Specific reciprication: The best client getting tool

If you have no money reciprocation is hands down the best marketing tool you’ve got.

What is it?

Reciprocation is based on giving away free sessions so that the client feels an obligation to recipricate your generosity by bringing you clients.  This does not however mean that you should be giving away sessions will nilly.  There are two significant caveats to giving away a session.

1.  The sessions must be good.  If the sessions are not good the client will feel no need to reciprocate and your plans will be shot.

What makes a session good?

1. Showing that you care (by being on time, friendly, genuine and giving positive energy – this does not mean you have to be jumping all over the place you just need to be in a good mood.  If your not in a good mood you cannot give positive energy)

2. Showing that your an expert (through experience, and having your class prepared)

3. Keeping the clients continually moving (rest periods are always walking or slow jogs.

 

The client must be told of the arragement:  If your going to give someone free training you have to tell them straight up that you need them to bring you clients in return for free training.  Some trainers might feel a bit awkward giving away something for free and then saying…”but this is what you’ve got to do for me!”   So here’s a little script to help you

You to potential client : Hey are interested in doing some training with me?

Potential client: Yeah I’d love to.

You: That’s awesome… I’m just starting up my personal training business and the best way to start it is by giving sessions away to friends so that if they like it they can tell there friends and so on.  Would you be interested in training for free?

Potential client: really?  Yeah!

You: Great!  We’ll just see how you go for four weeks.  If you keep bringing in friends or giving me people to contact you can train for free forever if that works for you.  If not we can just see how your feeling in 4 weeks.  Either way it works out well for you!

Go for it team.  Specific reciprication

Why Crossfit is not a good model to follow for your outdoor bootcamp

Obsession is a good word to describe my former passion for Crossfit.  But Crossfit is not a good model to follow for an outdoor bootcamp.

I’ve thought long and hard about affiliating with Crossfit but the fact is that being an outdoor  set up puts me at a huge competitive disadvantage to other indoor Crossfit affiliates in the area.  I think back to my reasons for starting Crossfit.  I wanted to be stronger (ie lift weights), I wanted to do crazy amounts of chin ups, I wanted to do muscle ups.  Good luck doing any of these exercises outdoors.  Here are a few more reasons why Crossfit is not a good model to follow

1. Crossfit is highly niche.  I know your pasionate about it but your obsession with the perfect squat is not shared by 90% of the population and for those that are, they wanna lift!  Oly bars outdoor just don’t work!

2. Fun is better than virtuosity.  If your anything like me you started out needing to get as many people into your bootcamp as possible.   Unfortuently 95% of these people just weren’t that interested in doing the perfect squat every single rep.  One thing they did love was the detail that I went into when explaining it for the first time.  This showed expertise.  But once they understood it they didn’t want to be corrected every time it wasn’t perfect.  Of course you should be pulling them up every now and then (generally a couple of times a session I think is fine) to fine tune technique but you need to focus more on making your classes fun.  This comes from developing competition, creating games, encouraging chats during water breaks and recovery runs.  Also a little teasing of clients (just a little!) and giving great energy.

Yep Crossfit is a revelation in Fitness.  But if you want to start an outdoor fitness group based on it be prepared to go in cheap.  (alot cheaper than  what an indoor affiliate will charge).  Personally, I think your better taking what ideas you can get from CF but implementing a lot more games, fun and interaction between bootcampers

Go for it team!

Should I make my Outdoor Bootcamp Competitive?

A big question when I started my outdoor boot camp was should I make it competitive?  I remember thinking that people would be turned off if it turned into a competition.  BIG MISTAKE.  Competition is the tonic to yelling.  You know when you want to yell at someone when they’re taking it easy?  Well, providing you’ve set the relationship appropriately with your client (simple good natured rapport building)  all you need to do is bring some competition into it.  That way you can whisper a command in someones ear “didn’t you beat joe last week?”  And they’ll be off like a flash.

Not many will admit it but EVERYONE is competitive.  Interestingly those people that proclaim to be staunchly anti-competitive will compete to be the least competitive.  Competition is ingrained into our DNA.  Survival is, amongst other things one big competition.  So, you definitely need to make your outdoor bootcamp competitive and you need to manage it well.   Here are some tips.

1. Handicap each client in your group by either time (if it is a run) or repititions (If it involves resistance training).

2. If it’s a combined run and resistance (which 90% of your sets will be) always handicap the exercise sets and not the running distance.  ie make the fastest runner do more push ups rather than make him run further.   Making him run further just means extra cones to put out…efficiency people!

