How to earn 374% return & $100k on his facebook marketing! (Part 3) (Interview with Andrew Read)

Highlights from the interview

[01:56] – Finding the niche to still have a lot of customers

[08:30] – Should you or should you not hire someone to do your facebook ads?

[16:17] – How Andrew achieves a 374% return on his marketing spend!

[22:08] – How Andrew made sure to wow his clients when Covid hit… and how it led to $3k more in additional sales

[31:03] – How many sales a week do you need to do to make $250k a year?

[37:01] – Training his 80-year old mom to be a world class deadlift champion

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About our Guest

To know more about our guest, visit the first part of our interview.

How Andrew made $30K in a weekend in his 3000 sq ft gym (Part 1) (Interview with Andrew Read)

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Edited transcription of Fitness Business Secrets Podcast, Episode 40

Finding the niche to still have a lot of customers

[01:56] Kristy: Okay. Alright. Nice. You’re expanding your revenue streams.

Andrew: Yeah, look, I mean Coca Cola, don’t just sell Coke, right? I mean, they sell Sprite, they sell Fanta. You got to have a bunch of different products in place. If you only sell one thing, if the person comes to you and they don’t want to buy that exact one thing, you’re kind of out of luck.

So, you need to make sure you’ve got an offer for at least enough of a segment that you can make some money off it. And  I see some of these people in their online groups and they’re just wasting time. And I also got my niche and you’re like, your niche is like three people you’re going to need to make it bigger than that to actually make some money off of it.

You know, the opportunity you’re giving yourself is very small. So what I say I trained 40-year old guys. That’s pretty much it, but there’s a lot of 40 year old guys. So I’m not really limiting myself at all by doing that. Whereas if I say I’m training 40-year old guys who live in New York, who want to do a half marathon, who want to do 12 plus pull-ups like, you see, my market’s just starting to narrow.

And I might become an expert with those seven people that want to do it. But yeah, unless I said, and people are millionaires and want to pay me appropriately, I can’t make a living like that. 

The pros & cons of article writing for lead generation

Kristy: Yeah. So tell me since  you’re expanding your revenue streams, and it sounds like you understand how to get leads.

How do you do, what works for you to get leads consistently into your program? What are the things, whether it’s Facebook ads or paid ads, you mentioned you chat. Is it posting on social media? What works for you? 

Andrew: So, I remember I worked for a company called Good Life, which is a gym company here, help them set up. So they took over a gym and re-set it up and those kinds of stuff. And I came in like a consultant to help them do all that. And, the then personal training manager, he had a personal training and he says, remember the reason people come to trainings because it’s entertaining. Make sure you’re changing the workouts every single time. 

I’m like, “Whoa! We need to stop right here.” The number one reason people return to training is because you gave them what they paid for. If someone comes to you and is to lose fat, you better make sure they lose fat. If someone comes to you to run faster, you better make sure they leave you running faster.

Don’t have a fat loss person who comes along and stays the same. Because they’re not going to sign up with you again. 

And when you’re looking now at this, I got to pay for customers too, when I’m advertising or whatever like there’s a cost associated with getting new customers. It’s cheaper for me as a small business to keep the ones I’ve got. And this is where a big gym, the big gym mentality is different. We can’t be on that perpetual sales cycle where we’re prepared to spend a lot of money on the fat loss, six pack, whatever keywords, because we can’t afford to outbid them on Facebook.

We have to make sure we focused on customer retention. And the number one thing you can do to get business is actually do your job. So when I post look at this guy with the six pack and I am posting those guys. I’m showing you what I did. I did the thing I got hired for. So that’s actually the number one thing is do the damn job you got hired for. 

Now, the next side of stuff, I might not actually be the best guy to talk to about that because when I see people like, “Oh, you know, I’m really struggling. You’re doing so well. How did you do it?” And I’m like, “Well, I wrote like two or three articles a week for free by 10 years straight.” That’s what I did to create my name. That’s not really the process I suggest to everyone. But again, when I look at what small businesses, big businesses capable of, I can’t afford to outspend those guys.

