Episode 269: The Top 10 Ways To Get New Online Personal Training Clients (Part 2)

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

0:00:12.3 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.1 Mike Vacanti: The fitness business mentorship price is going up very soon.

0:00:17.4 Jordan Syatt: Way up.

0:00:18.7 Mike Vacanti: Way up.

0:00:19.3 Jordan Syatt: Way up. It is increasing dramatically. Not for current active members.

0:00:24.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s right. Only for new people applying to join.

0:00:26.2 Jordan Syatt: Well, if you apply now and you join before the price goes up.

0:00:31.4 Mike Vacanti: Correct.

0:00:31.8 Jordan Syatt: Then you get in.

0:00:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Correct. Which is why we’re telling you.

0:00:34.1 Jordan Syatt: Which is why we’re telling you. So if you apply now and you’re accepted, you’ll get in before the price dramatically increases, astronomically. If you’re an active member and then you cancel and then you want to come back, then you’ll have to pay the new price. But if you get in now and you are an active member now and you stay a member, your price will never increase. So if you want to join the mentorship, if you want to get access to all of our courses on the psychology of coaching, on training program design, on understanding social media, content creation, on systems, assessments.

0:01:16.1 Mike Vacanti: Instagram Growth Guide and Instagram Growth Guide Part 2, which are both phenomenal.

0:01:19.8 Jordan Syatt: Yep. And then our weekly live Q&As with the mentorship where we answer all of your questions in depth. We do hot seats where we review mentees’ social media platforms.

0:01:32.3 Mike Vacanti: Shout out Mo, shout out Maureen and her husband. Let’s go.

0:01:35.7 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:01:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Had a great hot seat.

0:01:39.8 Jordan Syatt: If you want to apply to join, now is the time because if you wait, the price is astronomically increasing. Just so you can have insight into our strategy, the little back end here, we do two sales per year generally. One sale is when we give a discount on the current price, and the other “sale” is where we are increasing the price. Every year we increase the price. This is that annual point where we are increasing the price. Inflation, oil, fucking groceries.

0:02:10.2 Mike Vacanti: We’re also just massively underpriced relative to our competitors. Our competitors are like 4x more expensive.

0:02:17.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s true. And they suck.

0:02:20.3 Mike Vacanti: Objectively. Objectively.

0:02:22.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s true. Yes. They’re bad.

0:02:24.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s a swarmy industry. Masterminds and gurus and like, yes. And so…

0:02:29.7 Jordan Syatt: Go in and cold DM people every day and then use this template and da, da, da, da, da, da. Fuck your templates.

0:02:36.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I’m not selling my great aunt a high-ticket coaching package. All right, buddy? I’m not doing it.

0:02:44.4 Jordan Syatt: The only high-ticket coaching, the only time you’ll hear that phrase on this podcast and in the mentorship is when we’re talking shit about people who call themselves high-ticket coaches.

0:02:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Just comedy. It’s comedy is what it is.

0:02:57.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s gross. It’s gross comedy.

0:02:59.5 Mike Vacanti: That too. To apply, go to fitnessbusinessmentorship.com. On the homepage, you’ll see apply, it’s a little button. Click that, fill out the short application. I’ll get back to you in 48 hours. The link is also in the show notes or in the YouTube description. And now, without further ado…

0:03:17.3 Jordan Syatt: We should put a note under the apply button that says high-ticket coaches need not apply.

0:03:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Let’s do it. Let’s do it. We can make that adjustment easy. We are picking up with strategies. We’re ranking strategies on how. I’m actually just gonna read it so that I don’t butcher it. The 10 best ways to get new online personal training clients/best ways to grow your online fitness coaching business. We’re not talking about short-term. We’re talking about a long, stable, steady business. If you listened to last week’s episode, you heard us go through the first five. We are picking up with number six, Jordan.

0:03:55.6 Jordan Syatt: If you missed last week, go listen to it. First five, we had one instance that was just incredible, made my entire day.

0:04:04.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:04:05.2 Jordan Syatt: Just because we’re doing this thing, we write down sort of like Jeopardy style what our rankings are, and we’re both surprised by those rankings.

