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Bedros Keuilian: … that niche market and three, raising my rates and charging what I’m really worth. I kept undercharging and so I raised my rates and started charging what I’m really worth to that niche market now that I was positioned as the expert to it. And holy cow, I mean it took off and then I’ve used that same formula now for my client Sam out here in Chino who went from making $30,000 a month to $105,000 a month to seven figures; Josh Carter in West Coast, California rocking it with his training studio.
I’ve got a client out in New Jersey actually who only caters to the in-home training to a high affluent population. It’s like those $23,000 personal training packages but he charges $147 a session and so three and four-day week programs for 12 months. And it’s amazing to see that because once you break through that glass ceiling, the next $100,000 comes quicker, number one and number two, each of these guys have one thing in common. The [0:01:09] [Indiscernible] was they positioned themselves to that niche as the expert and because of that, they were able to justify charging a hell of a lot more than the average rank and file trainer.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean you see the specialist. They make more money no matter what the field is so that’s definitely some good info. Now one thing you brought up right there, and it’s something that I see a lot in the advice you give to trainers is the big training package. Now, with what I usually tell trainers to do when they’re solo and they’re dealing with clients one on one, and they’re really relying on relationship selling is not to push for a big package or at least not from the very beginning. But once you get into more of a business setup, when you have a studio or you have other trainers working for you, the big package, it sounds like it’s more essential. Can you talk about some of that, the pricing structures and which one is appropriate?
Bedros Keuilian: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely and in fact, I should tell you, I should premise this by saying when you sell a big package, let’s say a 12-month program, the biggest mistake I did in the beginning was I figured out, oh holy cow, if I could sell a three-month program, I could sell a 12-month program. All I had to do was I kind of borrowed from the car companies and said, “Look, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, the reason that you can afford a two, three or four-month program is because you can pay that lump sum in full,” and their objection to a 12-month program is always, “Well, I can’t afford $7000,” and [0:02:40] [Indiscernible] out there in New Jersey with a $20,000 plus program. People can’t necessarily fork up $20,000 in full.
So my whole thing was do what a car company does – finance it. So the 12-month program but you will pay first the last month down and this is the point of it that I use, that it’s important that you get that first and last month down from the client. Here’s why.
Sometimes, as you know, when you’re training a client, you kind of fall ahead in the training session. So when they’re supposed to train with you, it’s like 12 times a month. That might be a month where they train with you 14, 15 times a month and so if you only took the first month down, now you’re upside down on payment. You’re giving out more sessions than they’re giving out money but if you took the first and last month down, then you’re always ahead in payments and so you have sessions to spare which means you can train them more often in the beginning or if there’s a certain month they have more time to train more frequently, you can do that.
So it was first and the last month down and then 10 equal payments of X, Y and Z, whatever that dollar amount was. Like in [0:03:45] [Indiscernible] case, it’s like $1700 a month. My average training program for my facilities back in the day was $480 a month. Where I really screwed up was I would sign people up on a 12-month program and then the 12-month program would end and then I found myself having to reclose them. And by the way, the reason I came up with the 12-month program was as much as I had figured out the formula for selling with the whole script and the diagrams and all that and I was closing 85, 90 percent of the prospect in front of me, I still hated selling.
I’m a personal trainer. I’m not a salesman. I don’t like going through the sales process. I don’t like experiencing it and I don’t like delivering it and so I figured, “Well crap, if I can just get people to buy a longer term program, I won’t have to sell them until 12 months from now.” Well, that came back to bite me in the butt because 12 months now and you’ve got to resell them again and you go through the whole process again of building value, getting them to write a check or give you that credit card.
