Episode 268: The Top 10 Ways To Get New Online Personal Training Clients (Part 1)

0:00:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.2 Mike Vacanti: I have two PSAs. Pick a number, one or two.

0:00:13.6 Jordan Syatt: Two.

0:00:16.5 Mike Vacanti: If you are on a highway and there are two lanes and you’re in the left lane, you don’t do the speed limit. You go over the speed limit.

0:00:24.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s right.

0:00:25.1 Mike Vacanti: And if you are doing the speed limit and someone comes up behind you doing 10 or 12 or 13 or 11 or 9 or 15 or 8 over, you get over to the right lane.

0:00:34.0 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:00:35.1 Mike Vacanti: This is common knowledge, and for some reason, in this current era of life, all kinds of people of all kinds of backgrounds, of all ages, of all genders seem to be driving the speed limit in the left lane for extended periods of time and often doing it directly next to a car in the right lane.

0:00:53.5 Jordan Syatt: Infuriating.

0:00:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Infuriating.

0:00:55.2 Jordan Syatt: Straight to jail.

0:00:58.1 Mike Vacanti: Just… [chuckle] straight to jail. The lack of awareness of their surroundings, the lack of situational awareness is really… I can’t even comprehend it, to be honest.

0:01:09.7 Jordan Syatt: Disappointing.

0:01:12.3 Mike Vacanti: I must be high on anger. I did a little extra pre-workout. I hit legs. Maybe the acute rise in testosterone post leg day, but it’s not disappointing to me. I’m just pissed.

0:01:20.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, infuriating, disappointing, concerning.

0:01:23.3 Mike Vacanti: I’d like to be concerned for them, but I’m really just mad.

0:01:26.5 Jordan Syatt: No, concerning for society.

0:01:28.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it probably is, but right now, that’s not what I’m feeling.

0:01:32.0 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Just anger. Nice.

0:01:33.4 Mike Vacanti: I just want to give them a little bump, a little tap from behind. Don’t actually do that. That’s not part of the PSA. That’d be very dangerous at high speeds, but…

0:01:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Well, I’m gonna increase your… Improve your mood. Who’s this?

0:01:48.1 Mike Vacanti: Dude, I thought you were gonna say that your wife had your baby. I literally am like… [laughter]

0:01:53.1 Jordan Syatt: No, dude, it’s like six weeks too early.

0:01:58.4 Mike Vacanti: I know, I know, but the way you got me on the announcement surprise was… It’s like the reverse of scarring. It’s like now I’m ready for big surprises at all times. That is actually very exciting too, though. Hold him back up. That’s Mr. Conor McGregor.

0:02:16.8 Jordan Syatt: Conor McGregor. All right, we’re doing your MMA quiz right now.

0:02:19.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh, man, I’m nervous. I actually kinda wanted to cheat and study, but I completely forgot. I actually didn’t forget about this because I have a note on it, but I assumed you were gonna forget, so I didn’t do any prep.

0:02:32.8 Jordan Syatt: Well, it’s okay. You’re gonna get almost all of them, if not all of them. All right, who’s this?

0:02:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Well, that’s not a great picture of Mr. Nate Diaz.

0:02:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, let’s go. That’s right.

0:02:47.8 Mike Vacanti: He looks a little thicker.

0:02:49.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s how he stands. This is how Nate… He’s not got the best posture.

0:02:53.0 Mike Vacanti: Maybe it’s a young… It must be a younger picture.

0:02:56.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s definitely not within the last few years, but that’s how he stands. He always shrugs up like that.

0:03:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:03:02.7 Jordan Syatt: All right, ready for the next one?

0:03:07.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s Mr. Jon Jones.

0:03:09.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, let’s go.

0:03:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Arguably the GOAT. Arguably the GOAT.

0:03:12.7 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:03:12.8 Mike Vacanti: All right, I guess these…

0:03:16.2 Jordan Syatt: The top give you…

0:03:17.3 Mike Vacanti: No, no, don’t make it too hard. Come on.

0:03:19.0 Jordan Syatt: Well, that’s what you said last time, so I’m trying. I have a couple more. This is… You should get this one. I think you’re gonna get this one.

0:03:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Oh, yeah, Daniel Cormier.

0:03:29.9 Jordan Syatt: There we go. There we go. All right, now it’s gonna get…

0:03:33.3 Mike Vacanti: Olympic gold medal wrestler, maybe?

0:03:36.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, Olympic gold. Definitely Olympic.

0:03:39.5 Mike Vacanti: Legendary commentator, legendary fighter.

0:03:42.8 Jordan Syatt: I don’t like his commentating. His fighting was great. All right, ready? This is… Now it’s gonna get a little bit more difficult, but still like GOATs, like greatest of all time, like still incredible fighters.

0:03:53.1 Mike Vacanti: So wait, what we did… We’ve done four?

0:03:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:04:01.0 Mike Vacanti: Hang on, I’m gonna… I have my pen and my marker and my paper because we’re… Okay. I know who that is. The name that first came to my mind is not who it is. I’m gonna tell you the name that first came to my mind, but it’s not him. Gosh, I actually don’t know if that’s this guy. I’m gonna say the name. This is so disappointing. All right, I’m gonna say the name of the person I think it is.

0:04:29.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay, who do you think it is?

0:04:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Is that Anderson Silva?

0:04:32.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude! It’s Anderson Silva. Let’s go.

0:04:35.5 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go, let’s go.

0:04:36.5 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go. Well done.

0:04:37.4 Mike Vacanti: The first name was Kamaru Usman, and I was like, wait, no, no, that’s not right.

0:04:42.1 Jordan Syatt: No, no, not Kamaru Usman. All right, so there’s two more.

0:04:46.3 Mike Vacanti: But that picture has to be 20 years old of him.