Organic traffic more I believe is coming back to being more important for small businesses. It’s almost going back to our web 1.0 kind of business strategy where it just straight organic SEO when that’s through YouTube, Facebook or Google, because those are all three separate, powerful search engines.

You need to make sure you’ve got enough content that actually is directed towards whatever your target market is. That’s going to take a while to build up. And that’s really the problem with building a business. We all think, again it’s gonna be one thing that makes me successful in assuming this overnight thing. 

The reality is it’s going to take a long time. It’s going to be a whole bunch of things all at once being done correctly, simultaneously that makes you successful. So your marketing strategy, you need to keep a longterm view of it. Yeah. You need to do some things to drive some money right now. I get that you gotta pay bills. Yeah. Yeah, totally. But at the same time, you need to think that, I mean, my business, isn’t going to be the single thing I do today.

I’ve got to look at it and I’m even thinking about, you know, cause I’m 50 next year. I’m not going to do this forever. There’s probably another 10 years or so that I really want to do this for. Although who knows how we can retire with coronavirus, right? Will any of us be able to retire ever?

But how am I going to sell my business? Because right now it’s Read PT. It’s got my name on it. So if I’m not there, what am I selling? I actually have to change the name of my business at some point. Risk a little dip in my business because I can’t sell a business with my name on it. I have to change it to something that’s sellable later on. So, you know, you need to remember that all of this stuff is stuff you should be thinking about.

Kristy: Yeah. So, I completely agree not everyone’s going to be able to start writing two to three articles a week for 10 years. 

Andrew: Do not fall on my plan because my plan also involves nearly going bankrupt or I’m really having to sell you a gym. That’s not a great claim.

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Should you or should you not hire someone to do your facebook ads?

[08:30] Kristy: Let’s skip that. I’m sure you still dream about that sometimes. Why don’t we do, what is working for you with Facebook ads then?

Andrew: Okay. So I don’t do my ads myself. I hire people to do that. And so this is, I feel it’s like coaching. I feel strongly enough about what I do for a job. I think everyone should have a personal trainer, right?

Because I know the difference I can make. I’m an expert at what I do. I’m not an expert marketer. I know a few things enough to make my own posts and whatever, but I’m certainly not an expert. I can’t set up a mini chat funnel. I mean, I can, but it’d take me a day. Why would they just pay a guy who can do it in like an hour, who’s an expert at it? 

I don’t make landing pages. Same thing. I use ClickFunnels for landing pages. I’ve got an account but I don’t go into my ClickFunnels account very often. The only time I actually go in there briefly is to look at the new contents and what they filled out in the online questionnaire for new customers. So I get to know them a little bit before we get on the phone. 

My guy does all my ClickFunnels stuff for me. With Facebook ads, again I hire up. So, my business coach is actually an ex-marketing executive. So that’s what he specializes in is ads for Facebook. I get my ad guys to write up four or five versions of an ad.

I then, go to him. We have a meeting, we talk about the strengths and weaknesses of each. We decide on one and then he’ll even fine tune it again, because again, as much as I’m paying these guys, he’s much more experienced than I am. And so we’ll fine tune it again. 

And then at the moment we’ve been running ad tests for two months, we’re into the third month now. Starting to become more successful with it. And so I think a lot of people, like I have a friend who threw away $50,000, sorry, 50,000 pound, an English guy, 50,000 pound in a year, advertising on Facebook. And he said on the downside, I made no money.

On the plus side, I know how not to write ads now. So now he’s actually pretty successful when he does ads, but it was a $50,000 lesson. So for what I pay for ads, that’s four years worth of ads. So I would rather pay someone four years worth of ads that make than kind of mistake myself.

And so our ads, we have initially there were five, we focused in on one, we tried like with a video, the video actually hasn’t been very successful. And now we’re testing a couple of different images and you can very clearly see the difference between a black and white. It’s the same image between a black and white picture and a color picture.

The color picture is doing a lot better. So, you know, like we started to create this thing that actually has got some draw to it. We tested the headline a couple of times to make sure it’s really a good headline. And for people who don’t know Facebook just changed recently how many characters you get when you look at it on a mobile.