So the second time around when I reinvented the whole 12-month package, I said, “Look, you’re going to pay the first and the last month down then you have 10 equal payments of X, Y, Z.” Let’s say $480 and then after 12 months, you’re on our maintenance program for only $380 a month, which gets to instead of four days a week, three days a week because now you’re on a maintenance program. So from a 12-month program, month number 13 rolls over into a “maintenance program” where they pay $100 less and they come one time less per week and it was a win-win for everybody. They pay less. They still see a trainer and we found that our average client lifetime value extended out to 19 months, which is not a bad thing.
So that’s how I kind of came up with that formula and the reason I came up with that is because the whole idea of continuity [0:05:35] [Indiscernible] electronic funds transfer. This thing is the most brilliant thing ever. For example, at this month, I got 10 people. They pay me $480. Because I’ve got 10 clients, well, we do $480 times 10. That’s $4800.
Now at the next month, I got 10 people who pay me $480 on top of this 10. Well, let’s do the math there and the $4800 times two that gives us $9600. So next month, we just get another 10, right? So $4800. By month number three, we’re doing $14,000 a month so we’re getting another $4800. You can see where I’m going …
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah, yeah.
Bedros Keuilian: [0:06:15] [Inaudible] a month. Yeah. So all of a sudden, do not – I hated this. I [Indiscernible] experiences too where you’re making a killing all month. You’ve sold all this personal training but then now comes the beginning of the next month and you’re back to zero.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah.
Bedros Keuilian: And it’s like well, I know my math is like $8000 is what I need in profits so I need to sell probably, I don’t know, $12,000, $13,000 in training. But why am I starting from zero again? It’s because it’s March 1st and so with EFT, I know that the next month literally by month number five, I’ve got $19,000 scheduled to come in.
Now, not all $19,000 would come in. Some people’s credit cards might bounce and other people might quit early but if $14,000 of the $19,000 comes in, well I’m still ahead of my curve and what that allowed me to do is allowed me to live my own life. I can go on a short vacation knowing that I don’t have to be around to sell. Money is still coming in and people are still training with my trainers. I can actually have my knee surgery. I’ve had two knee surgeries and it was the EFT of my business that allowed me to do that.
I knew I could step away for a month and get two knee surgeries knowing that I’ve got continuity coming in every month. I didn’t have to be there to self-train the clients and then pass them off to the trainers.
And so that formula, once that formula, the whole EFT of 12-month program packaged together, allowed me to generate enough revenue where every eight months, I was opening up a new personal training facility in San Diego and so [0:07:41] [Indiscernible] five locations off to a big organization and went off into coaching and consulting trainers.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah. It sounds real good, man. Some really, really killer advice there. You basically have not only the sales but every aspect down to assign. So that’s some really amazing stuff. Now beyond just the business end of the personal training and starting a training business, a training facility, you go even beyond that. You have something called a Seven-Figure Formula, just a general wealth strategy for trainers. What’s that about?
Bedros Keuilian: Well, let me grab a pen here so I can draw it out even though we’re on the phone.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah.
Bedros Keuilian: I’ve got severe ADD and several other learning disabilities so I’m very visual. When people tell me, “Hey Bedros, I want to tell you something that I want you to visualize this thing,” and they start talking about colors and shapes of whatever. They will say a house or a car or this vacation they went on. I can’t visualize it but if they draw out whatever it is they’re trying to get me to visualize, it just works for me.
So I’ve had to draw even when I’m on the phone. But basically you imagine a triangle. The Seven-Figure Formula is this and I kind of stumbled upon it about two years ago by analyzing how was it that I kept producing million-dollar earning in trainers. So I kept looking back. There are my coaching clients and clients that I’ve been helping for the last two, three, four years. What’s [0:09:12] [Indiscernible] that I teach them and what did we do to create seven figures when we weren’t creating seven figures?
And it boiled down to if you draw a triangle, inside that triangle, you put the words “starving crowd” and all that means is you figure out who your target niche market is. Now ideally it should be a starving crowd that’s easy to reach; in other words, a starving crowd that’s looking for personal trainers. So if a starving crowd is college students, well, maybe some college students want to get in shape.
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