Becoming a Better Fitness Professional

Get Better Results Build a Better Reputation Make a Better Living

B e c o m i n g a B e t t e r Fi t n e s s Pr o f e s s i o n a l
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Introduction Page 1 Chapter 1: Establish Your System Chapter 2: Add Products and Services to Your System Chapter 3: Systemize Your System Chapter 4: Read, Write, and Present Chapter 5: Make Downtime Your Coaching Time Chapter 6: Start Every Client with Before Photos Page 2 Page 9 Page 14 Page 20 Page 25 Page 30

Summary Page 33

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introduction

Personal Trainer, Nutritionist, or Fitness Professional?

The role of a fitness professional has changed dramatically over the past decade. Even the name fitness professional is relatively new, often encompassing personal trainers, nutritionists, dietitians, and other fitness-related coaches and experts. Not that long ago, personal trainers were expected to design an effective and safe exercise program and speak only about exercise with their clients. Nutritionists and dietitians were expected to develop easy-to-follow meal plans based on the food pyramid or other standard recommendations, paying little attention to what research was suggesting about nutrition, and seldom considering the overall fitness goals or exercise program a client was following. This single-minded focus didnt serve anyone well. It also left clients with mediocre results. Todays fitness professional is no longer a rep counter nor a meal planner. Todays fitness professional has a much larger responsibility and must have a more holistic picture of a clients needs. Todays fitness professional has the opportunity to help turn the tide on the growing rates of obesity and metabolic dysfunction. Todays fitness professional is more of a necessity than a luxury. Theyre guides to help bring peoples bodies back to the health-promoting state they were intended to be in. This e-book is intended to help change your vision of how valuable your role is. It is also intended to help you increase your income and capitalize on product and service opportunities your clients need and may already be paying for. Fitness professionals can deliver life-changing, even life-saving experiences to their clients with the right knowledge and tools. Understanding how to make your role more of a business also helps ensure youre fairly compensated for the incredible experience you deliver. Some of the contents may not be applicable for fitness professionals who work for large fitness organizations. In fact, they may have an advantage with a number of these ideas, because the company they work for may already have some of these things in place. Whether youre an independent fitness professional, a full-time employee with one of the large and prominent fitness organizations, or your business is somewhere in between, I hope you find something in the following chapters that makes you better. Better at delivering results. Better at building your reputation. Better at making a living in this life-changing industry. Tom Nikkola Vice President | General Manager ThorneFX 1

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Establish Your System

What makes you unique as a fitness professional? If I was considering hiring you, what would you offer that others wouldnt?
These are important questions to consider. Chances are, you have the answers, but it may be difficult to convey what makes you different. Ive found that fitness professionals who crack the code on their brand are able to do so because they follow some type of system. The average person who is considering hiring a fitness professional comes in with the assumption that theyre either buying exercise instruction from a personal trainer or meal planning from a nutritionist or dietitian. You can wow them by explaining how your system delivers consistent results because it addresses lifestyle, nutrition, and exercise in a methodical process. Theyll quickly see that you offer more than a single part of the overall process.

What Does A System Entail?

At a minimum, a health, fitness, or performance-based system must address a clients exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle needs. If you were to simply explain how your program involves these three critical areas, you would immediately set yourself apart from the majority of personal trainers.

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The ThorneFX fitness philosophy has been developed with an understanding that these three components are critical to each persons long-term success. But we have taken it a step further. Each component or phase of a program should include a way to address nutrition, lifestyle, and exercise habits. But we also took a step back and asked, If were going to address nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle, what are we trying to accomplish with these three components of fitness? From that question, we established the four priorities of a health and fitness program, each of which has a nutrition, lifestyle, and exercise component:

1. 2. 3. 4.

Monitor and manage health Optimize recovery Improve body composition Enhance training or event performance

Ill walk you through the ThorneFX system, which you can claim as your own or reference ThorneFX. You may also decide to take some of the ideas and craft your own. The most important thing is that you can explain a logical process for helping your clients achieve success.

Monitor and Manage Health

Not long ago, it was impossible for fitness professionals to gauge a clients health with the assessments that were available. Today, objective assessments are more accessible than ever. Blood tests offer the most objective data available about a clients health status. As a fitness professional, youre not trained to diagnose anything from a lab test, but you can use the information to help guide your lifestyle, nutrition, and exercise recommendations. When a client has lab measures outside normal ranges, you can be the biggest influence to make sure he or she sees a doctor. In the past, fitness professionals might have had a client who did everything right, but struggled to lose weight, only to find out down the road that the client had a dysfunctional thyroid. We had male clients who struggled to gain any appreciable level of lean body mass even though they trained hard and ate well, not knowing they had low testosterone. We had female clients who loved their post-workout sweets as much as they loved their group fitness classes, who didnt know they had elevated blood sugar levels. They looked lean on the outside which made them assume they were healthy on the inside.

The bottom line is that a truly healthy client is far more likely to get results than a client who has a dysfunctional metabolism. The only way to know whether theyre healthy is through lab testing. For those who are not healthy, identifying it is step one. Getting help is step two. Its much better to identify the problems and have a client get healthcare advice at the beginning of the program than after they spent a lot of time and money on a program that achieves subpar results.

Monitoring health requires lab testing.

Diabetes and Insulin Resistance

Glucose
Blood sugar

92 3.3 4.4 33

Insulin

Managing health requires that a fitness professional, and sometimes a healthcare professional, actively support a clients/patients needs. A fitness professional can play an important role with lifestyle, nutrition, and exercise support. Sex hormones, thyroid, blood sugar, lipids, inflammation, nutrient deficiencies, and other components of metabolism are all influenced by exercise, nutrition, and lifestyle. So, in our system, step one is to monitor and measure health, which begins with comprehensive lab testing. Then appropriate actions are put in place to ensure each client achieves optimal health, so that he or she can recover, improve body composition, and enhance performance.

