Business

Educate them about what, you may be thinking. Well, consider this, many businesses focus solely on attracting new customers, but you NEED to spend a good chunk of your time retaining current and former customers. These are people you already know to be a good sales potential…they’ve already bought from you!

Take the time to market and sell new products to your old customers and less time trying to sell old products to new customers and you will see a drastic change in your sales, customer quality and branding position.

Here are a couple of key elements to use to retain your current customers:

It’s easier and cheaper to keep a current client than it is to try to find new ones. Here’s my Top 12 Ways to Maximize Personal Trainer Client Retention

When it comes to training success and longevity, retention is key.

Long-term clients essential. They’re your best source of new business (through referrals), are most likely to provide you with social proof (through testimonials), and are most likely to buy and recommend any affiliate products you may offer.

Retaining long-term clients allows you to focus on what’s important, namely high-quality service and results-based training.

Fitness businesses come in all shapes and sizes — from boutique Barre studios to big box gyms. We find our niche and serve the needs of our clients. Although services vary, successful businesses have one common thread. We have multiple streams of revenue to keep our operations afloat and thriving. Running multiple profit centers such as personal training, boot camps, and nutritional products is a tenuous balance. As entrepreneurs, it is easy to get distracted and have your hands in many different areas. However, we need to focus our energy on services that provide the deepest impact and the most return on investment. But we cannot rely on one area of our business to do all the heavy lifting!

We are going to explore ideas for diversifying your current income. We’ll also discuss how to create programs that include multiple profit centers to showcase the best of your business. To dive in, let’s look at a preliminary list of profit centers. Where does your business line up? Are you highly functioning in at least six of these areas? Write them down. Add to the list any of your services not reflected below.  Keep that list. You’ll use it as we work through this topic together.

The fitness industry is getting more and more competitive.  There are studios, boot camps, and CrossFit boxes popping up on every corner.  Then you have the big box gyms like Gold’s providing personal training and small group training on the cheap.

How in the world do you compete with all these businesses?

It used to be that if you were good at what you did, had a bit of drive to outwork your competition and produced results for your clients that you would succeed as a fitness business owner.

Now, there are more frustrated, struggling fitness business owners than ever.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way!  With a great plan you can succeed, make a great living, enjoy what you do and even have the freedom to take vacations and stop working 12-16 hour days.

Have you ever dreamed of starting your own business? If yes, then you are not alone. Nearly 50% of employees in their 20s or 30s would like to start their own business (University of Phoenix 2014). However, according to the Wall Street Journal, only 3.6% of adults under age 30 own a stake in a private company (Simon 2015). If you truly desire to start a business, what’s stopping you? Perhaps you can’t raise the money. Or maybe you just don’t know where to begin. My guess is that the process seems overwhelming!

We all get discouraged when we think of what we would need to do to launch a business. But life doesn’t happen in a quantum leap. It happens in small steps you take toward your goal every day. In this article, I will provide 10 steps to get you started on starting your business. Does this mean that significant success will happen in 10 easy steps? No way! One step may need to be broken into five smaller ones. It’s up to you to decide how small the steps are. All that matters is that you keep moving forward.

This week’s Throwback Thursday piece is “Continuing Education”, written by Lisa Lorraine Taylor on December 14, 2014. 

Hi Fit Pros,

TrainerLisa here with a subject that is very near and dear to my heart…Continuing Education! As an AFAA CEU Provider and someone who is very passionate about keeping current with my personal certifications, I’d like to give you my intake on this awesome subject!

What are CEU’s/CEC’s?

CEU’s/CEC’s stand for Continuing Educational Units or Continuing Educational Credits and this is a MUST upon receiving your certification(s). Every certification regardless of if you certified as a Personal Trainer, Group Ex, Spinning, Yoga, R.I.P.P.E.D, Turbo Kick, Pilates Instructor, or Zumba, Crossfit or any other fitness professional certification or modality, staying current in our industry is not only a smart thing to do but in most cases it. Is. MANDATORY!