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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:

“People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.”
                                             - Inventor Charles Kettering, who held 186 patents
Watch for this newsletter from the Personal Trainer Development Center each Sunday.

In this issue:

  1. How to fake your way to the top
  2. Most people agree on most things
  3. This week on the Online Trainer Show
1. How to fake your way to the top – Jonathan Goodman

Success in online training used to take dedication and hard work.

For starters, you had to look like someone who knew how to help people get in shape. That meant getting in shape yourself, even if it was just long enough to get photos for your website.

Then you needed social proof—testimonials and before-and-after pictures of your successful clients—to show you can do what you claim.

Earned media is the icing on the cake. Any trainer can claim they’re “in demand” or “highly sought after” or “internationally recognized,” and many do. The best way to validate those claims is to have someone in the media make them for you.

The good news (or the bad news, if you’re an honest coach) is that you can simply buy success. I show how cheap and easy it is in my new article.

Don’t have time to build an impressive physique? The video in my article shows how Photoshop gave me bigger muscles in less time than it takes to describe it.

Don’t have successful clients? For a few bucks, you can commission phony testimonials and buy stock before-and-after photos.

Even earned media can be unearned, if you’re willing to pay someone to include you in an article highlighting the best online coaches.

The initial price tag is intimidating (I was quoted $997 for an article in Yahoo Finance), but it’s also negotiable. I know because I did it, and I saved the receipts.

My new article exposes it all—my fake transformation, fake testimonials, and real haggling with the company offering to call me one of the “top fitness coaches to know about.”

Click here to see how easy it is to fake success, along with the truth about how an honest coach can stand out in a world of phonies:

--> How to Fake Success in Online Fitness in Three E-Z Steps for $317 in Just Seven Days

2. Most people agree on most things – Lou Schuler

My biggest insight, which came to me after close to 20 years of writing about fitness, is that pretty much everything works.

As Dr. Spencer Nadolsky noted recently on Instagram, “Walk more. Start lifting weights. Run, bike, swim, play, whatever. Most agree that exercise is great.”

The specific benefits may be different, but they’re all accepted as deposits in your longevity account.  

Diet is different, Nadolsky says. “I used to say most agree that vegetables are good for you, but the carnivores ruined that.” Still, across diet tribes, most people agree that eating less processed food is better than more processed food.

Mike Doehla offers an even easier way to visualize the broadest points of agreement on nutrition and weight control:

“If your goal was to gain as much weight as humanly possible, what would you do?” he asks.

It would probably include some combination of:

  • Eating out often
  • Eating frequent meals, even if you aren’t hungry
  • Drinking lots of calories—soda, juice, coffee, alcohol, smoothies
  • Choosing full-fat dairy and the fattiest cuts of meat
  • Topping vegetables and salads with butter, oil, and cream

If your goal is to lose weight, or simply avoid gaining it, Doehla says, you’d probably do the opposite of everything on his list.

At a time when opinions on things like politics and religion are increasingly apocalyptic, I find it comforting to think of how much we all agree on when it comes to health, fitness, and weight management.

We can and should disagree on how to achieve specific goals within those areas. But the last thing I want to do these days is go out of my way to find those disagreements.
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:

Episode 33, How to Turn Your Clients into Raving Fans, could just as easily be called “Tag, You’re It.”

When you create a new product or service, look for ways to include people in a way that makes them feel invested.

Jon uses his books as an example. In Ignite the Fire (his first) and The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Getting Clients and Referrals (his most recent), he quoted, consulted, and name-checked dozens of fitness pros. 

Then he made sure each of those people got a copy of the book, with a personal note from Jon attached to the page where that person is quoted.

The everyday version of that tactic:

Before you write a post on Facebook or Instagram, spend a few minutes searching for someone else who’s posted about the same topic. Quote and tag them in your post, and then write whatever you planned to say.

To their eyes, it looks like you were so inspired by what they said that you decided to write an entire post about it. The odds of them sharing it with their audience go way up.

The title of Episode 34, What to Do When Your Clients Can't Afford Your Training, is a bit of a misnomer. If your target customers can’t afford your product or service, your business is hobbled right from the start. It can’t possibly work.

But what if those clients are the reason you got into the fitness industry to begin with?

Step one, Jon says, is to build a profitable business by targeting customers who have disposable income with a service they’re willing to pay you to provide.

Step two is to use some of those profits to help the audience you originally wanted to serve. Want to work with young athletes? Volunteer at your local school or rec center a couple hours a week, and coach them for free. Or donate equipment. Or help them raise money to support their program.

It’s a double win: You’ll feel better about yourself, and the goodwill you create will help you attract future clients.


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


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



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