Bootcamp Trainer With The Artistic Talent of a Blind Hedgehog
December 9, 2008 By Leave a Comment
I am not much of a graphic designer. In fact I have the artistic talents of a blind hedgehog trapped in a paper bag. I suck when it comes to colours, designing logos, photo editing and drawing.
This is why in general I will outsource any graphic elements I need for my websites, flyers and posters.
However I do still use graphics tools. Why?
Like the HTML editing stuff I was talking about yesterday, you don’t need to be a graphic genius to edit and adapt graphics.
I never start from a blank canvas, and neither should you.
When getting graphics created for your website or flyers, always ask the designer to provide the final result in PSD format, as well as JPG or GIF.
PSD is PhotoShop Design format, which is a fairly universal image file format used by designers. It can be a “layered” image file which means each element of the image can be edited. It allows you the ability to change the text, move or remove layers and change fonts, colours etc without having to completely redesign the image.
You’ll need a tool such as Adobe PhotoShop or CorelDraw to do this editing, but these tools will become an important part of your toolkit. Saving you time and money in the long run, for getting minor changes made to graphics.
So the next time you are getting your graphics, logos, flyers or posters created by a graphic designer, make sure you ask for a “layered PSD file” as part of the delivered package.
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Photo editing is a different aspect entirely and something I cover in more detail in the new Group Training Success System program. Including how to do high quality photo editing with a freely available tool
Technorati Tags: bootcamp images,graphic deisgn for personal trainers,website design for Personal trainers
Are you using mind control in your fitness business?
December 9, 2008 By 2 Comments
Do you ever get your head in to a project and find that you never seem to get it closer to a point of being finished?
I have had a big project on the go this last few months that has taken up an awful amount of my time and resources. This project has had many different aspects to it which at times has been difficult to keep track of, and it is too easy to get lost in the details rather than seeing the bigger picture.
You have access to some great online resources which can help you keep track of your projects, whether large or small.
You’ve probably heard of mind-mapping. Tony Buzznan’s books on the subject are world wide best sellers. Now there are many applications to help you create your mind maps, the desktop ones can often cost literally hundreds of dollars, some are better than others.
I have been using an online mind-mapping tool for my big project and it certainly has kept me on top of the project, keeping my eye on the big picture and avoiding getting bogged down in the details. This tool is MindMeister.com, the basic version will not cost you anything to use.
Mindmeister is a very simple to use and accessible online tool that you can easily share with other people. For example, the website aspect of my project was outsourced to a developer in India. I was able to provide the developer access to the mind map so he could see my thoughts on the site and where the web
site fitted in to the overall project.
I have now started to use this tool for all my projects whatever the size, even down to planning the emails and BLOG posts that you see each week.
If you are having problems with focus on your writing projects, bootcamp structure, personal training business… whatever then this tool may really make things much clearer.
Try MindMeister today, then come back and let me know on this BLOG how you have found it!
Tim
Un-geeking the internet for Fitness Professionals
PS. My new project is coming soon. If you run a bootcamp or any group training program then this will certainly be right up your street! More on this in another email.
Have You Asked Your Clients The Question?
December 8, 2008 By Leave a Comment
It is the end of the year, and I find this is a great time for reflection of what you have done in your bootcamps or personal training over the last year. One massively under used tool in many small businesses is the survey.
Surveying your clients can be both a humbling and confidence boosting exercise. But either way very valuable.
Rather than talk about the psychology of surveys, and because this is a geek site for explaining how to do some techy stuff, I thought I would tell you about some of the online surveying tools I have used in the past.
First of all one of the autoresponder services I use is iContact.com and this actually has a surveying tool built in to its system… It is quite an easy service to use and it will embed the survey in to an email and send it out to all your contacts. It will then collate all the results and provide some pretty nifty and cool looking reports.
Then there is a free service called SurveyMonkey. The basic FREE version does have limitations but the service is great if you are only surveying a couple of hundred people. However, I am not a fan of the reports and the interface is not so obvious to use.
The one service I have recently started using is called WuFoo.com . WuFoo is similar to SurveyMonkey, but the interface is much more user friendly, you can embed your survey into an email or web page, as easily as it takes to embed a youTube video in to your website (ie. copy and paste a simple code snippet).
One of the great features with WuFoo is you can allow people to upload files as part of the survey, send out automated confirmation emails, send them to another web page on successful completition of the survey and request money from your survey participant if required too.
The cost of WuFoo for the basic package is just 9.95 a month and much easier and quicker than hiring a developer to create a customised survey on your site.
I used WuFoo recently for the 12days of fitness sign up for fitness professionals and made my life really easy for that job, I also sent out a survey to my bootcamp members getting feedback on the stuff they enjoyed and the things they would change about my bootcamps and got some fantastic feedback.
Take a look at WuFoo I think you’ll like it!
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