Because you know, you got a first sentence and you might say, like “Guys over 40 need to concentrate on dot, dot, dot. You need to make sure that first sentence before the dot, dot, dot is very strong because otherwise they won’t even click on the dot, dot, dot to read the rest of your ad. 

So, I see a lot of ads now, and they’ll actually only be halfway through a sentence before you get to that cutoff with the dot, dot, dot and you’re like, well, I’m not enticed to read that at all. You need to shorten that and make that pop. So we experimented with that. So the advertising thing, this is a new thing. So I have done nearly two and a half years. So it was two years organic only. And you know, so some of the numbers we talked about before, it’s like $35,000 in the first two weeks organic, not as cent spent. 

I recently did this round of the personal best challenge. I made $20,000 in a week, all organic, no money spent on ads. And again, a couple of cheapo posts on Facebook, a couple of old texts, ones with some pictures, a couple of video posts talking about it.

How to choose which clients to do a phone consultation with

Kristy: Was that on your Facebook group?  When you say organic, you just kind of lead people to the landing page and then they called, then you set up an appointment and then they closed over the phone?

Andrew: Correct? Yeah. So the 28-day challenges is a hundred dollars. I’m not getting on the phone with you and it sounds terrible, but I can make, if you think like a PT sale or a personal best challenge sale is $1,500, right for an hour on the phone. That’s how I look at it. So I’m not getting on the phone with you for a hundred dollars, but I can get on the phone with you for $1,500. 

So, I spend more time on sales calls for that stuff. So the goal is for $1,500 and you’ll find that the cut point products are roughly below that you probably don’t need to get on the phone with people for around that $1,500 mark. You’re probably gonna need an actual sales call. 

Looking at the success rate, the next thing will be that the price has to go up. So, I can make the same money with a few less people. The danger then though, is that the group wouldn’t have such strong interaction but the whole point is make the post, get them to fill out a time to talk and then get them on a call  and really find out:

A. Whether the group is suitable. And I’ve had a bunch of guys who were actually calling about the personal best thing, but I just said, “Look, it’s just not for you based on your injury history or whatever it happens to be. But this other thing over here would be perfect for you. Let’s try one-to-one, the cost is the same anyway. And yeah, converting people from their original call about the personal best then they need to do one-on-one has been very easy.

How Andrew can quickly create a custom training program in minutes

Kristy: Okay. Let’s move on another good reason to have multiple things to offer them. 

Andrew: And I really feel like people are scared of one-to-one. If you look at the gym industry and again, remember you got to do the opposite of what everyone says, right? So, big gyms focus on high volume, low quality, right? Low money.  The only thing that separates the small fitness business from a big fitness business is level of service. That’s the only thing that’s ever been the differentiation between a big gym and a small gym is level of service, quality of coaching, that’s the only thing. 

You can offer a group class that can match a big gym. They can do it cheaper and more often than you’ll ever be able to as a single owned business. But you can do one-on-one. If I were starting off again now as a gym owner, I would only do PT. There’ll be no group. The only way you could come into a gym would be to do personal training with one of the trainers that I hired to work for me.

So, you might start with me, but I would send you out to someone else after that. And you’d only be working one on one. And you wouldn’t be allowed in there at all unless you are with someone one-on-one. So the, the level of service is absolutely a thing you can sell people on.

And really, once you’ve got a solid system, like I said, I’ve got 50 different programs that I can offer people straightaway. But even now, like if I use one of my army guys, in example, he’s actually on four different programs at once. It’s like Monday, he’s running well, but they’re all just variations on the theme. So Monday is his heavy day. So he’s doing like some really basic heavy lifting stuff. 

He’s got a body because he’s  training for the army. So he’s got some body weight stuff. He’s got high rep calisthenics because he’s going to have to do tons of that for PT. And there’s a running program. And then he’s got another program that he’s basically like a hypertrophy kind of program. And he’s doing that because the volume of other work, he would get skinny as hell if he wasn’t doing this hypertrophy stuff and eating the house down. 

So yeah, he’s actually running a whole bunch of programs at once. But instead of it running this way, like the program normally would on the calendar, the programs are running this way week by week through the calendar, but it’s a conjugate training template.