0:04:15.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And it was just a great episode. If you want to skip ahead of the first 15 minutes of us having fun, there were a couple of good PSAs in there, some MMA guessing, but if you’re just brass tacks down to business, short on time, jump to the 15, 18-minute mark, somewhere in that range. Listen to the good stuff. Today, we’re diving right in.

0:04:33.5 Jordan Syatt: Let’s do it.

0:04:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Number six: Engage actively in communities and groups.

0:04:40.6 Jordan Syatt: Ready.

0:04:41.5 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three.

0:04:44.7 Jordan Syatt: That is an S-tier.

0:04:45.5 Mike Vacanti: S-tier strategy.

0:04:48.7 Jordan Syatt: If you’re not watching the video for some reason, maybe you’re driving, that’s fair. But we both gave it an S. We both gave… Yeah.

0:04:56.1 Mike Vacanti: We both wrote S independently on our pieces of paper. I’ll let you start on this one.

0:05:00.1 Jordan Syatt: This is so underrated. And for some… People just either don’t think about it, they undervalue it. And I feel like you and me and people in our generation of coaches, not even age, but people who came up in that time, it was so common. It was just like with all the forums and everything, it was just like you were interacting, you were engaging with real people. And then you were commenting, you’re like, “Oh, you got to know as like one person in the forums or a couple people in the forums, like, oh, this person knows what the fuck they’re talking about. This person is helpful, this person is kind.” And that’s how a bunch of people grew their following is through just being the people in the forums as the person they know what they’re talking about and they’re happy to help. Nowadays, with everyone having their own platform, it’s a lot of people just thinking, “Okay, all I need to do is just make my own content and not ever interact with people.” And that can work. It’s not a bad strategy, but especially if you don’t have a big audience yet or a big audience period, by engaging in groups, going to social media groups, like let’s say you’re a mom and you want to work with other moms. Going to moms’ Facebook groups, going to various mom communities online. And it doesn’t even have to be a fitness community. It could just be a mom community where you know moms are struggling with finding the time and having energy, just having an active presence in there and letting them know that you’re there to help. And you don’t have to sell your stuff. You shouldn’t even be selling your stuff. You shouldn’t even be being like, “Hey, I’m a personal trainer, you can work with me here.” Don’t be doing that. Literally just say what you’re doing. “Hey, I’m a personal trainer. I struggle with energy sometimes.” And like just give updates on who you are and what you’re doing. If someone says, “Oh, I’m so exhausted, does anyone have any advice?” “Yeah, here’s what I would recommend. Make sure you’re doing X, Y, and Z.” And leave that comment there, that’s it. And just be consistently present in these groups as someone who’s kind, intelligent, thoughtful, and willing to help people for free. I know numerous people who built the backbone of their business off of this as their starting point.

0:07:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Susan built a massive online one-on-one coaching business doing this and being really helpful in groups. Yeah, you nailed it. You nailed it. There’s this idea that just posting alone is the optimal strategy. And it is part of the strategy. Posting content on your feed, on your page is eventually going to lead to you reaching more and more people. However, you can also… Because what we’re talking about is relationships, whether it’s one-to-one or one-to-many. And when you’re posting and you have people interacting with you, that is a relationship. You also are doing like… I’m not thinking of the proper analogy, but you’re out there building one-on-one relationships when you’re helping people in these communities and in these groups. So you are not posting a link to a YouTube video you made. You’re not posting a link back to, “Hey, follow me on Instagram.” None of that. You’re being an active, helpful member of the community, whatever group it is. And Facebook groups is probably the most common place for this. I was doing this on Yahoo answers back in 2012. I know Jordan was doing this in various places as well.

