Fitness, Business, Fitness Business, & Achieving Life Goals

I’m sure many of you have experienced the person handing his/her business card out to everyone they come in contact with. I sometimes come back from presenting at a conference with a ton of cards that I will never look at again. What a waste of card-stock and it’s also the wrong approach for sales. That’s not to say that the business card isn’t a valuable tool. They just have it backwards. You don’t want to give them your business card; you want to get their card and permission to contact them.

With Personal Trainers, or any club personnel, the goal is to create an opportunity to sit down with the potential member/client and uncover their needs. Then, based on what you learn in that meeting, you can make an honest recommendation as to what action they should take. i.e. join your club, sign up for Personal Training, or not (if you don’t think you’re a good match).

So, back to the business cards… When you meet someone that may be a potential member/client try to schedule a meeting. If you can, that’s great. Set the appointment and then give them your card in case they need to change the appointment. If you can’t (one or both of you don’t have your calendar), ask for their business card or contact number and permission to call to set up a meeting time/date. If they give it to you, obviously there’s interest in knowing more. If they don’t, they’re not interested. Now you know that up front, you can save your business card, and aren’t sitting by the phone hoping they’ll call you.

Best wishes, Mark

Like using a map, in order to find the way to your destination, you need to find out where you are to know which path to choose. For weight loss, what are you doing? What habits do you have that are either helping you or keeping you from reaching your goals? This is where keeping a journal is essential, even if it’s only for a few days. While knowing how many calories and what % of carbohydrate, protein, and fat you take in is important, just as important is the when, where, and why you are eating. How many meals do you eat per day? At what times? Do you have times during the day when you are starving and end up binging? Do you eat when you’re upset… sad… bored? Only by recognizing what obstacles we have, can we create strategies for handling them better in the future. So, journal. Write down where you are now.

The 80/20 principle, also known as the Pareto principle, states that, for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Whole books have been written on this. It’s applied to every conceivable scenario and the concept is simple. We all waste a lot of time and effort on things that are unproductive. If we can focus on those few things that create the greatest results, we will achieve so much more in less time. A couple of tools I find useful are as follows:

In his book, “First Things First“, Steven Covey describes a grid of four boxes.

In one box are those things that are urgent and important (must be handled now and is important for reaching my goal).

In a second box are things that are urgent and unimportant (the typical things that pop up day to day that, because of it’s urgency, we feel like it must be important, but it won’t help us reach our goals) You’ll be amazed how many actually fall into this category. These are the real life-suckers that can leave us too fatigued to do the meaningful stuff.

A third… not urgent, but important (envisioning your future and how to attain it or maybe planning/taking some down time to recharge your inner batteries).

A fourth… not urgent and unimportant (wasting time).

Write out your list of things to do and label them as fitting into one of these boxes. Then stick to the two “important” boxes and either delegate or toss out the rest. (I love this exercise.)

Take that one step further with a tip from “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich“, by Tim Ferriss. It discusses the inefficient use of our time and how multi-tasking helps us work at many things and finish none of them. Ferriss believes in locking yourself away from distractions and working on only one task at a time until that task is finished. (I’m a big believer in this one.)

Now go to your lists in the important boxes and prioritize them. Gather all of the information or things you will need for the first project and lock yourself away until it’s done. If you can’t get it all done in one sitting, then schedule a meeting with yourself each day until you do finish.

If we can set our minds to attacking and completing the 20% of things on our list that are really important , we’ll attain the results we’re seeking sooner than we could have imagined.

Good luck, Mark

In his book, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies, Michael E. Gerber talks about “The Dreaming Room”.  At the creative company, IDEO, their brainstorming room is where they “encourage wild ideas”. Innovation and creativity flourish in a room/space where all ideas and dreams are considered, played with, and questions asked like “what if?, why not?, how would that work?” To have a safe place to suggest new concepts and ideas without fear of ridicule is essential to keeping a company ahead of the competition, or even better, away from the competition.  (Check out Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant for help in sidewards thinking.)