Blood sugar storage horm...

Hemoglobin A1c
Blood sugar

LP-IR SCORE

Predicting risk of insulin

Reproductive Hormones

Estradiol

Main female sex hormone

22.4 4.8 12.4 815 195 74.2

Luteinizing Hormone
Sex hormone

Testosterone (free)
Unbound Testosterone

Testosterone (total)
Steroid hormone

DHEA-S SHBG

DHEA Sulfate (androgen)

Sex Hormone Binding

If you want to take your health and performance to the next level, you need to equip yourself with the right information. ThorneFx Performance lab testing package includes important biomarkers for performance hormones, advanced nutrients, and metabolism.

Optimize Recovery
The second priority in our system is to optimize recovery. Obviously, this is much easier to do when someone has a solid base of health. Recovery is important not only following training sessions, but also in dealing with the normal stresses of daily life. Unfortunately, all too often, personal trainers focus on beating their clients up with training sessions. They smile as their clients wobble down the stairs after a session. They love hearing about how difficult it was to sit down on the toilet the next day. Most alarming is this often happens after a clients first session, not after theyve had experience with training. A true fitness professional understands the damage this can do to an inexperienced client.

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Rather than putting such a large amount of stress on a client out of the gate, our system focuses on the importance of properly preparing a client for an increasing level of physical stress by putting all recovery strategies into place. From a nutrition standpoint, recovery strategies include consuming a higher amount of protein, increasing micronutrient intake with lots of vegetables, and the use of a high-quality multivitamin and fish oil, and drinking plenty of water. Lifestyle modifications for enhancing recovery include choices as simple as sitting less or moving more, to getting a massage or using an ice bath or taking a hot bath with magnesium salt. Exercise modifications include adding active recovery workouts or using other exercise programs like Pilates or yoga. There are multiple ways recovery can be improved. In selecting nutrition, lifestyle, and exercise choices, these choices should: Reduce stress Enhance blood flow Increase nutrient availability Increase quantity of sleep Increase quality of sleep Limit inflammation Balance hormones Support immune function Support digestive function Can you see how the simple, four-part system can be tailored to a client and modified in dozens of different ways?

Improve Body Composition

Most experienced fitness professionals have seen dramatic results in clients who simply clean up their diet and begin exercising. If the first two priorities, managing health and optimizing recovery, have been addressed properly, theres a good chance that a client will have achieved some significant improvements in body composition. Body composition can be improved by increasing lean mass, decreasing body fat, or both. We see the improvement of body composition as a big advantage for most athletic competition as well. 5

A long-distance runner who doesnt need to carry around an extra 15 pounds of fat is going to be a faster runner. A running back with an extra five pounds of muscle will likely have more power to drive through a defensive line. Unfortunately, all too often, people focus their program on fat loss rather than lean mass gain. Gaining lean mass improves strength, helps provide more muscle to control blood sugar levels, enhances bone density, and provides more muscle to coordinate movement with aging. Many nutrition choices that are important for health and recovery also result in fat loss. A shift in the diet from processed carbs to more fibrous vegetables, protein, and healthy fats, more water, and an increase in micronutrient intake have an important role in improving body composition. To achieve ultra-low body fat levels, more structure might be necessary, such as carbohydrate cycling, the use of cyclical ketogenic or low-carb diets, or other options. Lifestyle factors such as improving quality of sleep, taking naps, or spending less time sitting can further impact body composition. With exercise, the use of high-intensity interval training for some, and lower intensity cardio for others may be appropriate. Modifying training volume and intensity, shortening rest periods between sets, and the use of more compound movements are a small number of the possible choices that can be made with exercise. What you might notice with each of these choices is that a stricter diet or a more intense training session can add more stress to the body. Hence, the importance of addressing recovery strategies before adding this extra stress to the body.

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A solid body composition program should: Enhance fat mobilization Increase protein synthesis Decrease protein breakdown Increase heat production Reduce food cravings Support blood sugar & insulin management Optimize sex and thyroid hormone function

Enhance Training or Event Performance

Chances are, any athlete or weekend warrior who has gone through the first three priorities will already be performing at a level they have never performed at before. There are still additional steps that can be taken to enhance performance during training. Of course, increasing the intensity means adding more stress. Adding more stress means that recovery strategies become even more important. The type of training or event one is participating in determines what strategies should be used for optimizing performance. Those performing in a short-duration, high-intensity event may need to fully harness their available glucose and glycogen, and even ramp up their nervous system. Others may need to combat the effects of stress during a longer-duration training session or event. For event or training performance enhancement, ones lifestyle habits can set them up for success or failure, but when the workout or sport begins, theres little lifestyle can do. Much of the acute performance-enhancing effects come from nutrition and supplement choices. To enhance performance, a program should: Reduce feeling of fatigue Reduce build up of lactic acid Modulate acute cortisol production Enhance sympathetic nervous system activation Improve availability of glucose (anaerobic events) or fatty acids (aerobic events) Stimulate mitochondrial biogenesis 7

Business Building Exercise

The four-part ThorneFX fitness system is a great way to develop a clients program. However, you may have some other ideas in mind. Remember that your system not only helps you stand apart from other fitness professionals, it also helps you organize your programming into a methodological process. Use the following questions to help you contemplate your personal system:

nzx What do I need to provide my clients if theyre going to

brag about the results they get with me?

nzx Where are some areas I can add value to a clients program
that theyre not expecting?

nzx What are the most common obstacles Ive had with getting
my clients the results they were looking for?

nzx What do most people expect of me when they hire me?

What would they expect of me if they knew it was critical to their success?

nzx Aside from my own personal workouts, what kind of

system have I created for myself to stay fit, healthy, and performing well? Have I created a way to communicate that to my clients?

nzx If your clients are talking to their friends about how good
you are at getting people to their goals, how do you do it? You may have a system in place already and never considered putting it on paper. This is a great way to differentiate you. If you like the ThorneFX system, use it as your own. If you have other ways to convey your process, do so. Just make sure its simple for people to understand and your system addresses more than just exercise.

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c h a p t e r t w o

Add Products and Services to Your System

The majority of fitness professionals Ive worked with over the years HATE selling. If they could, they would train people for free. They also tend to avoid recommending products and services that cost their clients additional money. While it is noble to avoid selling something you dont believe in, Ive found this fear actually becomes a disservice to clients when it comes to products and services that can actually help them. For a fitness professional to really understand whether a product or service is appropriate, it takes some self-eduction and an investment of time to find the answers that clients often ask. If a fitness professional goes through the work of identifying products and services that are appropriate for a client, and that fitness professional has the opportunity to earn money from it, why wouldnt he or she do so? As a matter of fact, most clients expect that if they are going to buy something recommended by their trainer or nutritionist, then the trainer or nutritionist is going to be compensated in some way. The key question to ask is, how would you maintain credibility, offer products and services beyond one-on-one sessions or group sessions, and make some extra income?

Use Your System

The key to make logical use of other products and services is to tie them into the system we talked about in the previous chapter. If part of your system involves a focus on recovery, then think about what your clients need to do to improve their ability to recover faster between workouts. Do they need to move more and sit less? If so, do you have a favorite activity monitor to recommend? If they need to get more sleep, do you have a favorite device or app that can help them track their sleep? Do you have supplements or evening habits that you can hold clients accountable to following? Your responsibility is to do everything in your power to hold clients accountable to make the right choices.

Lifestyle
What else can you do beyond asking your clients about how much sleep they get or how much time they spend stuck behind a desk? In recent years, there has been an explosion in activity and lifestyle monitors. Fitbit dominates the market, but you can expect that each year will bring new devices to the market. As a professional, you must maintain an awareness of whats available and figure out how some of the best technology can help you hold clients accountable, which makes you a better trainer or nutritionist. Movement and sleep are obvious lifestyle factors that can be tracked with devices. What about stress? Could you hold a client accountable to using an app like Headspace, which is a popular meditation app? Joel Jamiesons Bioforce HRV system is another easy-to-use piece of technology to help identify whether your clients are recovering as planned. Bioforce HRV system for measuring recovery Bioforce measures heart rate variability, identifying how sympathetic or parasympathetic dominant an individual is on any given day. With that information you know whether to turn up or turn down the intensity of the training. There are a number of other tools, apps, and systems you can find useful for various clients. If youre unsure where to start when investigating wearable technology, check out the Wearable Tech Database. 10

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Of course, you dont have to always rely on technology for holding clients accountable. Sometimes a simple notebook and pen work just fine as well. Beyond tracking habits, be sure you have a solution for clients to get periodic lab work done. As discussed earlier, this is key to ensuring theyre getting healthier on the inside, not just looking better on the outside.

Exercise
What products or services could you bring to your clients to make their workouts more effective? A heart rate monitor is obvious. Higher-end heart rate monitors allow you to program workouts for your client so you can be on their wrist with them even when youre not there in person. What else do clients ask you about related to exercise? Do you have a preferred water bottle that doesnt spill when you sip from it on the elliptical and doesnt contain BPA? Set it up on your websites online store through Amazon. Do clients ask you about your favorite shoes or workout apparel? Call it out on your website. Even if you dont make anything from the referral, you instantly add value as the go-to person for all their fitness needs. You may even have clients who become interested in setting up an in-home gym. Do you have a favorite brand of strength equipment like Rogue Fitness? What about some quality cardio equipment like Life Fitness? The point is, you can add value and expertise with a small amount of awareness about products your clients might start asking about.

Nutrition
The unique thing about nutrition is that food and supplements are consumed every day. If you can provide a solution in these areas, you have the opportunity to create an ongoing business. In some cases, it requires very little effort once your clients get set up with what they need. Nutritional supplements are probably the easiest way to create an additional revenue stream. Most people already use supplements, but theres a dramatic difference in quality from what they find at the local nutrition store compared to whats available through professional brands like ThorneFX. Your reputation is always on the line with products you recommend, so be cautious of any brand you represent. 11

No wheat, gluten, corn, yeast, egg, articial colors, articial sweeteners, articial avors, carageenan, magnesium stearate, palmitic acid, or stearic acid.

We created ThorneFX for this specific reason. We wanted to build a product line that fitness professionals could have total confidence in. Not only do we put the most efficacious ingredients in our formulas, in dosages that make a difference, we also dont add anything that could compromise the quality of the products. Theres no magnesium stearate, carageenan, artificial flavors, colors, sweeteners, or a number of other potentially problematic ingredients. Beyond supplements, what else might you be able to provide to add more value for your clients? Could you use an occasional training session to take them shopping instead of a workout? Could you provide them with 20 easy-to-make recipes to help them stay on their program? One word of caution on nutrition. I think one of the most common statements clients make to their trainers is, If you could just cook for me. While this idea sounds good, it is a LOT of work. It can also be a legal risk. If you start cooking for a fee, you will be forced to follow commercial regulations which could mean overhauling your kitchen or using a commercial kitchen for food preparation. Doing this on a part-time basis is probably not the best use of your time.