0:04:49.1 Jordan Syatt: Yep, at least 10, if not 15. Yeah. All right, there’s two more. These are… I think you’re gonna get the first one.

0:05:03.6 Mike Vacanti: Is he Dagestani?

0:05:05.7 Jordan Syatt: He’s not Dagestani.

0:05:07.2 Mike Vacanti: Okay, I’m pretty good with the Dagestanis. Shoot.

0:05:13.0 Jordan Syatt: You’ve seen him fight before. I know you have.

0:05:15.6 Mike Vacanti: No!

0:05:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Yes, you have.

0:05:16.7 Mike Vacanti: I might need a second picture. I might need a current picture because I do not recognize that man’s face.

0:05:22.1 Jordan Syatt: You’ve seen him fight. Let’s see if I can get another picture of him. You’ve seen him fight, actually, a handful of times. Let’s see if I can…

0:05:34.8 Mike Vacanti: I need another picture. And by the way, there’s like layers of meaning to this quiz for me because, I’m not gonna tell the whole story, but someone called me a casual at one point. Oh, yes, that’s Aldo, Jose Aldo.

0:05:53.5 Jordan Syatt: Jose Aldo. Yeah, let’s go, let’s go. Okay.

0:05:57.3 Mike Vacanti: That first one… Oh, so maybe the first one was a current picture.

0:06:01.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, first one’s current picture. Correct.

0:06:03.2 Mike Vacanti: Because I remember him on that 10-second fight with Connor. Yeah. And no one had ever knocked Aldo out like that.

0:06:10.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct. In 10 years, he was undefeated.

0:06:13.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:13.9 Jordan Syatt: All right, so this is the last one.

0:06:14.9 Mike Vacanti: And Connor called it before.

0:06:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. All right. This is the last one. This is I think gonna be the most difficult for you, but there’s still a chance you’ll get it. And if you need a new picture, let me know. It’s a little bit grainy.

0:06:28.5 Mike Vacanti: Gosh, I don’t even want… The first name that came to my mind was that actor who’s in action movies. I’m gonna need a second picture.

0:06:37.4 Jordan Syatt: Do you want a more current picture or when he was fighting picture? ‘Cause he’s an older guy.

0:06:43.6 Mike Vacanti: I’ll take both.

0:06:44.3 Jordan Syatt: All right. So let’s see.

0:06:45.0 Mike Vacanti: I’ll take all the help I can get. Jordan knows the story. One time I was at a UFC fight and got asked who my favorite fighters were by someone and basically buckled in the moment and couldn’t think of any fighters. And I think I said Connor, but this was a year and a half ago, so he hadn’t fought in a while. And they’re like, “Oh, you’re a casual.” And I was like, “No, no, I’m really not.” And I was training jiu-jitsu at the time and I was… Anyway.

0:07:15.9 Jordan Syatt: So this is a current picture.

0:07:19.6 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Yeah. Gosh, I can’t believe I’m not gonna…

0:07:22.3 Jordan Syatt: And then we’ll go…

0:07:23.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna save some names who it’s not.

0:07:25.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:07:26.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s not Chuck Liddell.

0:07:27.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s not Chuck Liddell, but they have fought.

0:07:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh, is… All right. I’m gonna write some ideas down. I have an idea here. I have an idea.

0:07:37.1 Jordan Syatt: This is like a prime his fighting career time.

0:07:40.5 Mike Vacanti: By the way, if this isn’t incentive for you to listen to the podcast with some video… Gosh. I don’t think it’s the name I have written down. I think I could get there with enough time, and time isn’t something we have a lot of today.

0:07:59.2 Jordan Syatt: You’re in the right era. Chuck Liddell is the right era.

0:08:01.9 Mike Vacanti: I don’t want any more hints. I’m gonna keep saying names that it’s not. The first name when I first saw his face was I think his name’s Jason Statham. He’s an actor.

0:08:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, he’s an actor.

0:08:11.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s not him. I know that. And then the second name was… The second name that came to mind who I know for a fact that it’s not was Stipe, which is just kind of a weird… He’s a big white guy in the UFC. I have a name written down. I don’t know what this guy looks like. I think I’m just gonna say it. It’s okay to get questions wrong. This doesn’t have to be… See, getting competitive over something that just is so trivial.

0:08:50.8 Jordan Syatt: You did great. You got all of them except for this one, potentially.

0:08:54.5 Mike Vacanti: Is it… I’m just gonna guess. Is it Mir?

0:09:00.8 Jordan Syatt: No, not Frank Mir.

0:09:02.1 Mike Vacanti: Gosh. Who’s that?

0:09:04.4 Jordan Syatt: Randy Couture.

0:09:06.1 Mike Vacanti: Sorry, Randy.

0:09:10.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s all good. It’s all good. That was great. You did really well.

0:09:12.9 Mike Vacanti: That was fun. Good job coming prepared.

0:09:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I picked fighters that were…

0:09:18.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you didn’t make it…

0:09:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, didn’t make it easier.

0:09:21.8 Mike Vacanti: I feel like this isn’t the most fun segment for the audience, so I’m not gonna make you just keep pulling names and keep having me guessing. But I was armed with some knowledge of…

0:09:33.2 Jordan Syatt: Are you in a better mood now, though?

0:09:38.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes. That was fun. That was good. That was good. That was good.

0:09:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Good. What was the number one PSA?

0:09:43.5 Mike Vacanti: The fitness business mentorship price is increasing very soon. So if you have ever wanted or thought about or considered joining our fitness business mentorship, if you want to grow your online fitness coaching business, if you want to start an online fitness coaching business, whether you’re a personal trainer in the gym or it’s just an industry you’re interested in getting into, the price will never be cheaper than it is right now. It’s going up very soon. There’s no guarantee that if you apply you get accepted, but we would strongly encourage you to at least throw your hat in the ring and apply.

0:10:18.4 Jordan Syatt: And if you are a current active member, the price does not go up.