Get you staff, colleagues, and/or friends together, and create your own Dreaming Room. Pick an issue or problem to be solved and just start tossing ideas out without censoring. Let it be wild and wacky. That may generate some great ideas and it makes the process more fun. a side note: I performed improvisational theater for 10 years in New York City. One of the biggest rules in improv is to never negate. You can’t say “no” or “you can’t do that”. Whatever is said, must be accepted as reality. That’s a great way to start. Give full focus to every idea and the presenter of the idea with an open, non-judgemental ear and just imagine it working. Ask questions of it as if it were already a reality. “Where is the…”, “How does it…”, “Who are your customers/users?”

Good luck, Mark

“You see things and say, “why?” but I dream things that never were and say, “why not?” – George Bernard Shaw

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? It’s incredible to me how often I see people in the service industry that just don’t get it. How many times do you walk into a store or restaurant and can’t seem to get anyone’s attention or, if you do, you’re obviously interrupting something very important (like an inspection of their nail polish or a conversation they’re having with a co-worker) because they genuinely seemed ticked off that you’re there. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone cared enough to even fake caring?

For me, it’s like Roy Scheider’s portrayal of Bob Fosse in the movie “All That Jazz”. Fosse wakes every morning up after obvious hard nights, throws some Visine in his eyes, takes a couple of uppers, and says to himself in the mirror, “It’s show time!” and puts on his I-must-deal-with-the-public face.

While that may be an extreme example, the point is that every interaction that you have can make or break someone’s day. It’s no different with Personal Trainers. I always talk about it being “show time”. You need to leave everything that’s bothering you outside of work. Remind yourself you have the power to create positive experiences for others and that’s a wonderful thing. Enjoy that power. Even if life is hard outside of work, you can choose to focus on the positive effects you have on others while at work. 

So, smile and pass it on.

So you want to lose weight. Why? And don’t tell me because you’re 20..40…80…150lbs overweight. So what? Why does that matter. There are plenty of people out in the world who need to lose weight that obviously don’t think it does matter. Why does it matter to you.? I also don’t want to hear you say that someone else told you that you needed to. If you personally don’t care about it you’ll never lose the weight.

Let’s head to your vision of the future. You’ve lost all of the weight that you wanted to. How would you feel differently? What are able to do differently? What would it mean to you? These are the things that you need to get to. It’s a little like Shrek. Ogres have layers, like an onion (or parfait). You have to peel back those layers to get to the heart of it all. The things that evoke emotion from you are your motivators. These are the things (feelings) that you need to keep in mind to help you stick to your weight loss program. Write these down! People who write down their goals are more likely to reach them than those who don’t. You can add to them as you think of more, but get something down now! Frankly, any time you find yourself faltering in your conviction, you should write them again.

Best wishes, Mark

Shock and horror! How dare I say that? Actually, there needs to be a little shock value to grab someone’s attention these days. It’s sad, but true. Anyway, the real point is that I was talking to this woman while sitting in a friend’s hair salon in NYC. She was talking about how she used to work out, was in good shape, then fell off the wagon and it’s been years now since she’s worked out. She said she didn’t know why. She knows she should, but just never seemed to get to it. I couldn’t help myself, I had to call her on it. “I know why you don’t” I said. “May I tell you?” I asked. She said that I could.

“You don’t work out because you don’t care enough.” I said. And off I ran with it. I had built a report with her, so I knew she would take it the right way. I told her that if she cared enough she would take the steps necessary to fit working out into her schedule. That’s not to say that she didn’t care, just not enough. And that’s OK as long as she’s OK with it, but it’s not a mystery. You need to own up to it, and she did, and she was alright with it.

Most of time in life when we are not achieving what we want, it’s because we don’t care enough to actually take the steps to make it happen. It’s not the world’s fault. It’s not someone else’s fault. It’s ours and we need to own up to the fact that we just don’t care enough and live with it or decide that we do care enough and take steps to change it.

Best wishes, Mark

Once the club/studio brand is clear, you can start to design the “experience” you want your members and/or clients to have.