Business Building Exercise

Grab a pen and paper and answer the following questions:

nzx What are the ten most common questions or requests

you get from your clients?

nzx For each of the ten answers above, what are three
different ways you could assist a client? It doesnt matter if youd earn something from every one.

nzx Next to each answer from #2, give each one the following
rankings:

nzx Ease to implement: 1-easy, 5-very difficult nzx Impact for clients: 1-high, 5-very low nzx Income opportunity: 1-high, 5-none nzx Go back to your list one more time and find the items
12 with the lowest total scores when you add up the three numbers. Thats where you should start.

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Remember, business grows by either getting more customers or having each customer purchase more than they had in the past. If you have clients who shop for supplements at retail stores, theyre probably buying low-quality products, which is a disservice to their goals, and youre giving up an income opportunity. If you have clients who get frustrated over what they should be eating, youre doing a disservice by not pointing them toward easy nutrition choices and recipes. If you have clients who stay up late at night and sacrifice sleep, you need to figure out how to hold them accountable. Remember, your job is to get results for your clients and to earn a respectable living. If youre a personal trainer, youre responsible for a lot more than just exercise. If youre a dietitian or nutritionist, youre responsible for a lot more than just meal planning. As your thinking expands about what youre responsible for, youll begin to see the income opportunities expand as well.

Your job is to get results for your clients and to earn a respectable living. If youre a personal trainer, youre responsible for a lot more than just exercise.

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Systemize Your System

I hope the first couple of chapters expanded your thinking about the role you play in your clients health, as well as the way you should view your fitness business. The advice and recommendations you make each day are opportunities to provide solutions your clients will see as a greater value in your services, and it makes an additional income opportunity as well. In essence, what youve done in the first two chapters is built a brand. Youve answered the questions Who are you? What do you do? and What makes you unique? If youre going to be able to tell that story to a larger audience, in an easy way, youre going to need a website. A well-designed website gives you the means to articulate what makes your business unique. It also allows you to conduct business. A website gives you a place to share information and education, but it also allows you to create a storefront so clients can easily purchase products and services from you. A website allows you to offer the products and services that fit within your system to the clients and followers who want to use your system. A website allows you to systematize your system.

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Your Website
Some of you reading this manual might not remember the days of using a phone book. Today, the easiest way to find or learn about a business is through the web. Websites can be designed and built for very little money. A basic site on Wordpress can be designed and set up to go live with your first blog post in a single day. If your budget allows, its a good idea to work with a design or development company, but its not a requirement. However, there are some best practices that should be implemented. You can be up and running quickly, and your website should be viewed as your most important brochure about your business. Its an expectation that professionals and companies have a quality website that outlines who they are and what the company is about. That helps satisfy curiosity the first time someone comes to your site, but you also need to consider how youll keep them coming back. Thats where value adds, such as free information on a blog, or guides to your favorite products, become useful. Your website also quickly becomes your store for your clients. Most fitness professionals dont want to deal with the headache of ordering and managing inventory. Theyd prefer to just have clients purchase products featured on their website and get a commission for the referral. If you have a large facility and want to carry inventory, you certainly can, but it isnt necessary. So how do you systematize your system with your website? Jason Lengstorf, founder of Copter Labs (who developed the ThorneFX website) has this to say about building a killer website that helps you build your reputation and income:

Your Website is Your First Impression

In many situations, the very first point of contact between your business and a potential customer is online. Someone will hear about your business, and the first thing theyll do is search for you online. This means that your website is effectively a member of your team: an online receptionist-slash-salesperson. 15

At the very least, a potential client needs to be able to answer a few basic questions about your business: What kind of business is this? What are the hours? The address? The phone number? What kinds of services are available? Would a person like me fit in here? How do I start?

If Im a potential client, and I find your business, but cant figure out how to get in touch, that makes me think youre hard to work with before Ive ever spoken to anyone on your team. First impressions will shape every action and thought a client has about your business, and thats critical to understand if youre looking to attract high-quality clientele. Online, your website is your storefront. If you come to a new restaurant and the sign is sloppily hand-painted, the specials are misspelled, and its hard to find the front door, youve probably already made up your mind that this business is crappy before you ever get inside. There might be a five-star chef inside, but if your first impression is that the business is lowbudget and carelessly run, you might never actually make it to the part where you get to taste the chefs world-class menu. Contrast that with a restaurant that has a clean exterior, a welcoming entrance, and a stylish menu; first impressions say that this place is going to serve you something tasty, so youre much more likely to sit down and give the food a try. If your website is low-quality or, worse, non-existent, it sends the message that your business is low-quality or out of touch with the modern world.

Jason Lengstorf Founder, Copter Labs

Choose Content Over SEO

One of the most common requests we get at Copter Labs is for better SEO. Understandable. Of course the goal is to get your site featured higher in Google results. However, things have changed in the last few years. Google is no longer letting people game the results; content is the driving factor. What does this mean? It means that SEO is actually producing content that people want to read these days. In addition, search engines are becoming less and less dominant with the rise of social sharing. Facebook shares and links posted to Twitter are the primary sources of traffic on 16

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nearly every one of our clients sites, which means the focus should be less on SEO and more on sharability. Besides, by writing great content that gets shared, youre boosting your SEO anyways. Its a win-win situation.

Dont Overcomplicate Things

It may seem far too complicated to move online. Doesnt a website mean setting up email marketing and managing social media and checking conversion rates and optimizing splash pages and managing ad campaigns? Absolutely not. All of that stuff can happen in due time. At the start, though, you dont need any of it. You dont even technically need a blog; you could just have your companys contact details and a professional presentation of your services which requires zero effort on your behalf after its set up. Online marketing is a spectrum. Start with just creating a good website, then worry about all the other stuff when its time to worry about that stuff.

