Create A Personal Trainer Website In Ten Minutes

Written by Fit Geek on January 24, 2009

I  believe Personal Trainers get a real block when it comes to getting a web site built.

“I don’t know where to start”

“I don’t know any HTML”

“I can’t afford a web developer”

To be honest and blunt with you, if you haven’t got a site and a simple opt-in box on your website, you ain’t really got a business… you are actually invisible.

So it is time to hustle and get a site built! I believe I can get a website built with an opt in box and a BLOG in Ten minutes. In fact I am going to put my neck on the line and do it live, in front of an audience, next weekend in Nottingham UK. I will get it filmed and I will place the video on YouTube for all to see.

The thing with building websites is not necessarily knowing technical stuff like HTML (although it can and does help). If you can follow a simple process and instructions on screen it can be ridiculously simple.

Watch this space for more details of my challenge later next week.

Thanks for making your comments and bookmarking my posts, I really appreciate it.

Why Does Google Not Tell Us About This?

Written by Fit Geek on January 18, 2009

Today is a really busy day for me, I am frantically pulling together the last details for the launch of the Group Training Success System which starts tomorrow afternoon! (and I have a full day of Personal Training tomorrow as well!)

Anyway I came across a great little resource the other day. It came right from Google itself, and it is a guide to website Search Engine Optimisation…

It doesn’t release any of Google’s algorithm secrets, but it does cover Google’s best practices for title tags, meta tags, URL structure, navigation, content, anchor text, headers, images and of course, Robots.txt, making this a good way to review the basics and make sure you have that stuff down correctly.

Hope you find this little gift useful and I’ll speak to you all again tomorrow, with details of the launch. I hope you are ready for all this?

Official Search Optimization Starter Guide (PDF)

Tim

Can Community Really Do This For Your Bootcamp?

Written by Fit Geek on January 15, 2009

Yesterday I was telling you about what happened on my first bootcamp and how I lost 50% of my profits without getting people to pay up front!

Ouch, I was annoyed and angry with myself for making that mistake!

However there was one aspect I did get right from day 1 of my bootcamp and that was my focus on community!

…and for once I am not talking about those online communities like Facebook, Twitter, or your NING sites (however all of these can, and do, play a part in this)

Do you think this was a powerful interaction?

As much as I embrace technology for many things in my business, I recognise that real human face to face interaction is 100 times more powerful, and something to truely nurture and embrace at all possible occasions.

I have been to fitness classes in commercial gyms where no one talked to each other, the changing rooms are deathly quiet before and after the workouts. No body exchanging telephone numbers, email addresses or even comments about what they thought about the music the instructor played!

What a shame!!

So when I started the ForestFit bootcamp I was adamant this would never be the situation in any session EVER.

You can easily implement exercises that require interaction between participants, getting them up close and personal with each other, sharing the experience. This can happen in the warm up, the actual workout and in the stretches at the end.

I have found simple tricks for everyone to learn everybody elses name within 2 sessions. It really doesn’t take too much imagination to implement this in to your programs.

The key now is in the experienced members of the group knowing exactly how this works. They now introduce themselves and actively find people they don’t know at the first workout of the month.

This support role, as a community, is what creates retention in my bootcamps at extra ordinarily high levels.

Team spirit on the worst day of the year!

The community is strengthened yet further with joint sporting goals, doing a 5km run together, creating a touch rugby team for a local charity event, organising social occasions and celebrating group members birthdays.

Once you have created a bond between your clients they never want to miss a session, they never want to be left out the teams, and the socials are something really special.

If someone was to ask me why my bootcamp has been so successful, I would say just one word…

Community!

Tim

PS. On Monday you’ll hear more about community and why it can boost your bootcamp retention and referrals. Keep an eye on your email over the next few days for the big announcement. This is no 35 buck e-book, it is full blueprint to success with setting up and running a group training program.

