0008: The Client's Journey

SUMMARY

The SYSTEM! In this week's episode, Mike shares an instrumental feature of becoming a successful personal trainer, whether it is in person or online.

You're the trainer, you've learned what you've needed to learn, but let's take a step back. What is your why? What are your experiences in fitness & health, and how can you share this experience with others. Some people want to lose weight, others may want to gain weight. Dissect your exercise journey, and identify where in the spectrum you are a master.

Know yourself, and reveal your lifestyle. Too many trainers accept all the clients that they can, which inevitably leads to exhaustion and dare I say a decrease in quality of your personal training. A human is a human, know your capabilities as well as your boundaries. Then, you can begin to complement your fitness career around your life.

SALES! Acclimate yourself to the essense of sales. Your knowledge and experience is valuable, and there will be people who seek it. Read books, attend webinars, or experiment with yourself in your community. Learning never stops!

Create automated systems. This will be a critical component of your business, as it will allow you to create an efficient business with less 'paperwork'. More importantly, it allows you to dedicate yourself on the actual matter, the client's journey.

OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT

Hi friends, Mike DeMora, founder of the NCEP, the National College of Exercise Professionals. In today's video, what I really want to do is I want to go over just the whole system and how it works. You know, you don't want to just get crazy, crazy, crazy busy, and be unbelievably successful and not really have a program or a system in which to work through. And that's what we want to go over today. I want you to really, truly think of the program that you're going to create and what it's going to look like for not just you, but for the client as well. So let me, right before, right behind here, I have this chart and if you want this chart. It's going to be in the download below. I want you to look at this chart and we'll really see what it means to you. Okay?


So the first thing I want you to focus on more than anything, is the client outcome. So think about the client. Now, remember, in the last video, we talked a little bit about finding your story, finding your, why, creating that compelling story. Right? So in this video, what we want to do is go over. Now that you've found that story. Now that you've found that, what kind of client outcome are you expecting? So let's go back to the person that let's just say, you've lost a lot of weight. So the clients you want to work with, or clients that need to lose weight, think about that outcome. Everything you do from here on end has to be centered around that outcome. The experience the client is going through. Though far too often, we don't really take into account what the client is feeling, what they're going through, what they expect from the whole working with a trainer.

So I want you to really think nothing more client outcome. Now, also with the client outcome, where I really want you to think about, are your lifestyle goals. Your lifestyle goals as a trainer. Think about it. So many trainers go in to the gym let's say at five in the morning. That's pretty freaking early! And they go in at five in the morning because their clients want to train what, before they go to work. So they go in every single morning at 5:00 AM to go train. Then they do nothing until the middle of the day, they might be able to catch a client or two at lunch. Then they do what nothing for the next part of the day. And then they come back after work, right? And they train from five till eight, nine o'clock at night. Is that the lifestyle you want? Even if it doubled your income, is that the lifestyle you are going to be happy with.


Just think if you've doubled your income, but now you're working from 5:00 AM till 9:00 PM, five, six, seven days a week. Does that work for you? I can't tell you how many trainers get completely burned out because they think, oh my gosh, it's just about the money. And they, they, they, they're going to take any client at any time. They're going to take clients that have nothing in common with them, but oh, they're a paying client. I'll take them, I'll take them. I'll take them. That is the absolute... I strongly, strongly, strongly urge against that. Do not do that. Let's go over the rest of our things. So once again, the two most important things are the client journey, the client outcome and your goals. Your lifestyle goals. What do you want out of being a trainer? When do you want to work? What time do you want to work?

How do you want to express this? Now when we get into our category, it's going to come down to two things, sales and systems. Now I said a word that really freaks some trainers out, which is sales. I'm sorry. You need to be able to sell. If you cannot sell, you will not be a trainer. Very, very, very, very, very few set, uh, club chains or anything are based on someone giving you sessions. You have to sell the sessions. In other words, you have to sell yourself. So during the sale, let's just say, you are going to now, this is in any other company, it's goods and or services. But as a trainer, we're pretty much going to limit you with, let's just say services, or at least for this, for this introduction, we're gonna look at your service. That is what you're selling your service. And when you sell your service, you need to create campaigns.