0:08:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Fitocracy was a big one back in the day. There were all these forums. Quora. Facebook is probably the best place for groups and communities at this point but this isn’t self-promotion. This is genuinely trying to help someone with a problem over and over and over again in these groups. And not only do you build a relationship with that person who you’re helping and build goodwill with them, any onlookers who have similar questions are going to see your answer. Like Jordan said, you’re going to become the guy or the girl in that group who is helpful on XYZ subject. You’re going to develop a positive reputation, and over time, that’s going to lead to follows, that’s going to lead to people eventually signing up for your one-on-one coaching. Yeah, it’s an incredibly effective strategy. It’s not quick, it’s not flashy, it’s not fancy, it takes a little bit of work. You’re not immediately converting a high-ticket coaching client. You are… I used this analogy last time, I’ll use it again. You’re building the foundation of the house that is going to be your business for 10, 15, 20 plus years into the future. And this is a very good strategy for doing that.

0:09:39.2 Jordan Syatt: S-tier strategy.

0:09:40.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s an S-tier. It’s a great strategy. It’s an S… It’s a super strategy, supreme.

0:09:44.8 Jordan Syatt: It works bigly.

0:09:48.4 Mike Vacanti: The Donald. There was a… I don’t remember where I heard it, if it was in an old podcast episode or in an old clip that got posted from us, but you just dropped the Obama impression out of nowhere at one point. It was really funny. That’s what you did. Number seven: Use email marketing to nurture leads.

0:10:17.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:10:18.5 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three.

0:10:23.5 Jordan Syatt: A.

0:10:24.5 Mike Vacanti: It’s an A-tier. It’s an A-tier.

0:10:27.6 Jordan Syatt: Wow. Let’s go. We both said A.

0:10:29.6 Mike Vacanti: We’re pretty in sync. Do you know why I did this? On our 30 healthiest foods episodes, I woke up the next day and I was like, eggs are awesome and chia seeds are lame. I was just like, what am I doing with my life here? I feel like I misappropriately ranked a few things, and I woke up with that heavy on my brain and I just said, you know what, it’s okay that Jordan likes fiber a little bit more than I do. I’m done being influenced. So now we’re doing separate ratings. All right, email leads, A.

0:11:11.9 Jordan Syatt: You go first. You go first, please.

0:11:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Thank you. I’m gonna first say the reason why it’s not S-tier, because in last week’s episode, which you should have already listened to, we talked about how important email marketing is briefly and one of the main reasons, which is that you have direct access to another human being. If you email someone, it’s going in their inbox. If you post something on social media, if you post something on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Jenny from wherever might follow you, but she’s not necessarily going to see that post. Whereas if she’s on your email list and you email her, she’s going to see that email. She doesn’t necessarily have to open it, but you’re going to have an at bat. She’s going to see the subject line. You have direct access to people on your email list. So it’s important to grow your email list. This says to nurture leads, which I like, we like, after a certain point. However, you don’t want to spend too much time, if any time, nurturing leads on your email list until you have a certain size email list. It’s just not a good use of time. If you have six people on your email list, you don’t want to spend four hours writing the most amazing value-based email because only six people are going to see it max at 100% open rate. Maybe a couple of them forward it, maybe eight people see it, maybe four people see it. But if you take that time and you put it into public-facing content, what is going to happen is you have the opportunity for way more people to see it, leading to more email list signups, leading to more social media following, leading to more potential people who could sign up for your coaching.

0:12:45.9 Mike Vacanti: So early on when your email list is small, you can… I’m not even going to get into the detailed strategies we have a two-hour course on this in the mentorship. But if you spending less time “nurturing leads,” we have strategies for sending emails, but it’s not going to be a substantial amount of time, doesn’t make as much sense. Whereas if you have 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 people on your email list, which might seem like a tremendous amount if you only have 11 right now, but you don’t grow linearly. You grow on a J-hook curve is what we’re aiming for, at least. In the future, nurturing those leads is a good idea. And even if you’re not primarily focused on your email list, there are still strategies for emailing your list on a semi-regular basis to keep in contact with/help/direct people towards longer-form or shorter-form content that you want them to see. And an email list and email marketing is an incredibly effective place to sell during launches or sales.

0:13:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I’ll say a couple of things. Number one is…

0:13:58.4 Mike Vacanti: Did I say too much? I’m not good at going first. I never go first. I don’t want to cover the whole subject.