So actually it’s not 50 training programs. It’s more like 50 times 50 is the possibility because I can mix and match them all together. So instead of having just like program one are gonna actually have program one, two, and three running at the same time, but running this way. So it’s actually making progress  with people with one to one is very, very easy.

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How Andrew achieves a 374% return on his marketing spend!

[16:17] Kristy: Hmm. Yeah. I had a question about, you basically have a marketing team and that might really work for a lot of people who just, they’re not about to learn Facebook ads manager. So, first I want to know deeper thinking. Okay. That sounds really expensive. Well, generally, what does it cost you for this Facebook ads team and then your Facebook marketing coach?

Andrew: Okay. So, my marketing mentor guys, a thousand dollars a month. My Facebook landing page mini chat guys, a thousand dollars a month. And the ad guys are $300 a month. So, obviously I pay the ad cost on top of that. My total cost a month is 2300. And when I  look at it, so my goal always is when I spend money out, I take that money back.

So if I spend a thousand bucks like on a certification, I want that money back with. That stuff I expect to at least a four time return. So if I spend a thousand dollars with you this month, I expect to buy $4,000 as a minimum because of something you did or told me or whatever it happens to be.

So, like I said, with the mini chat theme for the 28-day challenge we made over $60,000 US last year, just on that. So, that one of the things, sorry, a thousand dollars a month, I spent $12,000 for the year with the guy who created that. And I made $60,000 just off of one thing he did, even if we did nothing else together.

He’s, he’s fantastic. So I actually, yeah, I have referred a bunch of my trainer friends onto him. I think he’s fantastic. I really would not have been as successful as I had because the amount of time I would have had to invest into doing that myself would have stopped me from working with my clients.

And that’s you gotta remember, the number one thing I have my money from is working with people. That’s what people are paying me for is to work one on one with them primarily. If I have to spend a day or two days, three days writing copy and putting pictures in place. And you know, like I’m slow, because I don’t do it very often.

I’m not very good at it. What a waste of my time, just pay this guy, get it done. The results were from, from the year we made $60,000 on the mini chat thing, another $40,000 from two other landing pages. So actually I made a hundred grand, just over a hundred grand at him for the year for $12,000.

What you can expect to get from a $1000/mo marketing service

Kristy: Yeah, that’s pretty good. And I’m sure then they converted. So then you got maybe more longterm revenue from these customers.  I think a lot of people actually don’t understand how mini chat works. but the other question for some listeners is what does he do for you?

I mean, I know he’s making his money, but  I’m not sure if he just sets it up or does he do the landing pages also? Does he write the copy? Does he do the graphics? Like sometimes there’s things within that you still need to pay to get people to do for you? 

Andrew: He does all that. Yeah. He puts the pictures in place. He might say to me, “Hey, I need more pictures or can you do a video on this or whatever.” And I go off and do it and I give it to him. But I mean, I’ll say to him like, “Hey, this is the thing, this is the outline for the program. These are the key points.” He just, he makes it all. 

And we have at the moment, this is with the ad that we’re testing. One of the things we’re testing is go from register interest single page kind of thing to a multi page landing page thing where you then book it like a calendar link to get on a phone call.  And so this is now what we’re testing is how reliable are the leads coming from the people who just click on a thing.

So book a call the success rates being very low, even getting them on the phone. When they go through and they book a calendar link time to get called, the success rate is very high. So the goal is that. So now we, we are messing with all the bits and pieces to make that happen, but he does all that.

With mini-chat, for people who don’t know, it’s a chat bot. So you’re like, I might go click this link to enter to register your interest for the 28-day challenge. You click the link and it takes you to your Messenger on Facebook. And it’ll say like, “Hi, how are you doing?” The first question is: Are you a guy age 40 and 65? And you get a yes or no option and you actually click it just like a button on anything else that you click. And then it just takes you through a chat sequence. That again, it’s usually yes or no. Yes or no. Yes or no. It gets you to a link where it says, “Are you prepared to pay $97 to like make outstanding changes in your fitness for the next 28 days or something?”

