On today's episode of Vital Metabolic, hosts James Wheeler and John Parker speak with Clifton Harski, trainer and Director of Education for the Pain-Free Performance Specialist Certification. Hear Cliff share his tips to help new trainers get started and build their businesses, the pros and cons of online training, and whether you should spend time on Instagram marketing.
Episode Highlights:
- 1:10 - Clifton Harski is the Director of Education for the Pain-Free Performance Specialist certification with previous Vital Metabolic guest John Rusin.
- 3:29 - Cliff's business has been going well; he's been working on the curriculum for the PPSC full-time and training their presenters to do the presentations.
- 4:16 - The business Cliff was previously a part owner of prior to COVID had to close.
- 7:35 - If Cliff was a new trainer starting right now, he would split his time between personal training and group fitness.
- 9:07 - In group training, you need to be able to fix someone's form and come up with a solution very quickly, and that experience can be really helpful in one-on-one training. It also allows you to see many more and a wider range of people.
- 11:05 - You can also use the group setting to get to know people and develop them into higher paying 1-on-1 clients.
- 12:55 - A lot of marketing wisdom will tell you to hyper-specialize, but it's better for a trainer to have range and be more general in your approach until opportunities to focus more present itself.
- 16:55 - You need to define what an "online trainer" means to you and your business; do you provide a program as a workout provider, or are you actually actively training people, providing feedback and coaching?
- 18:40 - Clifton did online training in 2012-2013, and started every client on the same 4 week program where the workouts were done live so he could see how the person moved before providing coaching and moving into the next phase of the training.
- 23:00 - Whether you're doing online coaching, 1-on-1, small group, or large group training, you need to have a realistic expectation of deliverables.
- 25:35 - There are some Facebook groups that do reviews of the potentially shady social marketers claiming they can grow your following.
- 28:30 - People are so grateful for follow-up after a session.
- 30:10 - Go experience other facilities and other trainers and see how they do things, so you can generate ideas of what would be useful to apply to your own business.
- 32:13 - Set the expectation with your clients that you will be punctual, so you expect them to be too.
- 33:15 - Meet your client where they're at in terms of communication; a millennial may prefer to text, but a client in their 70s may only want to use phone calls.
- 34:15 - Cliff predicts that after COVID, there is going to be a consolidation of who's offering what; whatever businesses survive this are going to end up thriving.
- 35:20 - Convenience is the biggest factor in getting clients.
- 36:20 - Technology is catching up to allow virtual training to become so customized that it will begin to rival in-person training.
- 40:15 - Some trainers are even offering at-home gym designs, helping people build their own gym space.
- 41:05 - Instagram trainers give potential clients a false expectation.
- 42:00 - A lot of people who seem successful on Instagram actually aren't, because they may have a lot of followers but they have very low engagement.
- 44:10 - Social media is saturated with trainers, and it's likely time to start exploring other business models like a referral system.
- 46:00 - Decide if investing in Instagram is actually worthwhile to your business or if it is just going to feed your ego.
- 46:35 - Two examples of good Instagram use are John [last name?] and Kyle Dobbs because they both provide actionable, educational content.
- 48:23 - Think about the aspects of social media that you like, and start there with your content.
- 50:55 - PPSC is hoping to dominate the in-person education space.
- 51:35 - In 2021, they have an aggressive schedule of 10 events per month.
3 Key Points:
- New trainers should gain the broad experience of group fitness classes so that they can see a large volume of people.
- Don't implicitly trust shiny Instagram business coaches and marketers; instead, experience other facilities and trainers firsthand to see what ideas it gives you.
- Drive your Instagram strategy from what you enjoy about social media.
Tweetable Quotes:
- "If you are only doing 1-on-1s, that can be extraordinarily tiring. You've got to be the energy guy that brings them up the entire time, whereas with group, oftentimes the group can give you energy as the instructor and you feed off of it." –Clifton Harski
- "The benefit for a lot of people with online training is that it's lower cost for consumers. They pay less for it. But if you're doing true coaching, it might cost you more of your time, which as a trainer means we should be charging even more." –Clifton Harski
- "The #1 determiner of if someone signs up for you is convenience." –Clifton Harski
- "Find the positives with the social media so that you can be consistent in your messaging, that you can help more people and the people will come to you." –John Parker
Resources Mentioned:
