Gym owners – How to maintain & grow your sales as an online gym (Part 1) (Interview with Sean Garner)

Highlights from the interview

[07:00] – The big mistake large gyms try to make when going online

[10:23] – The misconception that gyms going online make that loses members

[17:11] – Creative ways to turn items at home into fitness equipment

[18:42] – Why you shouldn’t undervalue that bring to your clients by recreating the class experience online

[30:08] – Case Study: How a small boot camp like studio in a small town in Louisiana added 100 clients at $100 a pop when going online

---

About our Guest

Today on the show is Sean Garner. He’s a firefighter turned CrossFit gym owner turned personal trainer.

He’s owned and managed multiple fitness facilities and has been a sought after fitness instructor to high level business executives, entrepreneurs, but also parents. 

Men’s Health Magazine actually named him one of the world’s top 50 fitness pros. Sean has actually created his own series of online training programs, such as Project DadBod. And he serves as a fitness advisor for Men’s Health Magazine, where he launched his second DVD with the magazine in 2020. 

His latest project is EntreFit where he’s a business coach to other fitness coaches, especially gym owners where he has recently helped them maintain and even grow their sales through an online fitness business model.

---

Edited transcription of Fitness Business Secrets Podcast, Episode 45

Kristy: Hey everyone. So this is Fitness Business Secrets and I’m Kristy and I’m with Sean Garner  from EntreFit. He’s going to tell us how to get gyms online, which I personally, when I would think about it for my gym, I thought of so many obstacles because you have so many moving parts, it feels. And then we’re also going to go over his three-step framework to getting your business online successfully. So, Sean, how are you doing today? 

Sean: I am awesome. Thank you so much for the opportunity to hang out with you guys today. Hopefully it’s valuable and it’s not just looking at my goofy face all day and we get something good out of this thing. 

Kristy: It’s going to be awesome. Thanks for being on the show. 

The counter intuitive thing to do first when moving your gym online

Kristy: So I’m going to just jump right into it. I had a gym. We had people used to gathering, and that seemed like a lot of people to shift their mind in something, to an online business.

And there’s so many ways to do it. How would you, what are the steps for a gym that has been operating perfectly fine physically, how would they even start to get online? 

Sean: Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So, with all of this, you can go literally like a thousand different ways and it doesn’t matter if you are a brick and mortar facility, you’re an independent trainer or  group fitness instructor, whatever you are.

What I always tell everybody, and this applies honestly not just to fitness businesses, but to any business that you have. You always need to or should start with your “who”, like who’s your target, you might hear this as your avatar, your target client, dream customer, dream client, all those different ways are interchangeable, but if you don’t focus on the “who” and think about that aspect first, and you start creating all these other things, it’s going to lead to problems in the future. And the ones that are the most successful are the ones that start with their who’s. 

So, thankfully with a brick and mortar gym owning facility, it’s actually really, really simple because you’re “who” is already there. It’s your current and existing members. So whenever you do go online, you can start reaching out and appealing to more people, which is awesome. But whenever you first start out with a brick and mortar facility, you’re kind of at a huge advantage because you already have an existing client database.

You already have some existing demographics and psychographics, people know your instructors, so you don’t have to build up a trust factor or anything like that. So knowing that, you got the “who” figured out. Again, everything always comes back to them. So you’ve got your “who” now you have to think about, “Well, what best serves that who?”

So every facility, like we know this it’s like every gym and facility can be set up a thousand different ways. Also you can have a full service facility where people come in there, primarily they’re working on their own. Maybe they do some PT and some group fitness. It could be more like a boutique class-based thing, like an orange theory or a Barry’s type of a setup where they have like a proprietary class where maybe you have to have certain equipment or anything to go through.

It could be yoga studios. Like there’s so many different ways to do that. So there’s not like a one size fits all right way to do fitness online for a brick and mortar, the right way to do it is the way that serves your customer. So whenever you know who you’re going to serve, which is your existing clients, then you have to find out what would best serve them.

