An Article for Fitness Pros by Phil Kaplan

A Published Article
by

Phil Kaplan

Wham! The Prelude To Success!

Nobody's Ever Made It To The Top Without Falling Down Along The Way

originally published in Personal Fitness Professional
(unedited version)

Wham! That’s the sound of my head hitting the pavement. Not literally, but figuratively, and not once, but hundreds of times! Why would such a sensible man as I risk head wounds by knocking my skull against an inanimate object? Let’s just say I made mistakes. Some cost me a fortune. Others nearly cost my career. There were I lied in bed ready to abandon the dream that promised I could find a legitimate and lucrative career doing what I loved. Then I learned.

I learned about Thomas Edison failing to invent the light bulb 1,000 times before he got it right, about Sylvester Stallone being rejected for Rocky again and again, and of Colonel Sanders knocking on doors trying to sell a chicken recipe that it seemed nobody wanted. I don’t claim to deserve mention in the same annals as Tom, Sly, or the good Colonel, but they served as models for me. Their bumps along the road to success taught me that if I, a fitness buff with more ambition than brains, am willing to get back up each time I fall, I really could turn this dream of earning my living as a fitness professional into a reality.

It was the willingness to persevere that brought me to a point where I’m repeatedly asked to conduct seminars for trainers in quest of Professionalism. I don’t mean only Professional Income, although that’s certainly a part of it. I mean the respect that society reserves for recognized “professionals.”

At seminars I present powerful ideas for elevating public perception of a Trainer. I’d love to tell you I’m so smart I just invented these ideas, but that wouldn’t be a complete truth. I uncovered methods of finding professionalism and profitability, but it had little to do with being smart. I invented these ideas by failing miserably at first. I’m going to share with you the virtues of maintaining your value, of conducting paid small group Orientations, and of putting yourself on a perception pedestal with those who already command professional status, but I want to contrast these ideas with the pitfalls I experienced along the road to finding them.

I get offended when someone reaching for personal training mediocrity dismisses my achievements as the result of some advantage. I want to set the record straight. I worked hard, worked sometimes smart, and fumbled regularly. I haven’t any advantages that you don’t have. Everything that I share in my seminars, everything that I share in this article, is something that you can do and benefit from. Everything! I hope that by sharing the mistakes I made, I can shorten the path to your ultimate success.

The first mistake I made was trying to make my service affordable for everyone with an affordable per-session fee. Let me remind you of a concept I’ve shared in previous issues, the difference between cost and value. “Cost” is the amount of pain someone has to part with in order to obtain something. “Value” suggests there is “benefit” gained. It is far easier for me today to ask for $200 for an hour of my time than it was to ask for $15 when I started out. I realize now, the $15 was a cost. Today, for $200, I deliver far more value than people expect.

If you have the power to dramatically improve the lives of others, the concept of value takes on a whole new meaning. I used to charge $15 for an hour of exercise. Many trainers sell “an hour of exercise.” If you want to truly deliver value, you need a better offering.

Understand what’s going on inside the minds of clients and prospects. If they’re failing to achieve the results they desire, they have at least a few flawed beliefs. They perhaps believe exercise must be punishing and all-consuming. They might believe they’re too old, too fat, or too unmotivated. Their brains might have been polluted by the “eat less weigh less” adage, or they might simply have given up their belief that a lean, toned, body is possible. If you ask for $15 to take a person with such flawed beliefs through an “exercise session,” you can bet they’re going to perceive a cost. Assume the position of a coach, counselor, or educator, and a “session” becomes far more valuable. If you spend your sessions teaching, sometimes demonstrating, and sometimes instructing, and you empower clients to facilitate results in your absence, $200 doesn’t seem like such a stretch, especially if the “payoff” is a lifetime of health, fitness, and self esteem.

I’ve learned to make sessions affordable, not by discounting rates, but by offering “lessons” and distancing the sessions apart. If someone has a choice between 4 “workouts” a week for $50 each, leading to the need for “four more workouts” the following week, or getting clarity for $200 that will empower them to find ongoing results without regular need for a hand holder, where is more value delivered?

Before I learned to capitalize on the value I deliver, I had so much enthusiasm I’d hand out business cards everywhere, pulling over when I saw joggers, assaulting people in supermarkets who had their carts filled with unsupportive foods. If enthusiasm were the sole secret to success, I would’ve become Bill Gates of fitness in a matter of weeks. I understood the mistake I was making only when I grasped what is now obvious. People don’t want to work out. They want to enjoy their lives. They don’t want the exercise session. They want the payoff. Sure, they’re willing to go through the exercise if the payoff is substantial, but the value lies not in the session but rather in the outcome. Retaining a pesky fitness guy running around handing out cards had all the appeal of inviting a mosquito into their bedrooms at night. As far as those who might truly have been potential clients, how “professional” would they perceive me running around begging for $15 an hour?