Robertson Training Systems website, designed by Copter Labs ThorneFX Affiliate

Invest in Your Success

With a website that forms a positive first impression of your business, you have a better shot of converting site visitors into leads, and leads into paying clients. It seems like a catch 22 that you need a great website to attract clients but you need clients to afford a great website. Thats true, but only to a certain extent.

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First, consider how much business is being left on the table if your website isnt converting visitors into clients. How much is a client worth to you? At $150/month, a single client adds $1,800/year to your bottom line. If your website gets 100 unique visitors each month and youre not hearing from any of them, thats a lot of potential income slipping through your fingers.

A new website is an investment, but if it brings you just one new client each month that means you start year two with an additional $21,600...

A new website is an investment, but if it brings you just one new client each month, that means you start year two with an additional $21,600 on top of what you started with in year one. With just one new client per month at $150/month. A website with 100 unique visitors each month only needs a one-percent conversion rate to make that reality. This is very reasonable to expect with a quality website. Theres a reason they say, you have to spend money to make money its absolutely true. Even if you cant afford a fully customized site, there are good options for getting a website up quickly that meets basic needs without spending thousands of dollars. For example, Copter Labs just released FitPress, a fitness marketing website platform that allows you to get your services, products, and business information up on a quality website in a couple hours.

Look as Good as You Are

Dont let your website hold your business back. With very little time investment, you can make your website into a sale-creating asset that brings you business, rather than a headache that you have to apologize for to your prospective clients. Client acquisition is vital to any businesss long-term success, but without having tools and systems in place to make it easy for new clients to find your business and get in touch, client acquisition can become a huge time-drag, which gets in the way of actually running your business. Taking the time and making the investment in a quality website for your business will help bring in new business, save you time by answering basic questions about your business, and make you look as good online as you are in person.

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Business Building Exercise

Hopefully youre convinced of the importance of a professional-looking website for your business. The following steps should get you on the path toward building a bigger and better brand. Identify your audience. Write down exactly who your typical client is. The more you try to appeal to everyone, the more your website will appeal to no one. Identify your bandwidth. Its easy to get caught up in the need for blogging, social media, responding to comments, and still managing your clients. Before you begin your websites development, you must be clear about how much you can commit to on your website. Get as much help as you can afford. If youre just starting with a site that tells prospects where you are and who you are, you should still do it in a way that looks awesome. Go into this with a long-term vision. You dont have to build an audience of thousands of followers overnight. Remember that the primary purpose of your website is that when someone hears about your services, and they Google you, they find what they were hoping for a professional fitness business. There are a variety of ways to get up and running on your own with a website, and you can do it with very little cost. However, remember that youre a fitness professional, not a graphic designer or a web developer. If you spend 40 hours getting a mediocre looking website up, when someone else could get it done in a day with a lot more pizzaz, youre wasting your time and money. Take the hours youd spend working on your website and do more training sessions instead. While we used a more customized approach to web development with Copter Labs for ThorneFX, their new FitPress system appears to be one of the best options available for fitness professionals to position themselves as Fitness Professionals online. Were not getting anything in return for making the recommendation for FitPress, we just really like it and havent seen anything else like it. Learn more about FitPress here. 19

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Read, Write and Present

Each morning when I check my Feedly account, I have a collection of about 150 new research articles, blog posts, and news items related to nutrition, exercise, and other health-related topics. We have access to the latest content in ways weve never seen before. I cant imagine what Id miss if I were to step away from the internet for a year. At the same time, many of the basics of nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle are timeless. Its just that emerging research reinforces what we already know. A lack of sleep can be deadly. So can excessive stress. Dietary choices are the most common controllable factors in health problems. Sitting too much is really bad for you. The core of the message is rarely earth-shattering. However, the findings from research are often so powerful that when we have access to this information, it can act as a tipping point to get clients to change their behavior. At the same time, the media does us little service with single-sentence headlines that often present a different message than what the latest research actually shows. To be seen as a leading expert, its important to stay on top of the latest research and media information being passed around. Even if youre not interested in it, your clients are exposed to it every day. You probably already realize that your advice competes with your clients friends and co-workers, with daytime TV personalities, magazine covers, and a number of other questionable sources. 20

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Reading every day is a common practice of leaders in every industry. While this is a great first step, writing and presenting take your level of expertise to a whole new level.

Full-Time Fit Pro, Part-Time Blogger

You learn a lot from what you read, but when you have to teach, it takes your understanding to a totally new level. You dont need to be the worlds most renowned expert in metabolism to write about it. When you choose to write about a topic, you tend to look at the topic from multiple angles. Blogging, or even creating an occasional guest post for your favorite website might seem like a daunting task if youve never written anything before, but its very much worth the effort. Often, fitness professionals learn new topics at seminars, in books, or online, and they excitedly try to tell their clients what theyve learned. They end up with a clinical condition called diarrhea of the mouth. They try to repeat the intricate details of the research they just learned and end up speaking well over a clients head. Rather than motivating them to change, they turn them off with the complex information they share. Writing forces you to create something specifically for your audience to understand. If your audience is the general public, which is the same audience as most of your clients, you have to write clear, concise content in simple language. This process of forcing you to take complicated concepts and simplify them makes you a better fitness professional when youre talking with someone face to face.

From Writing to Presenting

If you can write an article in an easy-to-understand way, theres a great chance youll be able to speak about that topic as well. Delivering an effective seminar to a live audience is the best learning experience of all. You have to understand the material, you have to deliver it in an engaging way, and you have to be prepared to answer questions and change direction based on the feedback and questions from your audience. Im always surprised by how few fitness professionals offer free seminars. When I was training, it was one of my best lead-generation opportunities.