What does that mean? That means a campaign that means taking someone from point a to point B to point C to point D through a campaign, through a journey to create a sale. So what does that mean? Well, that means, let's just say, we're going to use Facebook ads. We're going to use Facebook ads. We're going to need to create campaigns. Each campaign is based on what? So you decide what the end result is. So let's say you want to get, uh, let's say you want to get 10 clients, right? So now you need to create a campaign on how you're going to attract 10 clients. Now, first you need to decide, are these going to be in-person clients? Are these going to be clients that you train online? Let's just say, we're going to talk about in-person clients, right?

So if we're talking about in-person clients, Facebook has the option, as you should probably well know that you can only what, send your ad to a what, three mile radius, two mile radius, five mile radius. You decide what it makes sense in your neighborhood, right? So when we talk about Los Angeles, no, one's going to travel more than three, four miles to go to their trainer. So we know that when we put out ads, we're going to put out ads in three, a three to five mile radius or below, right? So you need to decide what that works for you. Now, if you live in more of a rural area and you know, there's one farm house and their next farm house is a mile away and you only do a three mile radius, that's you and you know, three other people. So the three mile radius, isn't going to work for you, but remember, make this work in your situation.


So you're going to create a campaign in which you are then going to what, show them what you do and create what it is that you want and the goal that you want from that campaign. Do you want to try to collect emails? Do your, are you going to try to sell them? Or are you going to, are you going to try to actually get them to jump on your website, to see more about you? What is your goal of your campaign? Right. So all you're going to do is be running campaigns about your service to create sales. Now, the next step that people forget is the systems. Is the systems. What is your process? Now our goal is to automate as much as you possibly can. Well, what does that mean? So let's just one of our partners that we work with is called PT, enhanced.com.


I'll give you the information below. PT enhanced.com. What do they do? Well, let's go over the steps for a client. When you have a client that you think might be interested in training with you, the first thing you're going to need to do is get their background information. Do they have injuries? What is their goals? It's called a health history, right? So what PT enhanced does is they have that all automated. So the minute you put your client into their computer system, their software, you click a button and you send them all that stuff. Now they can fill out all the forms online. Now, when they meet with you in person, you've already collected all the data that you need. You can create forms yourself, or use the forms that they already have. And it takes you through all the steps. Even the sales process, even the sales process can be completely automated through PT Enhance.


You send them an invoice, right? They pay for it. Every time they use a session, you just go into the end of the software and click. boom. There's a session now was taken. So everybody is aware of when the sessions were done, how they were done, how they, when they were fulfilled, it's called automation. Let's just say, we're going to look for the sales automation, right? So you've put out a Facebook ad. Now you collect their email. What do you want to do next? Now that you have an email of someone who may be interested. Now, you could also get a phone number, but that would be part of your automation. So you're going to ask for a phone number, but let's just go with an email. Cause people will give emails much easier than they will a phone number. So you get their email.

Now you need to create a drip sequence, email where it says, Oh, thank you so much for your interest. Now here's who I am. Maybe send them a video of telling them here's who I am. Here's who I work with. Here's my, what, here's my story. I have lost 50 pounds because I eat better because now I move better because I create better programs. That is your story. And you can put that all in a video. So now we send them a video that says, here's who I am. If they're even more interested, fill out this form, fill out this, give me this, go there. It's all about automation. Think about it. If your goal is to work with people that need to lose 20 pounds, 30 pounds, 40 pounds, 50 pounds, right? And you all of a sudden get somebody who sees your ad and they give you information because they want to gain 20 pounds because they're too thin because they're anorexic.


Are you going to be able to work with that client? No. You want to weed them out through automation. Don't waste your time meeting with them. Don't waste your time. Setting up an in-person session with them. Don't waste your time. If that's not the clients that you want to work with, you need to automate that and weed it out. You will have more clients than, you know what to do with, if you understand what, this. Sales, and you understand the sales campaigns, but you need to be very crystal clear. Crystal, clear on what, on what client outcome you want and what lifestyle goal that you have. Okay. Now, once again, I just want to go over some of this with you again. Okay?

