escape the gym and the ultimate guide to online … · trading time for money with a cap on how...

THE ULTIMATEGUIDE TO ONLINE

COACHING

ESCAPE THE GYM ANDLIVE LIFE ON YOUR TERMS

I'm Rob Birkhead.Full t ime Online Coach and mentor to

ambitious PTs wanting to succeed online!

THIS IS YOUR GUIDE TO BUILDINGYOUR OWN THRIVING ONLINE

COACHING BUSINESS

Contents

Why Most 1-1 Personal Trainers Fail With Online Coaching 4

How To Acquire Clients Online (Without Sales Calls Or Facebook Ads) 5

Your Niche 6

Your Irresistible Offer 7

Getting your first 20-100 clients 11

How Do You Get Your Name Out (Without Being Famous On Social Media)? 11

How To Make Sales From Your Content 14

How Do You Price Online Coaching? 15

How Do You Make Personalised Programmes For Mass Online Clients? 18

What Is The Best Software To Use For Online Coaching? 19

How Do You “Onboard” Clients Online? 19

What’s The Best Way To Stay In Contact With So Many Clients At Once? 21

How Do You Make Sure Clients Use The Correct Form When Lifting Weights? 22

Where Should I Start With My Online Programme? 22

© Rob Birkhead 2019 2

Why Most 1-1 Personal Trainers Fail With Online Coaching There is a BIG difference between the world of Online Coaching and 1-1 Personal Training.

You see, as a 1-1 PT you’re operating within a very small bubble.

Your prospective clients are people at or near your gym, and your competition is just a few other PTs at your gym. Your gym is already providing you with a steady source of good leads - people who are clearly interested in getting in shape.

So all you have to do is be there and you have new clients within reach. I’m not saying it’s easy, but in my experience you can get away with hustling, spending more time on the gym floor talking to people and offering free sessions and make it work.

Online Coaching is a different kettle of fish...

You have millions of potential clients all around the world. So the assumption people make is it’s easier to make the big bucks online.

But here’s the thing… You’re also competing with tens of thousands of other trainers online, rather than just the 10-20 in your gym. Not only that, but people are naturally a lot more sceptical online as they don’t get to meet you in person and talk with you face-to-face.

So, it’s very easy to blend in online or be dismissed as a fraud if you don’t know what you’re doing...

So does this mean Online Coaching an impossible game?

Actually, no! I started off with zero PT experience, no clients and no testimonials, and yet over the past 5 years I’ve been able to build an Online Coaching business that has made over three-quarters of a million pounds in revenue.

However, in order to do that, you’ve got to set aside the PT rulebook and become a student of the game again.

In this book I’m going to go over everything you need to know to build a thriving Online Coaching business, and it can be done a lot quicker than you think.

With the knowledge I’m going to teach you in this book, you could completely replace your Personal Training income in 12 weeks (even if you’re a busy PT working 40-60 hours a week) - all you need to do is put it into action.

So what are you waiting for?

Let’s get stuck in!


How To Acquire Clients Online (Without Sales Calls Or Facebook Ads) This is the big question, and with good reason!

If you can’t consistently get clients online, then it’s always going to be a side hustle at best, and in my experience a side-hustle defeats the point of being an Online Coach.

The side-hustle model still means...

● Working split shifts at the gym from 6am to 9pm with constant pressure from your partner and family to spend more time together

● Trading time for money with a cap on how much you can earn (and constantly risking burning out working so many hours)

● Not enough time in the day to deal with 1-1 sessions, social media, marketing and online

The good news is that you can stop all of the above once you’ve mastered how to acquire clients online, and it’s not as hard as it seems!

The key is found in marketing.

I used to think marketing was something only big companies did! Little did I know it would transform my online business from £1,000 a month to £30,000 a month in less than 6 months.

I spent the first year trying to build an online business with zero marketing knowledge. I thought if I just hustled harder by working 12-16 hours a day and constantly posting on social media it would pay off.

It didn’t. Despite having over 20k followers, I struggled to make more than £1,000 a month (on a good month!), and I only had a couple of months to turn it all around and make enough money or I’d go bankrupt (and facing moving back in with Mum and Dad!).

However, once I discovered what I’m going to teach you next, I was able to get paid more than twice what I was earning in a 9-5 corporate job AND take 3 days off a week!

So let’s get right to it...