0:14:01.6 Jordan Syatt: No. You did great. It was fantastic.

0:14:03.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but what’s the strategy? Am I supposed to leave a few breadcrumbs?

0:14:06.9 Jordan Syatt: No, no, you don’t leave anything. You leave no stone unturned.

0:14:09.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay. All right.

0:14:12.0 Jordan Syatt: I just sent an email the other day, and I used to send emails almost every day for a period of time. Now I’m pretty sporadic with it, and I’ll cover that in a second. But I just sent one the other day with a link to a few podcasts, and the number of people who reply to the email being like, “Oh, thank you, it’s so good to hear from you. I got off of social media,” or, “I haven’t seen your stuff on social media. Thank you for the reminder,” and then they go back and start listening to my podcast again. Just ’cause you have people who follow you on social media doesn’t mean they’re on it, doesn’t mean they’re seeing your stuff. And it was bewildering even to me how many people were like, “Thank you so much for sending this. I haven’t seen your stuff in a long time. I needed this reminder, and this was a great episode. Thank you for sending it.” So it doesn’t even have to be for sales. It could just be to make sure they’re seeing your content and staying in contact with them. That’s number one. The other thing I want to say is the one thing I don’t like about the way that this was phrased, and this is the standard marketing way of phrasing it, but I hate it when people say “nurturing your leads.” It’s fucking obnoxious. It’s just communicating with people who follow you.

0:15:18.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s dehumanizing.

0:15:19.3 Jordan Syatt: Yes, it is. It’s essentially looking at the people who are on your email list as just purely potential dollars. When you frame it… It’s sort of like when personal trainers call themselves entrepreneurs. You’re not a fucking entrepreneur. You’re a personal trainer. All right? When you say, “I’m an entrepreneur,” that changes your entire framework for how you’re gonna approach things. Now it’s like everything has to be this amazing business strategy, “I’m an entrepreneur.” It’s like, no, just be a good personal trainer and help people. That’s plenty. You’re not an entrepreneur. Trust me, I’ve seen entrepreneurs. I’m not an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are a different breed. They are. It’s different. It’s not better or worse, it’s just different. You’re a personal trainer, which is amazing, be proud of that. So in terms of email frequency, we have an entire course in the fitness business mentorship, which the price is increasing astronomically again, just so you know. But an entire course on email marketing, on getting a lead magnet set up, all this stuff, blah, blah, blah. I’m gonna leave it there, but like what you said about making the vast majority of it public-facing content is the most important thing until you reach probably about 3,000 people on your list. And then sending consistent emails is plenty, but it could just be links to your content that maybe they missed that you posted on social media.

0:16:49.1 Mike Vacanti: Well said. We’re in sync. I’ll just say one last quick thing on that one, which is in the mentorship we have a monthly challenge every single month, which is an area of focus for the majority of the people in the group at least to be focused on and building their business and oftentimes it’s related to email marketing because even if you’re not sending to your list frequently, working on building your list continuously is a really, really good idea. But yeah, I’m with you, dude. Nurture leads is like makes me wanna puke. Which, by the way, that’s what I expected the whole list to be, was stuff like that.

0:17:18.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:17:27.1 Mike Vacanti: So I’m really pleasantly surprised with Grok on this one, old Groko. Oh, by the way, yesterday… Well, no, this is… Yeah, I mean, yesterday, but now this episode’s coming out in the future, was my birthday. I went to a movie with my dad in the afternoon. Have you seen previews for… By the way, I haven’t been to a movie in the theater for like four years. Project Hail Mary with Ryan Gosling?

0:17:49.3 Jordan Syatt: I’ve seen a poster for it, but I don’t know what it is.

0:17:52.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m not even really gonna tell you what it is because it’s better to just experience not really knowing but… I don’t even remember what made me think of that. Oh, Grok, Rocky. Grok Rocky is the name of a character in the movie who’s awesome. He’s the man. Well, he’s not technically, but he’s awesome.

0:18:15.7 Jordan Syatt: How was your birthday? Was it good?

0:18:17.8 Mike Vacanti: It was great. It was great. Yeah.

0:18:19.3 Jordan Syatt: How old did you turn?

0:18:20.7 Mike Vacanti: 39, big three-nine.

0:18:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go, baby.

0:18:23.8 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna be… I’m not even gonna say it. I’m gonna be pretty jacked at 40, I have decided. I’m not gonna say the name of the doctor.

0:18:38.2 Jordan Syatt: The name of the people who own.

0:18:52.6 Mike Vacanti: Yes, yes, yes. He was a Jewish doctor. Yeah. I told you that when I got sick a few weeks ago, it was like a reset for me in terms of nutrition and a bunch of things and I’m pretty dialed.

0:19:03.0 Jordan Syatt: The year of just…

0:19:05.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh man, I usually do that at New Year’s, not at, I don’t know.

0:19:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, but that’s what you did this New Year’s. You said it’s the year of just minimal ingredients, right?

0:19:16.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. You know what? The year of the micros was really the only year that lasted for the year. I will say what I’ve… I’m several weeks completely off of… I haven’t been on Instagram in months, but I’m several weeks completely off short-form social media, YouTube shorts, no X on my phone at all over that time period. No scrolling whatsoever, period. And my brain feels so much better. I’m clearer, I’m calmer, I’m less dopamine-seeking in other areas of my life, I think because of it. Processed foods being one of them, and also just inputs of any kind. Like for example, 80% of the time if I’m in the car, I just am not listening to anything. I’m not on the phone. I’m just thinking.

0:20:18.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s incredible.

0:20:20.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And it’s not my doing. It’s like…

0:20:22.7 Jordan Syatt: It is.

0:20:24.0 Mike Vacanti: But it’s really not. It’s a function of being fortunate enough to have found this pocket where I haven’t been on social media, but really realizing the benefits specifically related to not consuming short-form content. Anyway, I’ll get off my moral high horse, which wasn’t what I was intending to do. Eight: Partner with complementary businesses or influencers.

0:20:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Ready.

0:20:50.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m not ready. And I’ll just think out loud. This is a hard one for me because it’s something that I did very little of.

0:21:03.5 Jordan Syatt: That should tell you all you need to know.

0:21:05.1 Mike Vacanti: No, ’cause I know a lot of people who did it effectively. I think this one really depends on personality.

0:21:15.3 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:21:17.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:21:17.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m taking a hard stance on this one.

0:21:19.6 Mike Vacanti: Wow. I think we’re gonna be very… By the way… Well, all right, well, we’re gonna be very far apart then because I didn’t really do this, but… And you know what? Yeah.

0:21:30.7 Jordan Syatt: I just influenced you the other way.

0:21:33.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, whatever I do the opposite?

0:21:37.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:21:38.7 Mike Vacanti: No, what happened was… Do you want to know what happened? I thought of a specific time when you did this so effectively that that bumped me up.

0:21:45.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, interesting. Well, that might make me look like a hypocrite. One, two, three. F-minus.

0:21:52.6 Mike Vacanti: B.

0:21:54.0 Jordan Syatt: All right, Mike put a B, I put F-minus.

0:21:59.8 Mike Vacanti: Collabing, even if less effective than it was in 2015… And by the way, B is the lowest score I’ve given so far other than 1F. So out of eight, this is the second lowest behind three Ss, two As, and a B-plus. I’m talking specifically about collaborating in public-facing content as a strategy to mutually grow audience. I’m not talking about like getting into a formal business relationship. I’m not talking about affiliate marketing. I’m not talking about any of that world. I’m focused specifically, so maybe it’s slightly less accurate, on collabs. Doing a YouTube video together for my channel and then doing a YouTube video together for your channel where we both kind of shout each other out and go follow so-and-so with someone who you like, respect, have aligned values with, trust, feel good about telling your audience to go follow. Don’t go do it just because they have a big audience and if they’re like a scummy person or you don’t agree with their stuff. There’s so many ways you can do it like inviting each other on each other’s podcast, guest posting back in the day was a big one, which is far less common now.

