it’s worked for me in the past is this: in most gym situations I enter, I start to make friends with many of the gym members. I especially make friends with the younger athletes in the gym; they’re always looking for free training advice and are never shy about coming up and asking.

They also view Personal Training as the coolest job in the world, and as they see my client load swell and how professionally I serve them, their questions quickly turn from how to work-out to how they can become trainers themselves. You can give one these apprentices some part-time work with you on a trial basis. Like I mentioned, it’s not even important for this person to have past training experience, just that they have a passion for fitness and a willingness to learn.

Finding your employees through this type of networking is probably the best way to find quality people. At other times, in other training practice set-ups I’ve tried, I’ve placed ads in the help wanted sections of major newspapers. This has always ended disastrously for me and I don’t recommend it. The majority of people that view these ads are not just un-employed, they’re unemployable. They aren’t capable at all of handling the responsibilities that come with any job, let alone what you’ll be giving them. Rather than getting into any horror stories, and I’ve got some great ones, I’ll just tell you that the only people you should work with are the ones that you’ve gotten to know personally or that you get to know through a personal reference. And I’m sorry to say that even those won’t work on occasion!

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My goal in that excerpt was for you to clearly see how this skill of hiring and delegation can grow for you.  Just like that old “a journey of a thousand miles …” saying, your business success will grow the same way – one step at a time.

We have one more part of this series on hiring coming up.  Til then, step your game up and get busy enough so that you can start putting this hiring and delegating info into practice in your training business – good luck.