There are two foundational pieces when it comes to marketing in any successful business:

1. A Niche 2. An Irresistible Offer

Spend time getting these right and everything else will be easy - standing out from the crowd, making sales every day and charging more will all become easy.


Rush through them, and you’ll find you blend in with the masses and struggle to sell even a cheap programme (even if it’s really good). I’ve been there and there’s nothing more frustrating!

The good news you can turn that all around, and it starts with your niche...

Your Niche Your niche is the small specialized area of the fitness industry that you choose to serve.

In the gym, you don’t really need to think about this as you naturally have a niche - it’s the clients in your gym (or living nearby).

Online, you have to do this very deliberately or you’ll make the classic mistake most trainers make online: trying to appeal to everyone.

Trying to appeal to everyone seems logical. It seems like by doing this you’d simply have more people you can help and therefore more earning potential.

However, in reality it means you blend in with the masses and you and your services come across as boring and bland (and no one’s excited to buy something that’s boring and bland).

Not picking a niche is a guaranteed way to struggle to sell online and forever be desperately trying to convince people to work with you for rock bottom prices.

What works much better is to pick a small specialised niche and focus all your efforts on that area.

By having a niche you will...

● Stand out from the masses ● Make more sales more easily ● Build a great reputation in your niche ● Grow a profitable online business

So how do you come up with your niche?

The simplest way to think about your niche is to think of ONE person and ONE painful problem you solve for that person.

For example:

Person: A busy working mum age 45

Painful problem: Gained 2-3 stone since having kids, can no longer fit into nice clothes, lacks in confidence, is worried their partner no longer finds them attractive and feels like a bad role model for their kids


The key is to really delve deep into the problem. Not just the surface-level fitness problem such as them being 2-3 stone overweight, but also to find out as much as you can about the impact on the rest of their life (I like to split this up into Fitness, Focus, Family, Finance and Fun).

The more you understand about the problem, the more potential clients will be convinced you are right for them and have a solution for their exact problem - this is what makes the difference between getting a few sales here and there and exploding online!

If you’re not sure where to start with your niche, consider the following questions:

1. Who do you like training the most? 2. Who do you get the best results with? 3. What have you achieved on your fitness journey that you could teach to others?

Focus on who you love to work with rather than who you think has more money.

Almost everyone will pay for something if the marketing is good enough, and if you don’t actually connect and like working with your niche (or can’t get good results for them), then this will really show through and stunt your growth over time.

Don’t worry if you think your niche is too small. It’s very unlikely to be the case (much more likely it’s too broad, in fact!). There’s 7.5 billion people on the planet, so even in the smallest of niches, such a diabetic muscle gain, there’s tens of thousands of people who are looking for a solution!

Once you’ve defined your niche, it’s time to craft an irresistible offer for your niche...

Your Irresistible Offer Your offer is a way of presenting what you do best for your niche to solve your ideal client’s problem.

Most Personal Trainer’s offers are generic and boring, for example:

“Want to lose weight, tone up and get in the best shape of your life?”

That might work on your profile in the gym where you’re one of only a handful of PTs appealing to a captive audience of the people at your gym.

Online, this simply won’t cut it… In today’s internet age we are bombarded with offers. In fact, the average person now sees over 5,000 ads a day according to marketing experts Yankelovich, Inc.

In the gym as a Personal Trainer, you’ve only got the 10-20 other PTs offers to compete with. Online you’ve got 1,000 of offers from tens of thousands of PTs, nutritionists, weight loss companies and more.

Here’s the thing though…


I’m not saying it’s impossible and you should give up - far from it in fact.

In my experience you simply need to understand how to craft an irresistible offer and suddenly you’ll start getting attention and making sales.

What’s more, most Personal Trainers don’t have a clue how to do this, so you’ll already be putting yourself in the top 1% just by following this next piece of advice.

An irresistible offer needs to have 5 key elements - I call this the COSTS formula:

1. Call out your person 2. Outcome 3. Secondary outcome 4. Timeframe 5. Separate yourself from the competition

1. Call out your person This is where you identify the exact type of person you’re reaching out to. When the right person reads this they’ll want to read on as they’ll feel like the offer is just for them, and we all like to feel special!

For example:

● Busy working mums ● Ambitious personal trainers ● Hard-working Dads ● Lads…

2. Outcome This is the big result or main outcome you are promising them. This should be measurable and the absolute best result you can promise for them.

The natural tendency is to underpromise here, and whilst in general under promising and over delivering does work best, it simply doesn’t stand out as an offer.

Once the person is inside your programme you can explain the different results they can expect depending on how consistent they’re prepared to be, but save that until they’re inside.

This might seem slightly shady or dishonest... but remember, if you’re a great trainer then it’s your duty to help these people.

That starts with getting them into your programme - otherwise they’ll simply go with more compelling offers like Juice Plus, Slimming World (for the 10th time) or rubbish Men’s Health workouts and they’ll continue to struggle with their health and fitness forever!


Here are some examples of different main outcomes you could promise:

● Lose 15-25lbs ● Lose 2-3 dress sizes ● Drop 2 inches of your waist ● Add 2 inches to your arms ● Add 20kg to your squat and deadlift ● Pack on 5kg of solid muscle

Once you’ve established your main outcome, you need to also pump your offer up with a secondary outcome...

3. Secondary Outcome The secondary outcome is an additional benefit that this person is also looking for. This one doesn’t need to be so measurable, but should be very specific to your person and their deepest desires.

For example:

● So you can wear the dresses you’ve kept from when you and your partner first met ● Lose 3-4 dress sizes (if the main outcome is weight-based) ● Flatten your stomach so you can show off those “ab lines” in crop tops ● So can keep up with your kids even after a hard day’s work ● Build a cover-model physique ● Go from zero to superhero Dad

But outcomes are not enough - your prospects will also want to know how long they can expect to achieve these results...

4. Timeframe This is crucial! Your offer must have a timeframe, otherwise people won’t be able to judge whether your offer is generic or outstanding.

For example, losing 2-3 dress sizes in 8-12 weeks is pretty exciting, whereas losing 2-3 dress sizes in 2 years is pretty uninspiring.

If they can’t establish whether your offer is a great one or not, they’ll simply assume the worst case scenario and dismiss it.

So make sure you define the shortest possible time frame in which the result can be achieved.

For example:

● In 90 days


● In 28 days ● In 6 weeks

Of course, there will be some people who take longer to get there (usually due to lack of consistency), but don’t let this stop you.

As long as you explain during your on-boarding process what level of commitment is required to achieve the promised outcomes in the given timeframe, most people will be understanding if they haven’t done the work.

But there’s one last thing you need to do in order to make a great offer...

5. Separate yourself from the competition Last but not least, you need to make it clear what separates you from the competition (the other solutions your ideal client has either tried in the past or is considering now).

The best way to come up with this is to...

1. Find out what your ideal client hated about what they tried before 2. Pick whichever of these things they don’t have to do on your programme

For example, they might have hated...

● Cutting out carbs and wine ● Sweaty HIIT cardio ● Having to spend 30 minutes travelling to and from the gym for every workout ● Tracking everything they ate ● Cooking separate meals from the rest of the family

You don’t have to pick all (or any) of the above, just the one or two things that they won’t have to do with you that they’ve really disliked about other diets, plans or programmes in the past.

So now you’ve got all the elements of your offer you need to combine them into one clear offer...

Putting it all together Your final offer should be a combination of all of the pieces of the COSTS formula. Simply combine them in order as follows:

Call out your person + Outcome + Secondary outcome + Time frame + Separations

For example:

Busy Mums: Want to lose 2 stone and slip easily back into your pre-pregnancy clothes in less than 90 days (without having to go to the gym or give up carbs)?


This offer will form the basis of all of your online marketing.

You may not get it bang on first time round, but by repeatedly trying this offer and refining it over time you will find exactly what resonates with your ideal clients until you have them desperately trying to work with you and all your programmes are sold out.

Getting your first 20-100 clients Now that you’ve formed the foundations for your online marketing with your niche and irresistible offer, it’s time to go after your first 20-100 clients.

And you will be going after them in the beginning…

If you’re new to online coaching or you’ve never defined your niche before, you’ll need to build up an audience of your ideal clients before you can sell to them.

Otherwise, even if your offer is absolutely irresistible to the right person, it will still totally flop when put in front of the wrong person (this is one reason a lot of people waste a lot of money on paid advertising).

So before you can sell your programme, you need to build up an audience of your ideal client.

This starts with getting your name out there...

How Do You Get Your Name Out (Without Being Famous On Social Media)? It can seem like you have to have tens of thousands of followers to make it as an Online Coach.

But the reality is nothing like this…

In fact, I know lots of trainers with at least 10k followers and yet they’re really struggling to make money online (most are living at home with their parents or doing 1-1 work to pay the bills).

In contrast, me and my business Trinity Transformation have never had a huge following, nor been “Insta-famous,” and yet I’ve lived very comfortably for the past 5 years working exclusively online.

In fact... what I’ve really discovered is that there’s two approaches online.

You can either focus on:

1. Being popular 2. Getting paid


This is something a mentor of mine, Garrett J White, used to drill into me!

Being popular may pay off once you get into the 100,000+ followers, but unless you’re born ridiculously funny or good looking, that’s unlikely to happen!

However, getting paid is always an option, and it can be done with just a few of the right followers.

Author and founder of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly, talked about the concept of 1000 True Fans way back in 2008. The idea was simple: you only need 1000 true fans to make enough money to live very comfortably for the rest of your life.

This has now been proven to be true time and time again by successful online businesses, and even better, you need a LOT less than this to make enough to replace your PT income.

So how do you get your name out and reach your true fans?

It comes down to three things:

1. Outreach 2. Content 3. Consistency

Outreach Outreach means actively hunting down your “true fans”. This means considering where people in your niche would be hanging out, and getting them into your network.

The easiest way to do this is to ask current clients that fall into your niche what Facebook or LinkedIn groups they’re currently in and then join these groups. Then just add 20-30 of these people to your personal Facebook profile each day, and within less than a month you’ll have a network of around 500 of your ideal clients.

Down the line you can do this through paid advertising methods, but to begin with it’s always worth doing it organically to save money and prove out your offer first before sinking thousands into advertising.

Content Content means putting out valuable information to build a connection with your audience. Your content has three purposes:

1. Know 2. Like 3. Trust


They need to know you exist, like you as a person and trust that you are the best person solve their painful problem. Until these three things are established, it will be virtually impossible to sell your online services.

Note: when selling in-person services like 1-1 PT, these things are easier to establish as they usually meet you in person which makes building trust much easier. It is still possible online, but you must work for it!

So what content should you create?

Your content should help your ideal client solve the problems they are currently facing (and by problem we mean the “painful problem” we talked about in the niche section).

Your content should also establish you as an expert in your niche. Not by using flashy complicated language, but by consistently communicating to your ideal client that you understand their problems and you know how to solve them for people like them.

Ideally content will be content created by you, since you need people to know, like and trust YOU in order to sign up to work with you. Sharing other people’s content too often will just make it look like you can’t be bothered and you don’t know much about your own niche!

Content can be created as written content or videos - whichever your audience prefers and you’re more comfortable at producing. Simply post it onto your Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram profile (wherever you’re building your audience).

The key to creating good content is to understand your one person and their painful problem in as much detail as possible, and then focus your content on talking to this one person about how to solve their major problems.

If you’re not sure where to start with this content think about the following:

● What are they struggling with right now that’s stopping them achieving their goals? ● What things have they tried before (for the result you sell) that they hated? ● What struggles have you faced in your life that they might relate to on some level?

Your content won’t be perfect at first, but each time you create a piece of content you’ll get a little better at communicating your message. So focus on progress, not perfection, and you will be confident creating content before you know it!

However, content is nothing without consistency...

Consistency Consistency is the currency of change, whether that’s in fitness or business.


Most PTs understand that if a client only went to the gym every 2 weeks, they probably wouldn’t make any progress and shouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t!

The same goes for marketing - if you’re not consistent, you won’t get results. Ideally posting content daily will produce the best results, plus a daily commitment to posting content is easier to stick to than a “couple of times a week” commitment as it’s far easier to forget to do it!

So decide how much you’re willing to commit to and start making your content. The more consistent you are, the more success you will see.

How To Make Sales From Your Content Once you’re in the habit of building your audience and consistently putting out content, you’ll start having people engaging with your content (likes, comments, shares etc…).

“The fortune is in the follow up” is something that’s been said by every marketing and sales mentor I’ve worked with, and I’ve found it to be very true too!

In fact, depending on the study, it’s been found most sales don’t happen on the first interaction, but on the 7th, 8th or 9th interaction!

Therefore you need to get interacting with people in order to make sales!

The easiest way to do this at the beginning is with messenger conversations on whatever social platforms you’re using.

People want to feel understood, and the easiest way to do this is to talk to them about their problems and desires, and then offer to help them if you genuinely think you can.

There’s 4 key steps to any successful sales conversation:

1. Understand their current situation 2. Understand their desired situation 3. Find out what is holding them back 4. Make an offer to help them get to where they want to go

The key is to not settle for surface level reasons, but dig deep to find their painful problems and ultimate desires. This doesn’t mean be rude or aggressive. Instead help them get there by showing empathy and understanding.

Not every conversation will lead to sales, but if your content is consistently building know, like and trust and showing you achieving the results they want for people like them, the more and more conversations will be successful.

Eventually you can move onto more automated strategies, such as email sequences and chat bots, but at the beginning of your journey you’ll need to get hands on and talk to everyone you can


as this will give you invaluable information about what people are really struggling with (rather than what you thought they might be struggling with).

However, before you make these sales you’ll need to know how much to charge...

How Do You Price Online Coaching? There’s no hard and fast rule on pricing, but I have learned a lot from experience. You can save yourself years of struggling to make money online with these tips alone.

Here’s my 5 big lessons from selling over £750,000 in online coaching programmes:

1. Don’t undervalue your services - it will kill your growth and eat up all your time When I started out online I had ZERO experience as a Personal Trainer. I’ve never done 1-1, and therefore I had no proof of results. This meant I had to build up some case studies by offering free services initially.

However, once I had results I made the mistake of selling my programmes dirt cheap. We’re talking £25-60 for a 12-week programme with unlimited email support - crazy!

Even hustling like crazy working 12-16 hours a day, my business struggled to grow beyond £1,000 a month (on a good month), which was extremely exhausting. I only had a couple of months of income left to figure it out or my only other option was to get a 9-5 office job.

Luckily, I figured something out…

I joined an online programme that taught me the fundamentals of marketing: how to choose my niche, my ideal person and the problem I’d solve for them.

With my improved marketing and content I was able to raise my prices to a monthly payment plan of £49, or 3 payments of £135, for essentially the same programme… and clients we’re happier than ever!

Which brings me on to point #2...

2. The better you understand your client and their problem, the more you can charge Unfortunately, pricing tends to be more about how good a marketer you are than how amazing your programme is.

I know a lot of great trainers who aren’t making much money, and a lot of con artists who are absolutely KILLING it online.


For example, there’s a guy (I won’t name him) who is a New York Times Bestselling Author who’s now becoming famous for promoting a celery juice diet, which he was apparently told about by angels and science hasn’t discovered why it works yet!

Whilst this can be frustrating for a lot of PTs, the good news is it’s possible to be both: a great trainer and make a great living online.

However, we shouldn’t just discount everything these con artists are doing. There’s a reason they’re making a killing and it lies in their marketing.

The reason these con artists are killing it is because they’ve nailed the marketing fundamentals we talked about earlier:

● They know the exact person they specialise in helping ● They understand this person’s painful problems and desires ● They have an irresistible offer to solve these people’s problems

The better you do the above, the more people will be clamouring to work with you and the more you can charge them for the privilege.

Our pricing over the years has gone from £20 for a 12-week programme, to £135 to £297 to now £700. Whilst we have improved the programme significantly over the past 5 years, the biggest change has been in improving and honing our marketing.

But that’s not the only thing you need to do to charge more...

3. The more life-changing the result, the more you can charge Even if your marketing is absolutely spot on, there are still limits on what you will be able to charge. These limits relate to how “life-changing” the result is you offer.

You might think what you do isn’t very life-changing at all, but I’d have you consider that it’s probably a lot more impactful than you think.

Often trainer’s undervalue the life-changing impact of what they do.

For example, I used to think we just helped busy working mums to lose weight. However, weight loss on it’s own is not that life-changing and therefore you can’t charge much for it (think WeightWatchers or Slimming World - they’re cheap!).

However, once I dug into the impact of the results we were delivering I realised it was far, far more than that!

I discovered what we really do by helping our clients lose 1-2 stone in 12 weeks, is to give our clients a whole new lease of life by reigniting their stale marriages and helping them find themselves again after having kids.


The easiest way to identify the true impact of what you do is to break down your ideal client’s current problem and how it’s currently impacting the following areas:

● Fitness ● Focus (confidence and mindset) ● Family ● Finance (work) ● Fun

Then do the same again for how each of these things would be different in their life if you helped them achieve their ideal fitness goals.

Communicate this clearly in your marketing and you’ll be selling a life transformation rather than simply a “fitness plan”... and people will pay a lot more for a life transformation!

4. Sell more than one product and create a Product Ecosystem A lot of people get hung up on how much they should charge for their online service, as if it’s just one product. However, to make good money online what you really need is a Product Ecosystem.

A Product Ecosystem is a range of products that your ideal client will buy during their time with you.

For example, in its simplest form it could look like this:

1. 8-week transformation programme 2. Ongoing monthly programme

Generally, the initial transformation programme should sell them on a specific result e.g. lose 1 stone in 8 weeks OR Add 20kg to your squat and deadlift.

For this you can charge a set rate e.g. £297 (a payment plan is always a good idea too, for those who say they can’t afford the full price).

Then providing your clients are happy with their results, it’s likely many will want more results - this is where the ongoing programme comes in.

You can package this is many ways, but one way that works well is to charge a slightly smaller monthly fee than the initial programme e.g. £75/month.

Taking monthly payments for long-term clients works well as it helps you to build up a predictable base income.

For example... if you get 20 clients onto an ongoing programme, you know you’ll be making £1500 a month before selling any new clients into the programme.


You could also sell them into a year-long package with a discount over paying monthly e.g. £497 for a year. Whilst this is £400 less than paying monthly, the benefit is you get all the cash now and that means you can reinvest it into paid marketing strategies to grow your business faster.

Ultimately, the different price points and products you offer are not set in stone - they will need to be relevant to the results your clients want to achieve and what else you can help them with beyond their initial short-term goals.

A balance between recurring monthly payments and bigger one-off payments will not only suit different client’s financial situations, but also give you a stable financial base to grow an online business upon.

Once you’ve decided on your price you need to actually make your programme...

How Do You Make Personalised Programmes For Mass Online Clients? The short answer is you don’t! If you want to succeed online you don’t have time to be personalising every little detail (nor do you need to).

Here’s the thing… in order to stand out online you must choose a small specific niche that you serve: a specific person and a specific problem you solve for that person - we’ve covered this already.

But by defining your niche, it also means you save yourself the complexity of making multiple programmes - you only need one programme to serve that one person.

Of course, you may personalise elements of this programme, for example:

● Personalised nutrition targets ● Workout programme templates depending on experience level ● Different meal plans for vegans, vegetarians and meat eaters

But beyond that, if you’re doing tons of customisation, your niche is probably too big (and therefore not really a niche at all). Not only will this make online coaching extremely time-consuming, but it will also make your programme hard to sell.

So instead, really focus down on one ideal client in your head and then design a programme for them. Only customise the bear minimum needed to get the result you sell. You can always add more complication later down the line.

Now you know how to structure an online programme, you need to know what software to use to put it altogether...


What Is The Best Software To Use For Online Coaching? When I started coaching online 5 years ago there was no pre-made software available. For this reason I had to build my programmes from scratch on a website - it’s definitely easier now!

The good news continues... the exact software you use is really not that important! It certainly won’t define how much money you can make online. As long as the software you use covers the basics, then that’s all you need.

Here’s what features are a must:

● Workout programming ● Nutrition programming (meal plans or macro targets) ● A way for you to educate your clients throughout the programme ● A way for your clients to contact you

Apps like PT Distinction (which I have no connection to, by the way!) are geared specifically to online coaching and make building your programme easier whilst giving it a professional look. Although I still prefer the customisation of building it from scratch, there’s lots of online coaches making a great income using the plug and play apps.

However, don’t forget what really matters… you getting lots of clients and your clients getting the results they want!

Focusing too much on your software and the process you use to get your clients results is like trying to sell someone a holiday by talking all about the type of plane they’ll be flying on. What they really care about is the destination - how their life will be when they get there!

Most people don’t have a software problem at the beginning - they have a marketing problem meaning they have few or no online clients. As you scale up and get into the 100s of clients, software does become a lot more important, but you can worry about that then!

Regardless of the software you’re using, one of the most important processes for ensuring your online clients are happy is the on-boarding process...

How Do You “Onboard” Clients Online? Having coached over 5000 clients online, I’ve found that most of the on-boarding process can be automated to ensure all clients received the same great experience.

I get my clients started with their programme in two steps:

1. Complete a questionnaire 2. Watch a set of introductory videos


Here’s how I do it...

On-Boarding Questionnaire The simplest way to do this is to send every new client to a form where you collect all the information you need.

I collect the information I need to calculate their nutrition targets, plus I get each client to complete a PAR-Q (Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire) on the same form too.

There’s lots of different software tools you can use for this. Wufoo is a free stand-alone tool, and many of the PT apps include form templates, although I prefer to use Gravity Forms as it integrates seamlessly with Wordpress (the software I used to build my online programmes).

The basic information I ask for in my on-boarding forms is...

● Age ● Height ● Weight ● Starting measurements ● Starting photo (front & side) ● How often they have been working out ● Health problems

All you need to do is put a link to the form in your programme’s automated welcome email, plus I’d recommend putting a link at the beginning of your online programme in case they miss the email, and you’re good to go!

Introductory Videos Once my clients have completed their questionnaire, I immediately send them onto a series of introductory videos.

The purpose of these introductory videos is to...

1. Set client’s expectations 2. Ensure they have and know everything they need to get started

Setting expectations is very important so that you don’t end up with clients who expect they can do nothing and get a result (and also avoids unnecessary refunds down the line).

Make sure your clients understand how much time they’re going to need to commit to the process, what kind of mindsets to carry through the programme and what kind of results they can expect from their commitment. This saves a lot of confusion and support time down the line!


Secondly, if they need particular equipment or food for the programme, I make it clear they need to get this before they can start and provide them with a list of is needed.

Once they have completed the questionnaire, worked through these short videos and have got the equipment, they can then start the programme right away.

Now all you need to do is keep them accountable and feeling supported...

What’s The Best Way To Stay In Contact With So Many Clients At Once? The best way is actually to get your clients to do most of the heavy lifting and initiate the contact - this is how I’ve managed over 500 online clients at once between just two coaches (and in just a couple of hours a day maximum).

If your clients initiate most of the contact they have with you, all you need to do is reply to their check ins or concerns, rather than constantly chasing after them wasting your time and energy.

We do this in a couple of ways:

1. Weekly check in 2. Monthly progress review

Weekly Check In At the end of each week of the programme they are prompted to complete a “weekly check in”. This is simply a form that collects data about what they have done that week and whether they need help with anything, which is then emailed to their coach.

Whilst we do this process with a form inside our programme, it could also be done in private Facebook group to keep things simple initially.

Monthly Progress Review At the end of each month we have a more in-depth form where our clients send us their progress for that month, including photos and measurements which we then use to make any detailed adjustments to their programme or help them through mindset obstacles.

Other than these forms, setting up a private community using a Facebook group, Workplace or a forum can also really help with supporting so many clients. Providing you teach your clients well, the more experienced ones will then be able to coach the beginners through a lot of the more simple problems, saving you even more time!

On top of this, you’ll also want to make sure your clients are using good technique...


How Do You Make Sure Clients Use The Correct Form When Lifting Weights? This is unfortunately a limitation of online coaching. Whilst you should do everything you can to make sure they’re using good form, it will never be as good as 1-1 PT for this element.

Things you can do to make their form the best you can are…

1. Provide videos and step-by-step instructions for every exercise in your programme 2. Creating even more detailed videos coaching clients through complex movements e.g.

squats and deadlifts 3. Suggest clients organise one or two 1-1 PT sessions to go over more complex

movements

By doing the above we have actually be pleasantly surprised by most of our client’s technique when we have worked with them in person at our events. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely a lot better than the average gym-goer, and that’s still progress in my eyes!

Where Should I Start With My Online Programme? I understand there’s a LOT of information in this guide. Even when having it all laid out, it can still seem kinda overwhelming (especially if you’re not tech-savvy).

This is why I created my 12-Week Online PT programme, where I help ambitious personal trainers launch and sell out a profitable online coaching programme in just 12 weeks (without having any previous web design experience or having a big following online).

If you want to find out how you can build your own profitable online coaching business that makes 1-1 PT totally optional for you... I offer FREE 30-minute strategy sessions where we will get clear on where you are now, where you ultimately want to go and what strategies you need to implement to get you there.

If you’re fed up of working split shifts and want to have the freedom to work with online clients whenever suits you and from wherever you want to be, click the link below to get your free strategy session booked in now:

Book Your 30-Minute Strategy Session >


https://calendly.com/robbirkhead/strategysession

https://calendly.com/robbirkhead/strategysession

escape the gym and the ultimate guide to online … · trading time for money with a cap on how...

Documents