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Craig Ballantyne: … and a lot of people don’t have that fit right but then when we sit down and talk, we can figure that out and just boom, like all of a sudden, everything is very clear and very focused and they know exactly what [Indiscernible] and they know how to find these people and they know how to get these people to refer others. It’s very, very cool and then that’s when things start going from zero to [Inaudible].
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah, yeah, sounds good. I mean me and Bedros Keuilian were talking a couple of weeks ago and he brought up a really funny thing. One of his students said once that once you open your mind to the potential that there is marketing and you start studying online marketing, direct marketing, it’s kind of like losing your virginity again which is pretty funny about what he said. But when you talk about that lifestyle change, that’s kind of what it’s like, right? So it’s a major shift. It’s a totally new world.
Craig Ballantyne: It totally is. Now this weekend, I was in Vegas at a seminar completely unrelated to fitness and I like going to these things for a lot of reasons but one of them is just get outside your little box that you’re in and you go and you see other people doing many things on a much bigger level. You realize that you can just incorporate the same systems they’ve used because a lot of people are just thinking pretty small these days when there’s still a lot of opportunity out there.
So like you said, once you get your feet in the water and you start to realize, hey, this is all right and then you start to see so many bigger opportunities and people make those dramatic life changes. So there is a lot of hope out there for everyone that’s listening. I mean there’s a lot of people that need help with fitness and there’s a lot of ways to deliver your message and the thing is, with all this internet multimedia social networking and stuff, you really only have to connect very strongly with a small number of people in order to create a very comfortable lifestyle and you don’t need 100,000 people. You don’t need to be on national TV. You don’t need to be the next Biggest Loser trainer to just have a great success story.
I mean I know lots of people that 99 percent of fitness trainers have never heard of. In fact, I still go to gyms and I would never get recognized. So I mean nobody knows who I am, let alone the people that are even more niched than I am. So you only really need to get your hands in a tight niche with a great product and a really good story and a connection with the people who have a problem and you give them a solution.
If you have 1000 people paying you 10 to 20 bucks a month at a membership site or if you’re selling a couple of thousand ebooks a year at $40 to $100, I mean it’s game over. You’re really going to be able to dictate what you want to do with your lifestyle. If you want to continue training, if you want to get into some other stuff, you want to cut your training back.
I mean it’s a wonderful world and I really believe that there still is a lot of opportunity and I come across successful fitness info marketers all the time that I’ve never heard of that are making a very comfortable online living and I mean if I’ve never heard of them – I pretty well got my ear to the ground. If I’ve never heard of them, it just shows you – but they’re still making a lot of money. It shows you how much [0:03:40] [Inaudible].
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. You know what? I’m going to play little devil’s advocate here. I love to do that and there is still a very negative connotation people have especially trainers. Now I kind of have my ear to the ground on the training industry and what’s going on with the average trainer that’s still in the gym and there’s still a real negative feeling that they have towards the internet that it’s a real skuzzy way of selling stuff and the approach in general isn’t too reputable. I’ve even heard you mention on one of your DVDs that you kind of keep your Turbulence Training stuff hidden from your general market that you reach through the writing you do for the major magazines and stuff like that. So can you kind of talk about those two worlds and just your feelings on the subject?
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, I understand what you mean. I may have been misunderstood though. I mean I certainly don’t try to hide the Turbulence Training from the general market. I mean that really is what I’m trying to get people towards and I totally understand like why some people who are new to this would be, “How can you sell an ebook to somebody? You’ve got to be there all the time right beside them,” and it’s like well, they’ve been selling magazines and books for decades now and it’s no different than that.
In fact, to be honest with you, I’m a much better trainer now having worked with thousands of people on the internet than I was even three years ago when I was doing fulltime training in the gym and just because I’m exposed with thousands and thousands of [0:05:23] [Indiscernible] now and so I’m actually a much better trainer. I’m helping exponentially more people and just I don’t care if you’re running a 100-people boot camp six hours a day. You’re still only going to be able to serve a small portion of people compared to the number of people that you can serve online.
So we’re helping more people. The transformation contest, what I’m doing these days is changing people’s lives at a rate that I would never have been able to do offline and also personally what I believe any degree that I would not be able to do offline. So for just being able to do so much more and help so many more people and there’s a lot of skepticism for people when they first come to the website and that’s fine. Trainers are reluctant to do the type of websites that have worked which is unfortunate but I mean I didn’t really get into those types of websites for a while [0:06:22] [Inaudible] sales letters but they work and that’s why people use them. You have to just understand that when you’re doing that type of website, that you’re not trying to talk to 100 people. You’re trying to talk to the one or few people that it really connects with and that’s how those things work is by connecting very strongly with a very small number of people and as I talked with the Entourage DVDs, you have to be willing to accept that you’re going to exclude some people in order to include a smaller number of people in a much stronger level and at a deeper level and that’s how I’m saying these words.
If 98 people listening to this call think I’m a jackass, that’s fine and if two people say, “You know what? That is a lifestyle I want to live and I totally see where he’s coming from and I got to contact this guy and I got to get out of this 4:00 AM-8:00 PM lifestyle that I’m living,” then hey, those two people are going to be well-rewarded by this connection that we’re going to make. I’m happy to help them and some of the other people may eventually give me another try in the future and I will be happy to help them too. I’m happy to help everybody.
But when you do stuff on the internet, you certainly get in front of a large number of people. You’re going to have some people that don’t like you. You get some hate mail. You get some weird email. You get even some [0:07:42] [Indiscernible] emails a little bit. You get all types of folks and it’s great to interact with all types of folks because that’s what makes the world go round and I certainly just would say to people, “If you were truly interested in doing anything, whether it’s being online or whether it’s opening up your own facility and whatever, that’s your business and not really too many other people’s business. So you have to be able to [0:08:11] [Indiscernible] some criticism and you have to be able to understand that oftentimes, that criticism is coming from people with other things they should be doing other than criticizing you.”
So there are obviously pros and cons to the internet stuff but the pros outweigh the cons by 99 percent.
Kaiser Serajuddin: All right. Some good info there, man. Last week, I had Ryan Lee on and he went on a kind of a half-hour rant against the haters. So nothing you said that he didn’t cover already so that’s …
Craig Ballantyne: Who was that?
Kaiser Serajuddin: I had Ryan Lee on last week.
Craig Ballantyne: Oh, OK.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah, and you know him. He went on a very long rant about the haters. So he covered that …
[Crosstalk] [0:08:54]
Craig Ballantyne: … anybody. So …
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah.
Craig Ballantyne: You know what I mean? So …
Kaiser Serajuddin: All right, man. So, yeah …
Craig Ballantyne: At the end of the day, he has helped more people than all the few people in the fitness industry you could possibly imagine.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And what’s funny about Ryan is it’s only like the struggling trainers that have a problem with him. All the people, the top Olympic coaches, the celebrity trainers, all the people that are selling books and selling different gadgets all over the place, these are the guys who love him. It’s just the top people that love him. So it’s really funny how that works.
Craig Ballantyne: Yeah, he’s a good guy. Bottom line, he’s a very good and giving guy.
Kaiser Serajuddin: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And Craig, yeah, you too man. You give a lot of knowledge, a lot of info out there away for free in your newsletter, through your blogs and just for coming on here and talking to me for a little while. So I got to thank you for that and you’re definitely a guy that everyone needs to pay attention to.
Craig Ballantyne: Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
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