So depending on how your facility is set up and structured, was it primarily PT based? Was it  more like Golds Gym where it’s  primarily low ticket membership type sales? Is it a class based? That’s going to kind of start to shape what your initial offers should be, that you position out to these members.

Because if they’re used to, for example, if they’re used to high energy classes, like a Barry’s like an orange theory type of a thing, and then now you’re going to send them like a PDF and like, “Hey, just follow this program on your own.”  It’s going to flop. It’s not going to work because they’re there at that facility not because probably their program is awesome, but because they’re connecting with their instructors. So if you don’t set your online training offer in a way that still enables them to do that digitally, it’s going to flop. 

So the first thing you have to do is, like I said, start with your “who”, and then you start shaping and creating your offer based around that “who”.

---

The big Mistake large gyms try to make when going online

[07:00] Sean: If you are a larger facility, like a full service facility where you have regular memberships, PT, group fitness and all those extra services as well. One mistake I do see with that is they try to do everything at once.

Especially six months ago, whenever this whole pandemic started going on and gyms were having to be forced to close down and figure this whole online thing out, they wanted to do everything, right?  We had to talk with them and work with them.

If you literally spent years building out all of these offers in your current facility,  you just can’t come to the marketplace now with doing that, especially if you’re brand new to the digital world.

So know your who, find out what’s the biggest bang for your buck and what’s going to appeal to the most amount of people and then start positioning and creating an offer that’s going to speak to and add value to those people first. 

Understand what you need to change about your services when going online, and what to keep

Kristy: Okay, that’s great. Could you give me a case study? Because I imagine that most people, instead of starting with the “who”, or they’ll start with what they’ve been doing and just try to replicate that online. So let’s say, maybe the gym that I used to own had personal training and classes.

So maybe they’ll just jump online and do the exact same thing. Group classes, some personal training. Is that the right approach to just basically try to do the same thing online? 

Sean: Yes. Well, I’ll say this is what you do shouldn’t change. It’s how you do it. Like at the end of the day, listen, you’re still a coach. You’re either delivering these workouts in a one-on-one setting, or a group fitness setting or members, you created this really cool environment experience where members just want to come in there and train on their own. So if you still have that, you need to take that same “what” that you do, but now “how” you do it and deliver it is done differently.

 I’ve been in the industry for over a decade, owned multiple gyms, brand gyms, and done all like 90% of my career has been with the in-person. So I know that world very well. And I know that a lot of times this online has like a negative thought to it.

 It’s almost like a less than service and I now have been doing it for several years. I can tell you it’s actually a lot harder to do online well than it is in person well, and this is what I mean by that. If you’ve never, you can wing it and you can kind of almost get away with it a little bit easier online, but to actually be successful and thrive and serve a lot more difficult, because imagine this you’ve never taught or you have minimal experience teaching somebody how to do a squat. If you program a squat or something like that in your online training, you’re just expecting that everybody’s in a squat and it’s gonna be perfect just like you or the five, 10 people that you’ve trained in person before.

But  after you’ve been in the game for a long time,  if you have a new clientele, like what 90% of the faults are going to be with their squat. So before they even start, you know how to set them up, put them in a position to be successful, how to cue them, to make sure that they do stay safe. They don’t hurt themselves. They perform the movement correctly. If you’ve never done that stuff in person, and you don’t have enough reps in person going online is going to be a lot more difficult for you. You guys, people are going to be just leaving your program, dropping out, getting hurt, getting injured. And you’re not going to know why you’re gonna be frustrated.

You’re gonna think that online training is broken. No. Online training isn’t broken. You’re broken. You don’t know how to coach people. So what you do whether like you said, that personal trainer training and that group fitness stuff, that shouldn’t change but how you deliver it online should change.

---

The misconception that gyms going online make that loses members

[10:23] Sean: So yeah, you can absolutely take it, but I would say you have to maintain the value and the experience. What I see a lot of people do is they try, they think that online is a shortcut.