And they click that. And then  the last thing is, because you can collect email now through mini chat, which is not something that used to happen, but now you can. So the last question is what’s your best email and that allows us to market to them. So another thing that he does for me is email marketing.

So I saw this morning, for instance, I have an email that he sent out. And it’s just part of a regular sequence saying, “Hey, the 28-day challenge is back. It starts August 3.” So it’s a template email. He just changes the date on it each time. But once the 28-day challenge is launched, the email just goes out at a regular interval to everyone.

So, in terms of what he does for me, honestly, he does everything. So, he’s amazing. And like I said, I can’t speak highly enough about him. The money I had spent with him over the last two years has been worth every single cent. 

 So, the first year with the gym, because the gym existed until May, I made 150 grand that year, but you gotta remember I was taking in money from the gym at the same time. The next year I made 105 or something. So without the gym, very limited expenses, right. 

And now financial year runs July to June, so it’s just finished. Last financial year, I made better 150 and  that’s pretty good growth over a two year period, the business, you can see that the last three months, really six months of this year for a lot of businesses that have been a write off.

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How Andrew made sure to wow his clients when Covid hit… and how it led to $3k more in additional sales

[22:08] Andrew:I was telling you beforehand, it’s estimated that 90% of fitness businesses in Australia will be gone in the next three months because the government is changing the handouts game for businesses thanks to coronavirus.

They are extending it, but the numbers, the amount of money is coming down lower and they’re gonna say a whole bunch of businesses aren’t gonna make it. It’s like 95% of businesses are making no money right now in terms of fitness. So, you know, I have a business that’s actually made more money with a period of nearly six months of what most people would have seen as inactivity. 

So, really it has been tremendous and it’s not just him, obviously, because I still have to deliver a program that really works. Remember the most important thing is to do your damn job. So I still have to be in there every day doing my job.

And as an example, the first personal best challenges towards January, right? So, guys are coming into it. I actually got coronavirus at the start. Yeah. I was exhausted. And like, can barely stay awake? No, no, not serious. So my level symptoms, I couldn’t even get tested because there weren’t enough testing kits in Australia.

I had a client, who’s a doctor and he told me, yeah. So I rang the government hotline and they said, you have to go get tested based on your symptoms. Because from everything you’ve said, you’ve got it. My partner had probably had it as well. I rang my Dr. Klein. He said, look, and he’s the boss of an ER, at a big hospital and he said, “We can’t test you because you’re not high risk and you don’t have high level symptoms, but regardless, just stay home for the next few weeks.” 

So that was what I did. By about week five, week six, it was pretty clear that everyone was about to get shot out of the jeans in mid February. And so I was making like body weight programs for people and I was like shuffling things around, trying to keep the thing going as best we could.

But the whole thing was about to fall to pieces. And I said, you know what? And it was such a good group. It was about a dozen guys. And I was so strong as a community and have worked with enough groups to know when I’ve got a good group of guys in front of me. I said like, don’t go, we need to stay together, we need to hang out together in here in this little bit of sanity. When all these weird stuff is going on everywhere else, hang out here with me, I’ll just keep writing bodyweight programs for you for the next, however long until we can start again. So I kept them in there for another three months.

So the guys, half of the guys who are in the current personal best challenge, 12 of them have been with me now, since January, I’m not charging them any extra. I never provided an, if you look at the photos, there are legit 12-week photos of guys who look amazing, and those are not doctored, that’s not bullshit. 

They are legit what happened from hanging out with me for 12 weeks, but that’s bodyweight only. Cardio and diet is what did that, right? No gym activity at all, because we had no access to gyms. Those guys have now been with me for six or seven months. They only paid once. I haven’t charged them extra the whole time through.

So when I say I’m doing my job, I haven’t yet finished delivering the program. I promised I was going to deliver. I’ve kept them together. We’re now doing it again. They’ve got access to gyms or they have bought stuff to be able to train at home and now we’re riding it properly. And for the first time, really, even though it’s the second time.

So, when it comes to actually delivering what you say you’re going to deliver, that’s really powerful. And it’s so powerful that a bunch of the guys, one guy in particular, so there’s been 13 new guys come in. He’s responsible for two of them, which doesn’t sound like a lot. There’s $3,000 of money for me.

And because he’s such a strong believer in what we’ve done over the last few months and the changes he’s made and whatever, so, you know, that word of mouth advertising is coming good now. So, really that’s easily the most powerful thing that I do is actually deliver what I say I’m going to do.

How much Andrew charges for his personal best 12-week program

Kristy: Yeah, that’s good. And just to make sure, 1500 covers three months?

Andrew: Yes. Normally for these guys it’ll be nine months, right? Because they started, but this is what I said I was going to do. I said, I was going to finish this 12 week program with them. We haven’t done that yet. So,  in terms of integrity and stuff like that, I’m showing them that this is actually what I said I was going to do.

You can tell all your friends. If I say I’m going to be like Facebook live at this time on this day, I’m going to be there. If I say, you’re going to get this result, you’re going to get it provided you actually do what I say. So, the guys who come along and like I said, they’ve been burned before.

They’ve had people say,  do what I say and you’ll lose weight or whatever and it hasn’t worked. When I finally get someone who delivers the thing that they say they’re going to deliver now I’ve got raving mad customers. It’s good.   

How Andrew found his all marketing star team

Kristy: Yeah. it’s been incredible. My last question for the marketing, and I get it’s really like word of mouth and just your ability to execute but with the addition of your digital team, how did you find these people? 

So, first it start with your marketing coach? Because we haven’t really gotten to hear too much about them, which it sounds like they have really helped you. And I’m assuming they bring in $4,000 a month, since they’re a thousand dollars a month. How did you find your marketing coach?

Andrew: Okay. So, that was just through an ad on Facebook. Their name is TribeFit, T R I B E fit. And the guys who run it, Chris and Andrew, like I said, they are marketing executives. TribeFit.co

 These guys were running multimillion dollar ad campaigns. Chris was actually instrumental when the Emily Skye first started swimming. Like part of her Instagram success is down to stuff he was doing. And that’s been quite entertaining listening to like titles of how a $20 million fitness business was made.

And even down to things like, you know, like the temptation to take payment off someone. So if you know, you’re on a sales call and you say it’s $1,500 and the businesses can’t afford it, cannot pay you in installments. While that looks attractive from a cashflow perspective, the reality is it’s quite a hit to your income.

You might need that $1,500 to advertise on Facebook to actually get a bunch more leads. So $500 of ad spend is a lot less than $1,500 of ad spend. So actually, if I do you a favor and allow you to pay part. And I allow some people to pay part, but you have to be careful not to allow everyone to pay part because while it is good for cashflow, you have to make sure that your income stays high.

So you can keep advertising, right? When you’re paying for customers to get leads, you have to keep your income at a certain level. Otherwise your ads drop off. And next thing you know, the leads dry up and then you’ve got no money at all next month. So even little things like that that someone who hasn’t really been deep in it wouldn’t know.

So, I just found him through a normal ad. I had talked to a bunch of other people. I actually had a previous coach and he was good. He was more in-person focused. So that was why I found him when I had the gym. And while he had some good ideas for online, he was very much focused on kind of the high traffic, Emily Skye kind of model, which just doesn’t work these days. You can’t actually go, unless you’ve got huge funding from someone, unless you’ve got big funding, you can’t go down that pathway. It’s impossible because you can’t afford to buy customers the way like Kayla Itsines, Emily Skye can. It’s just not possible.

As an example, if I had followed his model, the first month I tried following like a hundred dollars a month recurring kind of program. I made $6,000 for the first three months and  that’s not bad, but yeah, at the end of that three months, because of normal nutrition, only two guys out of that initial group signed up for it again.

So I would have $600 that month. That’s a big hit to income. You’ve got a $6,000 to $600. So that was a pretty clear sign that he was on the wrong path. 

 And I found these tribe fit guys, and they’re being really useful. So, I had actually also come in contact with them initially. They were the ones who told me to set up my free fitness group to begin with.