3.  Have group competitions and single competitions.  Develop an awareness of who is closest to who in the singles and have them compete.  Similary when developing groups spread the talent onto either side.

4. Burpee’s on the line!  Create a definite consequence for the loser.  Burpees are my personal favorite.

5. Don’t be overt about it.  “Hey this is a competition!” will turn people off.  Having said that you can use words like verse ie “this is joe verseFred”

6. Emphasise the fun.

Get into it Crew!

A weird client retention strategy

G’day.  Hope your killin it!

When I was younger and surfed a lot more a guaranteed way to get me to the early surf was to arrange for me to pick someone up or have someone else pick me up.  Well guess what.  It’s the same with your clients coming to your early boot camp or training sessions.  Often your best client retention strategy is to arrange car pooling between your clients.  Obviously you want to arrange it so that the people closest to eachother give each other lifts.  This is gold for client retention.    It increases the cammaraderie between clients and ensures they are going to turn up in the wee hours of the morning.

Rip in crew!

The best outdoor personal training equipment

One of your biggest questions when starting your outdoor training program will be what equipment will give you the greatest bang for your buck.

The most important factors you need to weigh up are

price: If your anything like me you’ll be operating on a tight budget.

Size: Small and efficient.  All equipment should be able to be carried from your vehicle in 1 go or maybe 2 at the absolute most.

Variety of exercises that this tool will allow: This will allow you to cut down on buying other tools and also reduce trips to vehicle to unpack other staff.

There are many contenders to what Iwould rank as the best tools but lets look at the pretenders first.

THE PRETENDERS

SWISS BALLS: WAY TO BIG!  You may say it allows you to do a variety of exercises but there’s a TON of exercises you can do without these thing.  Save these for indoor training.

MED BALLS: To big, to heavy, to expensive and to hard to carry forget about em.

BARBELLS: Dumbells are just better

YOGA MATS: Initially I thought these were essential and no client paying good money would lie on the grass.  Since I stopped using them I’ve had 1 single complaint from hundreds of people.  The complainer lasted another 2 sessions and was gone.  ie it was her not the lack of mats that were the problem.  To hard to carry, to flimsy, blow around in the wind.  You dont needem!

THE CHAMPIONS

SKIPPING ROPE (JUMP ROPE): Cheap, easy to carry (although the nots will drive you nuts at first!) plenty of variety and challenge for clients

POWER BANDS:  Easy to carry and fun.  Excellent for assisting with squat depth.  These are the most underrated bootcamp tool by far.  Your clients will have some serious fun with these.  Get these from www.kettlebells.com.au

MARKER CONES: bit of a no brainer.  Although I have trained with very successful guys that don’t use any cones (they just pick a landmark and say sprint to it!) these will help your operation look fairly professionsal.  They’re cheap.

DUMBELLS: Small, cheap, easy to carry (when they’re in a box,) and give you endless variety.   These are the only weighted equipment you’ll need.  CRITICAL TIP:  only buy 5kg for women and 10kg for Men (ie don’t buy 4kg 3kg ect.  Keep it consistent)

Notable mentions:

KETTLE BELLS: I love bells.  But $70 for a 6kg bell compared to $15 for a 5 kg Dumbell.  C’mon.  Leave KB’s to the specialists or the  Crossfit affiliates

SANDBAGS AND BATTLEING ROPES: If your starting a military boot camp these are great.  If not stick with the basics.

TRX: Good for 1 on 1 up to 1 on 4.  To expensive and to hard to set up multiple stations apart from that.

Enjoy your shopping crew!

Mentor.

Who’s your outdoor personal training mentor?  If your serious about helping people and making a buck out of personal training you need a mentor who has done what you want to do.

There is more than 1 way to do this but the best way is to work alongside a mentor particulalry if your just starting out.  Learn as much from your boss as possible, learn his mistakes, learn the qualities that make him successful and build them into your approach.  Working for a boss will mean you’ll have to drop your rate for a while but this is more than a fair trade off for the learning the tricks of the trade.  Make as many mistakes as you can under this guy.  At least your not ruining your own business.

Another idea is to just pay for a trainers services for a month or two.  I’ve had several mentors most of whom had no clue they were “mentoring” me.  Doing a class with someone that has that extra edge or who is pulling those big numbers to class is one of the funadmental steps to improving and coming closer to your goal of setting up a kick ass business.

Make sure your mentor is specifically similar to the type of business you want to open up.  If you want to open an outdoor personal training business the best mentors are current owners of outdoor personal training businesses.  Whilst you could do worse than having a mentor that trains within a gym it’s better to go more specific.

Best of luck crew

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