Because they see, or they compare themselves to these really large brands that have all of this  dev team and tech support people behind them, or these influencers that look like they’re making all this money online and they’re just  snapping selfies on the beach all day.

That’s not real. That’s a facade guys. I’m going to let you know that right now. There is absolutely, and I had the opportunity to work with people that are literally making millions of dollars a year online training, but they have a huge team of people that are helping them to run that business.

So what happens is a lot of people see or think that, “Oh, I’m going to go online. Everything’s going to be automated. It’s going to scale. It’s going to grow itself and it’s gonna be super easy. ” No. And I saw a lot of these gyms when they put out their offer initially. I think, first of all, nobody expected that it was going to happen to the industry, what it did or last this long.

So they kind of put out these, I call it like duct tape offers. Like they just, Oh, it’s flat time together. We’re gonna be closed for a couple of weeks. And then we’re going to get right back into it. And it was six months later. A lot of gyms still aren’t even opened up. So the gyms that are going to start thriving are the ones that realize like, okay, it can’t be a less than service because if you were having this incredible group fitness experience online, and now you’re doing like IG live workouts, man, you’re not going to have that dual-sided experience.

Like right now I can look right at your eyes. I can have this dual-sided experience and stuff like that with you. If you’ll lose that, you’re going to end up losing that member to somebody that did take it a little bit more seriously and tried to maintain that same level of value that they are giving to their clients from the in-person.

Kristy: So, could you give me examples then? Because I could imagine a gym owner saying to me, well, I’m different  so maybe the CrossFit person, because CrossFit, there’s some competition. And then there’s  tons of equipment,  there’s certain equipment that people don’t have.

And then maybe the yoga person might say that’s different. And then the Orange Theory person might say why I’m a franchise. So I think everyone’s saying “Yes, but…” so  it sounds like you worked with a lot of different types of studios. Could we do examples of how let’s say, how a CrossFit type of gym moved online?

Sean: Yeah. Great, great, great question. And this is what I tell everybody. It’s not a super positive, nice guy, and this might sound a little harsh, but you’re not that special.  Everybody thinks, “No, my gym’s super unique. Oh, my members are going to hate going online.”  I’m sure if you keep telling that to them, they are going to hate going online.

And your gym is really not that special, I’m sorry to say that.  I’m a huge believer that if you really want to make something happen, you can find a way to take action and make it happen. That statement that you said it’s true for those individual gyms because of their mindset and their belief. I think a lot of times there’s a limiting factor with fitness professionals because they have a preconceived notion or idea of what they think online training is.

Cause that’s what it was for the first  five, 10 years it was in the industry, right. It was a PDF. Maybe you clicked on YouTube and you got some exercise, demo videos, and that was online training. There is freaky crazy technology that’s out there, guys that can, is able to deliver a way better experience than what I see a lot of trainers do in their in-person facility.

So what I would say is, do not let your ignorance of the technologies and the services that are out there and available to you, be a limiting factor on how you serve your clients. At the end of the day, this is my huge thing that I always preach.

Yes. It’s the fitness industry, but you need to know  and realize this is a service based industry. You are here to serve your clients. 

In the Instagramable,  Insta-famous world like everybody thinks  if they get a social media following now,  all of a sudden, they’re like some big celebrity or something like that. No, you’re a trainer and you’re here to serve a certain demographic or a certain audience that you’ve been called to serve.

And if you really truly take that mindset, you will figure it out. Right. If you really truly care about your community, that you’ve created with this in-person, you’ll figure it out and you’ll find a way to continue to serve them and add value to them in an online space. So that’s my quick rant. 

Now I’ll give you quite some specific examples of some different types of online training that I’ve helped gyms to create.