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I found that half of the people who came to one of my seminars would ask to do a consultation. Half of those who did consultations signed up for products and services, including training sessions. How cool is that? My goal was to get 20 people into a seminar, and I almost always ended up with five doing training plus some ordering other products and services. The more often I presented, the more confident I became in the topics Id speak about. Whether you work in a large fitness center or youre an independent trainer, look for opportunities to speak in front of groups.

Objections to Writing or Speaking

You might already be filling your head with reasons why these ideas wont work. Most who write or present faced the same objections at some point. Let me briefly touch on them.

1 I dont know enough

First, never forget that you have come further than some others on the highway of life, and the lessons you have learned are helpful and valuable to others. Second, never forget that experts are students first and that you can go research any topic and become an expert in that area, starting now. Third, never forget that people listen to those they trust, respect, admire, and follow they listen to role models. Brandon Burchard New York Times bestselling author
Youll never know enough. Thats why you have such a strong thirst for more knowledge. However, you know more than the people who want to read your articles or listen to you present. You have experience they dont. Youve read materials they havent. You have stories theyd love to hear that will educate and inspire. You will probably never have all the information youd like on any topic. But you can take the information you do have available and share your opinion of what it means and how it impacts peoples health. In fact, I would run away from any expert who claims to know everything about a subject. With science, there is little thats definitive. Dont let a fear of not knowing everything about a subject keep you from sharing what you do know, especially if its regarding a topic you have a lot of experience with. Pick topics youre passionate about and youve spent time studying. Youll be surprised by how well-received your content becomes. Brandon Burchard, author of The Millionaire Messenger offers this great advice in his book...

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2 Im not good at writing

I bet at one point you werent good at squats and lunges. The first time you tried a deadlift you probably looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame with constipation. Its okay. You only learn from practice. Just start writing. Write your first piece and share it with a couple of friends or clients, asking for their honest feedback. Talk to someone whos great with grammar and have them take a look. Remember that an article or blog post is not a research paper or a chapter in a textbook. It should have a human element. It should sound like your voice. It may have some imperfect grammar. Provided its professional and relatively easy to understand, itll be all right.

3 Im afraid of talking in front of people

The fear of public speaking is real. Many people would rather try sky diving or face some other terrifying task than speak in public. Lets think about this, though. Do you have any trouble presenting material to someone when its one-on-one? What if a couple wants to meet with you or train with you. Do you have any trouble sharing advice with two people? Have you been out with a group of friends and spoken about fitness or nutrition in front of several of them? Was it scary? Probably not. At some point between talking with a couple people about fitness, and talking with a large group, we reach a threshold where speaking becomes uncomfortable. First, that nervousness will probably never go away. If it does, its a sign youre bored with speaking, and thats a bad thing. Second, remember that people in the seats in front of you came to hear you speak. They took time out of their schedule. They took time away from friends, family, and work to learn something from you. They respect you. Theyre not expecting a polished motivational speaker. They want someone who is authentic to help them work through their challenges. Whatever your topic is, the people who show up for your seminar want to learn what you know about that topic. 23

Ive presented in front of two people and two hundred people before. No one shows up to challenge what you know on the topic, they show up to learn what you know.

4 I dont have anything new to offer

Yes, you do! You have a personal story thats worth sharing. You have clients youve worked with who struggled with the same issues your audience is struggling with. You have explanations that might sound similar to others, but theyre from someone your audience hasnt heard before. You. You probably have friends or family members whove asked you for advice in the past. Time and again, you offer it to them, only to realize they dont respond to your advice. Then they hear someone on TV say the same thing, or they read about it in another magazine, and they respond as though theyve never heard it before. There are people in your audience who may have heard the same thing before, but its you saying it now, not someone else. Even if youre sharing the same thing, its with your unique point of view. When it comes to written content, its easy to dismiss common topics, such as the importance of eating more protein in the diet, the value of fish oil, or the negative effects of excessive cardio. These topics seem second nature to fitness professionals, but not to their clients, prospective clients, blog readers, or seminar attendees. Often this information is brand new to them and it often contradicts conventional wisdom. When you share new insights with others, you are seen as an expert, even if that information is hardly new to you.

Business Building Exercise

The conversations you will have this week with your clients can be an easy way to come up with subject matter for an article or a presentation. While youre training your clients, make a note of some of the important topics you discuss with them. If they ask you questions, write each one down. Ask each of your clients this question: If I were to offer a seminar, what topic do you think you and your friends would be interested in learning about? At the end of the week, review your two lists. Youll probably see some topics that you know well, and you would enjoy talking about. Those are the best topics to start with.

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chapter five

Make Downtime Your Coaching Time

If you work in a fitness center, you probably have a consistent rhythm in traffic. You likely have a morning, lunch and evening crowd. You might have a lot of traffic mid-morning when stay-at-home parents come in. You probably have utter chaos in the evenings when people come in after work. Even if youre an independent trainer, you probably have a similar ebb and flow to your schedule. Over the years, Ive noticed this roller coaster-like day of fee-based (read income producing) time and fee-less time can become a great frustration. During the lulls, there isnt enough time to go do something fun, but the gaps can be long enough to leave you feeling bummed out you arent making money. What if you could turn these slow times into income-producing time without a client meeting you face to face? With todays technology, Google+, Skype, FaceTime, and other programs have made connecting face to face easier than ever, even when youre not in the same room. For most of your clients, the impact their nutrition can have can be more significant than their exercise program. Have you ever tried to talk to a client between sets of squats about how important it is to eat more vegetables and protein? Have you tried telling them about your favorite supplement when theyre in the middle of a set of sprints? It might be a time-efficient way to share nutrition support, but its of little value. 25

When your clients are available to train, its best to focus on training. What if you tried talking to your clients about their nutrition and lifestyle habits when you can have their undivided attention? It could be that you connect with them while they take a break at work. You may even be able to get them to take a walk wherever they are while they talk with you. Theyd get some movement in while also getting some nutrition and lifestyle support. John Berardi Co-Founder, Precision Nutrition Nutrition coaching is without a doubt the most under-utilized opportunity a fitness professional has. No one would argue its importance, yet rarely do fitness professionals offer a systematic method to offer such coaching. Even most dietitians Ive worked with over the years dont have a systematic process for nutrition coaching that can be turned into a lucrative business model. Precision Nutrition is the leader in nutrition coaching services. Ive always been impressed with their programming because PN has built one of the most effective coaching programs in the world, and they offer a certification based on the very method theyve used to get such results. John Berardi, co-founder of Precision Nutrition, and part of the ThorneFX advisory team, has this to say about what makes the Precision Nutrition model so successful for fitness professionals: As a trainer, you already know that exercise alone isnt enough to create real change in clients. Everyone knows nutrition is just as important, if not more important. Indeed, when training and nutrition are integrated into a clients program, they get up to 3 times the results. In other words, if they want to lose body fat, instead of losing only 5 pounds in the first few months, they can lose 15 pounds, or more. All by adding good nutrition to their exercise routine. Do I even need to say, for your clients, and for your business, that this can be game changing? Precision Nutritions My Plate But heres the thing. Just giving occasional nutrition tips between sets, or chatting for 5 minutes at the end of a session, is not enough. Even providing top-notch nutrition packets and information doesnt cut it. Theres only one way to consistently and reliably help clients do better with their nutrition. And thats by having a nutrition coaching system. At Precision Nutrition, we have a 4-step process:

1. Assess 2. Advise 3. Measure 4. Adjust

Heres the cool part: not only does this model work with nearly every type of client, it also becomes another full service you can offer prospects. And you can offer it a few different ways.

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Face-to-Face Coaching
One of the best methods to begin incorporating nutrition coaching into your practice is to offer face-to-face nutrition coaching sessions. Many of our PN Certified fitness pros have done this a few ways. Lets say you train with a client 3 times a week. Well, then every two weeks, or every 6th session, youd replace a workout with a nutrition coaching meeting. Instead of replacing a training session every two weeks, you could also just add a 7th session every two weeks for nutrition coaching. Of course, you could also offer nutrition coaching independent of nutrition. So you could meet with a client once every two weeks and follow-up by phone or email in between. These sessions should be built on PNs four-step model above. During each step, there should be an assessment or some measurement, a discussion, and some adjustment. And, just like with training, there should be a regular format for these meetings. Both you and your clients should know exactly what to expect during each one.

Web-based Coaching
As a fitness professional you really should have a website to promote your services. Even if you work as part of a team, this website can allow you to share training and nutrition ideas while also attracting new clients. At Precision Nutrition, weve coached nearly 30,000 clients through our website. And, whether you want an exclusively online business or not, you could easily follow our lead and supplement your income with online training. But when will you find the time? Well, as a trainer, you probably see most of your clients at certain times of the day. Possibly early morning (before clients start work) and evening (after they get off work). This leaves the time in between to cultivate this additional business. And since the online model offers greater flexibility, it might be perfect for your schedule. Options for online coaching include: Email consulting Sending daily or weekly nutrition tips Sending bi-weekly habits for clients to practice Collecting and analyzing food photos and/or records Setting up individual coaching calls by phone, Skype, Google Hangout, etc Setting up group coaching calls by phone, Skype, Google Hangout, etc. 27

With many of the online tools available today like Acuity Scheduling, Google Apps, Boomerang, and Skype, etc. there are many ways to automate your coaching while still delivering a great client experience.

But Dont Forget To Coach

There is one catch to all this: to facilitate true change, you cant just share information with clients. You have to learn how to really coach. When working with clients, you must: Listen to their needs and what they want to accomplish Learn how they live Discover whats really important to them Work together to create the right nutrition and exercise approach; personal and unique, based on their goals and lifestyle Coach them through the process; helping with the inevitable roadblocks along the way to success Thats real coaching. And few fitness professionals ever learn how to do it right.

Learn How To Coach

A lot of fitness pros are starting to figure this out: learning real nutrition coaching is the key to transforming your clients, and your business. And the coaches who dont learn this will be forced out of the business in the next few years. If you want to learn more about offering coaching, then youll really benefit from Precision Nutritions free 5-day course just for fitness professionals. In it youll learn the secrets of the worlds best coaches, including: What nutrition advice you can actually give How to get clients to follow that nutrition advice How to assess your clients nutrition needs How to devise a nutrition plan based on that assessment What stats to measure and exactly how to measure them How to optimize a nutrition plan based on those stats Click here to get started with the free course.

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Business Development Exercise

If youve always relied on one-on-one training or sold meal plans as your primary service offering, you need to think differently about your role as a fitness professional. At your core, youre responsible to help people become more healthy and fit and to perform better. You are an educator and motivator. You have to share why people should change and then keep them accountable and inspired to do so. Look at your schedule for the upcoming weeks and identify regular gaps in your schedule. Add up the number of hours you think you could be coaching, at your current one-on-one rate, and consider the potential income youre leaving on the table. Sign up for the Precision Nutrition 5-day free course. While its possible to come up with your own version of a phone-based or online coaching program, if another group has already built an effective model, why should you? If youre like most fitness professionals, youll get back the cost of the program in the first couple weeks you offer coaching sessions. Not only that, but youll get your existing clients to their goals faster and with more consistency.

