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Kaiser here and you’re watching me on Super-Trainer.com and if I’m shooting a video, I probably figured out what I’m trying to do. I’m trying to save time by answering some reader questions through this format.
So that’s what I’m going to do right now. Particularly I have a question from someone that purchased the Top Level Trainer Manual. If you remember, I took that off the market last month and it did really well right before I took it off the market.
So over this past month, I’ve been fielding questions from readers and doing the best I can to kind of fill in the gaps that there were in the information that was there because even though the whole thing was 200 pages, as you can imagine, trying to condense a whole career worth of training information into just that much space, it’s not possible.
So that’s what I’ve been doing now and right now what I’m going to do is answer two of the questions that I got recently and they’re both kind of related. They’re from a trainer. Her name is Summer that I’ve been in touch with online and yeah, these questions, the reason I like them is they kind of go through really the mind state that a lot of trainers are at when they’re just getting started; like all the ideas and all the ways you want to go about getting clients. They’re really covered in these two questions from Summer.
So in getting into these, it will probably answer any questions you have if you’re in the same situation just starting out. So let me get right into it.
Her first email was – I think this is the first one. Yeah. So here we go. Yeah. So after talking a little bit, she said that, “Do you think it will hurt me to train outside of the gym as far as credibility goes? Because I really want to train because I hardly ever use machines anyway and I do understand the psychological [0:01:53] [Indiscernible] that people might have with training in the studio but I prefer to train people outdoors,” and she just talked about whether she should charge less for training people outdoors.
So that was her first question and then she kind of followed up a few days later saying that she took a walk up to Mulholland Drive in Hollywood Hills and she said that she was thinking about putting little door hangers on the doors, to try to reach that market.
The way she explained it is that a lot of rich people have [Indiscernible] people that probably want to consume training services and not go to a gym. So, essentially the question is, “What’s the best way to reach them and how much should I charge them?”
So let’s get into the first question here. This goes back to the whole question of training onsite, not training out of the studio, not training out of the gym, whether or not that’s a bad thing, whether that’s a negative way to train, whether it’s an inferior way to train and whether you should charge less and you probably know my answer to that.
The answer is absolutely not. The value of the training session, that all has to do with what you as the trainer are bringing to the table and as long as you frame it the right way, as long as you’re bringing a really high level experience to the table, it doesn’t matter where you train the client. You can train them outdoors and as long as you explain that that’s a superior way to train and you make that clear in the actual experience that you have with them in the training session, then that’s how it is.
If you can back it up, then that’s all you need to say. I know out here in New York in the summer time, I always have training sessions outdoors and it’s actually the time of the year that I make the most money because in these outdoor sessions, you can pack more than one client into a particular training session while at the same time not charging them less.
I’m not talking about semiprivate sessions where you give everybody a break. I’m talking about charging the full price but stacking them all into a training session. But when you explain that the outdoor session is superior and you can give them a better workout, they won’t have a problem with that.
In your case Summer, now that you are starting out and trying to build up your client base, yeah, being outdoors gives you a lot of advantages. You can market your service as a boot camp which is a lot easier to fill up and there’s a lot of easy ways to market that, which we will talk about or you could do semiprivate sessions. I know my buddy, Michael out of LA, he’s doing really good. He’s making a killing with that where he charges a little bit less but he packs three or four people into each outdoor training session and he ends up pulling 100, 150 bucks for each of those hours at the gym. It isn’t’ bad considering he just got out of the gym only a few months ago.
So that kind of leads into your second question where you’re asking about how to reach these affluent clients, whether you should leave some kind of flyer at their homes and my answer to that would be no. In my opinion, that’s not the best way to do it.
One because I don’t know how well it’s going to be received and secondly, as a personal trainer, you still always got to kind of maintain your prestige. You know how I feel about training, that we’re high value consultants. We’re right on par with any professionals in any other field. So to really do something like that, it’s a little bit – it’s not [0:05:28] [Indiscernible] so I would recommend against it.
The way that I recommend that you do go about it is to find one area, one marketing vehicle that you really want to hit hard and to really push for some results in that area or even multiple marketing vehicles and I will explain.
We were talking about your boot camps. You could use Craigslist to fill up your boot camps and your semiprivate sessions and in the manual that you purchased, you will find – I talk a lot about how to advertise on Craigslist and put ads there and that’s just one way you can really fill up a camp real easily. Especially in a place like LA, you will get calls nearly everyday and as long as you make them a good offer which we also talk about in the manual, you can get them to show up; and then once they show up, then you show them the type of person you are, the type of training sessions and knowledge you provide. It’s a done deal.
Now once you have that one vehicle set and that one mode of training set where you’re training outdoors and you do have those bringing in a good income, then you can look into penetrating one of these [0:06:42] [Indiscernible] markets and two other ways that have worked really well for me in doing that and it worked for anyone that I’ve taught these techniques to – and I know some of the other fitness business coaches, they preach the same things and they work for their clients as well – are one, geographic targeting of your Google AdWords campaign.
Google lets you target your AdWords campaign within a very simple five-mile radius of any area you want to hit and that’s how I’ve been able to hit some of the really high end affluent areas and just I don’t even want to talk about the type of training environments and situations those clients were in.
Another way that you can hit those same markets is similar to what you were talking about here and that’s direct marketing but we’re talking about more – through sending a mail in and that can get expensive to send a postcard or a letter to a large number of homes.
That can run within $2000 or $3000 so that’s why I recommended something to come after. You already have a training situation that’s in the bank for you and then once you have a little bit of money to play with, then you can start with AdWords which even if you’re successful, your AdWords campaign will run you a few hundred bucks a month and then you can start also playing with direct marketing which will run you a few grand. But if you just get one client after a short time, it will give you practically all your money back.
Yeah. So that’s my answer about that. In general, smart small. Really hit one thing hard and what you also want to focus on is effectiveness and yeah, don’t sell yourself short. Always aim high.
So I hope that answered your question, Summer, and to anyone else who’s in the same situation, I hope that answered your question too and I will be doing my best through these little videos and through the post in the blog just filling in the gaps and building a little bit more of the information that you and all the other trainers that purchased the manual last month, that you got out of that.
So that’s my little video for today and you will be hearing from me soon.
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