How I Lost 50% Of My Profits At My First Bootcamp

Written by Fit Geek on January 15, 2009

I lost 50% of my profits with this mistake. I kicked myself, bashed my head up against a brick wall for being such a dumbass!

The first bootcamp I ran had lots of people sending me emails in the week before the training session, asking to be added to the list. I had set a maximum number of 20 people for the group to keep things manageable. I had a list of 20 people with 4 days to go and still I was getting emails, but I was turning them away as I already had a full list.

Problem was I had no money in my pocket, people would pay on the first day.

At that first session almost half didn’t turn up, it was raining, and 2 or 3 didn’t “remember” to bring the cash. they also didn’t remember to come to the next sessions either (

I had a group of 8 people eventually who did stay and did pay me, but I was feeling pretty pissed at turning people away the previous week. It was a big lesson.

As a fitness professional looking to FILL your bootcamps, that is if you are running it as a real “business”, like I outlined in my latest FREE report. Your primary task is to make a profit, getting clients to pay up front and in full!

From a technical standpoint, it can seem daunting to add a Paypal button to your web page, the act of setting up a real merchant account can seem extremely difficult too, which means you are probably put off the idea of taking payments on-line

A few bootcamp owners  have told me their clients would not want to pay on-line!

That’s horseXXXX!!

97% of my clients gladly pay online, I take cash from maybe one client a month, and I tell them their place is NOT confirmed until they have given me the cash.

My sales copy is designed to get the client to take out their crdit card and pay immediately on reading the copy, never even indicating the option to pay by any other means.

This year (as it happens today) I am setting up a recurring billing method so I can automatically get payments each and every month from my clients, I can then pretty much guarantee my income every month from the bootcamp. Once again, technically this may seem challenging but it is simply a matter of copying and pasting a little code snippet from Paypal or you shopping cart system!

Take action today and set up online payment for your bootcamp, the time, worry and hassle of collecting cash will disappear!

NOTE: On Monday, we start a five day special promotion for the Group Training Success System, in it will be step by step guides to do exactly this! Please note you will want to be one of the first 25 to order. I am not gonna let on just yet, but this bonus really will save you 100’s if not 1000’s of dollars in 2009.

Your comments and bookmarks are always appreciated. I will always try to answer all comments

How To Beat A Geek Fitness Professional

Written by Fit Geek on January 9, 2009

With a bloody great stick is probably your best starting point… )

As it happens, you have a lot going for you if you want to compete with a geek fitness professional. All this HTML, FTP, JS voodoo that geeks band about to confuse non-geeks is simply a cover for our own inadequacies!

So what follows is the five steps to successfully getting one up on a geek fitness professsional.

Step 1. Know what you want in a website and stick to your guns. Geeks get too easily distracted by the latest widget, gadget and cool technology. We are pulled off track from what we really wanted our site to do in the first place.

Step 2. Once you get your website built, be happy with the being ignorant to how it works and how to change stuff. Geeks want to fiddle with bits of code to make them “better”. We are too fussy and forget to actually USE the site for its main purpose of marketing and attracting new clients.

Step 3. Have an eye for design. I have the artistic talent of an one eyed wombat, trapped in a paper bag! Techically, geeks are stunning, graphically we suck!

Step 4. Concentrate on providing high quality content that your web site visitors will love you for. Geeks have ZERO attention span (that’s why it took your web-guy months to make that really simple change!). We hate to actually sit and write anything intelligent, witty or vaguely entertaining.

Step 5. Communicate with real people in the real world. Geeks are generally social failures and cannot relate to ordinary non-geeks. You biggest advantage is your charisma and ability to be a real human being on the other side of the internet. Pick up the phone talk and meet your clients in the real world.

I both hate and love the label of being a “geek”.

I am a geek trying to beat off the stigma and personal traits that make it difficult to compete with you!

Rather than let technology and geeks beat you, embrace the technology and use your advantages to beat us.