How to use live classes to deliver the connection & live coaching that clients are seeking right now

Sean: So my opinion right now, more than ever people need this, they need connection. They need ways to have that interaction with people. So depending on how big your gym is, you have to realize, like I said earlier,  doing an online, it’s not a less than service. It’s not an easier service.  You still got to put in the work.

You’re still going to bring the energy, if not more than what you normally do, because when you’re on camera, when you’re in a class, you might be able to get away with, “Alright guys, good job. Cool.” Cause the music’s going,  people else are sweating in there. They’re seeing the energy. But when it’s online, you got like 10 X yourself, like, “Come on, guys, let’s go!”

You gotta like beat yourself times 10, because that’s the only thing people are seeing. They’re not seeing their buddy next to them sweating and getting into the workout and stuff like that as well. The music’s not like thumping in the room.  You lose that part of the experience, so you have to make it up in other ways.

And so one of the things that I saw, a lot of like the CrossFit type facilities do pretty well with is these almost like this with  there’s lots of apps and services that are out there, but something like what we’re doing right now, how it’s on zoom, how there’s both cameras going, where you can see your people as your coaching them so you can  coach. What a novel idea, because remember, like I said, what you do doesn’t change just how you do it. So there’s lots of really, really cool services and apps.  And products that are out there that actually enable you to do something like where you could throw a B roll video up of an exercise. So say you’re doing a squat, and we use that as an example, and I hit a button and I changed scenes and I bring up a squat video.

And then while that squat video is playing, I’m looking at the monitor and I’m coaching people squat, and I’m like, “Hey Kristy, great job on squat. Hey, push those knees out. Hey, Brian, make sure you’re sitting back a little bit more.” And I’m able to coach, while the participants watching the squat video and I come up here, I hit a button and it comes back to me on the camera.

 There’s a lot of ways that you can still coach and do it. I saw a lot of people just doing which isn’t bad guys. Listen, I’m not  slamming  anybody, but I want you to know that there is a lot of really cool ways to deliver a good experience and add value to your clients still. So that’s a lot of people just doing like these follow along workouts, like on Instagram live and stuff like that, which that’s great because you are giving your members still a way to connect and to get some workout content while they’re stuck at home.

But you can’t let that be your end goal, right? Cause we know that you should always be seeking out a way to add more value and to truly serve them better. So there’s lots of really, really cool things that are out there that enable you to be able to do that. That’s one example.

---

Creative ways to turn items at home into fitness equipment

[17:11] Sean: I know a lot of the gyms also, you have to get creative because like you said, a lot of them might not have like using something like CrossFit, right.

That’s very much known for using  rowers ski areas, bikes. You’ve got to pull up rig a squat rig, you got barbells, you got ropes to climb, jump ropes, all this stuff that most people don’t have in their little tiny apartment or condo or wherever they’re living at. So, this is what challenges you as a coach.

Like I said earlier, being an online trainer is not a less than or easier service. It’s more difficult guys. You’re a coach, figure it out. Like if you really want to try and serve these people, there’s tons of creative solutions that you can do. I saw one facility where they were actually leasing out their equipment to members, so they could come and they could get with their membership.

Everybody can take home like a kettlebell or a pair of dumbbells or something like that. You can check equipment in and out, or you could just take one piece of equipment, hold it till the gym opens back up. I saw another gym put out guide and training materials, where they showed you how to take everyday equipment in your home and turn it into a home gym equipment.

Like load a backpack up with soup cans, books, and create like a sandbag type setup. Use a towel on a wood floor or tile floors, now you’ve got a slide board. Use paper plates on carpet. So you can do that creative ways to find some build your home gym in  your home and turn your home into your own facility and everything.

So, if people were to have a bad experience with online training, it’s not the client’s fault. It’s not technology’s fault. I would put the ownership on the coach for not taking initiative and trying to see how they could better serve their clients.