 My landing page guy, his name’s Cameron he’s fantastic. And just amazing in terms of what he’s done for my business, I really can’t recommend him enough. You can check out his page here: Fitness Leads And Sales

And how I found him was he initially worked for my first business coach and then just started to go off on his own and specialize in this part of the marketing in terms of the landing pages and the design stuff and things like that. And I just stuck with him from that point. We’ve been together now for a couple of years.

And like I said, I mean, for your people who think a thousand dollars a month is expensive, come on, I made a hundred grand with him last year. $12,000 to make a hundred grand, I’m not upset at all about that. 

Kristy: Yeah. And then how about your Facebook? It sounds like you have a Facebook team that writes a few ads for you?

Andrew: Oh yeah. So Cameron, the guy who does landing pages, he just, he has an agency that he uses. So, he just, he contacts them and goes, this is what we need, this is the client. They do it all and I actually don’t even talk to them directly. I only talked to him and so he relays all this stuff, so I don’t deal with them ever. I don’t even know where they are. I’ve got no idea who they are. I just know I pay $300 a month. That’s all I heard.

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How many sales a week do you need to do to make $250k a year?

[31:03] Kristy: Yeah. And so just to kind of implement, do you happen to know how many new ad sets do they do a month?

Andrew: Wow. I actually was in my account yesterday. I was talking about different images and stuff like that. The entire page is filled up with tests. I didn’t even know how many that is, but  they’re all  AB tests of different images or different colors or slightly different wording or whatever.

We’d been writing there, we’re into the third month. They’re doing their job there. And it’s always difficult with minimal spend when you test it, because you know, it’s hard for your ad to get seen by enough people to get a good cross section.

But we started to actually make some ground. And as much as I was complaining the other day, about how much I had to spend, you know, the reality is sales are coming through because of it. So it’s not quite at the level. I would want it to be, I think it needs to be a bit better still, but  what my goal is, and I don’t want to be a $20 million a year business, I’ve got no desire to do that.

I really like working on my own. I like working directly with my clients. For me to make about $150,000 a year, which is a lot of money. That’s net. But I need to make about $250,000 total to net 150.  So, to do that I need four sales a week. It’s really not a huge number of sales.

I was so far above that out of my main fitness group, 60 hundred people, and I’m at 150 grand out of that last year. So,  it’s be pretty  hard to say that it hasn’t done this job, the leads in there and very high quality in terms of  traffic, but I need to go to paid ads that’s the only way to make the next step. We’re almost there in terms of  how much money is coming in. 

So, things are going really well. And my suspicion for the next year is even with this corona thing, my business hasn’t changed at all in the income.

I’m not eligible for any government grants for loss of business or anything like that. And my attitude towards it is because I’m only doing high ticket, one-to-one kind of stuff. Even with the group it’s still virtually, one-to-one like it’s close enough. I don’t need much more than sort of 50 to 60 people a year at any one time to train. So just a roving cycle of 50 to 60 people.

That’s relatively easy to manage. It’s relatively easy to find 60 people out of 7 billion regardless of what’s going on with coronavirus or anything like that. Even if you say you’ll never be allowed in a gym again, I guarantee there’s 60 guys, somewhere in the world that have got enough stuff to train with at home that we can make some really good progress.

So, I don’t really see that the current situation is any real problem for me at all. 

Focusing on the MAIN thing that matters in your business

Kristy: Yeah. Well, that’s a great business model and I think it works good for also certain personality type. So to me, it’s that. It’s kind of works for maybe your personality, how  you’re making your business around how you want to run your life, which I think is cool. So yeah, I just was thinking that. 

Andrew: Well, my background actually before, well, I was an assistant manager in a couple of departments in five star hotels here and had this really high level, high quality education where the focus is very much on customer satisfaction, customer service, and compared to where most people come from in the fitness industry, there’s really not a lot of customer focused or education about it. 

It set me up straight away to really make sure that I was delivering the product that customer is paying for. So, you know, when a lot of people were just focused on, I like being in the gym, so I’m going to be a personal trainer. I was already thinking about actually what I’m really being paid for. Like here’s the series of things that I’m being paid for.