0:10:23.6 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:10:23.7 Jordan Syatt: So if you’re in there now and then the price increases, your price stays the same. If you cancel and then want to come back in later, then the price will go up. But if you are an active member, your price will never increase as long as you remain active in the mentorship.

0:10:39.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re locked in for life. That’s a great point. Don’t apply if you’re a high-ticket sales coach. Don’t apply if you want to sell $10,000 packages. Don’t apply if you are into a get-rich-quick or trying to make as much money as possible, or even if you know a decent amount about fitness and you’re a decent coach but you’re just hyper-focused on the finance side and want to be a millionaire, the energy in the group is just off-putting. And I mean it, be honest in your application because if that is what you’re about, there are a lot of great programs that’ll take you in a heartbeat.

0:11:14.2 Jordan Syatt: There are a lot of programs. I wouldn’t say great programs. There are a lot of programs that’ll take you in a heartbeat.

0:11:18.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s true. Great. The programs. I think that’s an accurate clarification. Well done. I really like/love the community and group we have right now. And so I don’t want to throw that off by bringing in people who are just like, “How do I get 10 more clients by the end of the week?” It’s just, it’s kind of gross and needy, and we’ve had some of that in the past that slipped through the cracks, and it’s just bad for the atmosphere. So if you’re someone who actually wants to help people, if you’re someone who wants to grow your business the right way, if you’re someone who’s passionate about doing the right thing, if you’ve listened to a bunch of episodes of this podcast and you vibe with Jordan and I and our messaging, then definitely apply because we would love to have you.

0:12:00.7 Jordan Syatt: Bro, you know what might piss me off just as much as the driving in the far lane pisses you off?

0:12:07.6 Mike Vacanti: Huh?

0:12:08.4 Jordan Syatt: Every week I get between 10 to 20 DMs from people who say, they’re like, “Hey, I’m a…” Let me see if I can find one. They say to me, like, “I’m a high ticket closer” type thing, and “I’m looking to be added to your team.” And one of the strangest things about these DMs is that they are… Let me see if I can find one. Okay, well, so here’s one, but here’s the perfect example. “Hey, Jordan, I put together a quick loom on how I’d help you close more deals if I was on your team. Curious what you think.” But then the picture is always of this wildly attractive woman as the profile picture. It’s almost always a wildly attractive woman. I’m putting up the pictures. Like, this is their profile. It’s just all pictures of her, and I don’t even think it’s actually a woman.

0:13:06.4 Mike Vacanti: I think probably AI.

0:13:07.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s definitely a guy behind the scenes trying to do this.

0:13:09.9 Mike Vacanti: 100%.

0:13:10.7 Jordan Syatt: This person sent me a message. “Hey, saw your client transformation. Super impressive.” I’m like, which transformations? I don’t have any posted. “I’ve been doing door-to-door sales. I’m transitioning to a remote setting. I’m handling rejection and real conversations. I’d love to help you book more calls.”

0:13:25.1 Mike Vacanti: You’re like, “I hate calls.”

0:13:26.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh, here’s one. Here’s a perfect one. Here’s another one. “Hey, Jordan, I’m an experienced high ticket closer with a strong D-to-D background, door-to-door. I’m looking to take on one more partner to crush some sales for. I know your time is better spent creating coaching than closing.” And then this is the picture. This is the profile picture. What is this, dude? And again, high ticket closer. I get this every week, many times per week. What is happening? All the time. High ticket closer, high ticket closer, high ticket closer. It’s insane.

0:14:07.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, there’s a brain virus that’s spreading across the entire global population. I don’t know exactly what’s causing it, but these people have it, and I think they could use 30 days, 40 days actually would be perfect in the woods without technology and just touch grass, get in nature, fill your lungs with air, and stop cold DMing people.

0:14:33.5 Jordan Syatt: Very odd. But I think if I’m getting so many messages about it, I know other coaches are too, and they’re definitely gonna be more likely to be like, “Oh, I need a high ticket closer. I need high ticket.”

0:14:47.5 Mike Vacanti: Nope, you don’t.

0:14:48.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s insane.

0:14:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Brother, today we are in part one of reviewing the 10, 20, but we’re gonna do 10 today, 10 best ways to get new online personal training clients. We’re ranking them from S-tier to F-tier.

0:15:10.3 Jordan Syatt: Love that. That’s a great idea.

0:15:12.9 Mike Vacanti: Now, I want to hear your guess. Thank you. How optimistic are you in our friend Grok here in this list of 20 strategies put together? Are we gonna be up in S-tier a bunch? Are there gonna be a lot of Fs? What do you think is coming your way?

0:15:33.3 Jordan Syatt: I am predicting a lot of Fs. I’m predicting F galore.

0:15:40.4 Mike Vacanti: All right. If it’s okay with you, we’re gonna dive right in.

0:15:43.2 Jordan Syatt: Dude, nothing’s been more okay with me.

0:15:45.2 Mike Vacanti: Further, further, I have a new element here. I believe that because you have been giving your ranking first and I’ve been giving my ranking second, that I have been subconsciously influenced by your ranking, which I don’t like. So what we are doing…

0:16:02.0 Jordan Syatt: You’ve been influenced by me? Wow.

0:16:04.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think maybe a little heightened agreeableness comes out on the pod. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. But…

0:16:09.5 Jordan Syatt: So you go first.

0:16:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Nope, because you’ll be influenced by me. We are going to…

0:16:14.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you’re gonna right it down.

0:16:14.9 Mike Vacanti: We’re both gonna write it down and show.

0:16:15.9 Jordan Syatt: I like that. I like that.

0:16:17.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a great new element to the podcast. The podcast is really gonna be… Keep tuning in because you’re gonna like it. Ready? Number one.

0:16:26.4 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:16:27.1 Mike Vacanti: Build a strong social media presence with valuable content.