---

Why you shouldn’t undervalue that bring to your clients by recreating the class experience online

[18:42] Kristy: Okay. Would you say, let’s say percentage wise then, because it sounds like a lot of examples you’re giving me are of gyms which usually has some type of live experience, class gyms, CrossFit gyms, boutique studio gyms. It sounds like they’re really just doing an online experience where they do a class where people can see each other through a zoom. Would you say that’s 90% of what you saw for anybody that was doing class-based programming?

Sean: Yeah. I would say that that’s a majority of the thing is they’re trying to still preserve and create that class experience for those class based members, because listen, there’s so much change and uncertainty with the world.  let’s not throw something new at somebody right now.

Let’s try and give them as much a normalcy as possible. So yeah, I would definitely encourage, if you’ve been doing classes now, all of a sudden don’t start  sending programs to people, unless they ask for that, because that’s, again, it comes back to what serves and adds the most value to your clients.

They’re wanting some type of normalcy. You  don’t realize like, first of all, I’m a huge believer of what we do as fitness professionals is so much more than sets and reps. That  for you, it might be a workout program or a HIIT class. But for that person, that might be the only 45 minutes of normalcy that they’ve gotten in the past several months.

So bring the energy and bring the fire and find a way to make it as awesome as possible.  Like I said, there’s so many different ways out there to improve your content.  I know way to best serve those people. 

And that’s whenever you get into  what I always call  the other side of fitness. It’s not the sets and reps. It’s not your cool exercise that you came up with. It’s finding a way to connect with that person and serve to them and have value that’s going to truly change their life.  

Why you shouldn’t adjust your autobilling if you go completely online

Kristy: So, let’s say, I think that’s a very clear idea that maybe some gyms have started. Would you say that you seen most gyms charge about the same price? Let’s say they’re closed and now they’re offering this, do they charge the same membership? Almost like not even changing the reoccurring billing that’s happening. 

Sean: Yes. Hopefully the one that I think did it right and who’s businesses probably aren’t shutting down right now and they’re not scrambling for cash are the ones that realized — what you do didn’t change, just how you do it. 

So yeah, the gyms that had this awesome class-based experience, and now they’re just going to send people prerecorded videos and some PDFs. Yeah. They probably felt bad charging the same amount of money as their normal memberships.

The clients that I worked with that I got early, they didn’t stop their auto billing because what we did is we did realize. Yes, the experience and the value, some of it has lost in other areas by having that in-person touch and experience. So if we want to maintain that value, what other things can we add to increase the value to make it the exact same thing?

So first of all, what you need to realize is online training in a lot of ways is actually more valuable to your members. You can’t take away the experience of being there with somebody one on one from an experience and for teaching them the art of or the skills of fitness exercises. 

But going back to what I said earlier about truly serving your clients, sometimes it’s actually better to serve them when its best and most convenient for them. So yes, the art and act of teaching exercises can be done better in-person right now with technology.

But sometimes it truly serve people it’s actually done better online. And that’s actually what we found out. A lot of the studios that we were working with, their members actually were at first were kind of like hesitant about doing it. They said, you know what? I actually liked doing this online thing better because it’s a convenient, you guys have more class times.

I don’t have to drive it off to travel. I’m not wasting time on the car. You don’t have to sit in traffic. If I miss the class or I’m late, I can watch the replay on demand. And they’re being served.  Oftentimes, we take what we think the client wants and we try shove it down their throat. And we don’t realize that  they’re there typically for something completely different than a while we really think they’re there for us.

So that’s what I would say about that is you’re going to have a great day. If you truly serve them,  the online proponent might be the exact thing that they were looking for. Does that make sense?

Simple ways to make your online membership an even better health & fitness experience 

Kristy: Yeah.  And I think there’s definitely benefits. And then also, maybe some people for some of them, there’s some drawbacks. I’m wondering for the clients that you worked with, you said that  you offered a little bit more of something else, was there anything like they added. Like a really useful Facebook group.  Was there anything substantial or even unique that they added that really helped people feel like this was worth, this was the same value to them?