You are responsible to help people become more healthy and fit and to perform better. You are an educator and motivator.

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Start Every Client with Before Photos

Youve broken the ice with your new client. He or she has opened up to you about frustrations with how they feel or look. Youve assured them youre the right person for the job and won them over with your professionalism, enthusiasm, and expertise. Youre ready to start scheduling their sessions and talk about how the program will unfold. But before you get started, you explain that you want to take some photos of them. In fact, the more revealing they are, the better. Awkward isnt it? To me, having clients take before photos was one of the most difficult requests I made. I knew that many of them had a hard time looking at themselves in the mirror. They often said that during our consultations. Asking them to take a half-naked photo was a difficult request. As difficult as it is, taking a before photo is one of the most powerful exercises your clients can do. Whether you decide to take the photo, or a friend or family member takes it, just be sure to get it done. A before photo creates a number of opportunities.

Before Photos for Your Client

A before photo is a visual reminder of the commitment your client has made to you and to himself or herself. Its a memorial that marks the internal struggles they were facing the day they first met with you to create a program. Its a powerful reminder of why they need to stick with the program when motivation fails and other issues of life get in the way. 30

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When they have their after, the before photo serves as a consistent reminder of why they dont want to fall back into the habits that led them to you in the first place. The stark difference between the before and after photo makes the after photo even more powerful. It gives your client something to show off, to be proud of. The more often they show others the difference, and talk about how much better they feel with their new life and body, the less likely it is that theyll end up back where they started. Ive not found anything more powerful than putting the before and after photos side-by-side into a single image for your client to keep with him or her.

Before Photos for You

Maintaining a catalog of before and after photos is one of the most powerful marketing tools you have. A dentist shows off the before and after effects of their work on teeth. A construction company shows off the before and after photos of home remodeling projects. And weight loss products, programs, and companies show off the before and after photos of their participants. Obviously, many products in the weight loss industry are junk, and it is tempting to stay away from one of the marketing approaches they use. However, keep in mind that they use the power of before and after photos because the images work. People tend to portray themselves in those images and feel hope and excitement that they may be able to look and feel like what they see in those images. If youve never made it a habit to get a before photo from every client, start now with the clients you have. If you see yourself as a career fitness professional, then youll work with hundreds, if not thousands of people during your career. Some clients will be with you for a short period of time. Others will become lifelong friends or even business partners. Ten years from now, not only will you have an enormous library of testimonials, but youll have a collection of photos from people whose lives are forever changed from the time they spent with you. Often, your life will be changed in some way as well from each person you work with. Itll be pretty cool to have their photos to look back at someday. 31

Ive not found anything more powerful than putting the before and after photos side-byside into a single image for your client to keep with him or her.

Precision Nutritions Lean Eating 2014 Winner

Beyond reminiscing about who youve worked with, youll assemble a powerful list of before and after photos to share with other prospective clients. You can have photos you can highlight on your website (with their permission). Youll have an incredible gift to give back to your clients. The quality of your photos will determine how versatile they are for use on the web or for printed use in a testimonial binder. If possible, use a white background and bright, natural light. The white background makes it easy, with the help of a little photo editing software, to put two images side by side and make them look like theyre in the same photo. Some extra white space leaves room for adding any other text youd like to the photo as well.

Business Building Exercise

Setting yourself up for success with great before photos will take some research and investigation. You dont need a photography studio or a $5,000 camera, but you should find an area where you can get consistently good photos. Identify a location where you can regularly take progress photos. Ideally, the area should be well lit because using your flash will tend to wash out the images. A white background is preferable but not required. Grab a friend or another fitness professional to practice taking photos. Note the ideal distance away from the wall, the perfect spot to stand, etc. When taking photos, try to leave some extra space to the right or left of the individual so you can add text on top of a photo when you want to. You also need to consider a picture size and shape that will fit your website or Facebook. To optimize a photo for Facebook, it should have proportions of 1.9:1 width-to-height. Take several photos. Eventually youll get an eye for exactly the type of image you want, but dont worry about taking several photos each time. Once youve built a library, and you have some great before and after photos, make use of them to promote your services. You can also have the before and after photos professionally framed as a gift for your clients. That is a pretty cool gift! 32

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chapter seven

Summary
I hope this e-book sparked some ideas to help you grow your business, in terms of success with clients, reputation and income. There are a number of other ideas not covered here. However, more ideas arent always better. The only ideas and suggestions that matter are the ones you take action on. Start with some of the suggestions made in the previous chapters. As you become proficient in those areas, then start looking for new ideas. As you build your business and begin looking for mentors and coaches to take it to the next level, consider becoming a member of Net Profit Explosion (NPE). NPE is most known for helping coaches master the business of fitness. Remember that while its noble to maintain the objective of serving others, you still need to provide an income for yourself and your family if you have one. As your income rises, youll find your level of professionalism will also improve. If becoming part of the ThorneFX Affiliate fitness professional network sounds like a good idea, then were confident we can help you by providing best-in-class products and services. If we dont fit your business model, no problem. But stop in on our blog from time to time and check out the latest content. Whether youre a ThorneFX Affiliate or not, we are confident the articles on our blog will help you and your clients along their way toward better health, fitness, and performance.

To your success in health and business!

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co n n ec t w i th us

For Pros, By Pros

Facebook: facebook.com/ThorneFX.Fitness Google+: google.com/+thornefx Twitter: twitter.com/thornefx

Email:

info@thornefx.com

Phone: 844.847.6339

ThorneFX.3.10.2014