0:16:31.9 Jordan Syatt: Shut up. That’s number one?

0:16:33.4 Mike Vacanti: Yep. Don’t say anything.

0:16:36.2 Jordan Syatt: Ready.

0:16:36.8 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three. S-tier.

0:16:41.3 Jordan Syatt: S-tier, baby. S-tier. Let’s go. I’m shocked that that was number one. And this was on Grok?

0:16:49.7 Mike Vacanti: Yep.

0:16:50.5 Jordan Syatt: Grok just got a lot of extra points for that one. That’s crazy. Let’s go, Grok. I wonder if we asked ChatGPT what the first one would be.

0:16:58.1 Mike Vacanti: We can do that experiment at some point.

0:16:59.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:17:00.3 Mike Vacanti: Take it away.

0:17:01.0 Jordan Syatt: You start. You take it away. I don’t want you to be influenced.

0:17:04.2 Mike Vacanti: Oh, you’re chewing.

0:17:05.4 Jordan Syatt: Yo, Mike’s eating, everyone. All right, so I’ll go first. Mike’s eating. Thank you to have a podcast. [laughter]

0:17:09.6 Mike Vacanti: This is how much I have left. Post-workout carbohydrates. I’m replenishing glycogen storage, getting a slight extra boost in insulin.

0:17:20.5 Jordan Syatt: Listen, we talk about this all the time.

0:17:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Protein spikes insulin plenty. You don’t technically need carbs, but I like carbs post-workout.

0:17:26.5 Jordan Syatt: We talk about it all the time. There are many ways that you can get in front of people. There actually aren’t that many ways. There are a few main ways you could get in front of people. Number one is you can coach people in person. And then that leads into a whole host of other, well, how do you get people to go into your gym? You could do door-to-door shit, you could put up posters, whatever. But number one, in person. Number two is free content on social media. Number three is paid advertisements. These really boil down to the three main ways. And by the way, cold DMing people is essentially the social media version of door-to-door sales, and it’s… I just don’t like it. Not a fan.

0:18:11.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, terrible. Terrible.

0:18:12.3 Jordan Syatt: Not a fan. I would rather you do door-to-door sales for your online coaching than I would you cold DM people, really. That would be far better for me, but I’m not really a fan of either. Making great, high-quality social media content is 100% free, and the upside is essentially infinite, and the downside is essentially nothing. And never mind the upside of how many people you have the ability to reach, but you always have even someone who doesn’t have that big of an in-person community, whether it’s elementary school friends, high school friends, college friends, colleagues, family, you have a community of people who will be built in to follow you already. And people are like, “Well, I only have 57 followers.” It’s like, okay, what if four of them became a client? That’s life-changing early on in your coaching. It’s absolutely life-changing. My first few clients were literally high school friends. They were high school friends, college roommates.

0:19:20.4 Mike Vacanti: Four clients, 300 bucks a month, which isn’t an unreasonable starting monthly rate for online personal training, is 15 grand a year in revenue.

0:19:29.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s insane.

0:19:30.6 Mike Vacanti: Real money.

0:19:31.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes. So you don’t need to go viral and have a massive audience in order to build a wildly successful online personal training business. So it’s just… And also I’ll add the other side of it. Getting good at making content and boiling concepts down to be very simple and straightforward and easy to understand will also help make you a better coach.

0:19:53.3 Mike Vacanti: Absolutely.

0:19:53.8 Jordan Syatt: If you can get better and get really good at making content in a way that people can understand things more simply, that will help you communicate better with your clients. And also it goes in the other way as well. Getting better at communicating with your clients, understanding what they’re struggling with and how to communicate with them better will help you get better at making good content too. It’s a symbiotic relationship there.

0:20:16.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re improving your communication skills in both.

0:20:18.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:20:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Is there a professional downside to making social media content? No. Is there a personal downside?

0:20:27.7 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:20:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Maybe for some people. For me, there definitely is. For Jordan, there is. For most people, there probably is. However, we’re talking about how to build your business. We’re not talking about how to live on top of a mountain and become a monk. The sacrifice of spending a percentage of your life making content to reach more people to grow your business is worth the outcome, which is that that business can sustain you for much longer than you think. The other thing here when we’re comparing the options, which is in-person interaction versus social media interaction, technology is a lever. And what that means is you can, rather than repeating yourself in one-on-one conversations 100 different times, you can say it once and have it reach 100 people, or you can say it once and have a post reach 1,000 people or reach 10,000 people. Especially in today’s internet, you’re much less limited by your current number of followers. And though super rapid growth is very uncommon and actually has quite a few downsides that we can talk about at some point if we want, it is possible.

0:21:45.3 Mike Vacanti: Your ability to reach more people spending less time doing it by making really high-quality content is right there in front of us for anyone who chooses. And so I think Grok nailed this one both in terms of putting it on the list and at the top of the list. I also like that it said valuable content. Right? You’re educating, you’re entertaining, you’re building relationship. You’re actually trying to help strangers for free at the thing that you’re gonna be doing when coaching them. So attracting the type of people who might want your coaching. It’s S-tier.

0:22:25.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s the best one. We can only go down from here.

0:22:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Or same. Oftentimes we put a lot of stuff in S-tier, but yeah, it isn’t a one-year project though. It’s not a six-month project, it’s not a two-year project. It takes a real commitment.

0:22:43.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yep.

0:22:44.5 Mike Vacanti: What are you doing, doodling over there?

0:22:46.8 Jordan Syatt: You put a pen and paper in front of me. What do you expect? ADHD, dude. I’m like back in school again.

0:22:52.9 Mike Vacanti: All right, I’m gonna need you to dig deep. I’m trying to get my high school buddies to, since I’m in Minnesota now, I’m trying to get my high school buddies to do a once-a-month workout. And with conflicting schedules and kids and 80% of them probably just not wanting to do it, it’s been very difficult. But I’ve been just unbelievably, you gotta dig deep. If we’re going at 5:00 AM, we’re going at 5:00 AM. No excuses.

0:23:25.3 Jordan Syatt: You’re trying to get them to a 5:00 AM workout?

0:23:27.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m trying to get them to a workout. And then I just, well, this guy’s gotta work at this time. This guy’s kids have soccer practice. There’s just a million things. I’m like, all right, then we’re waking up at 4:00 and we’re gonna go get after it. All right, number two, create lead magnets and freebies.

0:23:46.7 Jordan Syatt: So the question is, hold on, I want just the question. The question is the best ways to get new clients?

0:23:53.8 Mike Vacanti: Yes, which I guess slash the best way to build an online personal training business, online fitness coaching. It’s not just we’re trying to maximize how many clients we get in a one-day or a one-week span, right? You’d get on the phone and you’d cold call everyone you know. We know that strategy. There are gurus who literally charge five figures, $10,000-plus to tell you to call everyone you know and pitch them on online fitness coaching. It’s stupid. It’s self-evident why it is stupid. We’re talking about how to build a sustainable business that is going to support you 5, 10, 15, 20 years into the future. We’re building the foundation of a house you’re gonna live in forever. We’re not staying at a hotel that’s gonna kick you out in a couple of days or a couple of weeks. All right?

0:24:44.3 Jordan Syatt: Yep, got it.

0:24:45.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m ready when you are.

0:24:45.6 Jordan Syatt: Ready when you are.

0:24:47.5 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three.

0:24:50.6 Jordan Syatt: A-tier for me, S-tier for you.

0:24:51.8 Mike Vacanti: S-tier.

0:24:54.0 Jordan Syatt: All right, you go first.

0:24:55.0 Mike Vacanti: Sure. You’re the business guru at this point. I stopped making content in 2018.

0:25:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Okay, so I’ll go first.

0:25:01.9 Mike Vacanti: So I’ll go first. This is a, all right, so what are we talking about here? We’re talking about giving something away for free. If you think of Gary’s jab, jab, jab, right hook model, which still works in today’s day and age and is the foundation of most, if not all, businesses. When you’re making social media posts, you’re giving something away for free. When you’re creating a “lead magnet”, you’re also giving something away for free with the hopes to have an audience’s attention to potentially sell them something in the future. This is another strategy similar to posting free content on social media. You’re giving away a free PDF, a free video, a free course. You’re giving away something generally a little bit longer-form for free, usually in exchange for someone signing up for your email list. This is a strategy that Jordan and I built our careers on. This is a strategy that we talk about in the Fitness Business Mentorship. This is something that still works incredibly well even if the landscape is a little different.

0:26:18.7 Mike Vacanti: Maybe if we’re thinking of 2015 compared to 2026. In 2015, we have more website traffic to an article followed by more opt-in to the email list freebie from the article. Whereas in 2026, we might have more comment on a post to get sent this thing. We might have more mid-YouTube video, “If you want this free thing, link below.” The tactics are gonna be a little bit different, but the actual strategy is the same. Give me email address, I give you free thing, guide, education, help, and then you’re on my email list where I cultivate a relationship and potentially sell to you in the future.

0:27:02.5 Jordan Syatt: Yep. So I agree with all that. I’ll explain why I gave it an A and not an S. What you said was completely accurate. We built our careers on this. And having access to this email list, essentially a bunch of people who signed up for our freebie, has given us the ability and the opportunity to reach out to a significant number of people anytime we want with pushing them to our content, pushing them to potentially signing up for our coaching, our programs, whatever. The only reason I gave it an A and not an S is because the content comes first, the freebie comes second. The free content, building the audience, is what comes first. Getting people’s attention is what comes first. And so we didn’t start off by being like, “Hey, before I’ve even got my social media, before I’ve got my website up, before I’ve got articles out, before I’ve got videos out, I’m gonna make this freebie.” No. First, you make the free accessible content to everybody. You build up a significant, it doesn’t have to be significant, but you build up even a small audience of people who are looking forward to your content, are expecting your content, are excited about your content, who are starting to trust you, and then the freebie comes.

0:28:20.1 Jordan Syatt: And there’s an argument to be made for both A-tier and S-tier. For me, I was just thinking, I know people who have built an amazing business without ever really making lead magnets, and they’ve crushed it. Now, I do think their business would be even better and more anti-fragile if they did have an email list and these lead magnets to get people on. It would make them more stable and a less volatile business model, less fragile to major potential issues with social media platforms, et cetera. But they’ve still done it. I don’t know anyone who has just built a freebie, even the best freebie ever, and put it out there and crushed it as a result of that. You could have the best freebie in the world, but if you don’t have an audience of people who know who you are, care about who you are, who appreciate you, trust you, it doesn’t matter. So I think they go hand in hand, and both is better than either alone, but that’s why I gave it an A and not an S.

0:29:22.7 Mike Vacanti: Cool. Agree to disagree. I’m actually gonna give you an analogy back to you with your “the content comes first, the freebie comes second.” The barbell for building quads, the high-bar back squat comes first, the leg extension comes second, but they’re still both S-tier moves for those quads.

0:29:43.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s true.

0:29:44.1 Mike Vacanti: That’s why I said it, Jord.

0:29:45.3 Jordan Syatt: But I don’t know, I think it’s different. You could never barbell squat. You could never barbell squat and just do leg extensions and build monster quads.

0:30:01.3 Mike Vacanti: I think that for someone to never barbell back squat and only do leg extensions, there would be something fundamentally wrong with their soul to the point where they’re so untrustable and weak-willed that I don’t think they would, even if they got bigger quads, they would ultimately fail because they never barbell back squatted. They skipped a crucial step in life, and I don’t think that will end well for them. So the other thing I was gonna say is the value of an email list is greater than the value of a social media audience because…

0:30:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Agreed.

0:30:39.6 Mike Vacanti: That email list is reachable whenever you want at the drop of a hat. And your social media audience, as we now know, accounts with millions of followers, tens of millions of followers who struggle with reach, I shouldn’t say struggle with reach. Everyone with a big audience struggles “with reach” compared to that same audience size five years ago.

0:31:06.4 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:31:07.2 Mike Vacanti: And so lead magnets are what builds an email list. Building an email list is the insurance policy of your business. And so we’re kind of splitting hairs here. Jordan and I are both very in favor of using lead magnets and building an email list. So whether it’s A or S, tomato, tomahto, but I got it in S-tier.

0:31:29.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:31:30.6 Mike Vacanti: Three, leverage referrals with a structured system.

0:31:36.0 Jordan Syatt: I feel like this whole thing is either gonna be S, A or F.

0:31:41.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s binary. I think it’s S or F. I don’t think it’s… Ready? Did you write yours?

0:31:47.3 Jordan Syatt: Ready.

0:31:47.8 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three.

0:31:50.6 Jordan Syatt: F.

0:31:51.2 Mike Vacanti: F-tier, F minus. You are failing.

0:31:55.8 Jordan Syatt: Fail.

0:31:56.2 Mike Vacanti: Failing. Imagine signing up for someone’s fitness coaching program and after like six weeks, the coach is like, “Hey, you liking this program?” And they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, it’s going good.” And they’re like, “Sweet. If you refer me one client, I’ll give you a $25 gift card to Starbucks. If you refer me two clients, I’ll give you a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble. And if you refer me three clients, I’m gonna send you a pack of your favorite.” But like, gross. Gross. No, I don’t wanna exchange small nominal dollar amounts for me to… If I am really enjoying this service, I’m gonna tell people about it and then you’re gonna get referrals naturally, which is what has happened to both Jordan and I since we started in this business. It feels swarmy, it feels spammy. It feels someone is paying you money to sign up for you to help them, and then when they do that, you’re going for an ask in return from them.

0:32:57.1 Mike Vacanti: It doesn’t even work that well. Like, I would argue that it increases churn. So if you have a structured referral system, the percentage of your clients that are gonna get the ick from it and not stay on as long as they would otherwise far supersedes the dollar value that you would get in any potential referrals above mean referrals not having a structured system in place. Referrals aren’t bad in and of themselves. It’s how I survive now when I haven’t made content in seven years. People referring me/the little bit of SEO I’m living off of is how I get new clients. But you get referrals by delivering a very good service to your clients. You don’t have some fancy-shmancy structure with incentives. That’s getting into like weird pyramid MLM nonsense.

0:33:47.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s like a prostitution ring. Yeah, it’s the…

0:33:50.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m not gonna go… A prostitution ring.

0:33:54.4 Jordan Syatt: The key phrase that Grok used that makes this F-tier is a structured referral. It’s the structured referral system. Your structure is, be a great coach.

0:34:06.2 Mike Vacanti: Boom.

0:34:07.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s your structure. Be a great coach, communicate well with your clients, deliver what you’re gonna deliver, deliver what you said you’re gonna deliver, and then deliver even more than that. You over-deliver, you make it an incredible experience, and over a long time, you will have people referring to you. Now, here’s one thing you can do outside of the structured system, ’cause I’ve known business coaches who’ve even told me when I was early on, being like, “Here’s what you do.” I thought this was the weirdest thing. They said when someone cancels, when someone ends their coaching with you, this is when you send them, “Hey, by the way, it’s been wonderful working with you. If you have any friends or people who you think would also like working with me, I’d really appreciate you putting us in contact.” I’m like, wait, you’re waiting until they’ve decided to cancel to run this scheme? That makes no sense to me.

0:34:55.1 Jordan Syatt: But what might be a tool you may want to implement, which, by the way, I’ve literally never done this. I’ve never done this, but I would say this is a better option. Let’s say you have someone who was referred to you, right? A client was referred to you by another client and say, “Hey, so-and-so reached out to me,” or, “So-and-so recommended you. I’m really excited to work with you,” whatever it is. Screenshot, story, be like, “I love when I get referrals like this. It means I’m doing my job well. Thank you so much.” Just show that other clients have referred people to you without asking people to refer people to you. That is a much more natural, organic, and it just feels like you’re proud of it, which you should be proud of it. If your business is surviving off of referrals or if you’re just getting referrals, it means you’re doing a really good job. You should be proud of that. So share that, and it may be other clients who hadn’t thought of it before will be like, “Oh, shit, I’ve got a couple of friends who might want to work with you,” just as that reminder without you having to deliberately ask them for it. So that… And again, I’ve never done this, but if there’s one sort of middle ground here, that’s where I would say that might be a good option.

0:36:17.2 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s really smart. I think that’s a really smart suggestion. Yeah.

0:36:20.6 Jordan Syatt: But other than that, this structured referral system is not something I’m a fan of at all.

0:36:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Four, run low-barrier-entry offers, challenges, trials, or mini-programs.

0:36:35.1 Jordan Syatt: If we have the exact same thing, it’s gonna be crazy.

0:36:37.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s impossible. It’s impossible because I did something unconventional. Did you also?

0:36:45.6 Jordan Syatt: I sort of did something unconventional.

0:36:47.3 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three.

0:36:49.9 Jordan Syatt: B-plus. B-plus!

0:36:51.0 Mike Vacanti: Holy! Dialed! Dialed!

0:36:57.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy!

0:36:58.3 Mike Vacanti: Dialed!

0:36:59.6 Jordan Syatt: Wow!

0:37:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Take it away, Jordan.

0:37:02.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy!

0:37:03.8 Mike Vacanti: Wow!

0:37:05.0 Jordan Syatt: What a build-up.