Some of it is appearance. Some of it is attitude and how I relate to my customer and communication, but a very large part is quality. If you stay in the Hilton and the sheets and dirty, well, that’s not good, right? I mean the Hilton hotel, I can tell you is formed on two things — that’s clean beds and hot food, that’s it.

So, that’s the entire Hilton hotel chain on those two things. So if you stay in a Hilton hotel and the beds are dirty, that’s like an insult to the very bottom line of what their business is formed. So if you come to me and you’re paying me for fat loss, I have to make sure I give you that.

I think a lot of trainers aren’t focused on that. They’re just like, yeah, I’ve got the money, I get to play in the gym, but they’re not really focused on why this is important. They get taught during sales calls you need to bring out the pain points. 

You need to dive into, “Yeah, I need to lose weight because my husband doesn’t find me attractive anymore.” That’s fucking horrible. And if you’re not helping them lose weight and you’re not turning yourself inside out for that person every minute they’re with you, you should give the money back because what a horrible person you are that someone opened up that about themselves and told you these incredibly personal thing, and then you didn’t actually fix it for them. 

Because they came to you for that to be fixed. Imagine going to therapy for quitting smoking or something, and it doesn’t help you. You don’t fix smoking. Like why did you pay? You don’t go to a restaurant and leave without the food. If you go to personal training, you’ve got to make sure you’re giving them the thing that they’re paying you for. 

The thing I’m best known for is this one-to-one thing. And I understand a lot of people are reluctant because I think it’s a time suck. It’s just not for me. And as I said before, I actually think the group thing is more of a time suck for me than the one to one. So I’m really fast when it comes to writing programs and my interactions with people can be quite fast as well.

And the benefit of TrainingPeaks is I can do it from anywhere. I mean, I was literally on a mountain in the pole last year. And answering customers on TrainingPeaks in terms of looking at workouts and stuff like that. So, I really can do it from anywhere.

Kristy: That’s a great way to end this.

Andrew: I will caution people. This is the one thing that people think I’m going to go online and I’m going to just get to sit by the beach. Were you still going to work? Yeah. You might be sitting by the beach, but you’ll be working. So, you know, yeah. I was in Nepal. I was actually with my mom hiking up and down mountains in Nepal.

I was having to work at night when we went to lodges where there was wifi. So you might be in a great location, but you’ll still be working.

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Training his 80-year old mom to be a world class deadlift champion

[37:01] Kristy: Were you able to keep up with your mom? She’s like champion.

Andrew: My mom is yes, she’s a world champion powerlifter, but she hiked, we covered like 80 kilometers, like 60 miles nearly.

Kristy: Oh my goodness. It’s incredible. 

Andrew:  I’ve been training her for nearly 30 years. She was my very first client, the first person who ever trusted me to Guinea pig her and, what I’m talking about, like I’m delivering lifelong health and fitness. 

 When you look at what the end result is, it’s pretty clear what living in athletic, healthy lifestyle does for you longterm, because now at nearly 80, the difference between her and other people in her age group is profound. She looks about 10 years younger. They’re all starting to age, you know, like walkers and scooters and stuff like that.

 I think a lot of trainers are only focused on this thing right now. So actually, I’m more likely to have a conversation with someone about, “Hey, how come you didn’t go to sleep last night?” than “Wow! You had a great time working out at the gym today.” I’m more concerned about the other stuff.

And I think that’s something a lot of trainees need to be more wary of is all the other stuff is so much more important. 

Kristy: That’s good. Well, Andrew, it’s been great having you, if people want to reach out to you or in any way, how can they get in touch with you? 

Andrew: Easiest way is by Facebook page. So it’s Andrew Read. It says athletic adventure. I kind of think of myself as a crash test dummy for a lot of things. So you can find my Facebook page. 

Kristy: Okay. Awesome. Well, it’s a pretty great page. I did enjoy the abs photos I have to admit, so it looks like you do great work. Thanks so much for being on the show. It’s been fabulous. I think our listeners learned a ton. Thank you. 

Andrew: You’re welcome. It’s good chatting with you.

Kristy: It’s great. Thanks.

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