Sean: Great question. So sorry I forgot all about that. I got so excited. So yeah.  Remember,  the majority of, if you think about how 90% of the gyms are set up and let’s just use like the boutique class-based model or something like that, people are coming in, they’re doing a workout class. Maybe they can work out on their own, they’ll grab a smoothie on their way out and they leave, right?

Like that’s how most gyms are set up. If you want nutrition. Yeah. We can work with a personal trainer. Maybe we have nutrition service or a challenge that we offer. And that’s kind of something separate with your membership. So what we had some of the gyms do, which was awesome is set up a true online experience.

What I was doing with the clients that I was working with is I told them,  we need to be that one hour of a day in people’s life that returns some type of positive normalcy. They flip on the news, social media, everything is so negative and depressing.  You guys become that one hour of their day that they look forward to.

So what we made sure that we did with these facilities we were working with is they became the one stop shop for everything. Like that was the resource for everything. So we did, a lot of them did end up creating a private community groups in Facebook, or if they had  a backend membership site that they created those things in, they were going live in that group every single day because listen, man, these people are stuck in their home. They just want somebody to talk to. I love my kids to death. I’ve got three kids and my wife, but sometimes like my wife and I, we just need to talk to some adults.  We’re stuck in his house.  This might be the only time that we get that.

So, that was great. And, what they did is they, the one the clients I was working with is they realized, and they delivered more than fitness. So they weren’t just creating these workout programs that were awesome group fitness experiences, but then, okay, well what’s the other 90% look like, so what they would do is every week, their week would be set up almost like a thing about like a television network block.

So they have their workout classes several times a day, set up their schedule and everything. But then  one day might be a live Q and a with one of the personal trainers. So the personal trainer is going to come on there and they’re going to answer their top fitness questions and stuff like that.

One of them, they might bring a nutritionist. And so the nutritionist is going to answer all questions. So Tuesday might be the nutrition talk. A couple of the facilities actually had psychiatrist as members. And they offered to do just like, not necessarily counseling, but just talking to people and helping them work through some of this mental stress and everything that they’re going through.

So, that was a really cool value add service. And people love that. There’s this one guy, with one of the facilities, and he would log on at like 8:00 PM each night and he would do a five minute dad joke set. And it was just like something stupid. He would get on there for five minutes. He was one of the trainers and he would just tell dad jokes for five minutes.

Listen,  if people need some humor right now. And they, that was like one of the most popular thing. I love it when Joe goes on there, his jokes are so funny and cheesy.  Little things like that. Like thinking about, we started this whole conversation on your, “who”. And how can you truly serve them?

So when you have a servant’s heart, you need to think about that who, and those people that you’re called to serve and your job as a, for me as what I determined is successful coach is you obsess  about that  person so much where you’re thinking about all the different ways that you can add value and to serve them.

We had one of the other facilities they had one of their trainers start doing kids programming. It was just like jumping around in circles and playing games. Like man, give the kids some entertainment and some movement for a little bit. Cause they’re confined in here.  

The success and the creativity  and your ability to serve comes 100% down to your own personal creativity. If you truly want to serve people, you can find a way to add value to them and truly serve them. Find out what their needs are and meet their needs. That’s service. 

How to actually grow your membership when your gym is only online

Kristy: Yeah, and it sounds like a lot of these add-ons then would be just an additional sense of community since they don’t have the smoothie bar now to kind of chat at or after class. And I think that’s really interesting, but I’m wondering that is probably really great for people who had initially in-person connections. And so,  regarding gyms who just also want to think, because they’re investing in these new operations to be online, and they’re probably thinking, well, now that we are here, it would be great if we can actually add clients.

And I wonder if that experience is different because now you have clients coming in who didn’t have that in person, or we used to do that class together. So , have you found that your clients are able to effectively attract new clients through the same system?

Sean: Yes, because here’s a beautiful thing. And this is where I don’t know if I said this or before we were talking about gyms very much have the advantage of whenever they go online because they have an established  customer list and most important ones are the most accessible things that you can have online, not a social media following or anything like that, is a lead database of email addresses and phone numbers. 