0:37:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Maybe I wasn’t being influenced by you. Maybe we were just in sync.

0:37:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, my gosh, dude. That just made my week.

0:37:12.9 Mike Vacanti: Wow.

0:37:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Especially with the “It’s impossible. It’s impossible.”

0:37:16.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s like when we found out our firstborns have the same middle name and we didn’t know it for like two years.

0:37:24.6 Jordan Syatt: Did we tell that story on the podcast?

0:37:26.4 Mike Vacanti: No. No, we didn’t.

0:37:27.8 Jordan Syatt: It was like two weeks ago, I was like…

0:37:30.4 Mike Vacanti: When you were in Minnesota. We were driving.

0:37:32.2 Jordan Syatt: I was like, “What’s her middle name?” And you said it, and I was like, “Shut up!” You were like, “What? That’s my middle… That’s my daughter’s middle name.” All right. B-plus, dude. All right, so this is wild.

0:37:48.2 Mike Vacanti: I have some ideas. Or you go.

0:37:50.1 Jordan Syatt: No, no, you go first. You go first.

0:37:51.8 Mike Vacanti: No, were you just structuring them in your head or what was… Usually you don’t take a pause like that.

0:37:58.0 Jordan Syatt: I literally forgot what I had rated as B-plus. So I was trying to remember.

0:38:08.3 Mike Vacanti: Here’s… So I’m gonna read again. Run low barrier entry offers, challenges, trials, or mini programs, which is a great strategy. I like it a lot. It allows… So if you’re offering one-on-one fitness coaching for $300 to $500 per month or more, or a little less if you’re just getting started, maybe you’re a little bit under there. If you’ve been doing it for a long time, more than there, there’s a pretty wide range of reasonably acceptable monthly prices. It can be beneficial to have some of your audience join a free or, what probably makes more sense is a low price point challenge so that they can get a taste of what it’s like working with you. Because once they see that, wow, on this $49 challenge, this coach is giving me such incredible value and I’m really enjoying these interactions, that I actually am potentially interested in this person’s one-on-one coaching, this higher-level coaching. That’s the benefit, or that’s one of the benefits, I should say. It’s not a great revenue stream in and of itself until way down the road, which we talk about a lot in the mentorship in more detail.

0:39:23.9 Mike Vacanti: However, it’s a good strategy for giving more people a taste of what working with you on a paid service is like. The reason why I don’t have it higher is it’s not easy. Building multiple things isn’t easy. You’re posting long-form content on YouTube or a podcast. You’re making reels that are going to Instagram, TikTok, shorts, Facebook. You’re all over the place. You’re working with your current clients. You are doing a bunch of different things. So then to periodically roll out low price point challenges that you need to build excitement for, market, run, deliver the service, it’s just more time and energy and effort that I actually didn’t do this for that reason, actually, because it was just more work. So you don’t need to do this to build a successful business, but it can be beneficial for sure.

0:40:21.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I think for you, you never needed to. You built a wildly successful one-on-one client roster where you just never… Why would I do that when I’m just getting one-on-one clients already? So I feel like for you it was not necessary to add that extra work.

0:40:40.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:40:40.7 Jordan Syatt: Whereas, because it is extra work, and if you’re killing it with one-on-ones, probably not worth it. If you already have a ton of people coming in, you’ve got a full client roster, do not degrade your ability to work with your one-on-ones for this challenge. It’s a bad idea. But so I did this early on. Even not early on, I did it for one-on-one coaching, basically where I did… I didn’t do a lower price point one-on-one. I did challenges. And that’s really the word in this Grok prompt that got me to be like, it’s gotta be a B-plus. Challenges are a really effective way to get people to sign up for a program. And a short-term challenge, I wouldn’t recommend 12 weeks. 12 weeks is a long time. You get a huge amount of drop-off. It sounds great, you feel like you’re delivering something amazing, but the amount of people who drop off by the end of week six, seven, eight is pretty significant. A four-to-six-week challenge is plenty, and you get much better retention and much better carryover to if they want to become one-on-one.

0:41:42.4 Jordan Syatt: So I would run these challenges that did incredibly well. They were essentially small group coaching, and they would be challenges, and they were strength… I did strength-based challenges. So let’s see who can add the most to their squat, bench press, deadlift type stuff. The first one I ever ran was called the Get Strong Challenge, and I gave away cash prizes to the person who added the most percentage-wise to their squat, bench press, deadlift. And they had to send me videos. Everyone had to send videos of their max lifts beforehand. And I had to do that to make sure that there wouldn’t be cheating. Because if someone sent a video of their max lift and it was easy, I’m like, “Well, that’s not your max lift.” And by the way, my audience at that time was powerlifters. So I wouldn’t do that specific challenge now, but I would do other, whether it’s nutrition challenges, whether it’s just general health challenges, mobility challenges, step count challenges, absolutely. Nutrition tracking challenges. I did a calorie cycling challenge with the Inner Circle in the 2019, 2020 era. So there are many ways to do challenges.

0:42:48.5 Jordan Syatt: And the way that we would do the prizes with the calorie cycling challenge in the Inner Circle was we didn’t want to do it based off of pictures. We wanted to do it based off of how it actually impacted your life. So we had people submit these written surveys of like, “Hey, what was your life like before this? What was your life during this? What are you planning to do after this?” And basically we had to go through all of these written, which was a tremendous amount of work. But then from there, we essentially subjectively picked out who we think the winners would be and then give prizes that way. A huge amount of work, but then also a huge amount of people would then go into one-on-one coaching, go into the Inner Circle. So challenges are an unbelievably effective way to get people into your ecosystem. And the people who are most likely to buy from you are people who have already bought from you. So the hardest part is just getting that first, “Hey, I’m gonna take my card out, I’m gonna trust this person, I’m gonna join.” Once someone’s done that, and especially once they’ve done that and loved what you’ve given them, the odds of them buying again are astronomical.