It’s important that you realize we’re not dealing with reality when we’re marketing to the public. We’re dealing with a twisted and manufactured perception. Adjusting fees to make yourself “affordable” will absolutely take a serious bite, from a perception standpoint, out of your value. This leads to my second mistake. I thought FREE consultations were the way to go.

Understanding the concept of value, it’s clear that conducting a FREE session immediately sets your value at ZERO. I know why you might feel compelled to do it. I was once there. We have a great deal to offer and we want to prove it to people so they feel 100% comfortable “signing up.” It’s difficult to ask for $35, $50, or $75 for something that we haven’t proven is worth the investment. I’ve found a phenomenal way to get around that difficulty. I’ve learned to implement the small group Orientation as an initial session.

People enroll for an hour in the presence of others with similar needs. I spend the hour explaining the vital concepts of metabolism, supportive nutrition, aerobic benefit, and resistance training. I explain Periodization, target heart zone, and other concepts we’re all familiar with in a manner that allows attenders to understand why previous attempts might have fallen short.

Today my trainers, who command $75 per session, conduct Orientations for $20 per person. Since they will often have 4-8 people in a group, revenue is substantial, and the “audience” is qualified. By virtue of the fact that they’ve enrolled in a $20 session, they’ve expressed that they see value in investing in education. I’ve eliminated risk on the part of clients by conducting all Orientations with an unconditional money back guarantee.

I made another mistake that I know most trainers make. I thought more money up front meant I was making more money.

After fumbling around at $15 per session, I worked my way up to $35. Since $35 here and there didn’t seem like “I-have-a-promising-career” kind of money, I decided I could earn more by getting clients to commit. “Commit to 3 sessions, pay only $90, commit to 12 for $299!” With three “sales” in a week, I’d go to the bank with near $1000. What I failed to realize was, I didn’t “own” that money until value was delivered. If someone caught a cold after Session #7 and cancelled, I owed them sessions. That was sometimes after I had spent their money! I soon wound up in The Land of Owesies. I owed one client 5 sessions, another 4, and bank deposits were becoming fewer and farther between.

Selling packages also inevitably brought me to the “last session.” Clients would start a countdown, keeping in mind how many sessions were left. After the last session, they had to be “sold” again.

The most critical mistake in selling packages is the fact that we are dropping our value only because someone is willing to commit to frequency. Why should we drop our value in exchange for commitment? Isn’t that commitment a part of what we expect if we’re going to bring about results? Can you imagine a doctor saying, “You’re really sick. You’ll have to see me frequently, so I’ll charge you less per visit.” Of course you can’t. Why? Because a doctor is . . . . come on . . . . let’s all say it together . . . . A PROFESSIONAL!

We know the value of networking with medical professionals which leads to my next mistake. I believed that making contact equaled effective networking. I’d set up meetings with doctors, tell them what I could do for their patients, and leave them with business cards. It should have dawned on me that doctors have busy agendas and handing out the renegade Personal Trainer’s business cards was not first on their priority list. When I came to understand that my goal was not to recruit doctors as sales people, but rather to get both medical professionals and their patients to hold me in the esteem they reserve for those who have graduated medical school, I took a new and far more effective approach. The “Weekly Health Night” was the first promotion utilizing this new approach that paid off big time.

If you affiliate with a health club, organize a weekly health night, where three medical professionals are invited to participate. Each week set up four tables. One table might be manned by a chiropractor, another by a cardiologist, the third by an internal medicine specialist, and the other by you! This puts you on the same perception pedestal as those who instantly gain “expert” status. To strengthen your link to this platform, each week one “specialist’ can conduct a 30-45 minute talk. By working yourself into the rotation, you are perceived by members as an “equal” to the other speakers. You also cement your professional status in the minds of the medical professionals who are joining you. The compound effect can prove quite measurable in profits over time.

With enough of us finding our way through the maze of confusing and conflicting information, a standard for “Fitness Professionalism” will someday be set in stone. Until that day, we have tremendous opportunity to excel. Allow my mistakes to serve as a beacon to illuminate the most effective path to profits and professionalism, and if you hit a few stumbling blocks along the way, remember, each one is a required lesson leading to the pinnacle of success.

Phil Kaplan's New Book, Personal Training Profits and A Secure Fitness Future has been added to his line of products and programs geared toward increasing the success of Personal Fitness Professionals Worldwide. His PEAK Training Seminar Programs share his success methodologies in a workshop format for elite trainers.

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