0:23:17.6 Mike Vacanti: You could do some kind of like email list swap with someone else who has a similar size email list where you shout out a piece of their content, they shout out a piece of your content. There used to be names for this kind of stuff. I think this gets spammy. Remember those groups? It’d be like groups of 25 people and it’s like, “You like my stuff, I’ll like your stuff.”?

0:23:39.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:23:39.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I was never into that. But I’ve just thought of times where it’s a symbiotic relationship where it’s a win-win, both people benefit from sharing audience, especially outside of industry. That’s even better if it’s someone who’s not in the fitness industry.

0:24:04.4 Jordan Syatt: I agree with that completely. Like a finance person and a fitness person teaming up to do something together, I think that is, that’s peak. That’s incredible. I’ll say, I think if this was like 10 years ago, absolutely, I’d be like, this can be, especially whether it’s cross-posting, guest posting, doing collabs on channels. I think the best way to do it now is either, more of like either a podcast or like a live together where you then make clips and then you can essentially share on each other’s pages and do collab posts, I think that can be beneficial. But I’m gonna take it more from an overhead perspective of I just want you to focus on what you’re doing and not… Like it’s the whole like, I don’t want people to spend so much time trying to network and trying to game the system and like, “Well, who can I collab with?” and then cold DM or reach out, “Hey, I got an idea that could benefit both of our businesses.” I just want you to be the best coach in the world and I just want you to make really great content on your own.

0:25:21.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s really what I want you to focus on. If this was again 10 years ago, I would have said, yeah, there’s definitely an opportunity to spend some time doing this because I think it made a much bigger impact 10 years ago. And especially because the benefit back then was you get new followers and those followers are definitively gonna see your posts. Now you get new followers and they might not see your posts. It’s just so different.

0:25:51.7 Mike Vacanti: Same with followers that you earn yourself through organic reach though.

0:25:54.9 Jordan Syatt: Correct. I completely agree 100%. That’s why like the value of just trying to chase followers is, it’s just not a good idea in general. And I think this is a strategy to essentially chase followers and I do think going into a different professional realm and collaborating with someone who is not in the fitness world is probably a legitimately decent strategy right now. If you have colleagues or people that you know who are in a different industry, I think that would make far more sense.

0:26:27.6 Mike Vacanti: And even within the fitness industry, the pie is big enough that we’re in agreement that going outside of the industry is better but if both gain from each other’s audience, it’s not like, okay, I’m never going to… Like, oh no, I lost that person or they lost that person. It’s like, no, you might buy a workout program from this person, you might do one-on-one coaching with this person.

0:26:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s not a bad idea. I think it’s a bad idea right now.

0:26:59.6 Mike Vacanti: You’re taking hard stances. You’re binary. It’s S or F, and this one’s F you.

0:27:03.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s an F-minus for me.

0:27:07.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s an F-minus. It’s below. I just want to… You have it below the referral structured system.

0:27:11.3 Jordan Syatt: I should have put an F-minus for the referral structure.

0:27:13.8 Mike Vacanti: You might have. I put an F. Maybe you did put an F-minus. I’m not gonna press you, press you here. And if we want to leave out names, we can leave out names. But if there was an opportunity with someone who had like 20 times the size audience of someone listening and that person wanted you to go like teach them to deadlift, and then they would post those videos of you teaching them to deadlift on their social media and like…

0:27:35.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, I’d do that immediately. But I’m not seeking that out. I’m not like… Like if that opportunity came, I would do it for sure.

0:27:56.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but you’re not trying to like be in the weeds and be sneaky and trying to manipulate it to do that.

0:28:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes, exactly.

0:28:02.9 Mike Vacanti: I see. All right. All right. Then your ranking makes more sense. If these situations arise naturally, you bump into a friend, a colleague at a conference, and you take a picture and you both post on your stories and it’s just natural and maybe you tag the person, they tag… You’re not like, “Hey, tag me and I’ll tag you,” but if it just happens naturally, cool, beneficial win-win. But you’re not trying to like game the system and have that be your primary area of focus because then you’re not thinking about being a great coach, making helpful content, like doing the right things.