Most important thing is to always think about what the client is feeling, what the client is going through, their emotions, their thoughts, their feelings, their obstacles. What do you mean obstacles? Well, if you have a client that wants to lose 50 pounds, I always go back to that. Cause it's just an easier one to go through. If you have a client that wants to lose 50 pounds, do you think they just started thinking about that today? Do you think the minute they think I want to lose 50 pounds, then it just comes off them? Or do you think they've tried to lose weight before? Well, yes. Logically they've tried to lose weight before. Think about what their obstacles were. Now, remember that's when, if your journey and your story matches up to the kind of person that you're going to train you'll know exactly how they feel. Did you ever try what, weight loss and it didn't work? Did you try a different diet and it didn't work. Did you try to go to the gym and work with a trainer before? And it didn't work because the trainer didn't really think about you or didn't know you, maybe you worked with a trainer that never needed to lose weight.

Just like we talked about before, is this all starting to make more sense? Think about the client journey. And if you already had that journey, you are an expert. Far too often, we start hitting up with that. We call imposter syndrome, where we start second guessing ourselves. We start wondering like, wow, am I really the expert to do this? Can I really help someone? And yes you can. If what? If it's something, you know, you're good at? If it's something you've done yourself. If it's not something you've done yourself or have experience with, then you're probably not going to be that expert. You're not going to be the best. Now see, think of Bill Belichick, the greatest football coach in history.


No, one's going to say he's the greatest player. No, one's going to say that he's, you know, MVP all star when he played himself, but he did play football. He was around a coach like his father who coached before him and he learned the system. So even though he did not become the greatest NFL player in history, or even make it to the NFL, he's still able to coach in the NFL because he has enough background about it. But if he were to have been an NFL player and were to have had that background, he could then do it easier. Right? He could then speak to it, brighter, speak to it more, more authentic. So that's what we're trying to say. Now look, if you're someone who's lost 50 pounds, you are already into a category rhat's amazing. If you've lost 50 pounds and kept it off for more than a year or two, you are part of like one half of 1%.

If we understand that 98.5% of people who are looking to lose weight, fail, fail in the first year. And failure is defined by not only did they not lose weight, but they actually gained weight. The fact that after two years, you still have the weight off. You are an expert. You are part of the chosen few. Now you just need to go back and journal and think and think about everything that you went through. Think about your journey. Think about if you were to add, if you were to have had somebody that jumped in the journey at this point or jumped the journey at that point, how they would have helped you, maybe that did happen. Maybe you did have a coach. Maybe you did have a friend. Maybe you did have someone in that jumped in that journey with you. Did it help you?


And if it did, now you know exactly what you want to give to that individual. Are you seeing where this is going? You need to keep that client in mind at all, at all steps through the process, the client outcome and the client journey is by far and away, the absolute, most important thing for you to remember on how to sell someone and how to work with someone, how to be successful, how to get clients, to stay with you, how to get them to refer more clients, just think about it. How many people that are overweight hang out with other people that are overweight. So now all you need to do is be successful with one person who's overweight and in that category. And now you've got droves of clients coming to you. It's all about the process. Everything that you do, if you do anything and it works, know every single step of that process. And then what lather, rinse, repeat.

Just repeat it over and over and over again, and be able to duplicate that. Now just think if when you were in the middle, you were just starting. What's what got you interested? Was it that someone, like I said made fun of you? Was it that someone, uh, you know, you cared about, uh, died because they were overweight. Was it something that, what was it that spawned you? And then the next step is how many people do you think are going through that exact thing right now? Now, if your goal was to get 20 clients or your goal is to get 10 clients, how many people in your surrounding area do you think are going through that exact thing? And you can speak to them authentically. You can speak to them at their level. You could speak to them, exactly knowing what they're going through and you can then help them.


