Are you using mind control in your fitness business?

Written by Fit Geek on December 9, 2008

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.

http://www.mindmeister.com

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?

Written by Fit Geek on December 8, 2008

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!

What does an Un-Fit Geek Look Like

Written by Fit Geek on December 4, 2008

How and why I found this video is not up for discussion… but it amused me enough to urge me to show you what Geeks are really like…

Quite scary really…

You’ll be happy to know MyFitGeek is nothing like this at all!

Tim

Do You Have More Than 157 Friends?

Written by Fit Geek on December 3, 2008

It is MyFitGeek – Tim Goodwin here. I don’t have many friends, maybe thats because I am a geek… Let me qualify that, I don’t have many friends on Facebook, only 157 as of today, christ even my brother has more friends and his friends are way cooler than mine.

What is necessary to have friends on Facebook? Let me know.

What I do have on Facebook, is something quite powerful, that I use regularly to help promote my Bootcamp locally. I have created a group and a page, both devoted to ForestFit. Whilst it doesn’t have so many members or fans, the act of having a facebook group or page adds to your reach, making more people aware of the groups you run.

Over the last few months, when I ask new people who join ForestFit where they first heard about us, about 75% of them say Facebook.

I do run adverts on Facebook too, but the chatter I get from my current members is significant to widen our reach.

Setting up a group or page on Facebook is really easy, and requires little attention afterwards. It is a good idea to update it each month, but this will take a matter of minutes.

Dan Kennedy talks regularly about using multiple media to promo your product/service, never rely on just one approach. Whilst your newspaper ad may work this week, it may not next week. If you can spread your reach through multiple media, you’ll continue to get a steady flow of new leads to your website.

Your task this week is to set up a Facebook group for your bootcamp or personal training service. Once you’ve done that add me as your friend )

http://www.facebook.com/friends/?ref=tn#/profile.php?id=587693973&ref=name

Tim

Un-geeking the internet for Fitness Professionals

PS. Facebook can get addictive, so I would suggest getting the group set up, invite your current clients to join and post stuff to it and drop in from time to time to add contact, but leave it at that.

Is Wordpress The Solution To Your Website Woes?

Written by Fit Geek on December 2, 2008

It is MyFitGeek – Tim Goodwin here. Have you been literally tearing you hair out over your bootcamp or personal training website? If you have seen a picture of me lately you’ll have seen I have none left on my head ) squeak!

This morning I was going out of my mind with the 12 days of fitness website, that I am helping Dax Moy with this year…

Something wasn’t right, it displayed fine on FireFox browser but it was all over the place in Internet Explorer…

Anyway, it made think about one of the questions I got last week about Wordpress and using it as the basis for a website. I have had in the past wordpress site for an information product I had.

Whilst the site looked good and and maintained a common look throughout, I did get frustrated by the lack of control I had with it. Despite being a geek, I don’t care to understand EVERY coding language out there and PHP (which Wordpress is based on) is particularly geekie and ugly.

Anyway, before I get off topic, I believe WordPress to be one of the most accessible ways for fitness professionals to create and maintain control over their sites, although it does have its limitations…

To get it set up you DO need a geek to install and set up a few “plugins” to make it work most effectively for you. For example you’ll need a plugin to improve your control over the Search Engine optimisation stuff I talked about in a previous BLOG post

http://myfitgeek.com/blog/33/are-you-focussing-on-the-wrong-search-terms/

You’ll need to have a theme designed and coded by a competent designer/developer, as the themes you get for nothing are in general quite poor.

Saying all that, once it is set up, editing and adding pages as well as maintaining a BLOG is really very simple. Editing pages is just like using a WYSIWYG editor, and now Wordpress can add in things like videos, audio and other media with relative ease.

This BLOG is based on Wordpress… and I am in the process of finding the right developer to design and code the full MyFitGeek website based on Wordpress, hopefully it will look way cooler than this shabby template.

It is not the ultimate solution, but it may be the right solution if you want more control, without the need to get heavy in to the techie coding stuff. Sounds like the ideal solution for many fitness professionals??

Do you have a WordPress web site now, how do you find using it? Is this something you would like to have for your website solution? Leave me a comment below…