0:43:59.6 Jordan Syatt: So something like a challenge that’s a little bit lower price for a relatively brief period of time is just such an unbelievably effective way to get people in your ecosystem to then potentially have them be with you for a much longer period of time in a one-on-one setting. And oftentimes these people are the ones who will say, “I don’t know if I can manage this cost of one-on-one coaching.” So they do this lower-priced challenge. And then as soon as the challenge is over, they’re like, “Oh, I can make it work,” because they see the value in what you have. Now all of a sudden they can make it work because they trust you more and they appreciate you more. But they couldn’t justify it before because they didn’t have that trust yet.

0:44:36.2 Mike Vacanti: Well said.

0:44:36.9 Jordan Syatt: That was crazy. That made my whole day.

0:44:39.5 Mike Vacanti: That was insane. That was insane. Number five, optimize your website and Google presence.

0:44:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Man, if this was 2018, it would be a very different answer.

0:44:53.1 Mike Vacanti: Ready?

0:44:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:44:54.3 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three. I have a B.

0:44:57.0 Jordan Syatt: I have A. Oh, you have B?

0:44:59.9 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:45:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I have B. You have A.

0:45:02.6 Mike Vacanti: Just because… So the elephant in the room here is Google presence. Who uses Google anymore? Search traffic over the last few years has shifted from google.com to a wide variety of AI bots, Grok, Gemini, ChatGPT, perplexity. I don’t even know the names of all of them. That doesn’t mean that having long-form written content on the internet is not valuable for reaching new audience. In fact, roughly 20% of fitness business mentorship applications over the last three months, so one out of five, have been… We have a “how I found you.” Actually, I don’t know if we have a “how I found you,” but they’ve said it in the… I think we have a “how I found you.” They have been via ChatGPT or another AI agent, which is pretty crazy.

0:46:07.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s crazy.

0:46:08.4 Mike Vacanti: And that’s a function of our podcast, obviously, but also the website that we have for our podcast and the transcripts of the podcast. Man, this is… I don’t know, I have so much to say on all of these, but I guess we just have to… I have to force myself to be economical with my words, which I’m not doing presently. The benefit of a website is… The main benefit of a website is you’re making long-form written content, which is helping you better understand… By the way, we have a whole two-and-a-half-hour course on this in the fitness business mentorship. I know I keep saying that, but it’s just naturally what’s going on here. You’re gonna get better… You’re gonna better understand the topics that you’re writing about. Making a 60-second reel versus making a long article that you spend hours and hours researching, writing, and editing. Writing helps you think more clearly, as does editing. You’re gonna be able to make better short-form content as a result of making good long-form content. Within an article, you’re gonna have five to seven short-form content ideas related to that article.

0:47:18.3 Mike Vacanti: There’s still an element of professionalism for everyone, I would argue, between just having a social media presence and having a social media presence plus a website. A website, even if you’re not making a ton of long-form content on it, is a hub that people can go to in addition to your social media where they can see, they can learn about your program, they can learn about potentially people you’ve worked with, they can see some of the longer-form stuff you’ve done. It’s a place where they actually apply for coaching, which is important. We want to have a business structure so people are applying for coaching in a formal, streamlined process rather than just DMing you, “Yo, how much your coaching?” and then you reply, “Hey, my coaching is…” You’re not gonna convert anybody doing that, which is why we talk about not selling in the DMs and instead having this formal process when someone signs up for fitness coaching. There’s a whole bunch more, but in the interest of time, I’m gonna leave it there. I had a B, I moved it to an A. I think it’s slightly more important than challenges. But yeah, you should definitely have a website. It’s less important than having a strong social media presence where you’re giving valuable content.

0:48:37.2 Jordan Syatt: Here’s the cool thing about a website in 2026 is it’s so easy to make a great-looking website that is just clean, simple, professional. It doesn’t cost… When I built my… So my first website was free. I just used a free version of WordPress. It looked horrible. It was terrible. It was just a free template. Then I waited until I was making enough through my online coaching to actually fund a website design, which was thousands and thousands of dollars to redo the actual website. And now you can do it… You could do it essentially for free. You could use AI to help you build an incredible website, or the templates now are just insanely… They’re beautiful. And you don’t need anything… You don’t need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on it. So making a website is so easy, it’s almost like, why not? Why wouldn’t you? And then on top of that, never mind the articles, all the benefits that you said, I think the biggest one is, yes, the way Google works now is different and people don’t use Google as much as they did before, which is pretty crazy when you think about it.

0:49:54.1 Jordan Syatt: But all of these other AI platforms are still scraping the internet for these topics. And so they’re still going… I’ll regularly go on and I’ll just ask, “Hey, could you just recommend a bunch of health and fitness podcasts for me? Could you recommend some health and fitness professionals to follow?” just to see who it recommends. And without question, having a website, having a strong presence online is going to lead to you being more likely to be recommended on these platforms. And that’s what people are searching for. So is it the number one most important thing? No, but it’s very easy to do in 2026 and it’s stupid not to.

0:50:35.7 Mike Vacanti: Well said. We got through five. We were trying to get through 10. We got through five. We had a lot of fun this episode. We’re gonna keep going next week. We’re gonna see how many we can get through, but that is where we’re leaving off today. Thank you very much for listening. The fitness business mentorship price is increasing by a pretty substantial amount very soon. So if you have any interest in joining the program, now is the time to apply. There will only be one sale in the 12 to 18-month window that we’re in right now. We haven’t had one for a while. We don’t do sales very often. And so when the price goes up here, we like to notify everybody, give you a chance to join at the lower rate before it goes up. I don’t right hook ever, but I’m right hooking. So if you’re interested, fitnessbusinessmentorship.com, hit apply, fill out your application, we’ll get back to you within 48 hours.

0:51:31.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s it. See you.