0:28:34.5 Jordan Syatt: Correct. And those opportunities will arise more frequently when you make great content because you’re a great coach and you’ve mastered the skill. I’ll also say like when I have people on my podcast and I have all these clips, I tell them, I say, “Hey, I’m gonna post a bunch of these clips and every one that features you, I’m gonna invite you as a collaborator. Under no circumstance should you feel obligated to accept this collaboration. Only do it if you like the clip and you wanna share it. I’m posting the ones that I think are the most beneficial, but if you don’t like it, you don’t wanna collaborate for any reason, do not hit accept.” And I tell them that explicitly.

0:29:11.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah, that’s awesome by you and just doing the right thing there because…

0:29:18.4 Jordan Syatt: I’ve had some people be like, “Hey, I’m gonna invite you, make sure you accept.” I’ve had people say that when I go on their podcast.

0:29:25.3 Mike Vacanti: And you’re a draw. Like getting you on a small podcast is a really big draw. So then for that person to be like, “I’m doing this to use Jordan for his audience so that he can share the clip with his audience so they come to my podcast,” that is infuriating for me. Number nine: Offer free consultations or assessments.

0:29:50.0 Jordan Syatt: I like this better where we just write it down. I think it’s more fun.

0:29:53.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s way more fun. The pod’s just getting better and better. Hit subscribe on YouTube if you’re not subscribed. What do they say? There’s this thing. “Did you know over 40% of your audience is not… Or over 40% of you who are listening are not subscribed? Hit that subscribe button. It helps us grow the channel and blah, blah, blah.” But seriously, hit subscribe. Just keep listening. All right. I don’t even know that I feel good about it here. I’ve never done this to my knowledge.

0:30:22.8 Jordan Syatt: You’ve never taken a client for free?

0:30:24.3 Mike Vacanti: Of course I have, but this is… Wow, that’s how you’re rating this one, I understand. Free consultation or assessment. Here’s how I’m thinking of it. I’m thinking of it when I was young and naive before I was even in the industry and I’m at the gym working out and then this trainer comes over and he’s like, “Hey, I can help you with this for free.” And then I’m like, “Oh, cool,” and I don’t really know what’s going on and he helps me with something and then immediately starts trying to pitch this 20 personal training package thing and I’m like, “I feel obligated ’cause you just helped me for free, but what’s going on here?” and I’m confused. So there’s some of that and then there’s some of… All right, so if this is about free clients, I have it somewhere else. Here, I’m giving two ratings. This is just… Okay, ready?

0:31:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:31:21.0 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three. So for free clients, I have this at an S, but if it’s as a strategy, and Jordan has S-plus written there. If this is a strategy for providing a free consult to then be able to sell to someone, I have it as a B because I view it as similar to running a challenge so that someone can get a taste of your services so that if they really like you, they’re more likely to sign up for your one-on-one coaching. However, I have this slightly below challenges, which I added a B-plus because challenges are scalable, so you can have 10 people or 20 people or 100 people in a low-price-point challenge and you’re putting in X amount of effort and then you’re gonna potentially have more people who will join your one-on-one coaching. Whereas this is not scalable, it’s one-on-one. So it’s the same strategy but slightly less efficient.

0:32:19.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think we’re completely in agreement. If it’s free coaching, taking on free clients especially early on, I give it S-plus. It’s like literally the best thing you can do when you’re early on. It’s just, there’s no downside, all upside.

0:32:32.3 Mike Vacanti: Allows you to build your systems, helps you become a better online coach because in-person and online coaching are a little bit different and so it… You’re potentially gonna have someone who becomes a paying client if they really like your free coaching. There’s gurus everywhere being like, “You undervalue yourself. Always charge what you’re worth.” It’s not even about that. You’re just starting your online fitness coaching business. You’re helping someone to become better at what you’re doing. You potentially have referrals, you potentially have a testimonial coming from there. Yeah, it’s a really good strategy.

0:33:05.9 Jordan Syatt: And by the way, it’s not even a one-way. They’re helping you. They’re trusting in you, they’re doing the program. And then if they get results, that will help your business. Don’t pretend like this isn’t helpful for you too. Right?