The first perception of Personal Training may be at POS. How the program/membership coordinator (sales person) describes or recommends Personal Training can have a huge impact on the potential client’s impression of Personal Training. That process or description should be carefully planned out to either sell Personal Training right there and then or, at least set the Personal Trainer up in the best light going into their first meeting.

Now enters the Personal Trainer. What first impression will the Trainer make? In Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking he states, “A person watching a silent two-second video clip of a teacher he or she has never met will reach the same conclusions about how good that teacher is that are very similar to those of a student who has sat in the teacher’s class for an entire semester. That’s the power of our adaptive unconscious.” The power of that instant decision making is something we need to be aware of and prepare for.

The following is of my view of what a positive, initial experience with a Personal Trainer might be.

Punctuality – being late for an appointment is a perfect way to show a potential client that you don’t care about them or their time.

Appearance – clean, professional look, warm, friendly, open

Interaction- warm, friendly greeting, light conversation as you invite them into a clean, comfortable, private office.

Motivational Interviewing – going through a medical health history and lifestyle review utilizing coaching techniques and guided interviewing, a la Robert Rhode, explore the positive motivators for the goals that the individual has. A Personal Trainer that listens intently and asks appropriate open-ended questions will be perceived as caring and trusted.

Recommendation - make an honest recommendation of what you believe the best course of action is for the client. Usually this would entail Personal Training, but not always. Ask if that sounds like something they would like to do.

Sealed with a … well, with positive, enthusiastic statements of encouragement, support, and assurance that they are on their way to reaching their goals.

Of course this is my view because it is consistent with my brand. This varies with your own brand.

Best wishes, Mark

Along with the idea of the Experience Designer post, I got thinking about how we might enhance the experience of Personal Training and be consistant with our brand. Immediately my view of what I deem as a professional experience jumps into my mind. Only a fraction of a second later I realized that my view is very biased (by nature of being my view). Even just addressing a Personal Trainer’s appearance, I’m a firm beliver in a clean, professional look complete with with uniforms and name tags. Now what if you run a Boot Camp? What kind of look would the Trainer/Instructor have? Maybe your facility has a theme. That would change things everything.

So, before we actually get to discussing the Trainer, what is the club/studio’s brand? What do people think of when they here the club’s name? An even bigger question would be, what would the club owner want people to think of? If you want an example of a club brand out of the ordinary, check out the Anti-Gym  http://www.theantigym.com . Not the brand I would want for my club, but a strong brand none the less. Saco Sport & Fitness, where I am a Fitness Director, is professional yet comfortable, multi-purpose club for the entire family. Beyond that we also hope that our committment to member success is also perceived as part of the brand.

Now that the club/studio brand has been clarified we can re-address the Personal Training experience in Brand “Experience” part 2.

I love reading Fast Company! It’s a (dare I date myself?) “hip” business magazine with great usable information. I also really like browsing www.fastcompany.com and it’s article archive. While looking through some articles yesterday, I come across the “10 Hot Jobs for 2007″by Kathryn Tuggle.

One of the 10 most sought after jobs for 2007 was the Experience Designer. Every time we go somewhere we have an experience. Sometimes it’s great, but usually it’s blah to downright awful. Experience designers are people whose job it is to take your everyday event (going shopping, the movies, or to your health club) and turn that into a positive, memorable “experience”. That’s pretty impressive to be in the top 10 jobs. They’re there because, particularly in this economy, the experience is what is going to differentiate you from others. 

Experiences are sensory and emotional in nature. They can be what you see, hear, smell, feel.. They’re comfortable, pleasurable, and can even be intellectually stimulating. Think about this the next time you walk into a new restaurant  for the first time. Take a moment to think about your first impression. Take another moment as you’re leaving to evaluate the whole experience. How did it make you feel and how did it make you feel about the restaurant?

What can we do to make our clients, members, customers leave feeling that they have had a wonderful experience? How can we maximize the environment, the personal interactions, and the quality of our product/service itself to leave them wanting to feel that way again? Additionally, the experience should be consistent with our own unique brand. So, the answers may be different for everyone, but the questions are the same.

What is your experience?

Best wishes, Mark