Five Serious Steps to More Sessions!

(Authors Note:  I have a genetic predisposition to drone on and on so please forgive me.  You might be better dividing this thing up into parts.  Kind of like if you were planning on crossing the Sahara Desert, but not really.)

(I have a tendency to ramble a bit.)

Hey PTP,

I'm a loser.  I really mean that.  I am stupid, stupid, stupid.  I have been at my gym for two months now and I don't have more than a handful of clients.  I feel like there just aren't that many people who want to work with a trainer.  Can you give me some advice on how to build my business?  I am so distraught  I just don't know what to do.  I think I might have to get out of the industry if things don't improve for me soon.

Signed,
Failing Floor Trainer

(Just like Gordon in Dodgeball came to learn, "L" really doesn't stand for love.)

Dear Failing Floor Trainer,

Dude, I feel your pain.  When I first started out in this industry I struggled very much like you are right now.  So let me give you a little bit of advice that I wish somebody had given me many years ago.  Here are five serious steps to more sessions:

1.  Get a new attitude:
First off failing floor trainer let's make this clear that you are not a loser.  This guy is a loser:

(Nice Mustache Douche Bag)

You are just a guy who is struggling with a new career.  If there is one thing I have come to learn after all these years is that people who are successful tend to have a lot in common.  When it comes to how they view themselves and the world around them they are definitely two steps ahead of where you are right now.  

Stop saying that you are a loser and that you are stupid.  People who succeed don't take daily craps all over themselves.  They know that the world does a good enough job of that by itself:

(Sometimes life is a lot like a Turd Sandwich.  And sometimes we all just have to take a big bite of it.  By the way, that is a metaphor.  I don't won't you to think we should all be out there eating poop.)

Those who achieve great things understand that words are powerful things.  You start repeating negative garbage like "You are a loser" enough times and trust me you will eventually start to believe it.  

Secondly, people who succeed also tend to view themselves as in control of a great many things in their world.  Scientists call this having a strong Central Locus of Control.  I call it not being a whiney little bitch.  

Now understand successful people aren't delusional with this.  They aren't control freaks or megalomaniac's.   Very few actually think they can influence the outcome of things like the weather or politics in sub-saharan Africa.  What they do know is that there are things they have influence over like their education, their ability to get out and meet people and their ability to get to bed on time and not go out and get high and drunk at the clubs thereby showing up dirty, disheveled and late for work the next day:

(Party People might be in the house tonight.  Then again they might also be on the un-employment line too.)

Your action step here is to first keep a real close eye on your language because self deprecating comments are not sexy and nobody wants to work with a non sexy personal trainer:

(I am certainly not inspired.)

Next action step is to take two pieces of paper and on one write down a list of all the things you can control when it comes to your business and on the other one write down all of the things you can't.  Now take the second piece of paper, the cannot control list, and put it over the sink and light it on fire because that is the last time you need every worry about it:

 (Burn Baby Burn!)

Now take the list of stuff you can control and put it some place where you are forced to read it and do something about it everyday!  If you start putting things like "I can do something about this and make my life better today" repeatedly into your head instead of all of the nonsense (like calling yourself a loser), in six months you will be way ahead of where you currently are.  This is because the very way you view yourself, the world around you and the way you behave will change.   

 2.  Get out of your own ass:

The last time I heard the words "I" and "me" used as many times as you did in your letter was when I was listening to an interview with a drug addicted Hollywood Starlet:

(Seriously kids, don't do drugs.)

Dearest Failing Floor Trainer here is a real punch in the face for you:

THIS BUSINESS IS NOT ABOUT YOU!  IT IS ABOUT YOUR CLIENTS!

Not once in your message did you mention how you are failing your clients and the members of your gym.  

How do I know you are failing them? 

Because if you weren't two things would be happening:

You would have your current clients referring so many people to you because of you excellent service your problem wouldn't be not having enough clients.  It would be burnout.  Current client referrals are the number one resource when it comes to building your business.  Being a sleaze bag car salesman, tricking people into training with a bunch of fast talk and high pressure techniques, not so much:

(Can't see a lot of return business with this guy.)

And when it comes to the members of your gym I seriously doubt with all the me first pro-nouns you are throwing around you are for one minute thinking about their needs.  You know like actually getting something out of the the money they dump down the toilet every month with their gym membership because they work out like fools.  You most likely go out and look at them as just numbers to build your business and trust me, unless you are real sociopath people will be able to read your intentions from a mile away.

Your action step here is to go President John F. Kennedy style.  Stop thinking about what clients and members can do for you and instead think about what you can do for them.  When you start focusing on others instead of yourself that is when the good stuff starts happening.


3.  Actually become good at what you do:

Here's another news flash for all you trainers out there.  You are not as good at this as you think you are.  Especially if you have only been doing this for a couple months to a year.  It's like comedian Rodney Dangerfield used to say "Kid's today, they don't want to start at the bottom and then work their way up.  They want to start at the top and then work sideways".  That is not being negative, it is being realistic:

 (So you think you are hot stuff because you were your Church Basketball League's leading scorer for the last three years running?  Tell that to the greatest there has ever been.)

Most trainers think they are good because they have no clue as to what good really is.  You think for one second I believe my writing rivals that of Ernest Hemingway?  Get real Mike Cruickshank!

It's like when I bought my first stereo receiver from Sony, I thought it was amazing.  Hell I paid $500 bucks for it!  But then one day I went to this rich clients house and  heard him cranking tunes on his Ongaku Amp (around $80,000).  It made my Sony sound like it was spitting music out of a tin can.

The bottom line is we all have room for improvement regardless of how special we might think we are and that goes for me too.  The day I stop learning is the day I start dying and it is also the day I start failing my clients at what they have entrusted to me which is the most valuable asset out there, their health.

(As much maligned as our industry sometimes is the service we provide goes above and beyond just being a bunch of dumb jocks with clip boards.  If you don't have your health than you don't have anything.)

The action step here is to every night be able to write down one thing you learned about this profession that you didn't know when you woke up that morning.  Odds are if you find one thing you are likely to find at least a dozen more which means by the end of the year you could potentially be like 4,380 times more smarter (is that even proper English?)  than you were before.  That makes you a better skilled, more valuable and most importantly more interesting trainer.  If you fail at selling training after all that then maybe you have something to complain about.

 4.  Commit to this as your career:

God help all of us because this damn post has gone on way to long already so let me make this one brief.  Nobody is going to want to invest thousands of dollars in a trainer that they think won't even be working at the gym in six months.  Take this career seriously!  Being a Fitness Professional is not something you do to pass the time till your Country Music Career takes off:

(I get it.  Trace Adkins is friggin awesome!  I also get the fact that the odds are against you ever being him.  So drop the pipe dream and start committing to your training career today!)

Coming second only to current client referrals I have gotten more business from other trainers "flying the coop" than any other source of business.  If you want to succeed at training the action step here is DON'T BE TRANSIENT.  It's great to have dreams and interests just don't let them interfere with your day job.  Now if you go and sign a multi million dollar record deal then that is another story.  

5.  Don't try to become a salesman:

Last but not least stop trying to be the aforementioned sleazy training sales person who is out there bragging that they once sold personal training to a homeless person (Yes, I heard this being said at a seminar I went to) or selling pills to people telling them they are the answer to all their weight loss woes:

(Shame on you Bob!)

If you really are skilled at that type of sales work you won't need to be reading my blog because I am all about providing the client with better service, not just taking their money.  If that is why you got into this industry maybe you should be selling stolen car parts instead of personal training.

I have read pretty much every sales book out there and the only result was I felt awkward using the techniques involved because they were nothing more than low level ways to manipulate people and that is not the kind of guy that I am.  If I was I wouldn't be wasting my time in fitness.  I would instead be making big money selling people drugs for when "Diet and Exercise just aren't enough":

(Just like Super Trainer Willis Paine once said "What is the point of having a celebrity disease if you can't sign a celebrity drug endorsement deal".  Hey Sweetie, I have some advice for you, "Try laying off the Ultimate Fantasy Deep Fried Cheesecake!)

Low Life sales training might work well when selling cookware but when it comes to improving peoples lives the only solution is to get better at selling a better version of yourself. The only way you sell a better version of yourself it to actually make yourself better at what you do.  That is not found learning skills of manipulation.  

Leveraged selling comes across as genuine as chest hair on Harry Potter:

(This poor bastard might be the greatest actor since Sir Laurence Olivier but most people will never be able to get over him being that awkward little cute kid with the spectacles and the wand.)


Things like that don't work very well in a business as personal as Personal Training.

CONCLUSION (Praise the Lord!)

There will be no conclusion because I have already gone on long enough.  In fact I am going back right now to edit the hell out of this thing.  Have a good night and I hope you learned something from this.

Yours in the war on lipid emulsification,

Mike Cruickshank