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Stronger Sundays

Dominate your fitness business with this weekly collection of strategies, tips, and tricks.
By trainers, for trainers.

03/28/2024

Quote of the week:

“Like every American person, I’ve read of speedy routes to losing 10 pounds in two weeks, three pounds in two days or 40 pounds in two months, and I’m convinced that none, no, not one, can be successful if you do not first take the weight off in your mind before you strip it from your body.”
                                    - Celeste Geyer, a former circus “fat lady” who lost more than 400 pounds in her late 40s, kept the weight off, and lived until she was 81. The quote is from Diet or Die, her autobiography.
Watch for this newsletter from the Personal Trainer Development Center each Sunday.

In this issue:

  1. The power of thinking big
  2. Why choosing a diet is like picking a job
  3. This week on the Online Trainer Show
1. The power of thinking big – Jonathan Goodman (follow him on IG @jonathan_goodman101)

“We’re not arrogant,” Noel Gallagher of Oasis once said. “We just believe we’re the best band in the world.”

That confidence was the secret to his success. By his own admission, other people were better at all the things a successful band is supposed to do. But they told people they were the biggest band in the world until, one day, they were.

I took Gallagher’s words to heart when I started the Personal Trainer Development Center. That’s why I put a skyscraper in the logo on my first business card:
I printed 1,000 of them. There are 950 or so left. I never gave them out.

I ordered those cards at a time when the PTDC was just a website a young dude ran out of a corner of his one-bedroom apartment at night after training clients for 12 hours during the day.

Starting a business is hard. Getting in shape is hard. Writing a book is hard.

Anybody who has anything worth having has probably worked way harder for way longer and gone through way more hardships than you’ll ever see.

Back when my business was nothing, fantasy kept me going. Putting a building in my logo helped me pretend my idea was bigger than it was. Pretending helped me stick with it.  

Those early days were hard, and I felt like giving up all of the time.

But I’m glad I didn’t. Because if I had given up 10 years ago, I wouldn’t be welcoming two to three million people a year to that little website I launched in my one-bedroom apartment.

Sometimes we all need a bit of delusion. And maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
2. Why choosing a diet is like picking a job – Mike Doehla

Mike is founder and CEO of Stronger U Nutrition.

Imagine you’re an in-demand job candidate who’s sorting through multiple opportunities. (Nice problem to have.)

Money isn’t an issue; they all offer more than you make now. You’ll earn it by doing more challenging work. The open question is which job will be the best fit.

The same things are in play when you pick a diet with the goal of losing weight.

You know (or should know) that weight loss requires a calorie deficit, which you can achieve with just about any diet. You also know some options will be more satisfying and sustainable than others.

The big difference is how each diet puts you in a caloric deficit:

  • Macro tracking makes you aware of exactly where your calories are coming from.
  • Keto and vegan diets (among many others) narrow your food options.
  • Intermittent fasting restricts the opportunities to eat.
  • WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers) gives you a point system to restrict how much you can eat.

It doesn’t matter if the figureheads behind those diets tell you not to count calories, or even that calories don’t matter. The reality is they all work by helping you create a caloric deficit. Your body knows if you’re in a deficit, and that’s what matters.

If you pick the right diet, you’ll be able to stay in that deficit long enough and consistently enough to get the results you want. It’s like picking the right job. When you enjoy the work, you’ll do it more consistently and effectively, and you’ll thrive.

But if you pick the wrong diet—if you don’t enjoy the food, or if it requires too much effort to prepare, or if the calorie deficit is too small or too extreme—you’ll either be unsatisfied or overwhelmed.

Same with picking a job that’s too demanding or too monotonous. You’ll soon be back on the market looking for the next one.

Either way, the rules are the same. You just have to find a way to make them work for you.
3. This Week on the Online Trainer Show
The Online Trainer Show is proud to be sponsored by PT Distinction. After carefully reviewing all the major software platforms, we recommend PT Distinction because it offers a unique combination of flexibility, coaching tools, and ease of use. That’s why we use it in Online Trainer Coaching, our just-launched personal training business.

Click here to get a full 60-day FREE TRIAL to try PT Distinction with your own clients.

Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about this week on the Online Trainer Show:

In Episode 59, Closing the Information Gap to Make More Sales, Jon says the biggest disconnect between coaches and potential clients is the value of the service the former provides to the latter.

“Our clients know so little about what actually constitutes a good service,” he explains. They don’t know what goes into a good training program, or why it’s different from a bad one.

“When there’s such a huge asymmetry between what clients know and what trainers know, it leads to a lot of really frustrating issues.”

Most notable, from our point of view, is that the people who would get the most benefit from what we do often don’t understand why it’s worth the price, which is why they aren’t willing to pay it.

Jon admits he underestimated the problem when he launched Online Trainer Coaching earlier this year. Even trainers needed help understanding the value of a good training program.

In Episode 60, Putting the "Social" Back into Social Media to Gain Clients, podcast producer and Online Trainer Academy mentor Amber Reynolds highlights a common problem she sees among coaches who struggle to find clients:

“One of the first things we’ll do is check out their social media,” she says. More often than not, they note the absence of anything personal on their personal pages.

Especially at the beginning of your career, it’s hard for potential clients to care about what you do if they don’t know who you are. They need an authentic human to connect and engage with. Nobody connects or engages with marketing copy.

The trick, as Jon explains, is to be strategic about what you present, how you present it, and how you use those aspects of your personality to build an active and responsive community.

You’ll find every episode here:

--> The Online Trainer Show


P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:

1. Grab a free copy of The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Online Training
It’s your blueprint to building a fitness or nutrition business online. --> Click here

2. Join the Online Trainers Unite Group and connect with other online trainers  
It’s our Facebook community where fitness and nutrition pros like you can share insights and advice about starting or running a successful coaching business online.
--> Click here

3. Join the Online Trainer Academy
Our world-class certification course is everything you need to responsibly and profitably coach fitness or nutrition online. --> Click here


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Get the blueprint, tools, and support you need to take action and build your online training business—one that helps you achieve your desired lifestyle. (Without any gimmicks or shady tactics.)

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