The only thing you're really going to have to focus on once you nail this down is your own lifestyle. Yes, you're on my side. You are going to get so many people banging down your door to work with you, that the only thing you're going to have to worry about is your own lifestyle. The last thing we want to do is you to become successful and then fall into bad patterns and fall into your quote on quote old lifestyle, right? So you need to treat yourself as number one. You can't help anyone if you can't help yourself. So remember all the things that you did to get to where you are now, and you need to keep doing them. You need to create a lifestyle vision for yourself. And maybe that lifestyle vision is going to work a little early with some people early. Then I have a break. And during that break, I'm going to what, I am going to read. I am going to jog. I am going to work out. I am going to prepare my meals. I'm going to, what is it that you're going to do?

Create a lifestyle that makes you flourish. Create a lifestyle that makes you feel good so that you can be the number one representation of what it is that you do. You've got to walk the walk, talk the talk, live, live the life that you're discussing. And if you don't do that, you're not authentic. And people can read right through all the bull crap. So I really want you to think again, when you choose in the last video, we wanted you to choose who you are, choose your why. Choose what it is that got you into this profession in the first place, and then create a compelling story.


Have you created your compelling story yet? Do you know what your story is? Do you know what it is that you want to, who you want to attract? Because if you don't all the other steps won't help, they won't help at all. So think about that story. Think about who you are, think about who you want to be. Right. And play that hole down. Write down as many notes as you can. This is what I felt like the first month of my diet. This is what I felt like the first day of my diet. This is what I felt like the first week of my diet. This is the way I felt. When I started walking every day, it was miserable. The first couple of times, my feet hurt. My knees hurt. This hurt, that hurt, blah, blah, blah. That's how you sell someone.

Hey, it's the new year. Have you started your new program? Are you filing that your feet hurt? Have you, are you finding out that your knees hurt? Are you ready to quit? Are you right there at that point? Ready to quit? Well, don't quit. Come and hire me. And I'm here to help. I've been there. Joel old picture of yourself, 50 pounds heavier. I used to be you. And I'm here to help. I've found the system. I have found what, the program that is going to help you. And I'm telling you, you will have them coming to you in droves. You'll have to beat them up with a stick because no one can be you better than you. And if you are them, that's who they want to be with. Everybody wants to be with someone who's just a little bit better, right? A little bit further down on the path.

It doesn't need me. And you need to have full six pack abs and you need to be ripped beyond belief and you need whatever. No! In fact, that picture perfect person is sometimes too over the top and someone who's a hundred pounds overweight who sees someone looking like that thinks I can never look like that. I can never be that person. Why do I want to hang out with them? They don't understand me. They don't know who I am. So don't stop. Don't don't don't like not become a trainer because you don't have full abs yet. Don't not become a trainer because you don't think you can help people. You can. You can and you will. If you understand the process, it's just a process.


Step by step by step. We are going to take you through this process, but it starts with you. It starts with you knowing who you are, knowing who you want to work with, creating a compelling story, taking as many notes as you can, along the process. Thinking back to when you went through that process and you become that person again, mentally, mentally, you think about that. And then you know how to speak to the people that need you. Look, I commend you for being this far. This is already a step on the journey, right? You're already watching videos and trying to figure out what you're going to do the next step in your life. And I commend you for that. You've already made a huge step forward. Now you just need to put it in paper, need to really think about it. You need to systematize it and automate it and make it where it's doable for you. And we're here for you. We will hold your hand and take you through those steps.

We will take you through those steps and show you how to become a successful trainer. We have trainers making six, seven figures a year and they just started. People I'm telling you, there is never been more of a need for people who care and people who have a system, not these, you know, people that are walking around in crazy shape and they always have been and they look amazing. And they're just, you know, should be in the picture of a magazine or something. I'm telling you, people are not there. That's not what they want anymore. They want real, they want authentic. They want someone that they picture themselves. Just that one or two steps in front of them. And that's you. You can do this. You can do this. I applaud you for being here. Thank you for taking this step. And you know, we're probably going to be in your neighborhood really soon. If you're seeing this video, the idea is that we're going to put these videos out before we come to your town so that you can go through the entire program live and in person. If you're interested with that at all, go to NCEPfitness.com, click on the events and you'll see we're going to be in these upcoming weeks and months and years. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for spending this time with me and believe me. We have you covered. Thank you. God, bless take care.