So if you think about the reason why most people will leave a gym is something to do with price, they got bored or they moved, right? So now those people are moving, they’re gone, but you still have their contact information. This is the one thing that you should realize is people love doing community, right?

We see that there’s community groups all over the place online, but what they really like doing. Is community with people that they know and they’ve done community with before. So it’s so much more fun and interactive and engaging if you’re doing a live online workout with people from your city versus people from all over the world, right?

You’re like, Oh man, that person, they’re just down the street from me.  You feel me more connected to them.  They like to do community with who they do community with. So we had one of our facilities that we worked with.

She had a really small boutique gym in Louisiana and she was able to add a hundred. I think it was like 120 new clients back into her online virtual gym that she created because they were past clients that have left and moved or canceled membership, but they were stuck in their home. They knew they needed to move because they’re not moving anymore.

And they wanted to do community with somebody that they already knew and trusted, and that they’d done it with before. So she was able actually to capture, it’s like, I know it was over a hundred. I want to say is around 120 of her clients back in to this online virtual gym that we helped her create, because that’s what they’re looking for.

They want community with people they know. The most difficult thing with your online business is getting people to know, like and trust you. If you already have that list, man, put an offer in and serve them and you’ll get customers. It’s okay. Not really that difficult.

---

Case Study: How a small boot camp like studio in a small town in Louisiana added 100 clients at $100 a pop when going online

[30:08] Kristy: Yeah. So I’m just curious on that example, because I think that small studio speaks to a lot of customers. Could you tell me about how much she was charging offline and then what type of, what was her model? What type of classes did she do and what was her target customer?

Sean: Yeah, it was a small, like really small facility. I don’t remember exactly the size of the community that it was in, but it’s a very, very small, it’s  not like in a major city or anything like that.

She was doing a small group fitness classes. So she would have anywhere from  12 to 15 people in our class. And the membership ranges were anywhere from, I think,  $90 to $120 a month based upon how they were set up. She didn’t change the price. The price is still the same. It’s still the exact same offer because what she did didn’t change just how she delivered it.

They went from having to be inconvenienced from driving to a class time that maybe didn’t really, truly fit their best schedule. Doing the class and having to drive back home. So they’re losing all that time to now they open up the phone and they can do their workout right there from their living room.

Her in particular, one of the things that she did is she would do like a Thursday night, a ladies night, and like a bunch of the ladies would get together on a community group, sip some wine and just laugh and just connect like that from her facility. So, yeah, again,  I think that so many businesses, this is what holds a lot of fitness professionals back and it’s going to be, I guess like another, another whole topic in conversation is just the mindset thing and self worth.  

A lot of fitness professionals don’t make what they’re worth and it’s because they don’t charge what they’re worth, because they might say that they think that they’re worth more, but they really, truly don’t believe it.

I mean, you can tell that even more so whenever they go online, because just how they view themselves as like, Oh, well, you know, I struggled to get $60 a session for personal training. And so, well, if this online training program is only going to cost me two hours a month, that’s only $120. So that’s all I should charge for that.

No, you’re not worth your time. You’re worth the value of the problem that you’re able to solve.  If you bring incredible results, people will pay for it. So typically it comes down to a self confidence issue of the trainers, not actually believing that they can actually get the results that they’re looking for. 

Because if you knew, if you hire me in eight weeks, I’m going to completely transform and change your life. You’re going to be a mentally, completely different new person. Your body’s going to feel better than wherever you’ve ever felt before. You’re going to be sleeping better. You’re gonna have more energy. You’re going to start feeling confident in the way that you look. If you knew that you could deliver on that result, you would charge whatever you want.

The problem is you really don’t because, you know, just like we all do, it does obviously take the client to buy in and do that. So it’s your ability to coach that person to get those results and everything.

Stay tuned for the second part of this interview with Sean!