(S.S. #17) Showing your clients how much you care

1. Why I’m giving my new book away for free - Jonathan Goodman

At 8 p.m. on Tuesday, September 10, I emailed a link for my new book, The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Online Training, to everyone on this list.

Two key details:

The book is free. I only ask readers to pay for shipping and handling.
I only had 1,300 copies, none of which had arrived at the fulfillment center at the time I sent the email.

Within 12 hours, we had 1,353 orders—53 more than I had in print.

That’s in addition to 10,512 copies we sold in bulk to partners. So we’re officially backordered. The good news for those waiting for their copy of the 181-page paperback is that I’m including the ebook and audiobook, so you can start reading and/or listening right away.

But here’s the big question: Why is the book free?

1) Because I want to grow my business. I want more people to read my books.

2) I want more people to see and share the articles we publish at the PTDC.

3) I want more new trainers to start their careers the right way, and I want more experienced but frustrated trainers to consider online training as a viable path to achieving the income and freedom they need for a sustainable career, with time for family, friends, and personal interests.

And I want more of those trainers to consider enrolling in the Online Trainer Academy, where we show how to build a solid online business and provide mentorship for as long as you want it.

Ambitious? Sure. But I’ve never been someone willing to settle for less than I thought I could achieve. That’s why I launched the PTDC in 2011, and OTA in 2016.

And, to return to the question, it’s why I’m giving away my new book for the cost of shipping and handling.

If you haven't yet, get your copy here:

--> The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Online Training (free – all that I ask is that you cover the shipping & handling.)

2. Showing your clients how much you care

When an anxiety-racked client cancelled on personal trainer Lana Sova, she had an unusual reaction: "So sorry you’re feeling this way," she replied, adding that she’ll be at the gym until 8 p.m., in case the client wanted to "cry and do deadlifts." She closed by telling the client she loves her.

"We work with humans," she wrote in a post for Online Trainers Unite (one of our free community Facebook groups). "It’s a privilege for us to be in a position in which clients feel safe to share how they feel."

And yes, she added, she really does love her clients, "every one of them," and isn’t afraid to tell them.

Go deeper: For many of us, the gym is exactly where we want to be on the days we feel less like the windshield and more like the bug. But for some people, the gym makes them feel deeply emotional, perhaps even sad. The Pulse, a weekly public radio program covering health and science, explains why.

3. In youth sports, parents should be seen and not heard

Last week’s edition of Stronger Sundays looked at youth sports from two angles: micro (the lasting benefits of skill development) and macro (how the rising cost squeezes out less affluent families).

But we didn’t touch on an important and too often forgotten aspect of youth sports: character development.

Too often, author Robert Glazer explains, parents prevent kids from absorbing the lessons of organized sports. How? By instilling in their kids a fear of failure and treating a kid’s success on the field as a "benchmark of parental success."

The takeaway: Just 5 percent of kids who play high school sports will go on to play in college, and just 1 percent will play in the pros, Glazer notes. But 100 percent "will be part of a team at some point in their adult life and career."

All of them will face disappointment, work with someone they dislike, and suffer a defeat that requires resilience, poise, and humility. They’ll need to stay calm when the people around them are losing their s***, and when a decision doesn’t go their way, show respect for the person who had to make the call.

Go deeper: In a recent post from Pete Dupuis, he describes how they get kids at Cressey Sports Performance to take charge of their own training, and persuade parents to allow it: "If we train a kid to minimize his dad’s role right in front of him on the first day, we (usually) find that the dad voluntarily takes a step back in handling each of the logistics along the way."

4. Secrets of successful guest posts - Lou Schuler

Everyone with a URL has gotten countless variations on this email: "Hi, I enjoyed your post on [topic they clearly don’t know anything about], and I think you’ll be interested in my guest post on [topic you couldn’t care less about]."

In a world of d*** pics and sextortion scams, unsolicited guest-post offers are one of life’s more benign annoyances.

And that’s a shame, especially for new and aspiring fitness writers. For them, guest posts are one of the best ways to develop their voice and get their work seen by bigger and more discriminating audiences. But how do you get anyone to take your pitch seriously?

That’s why we’re excited to share this incredibly detailed guide to pitching and publishing guest posts from former PTDC editor Stephanie Lee. To do it successfully, Steph says, you need to do these two things well:

Come up with a compelling idea.
Write an irresistible pitch.

Easy? Absolutely not. My own publishing career predates the internet, and I’m still wondering when I’ll finally get the hang of it. But it’s hard to think of a better way to move your career forward than sharing your knowledge on platforms where a lot of people will see it.

Go deeper: I got a chance to talk about my very long career in fitness writing on the Fitness Devil podcast, hosted by Dean Guedo and Andrew Coates. If you can tolerate a bit of profanity (okay, more than a bit), you’ll hear me connect today’s health and fitness fads to some from the late 19th century—which, for the record, I didn’t witness personally.

**Thanks for reading. What to do next**

Want to improve your fitness business? Buy a book or two from the PTDC book store.

Interested in online training? Click here to take our free 3-day mini course and learn the core truths guaranteed to get you more clients.

If you like this newsletter, please forward it to a friend or colleague.

---

Want more emails like this? Click here to subscribe and get next week’s digest. (While you wait, enjoy the free Wealthy Fit Pro 3-Day Business Course).

Click the Share button below!