0:33:18.7 Mike Vacanti: 100%, otherwise you wouldn’t do it.

0:33:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. And by the way, if people aren’t signing up for what you’re charging, then you’re not worth that. So get off your high horse, buddy.

0:33:32.7 Mike Vacanti: The market is the market.

0:33:34.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. So in terms of the way that you interpret it, which I think is probably the accurate way that it was written, I give it a B as well. I think they, especially for in-person, it’s very effective. Like, “Come in for a free consult. Come to the gym, we’ll assess you.” It’s 100% free. There’s no bait and switch, there’s no whatever. It’s fine. Come in for free. That’s amazing for in-person coaching businesses. For online, I don’t really know what you’re gonna offer in this free consult other than just talking to them, which is fine. That’s great. You can develop a relationship. I think it’s a B. But I think there are other ways to essentially accelerate the process. I’d rather you do like either one month of free coaching or a discounted challenge type of thing to get them immediately into your coaching. That way you don’t have to go through this whole process of this free consult. Just get them into your coaching either at a lower cost or for free and then just immediately get them into that ecosystem immediately rather than going through this whole consult process.

0:34:44.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Well said. Last one, slightly shorter episode today. We got a live stream right after this with the mentorship. Number 10: List on trainer marketplaces and directories.

0:34:59.3 Jordan Syatt: That was just Grok needing to fill one more spot.

0:35:07.4 Mike Vacanti: I think you’re gonna be surprised by my answer.

0:35:09.3 Jordan Syatt: I’m sure I will.

0:35:10.9 Mike Vacanti: One, two, three. E. I’m going with E.

0:35:19.9 Jordan Syatt: I wrote F-minus.

0:35:21.3 Mike Vacanti: So this is obviously incredibly antiquated and outdated like in a social media world where people buy coaches, not coaching, you develop a relationship with someone, even if parasocial before signing up for their service, or it comes with a strong referral 99% of the time, one of those two. You’re very rarely going to a personal trainer directory and picking someone out based on their bio. The reason I gave it an E and not an F is I find this to be easy to do and very low time even if pretty darn ineffective. Whereas the referral system, which I have at an F, is actively bad for your business. It’s kind of scummy. It’s actually hurting your business. Whereas this is just like you waste 45 minutes and there’s a Hail Mary that someone signs up because they found you in a personal training directory.

0:36:46.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think it’s an absolute waste of time. I’d rather, rather than getting it onto one of these… I don’t even know where I would find a directory. I don’t know what a directory looks like. I don’t know the process of going through to get on a directory. I don’t think people use directories anymore.

0:36:47.5 Mike Vacanti: I don’t think they use them for personal trainers very often at all, if ever.

0:36:48.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it just, you know what would be greater than that is just taking the time you had spent on that and making a wildly good piece of content.

0:36:49.6 Mike Vacanti: I’ve used this for like doctors, for looking up doctors before.

0:36:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:36:55.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:36:55.5 Jordan Syatt: I just go to AI. I’m like, “Hey, I need a doctor.”

0:36:59.5 Mike Vacanti: And where do you think they’re pulling from? Directories. Are they?

0:37:04.4 Jordan Syatt: They’re probably pulling from reviews on Google.

0:37:08.1 Mike Vacanti: For sure, and directories. All right, look, it’s not a great strategy. Similar to like writing your website in chalk on the sidewalk and maybe someone sees it and goes to it. It’s not a great strategy. There’s a lot better things you can be doing. With that being said, we got a call with the mentorship right now. The price of the fitness business mentorship is going up by a substantial amount very soon. If you didn’t apply yet and you’re interested in growing your online fitness coaching business, apply now. Link is in the show notes, in the YouTube description, FitnessBusinessMentorship.com. On the homepage, you’ll see apply. Fill that out and we’ll get back to you within 48 hours. Have a wonderful day.

0:37:49.6 Jordan Syatt: High-ticket coaches need not apply. See ya.

0:37:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Goodbye.