Creating Chaos - For Fitness & Sport Professionals

In business, we talk about marketing, advertising, promotion and trying to communicate with prospective clients / customers to our business. This is an absolute must in business - if you're not growing then you're shrinking! That's just the way it goes.

However, something that I've learnt the hard way is that actually, the vast majority of income comes from existing customers. Therefore, why is it that most of our time and energy goes towards trying to entice new customers into becoming loyal champions. Well, probably a combination of things can lead to this mentality. Getting new business is a complete buzz, it is in my opinion one of the most exciting aspects of business. When we're desparate in business, it is often easy to see new customers as the only hope to help solving dismal situations. The reality is though that all the while, existing customers are there and often forgotten about. What would you do if someone you purchased from didn't seem to care and only delivered the minimum. I know what I would do and it wouldn't include putting my hand in my pocket.

By valueing your existing customers - showing them that they are the most important aspect of your company and spending every moment of your working life striving towards adding value, improving service and generally delivering as you would want to be serviced, you can be sure to have some extremely loyal customers and advocates to your business.

If you'd like more detail on the specifics of how to add fantastic value to your clients or personal training business and winning the most loyal set of customers then contact us at info@creatingchaos.co.uk

Hope this is useful

Having someone else describe how fantastic your services or products are has long been known and used as a tool in marketing, advertising and raising awareness for your business.

It speaks volumes for your services when someone recommends or refers you and it's quite staggering at how many businesses operate exclusively on referral schemes or referred marketing methods.

So, it stands to reason that having some testimonials will go a long way to help promote your work. The real trick though is getting the wording correct within what is said to ensure that the testimonial maximises on impact. Knowing the right questions to ask your clients will help massively in getting this right every time.

Here are 4 simple questions that get those key answers from your clients:

What solution were you seeking when you first hired us?
What do we provide that you value the most?
What has been the result of working with us?
What would you tell others who are considering using us?

By taking the repsonses and putting it into a neat and flowing testimonial, you will be answering all the major questions that potential clients have: namely what does this product or service do for me?

If understanding more about how your clients' minds work, how to motivate and be more effective in your coaching then why not look at our Professional Fitness Presenter course.  The PFP is a 2 day course that leaves trainers confident in knowing how to improve rapport, instruct more effectively, use influential language and engage professionally for both 1 to 1 and group level instruction. Click here for more

Having had some great feedback from my last blog, I wanted to touch more on the business side of things. After all, with so many of us trainers self employed, we don't have that line management system that guides us. In fact, the biggest way we learn is by making the mistakes. Having spoken to a lot of hugely successful people in my time, one of the greatest common features to each conversation has been 'making lots of mistakes and learning from them' - it seems it's practically a crucial part of success.

Well, in my relatively young life in business, I've made some absolutely monstrous mistakes. Ones which have felt like they've almost sunk everything that we've put our heart and soles in - the key is to see the mistake not as a mistake and as an investment. The investment you take is not to repeat the same mistake again.


One of the greatest lessons that invariably all businesses must learn is that marketing has to be shaped by benefits. Unless you are selling an absolute essential like petrol, people need to know what is in it for them.

Do people purchase personal training because they enjoy spending a lot of money to hang out with you? No!

People have varying buying strategies and generally purchase for different reasons, however, generally speaking, people buy for what they get in return. With this in mind, it stands to reason to have these clear benefits listed all over your marketing / leaflets / websites / Business cards rather than just listing your services or features. Features and services are important but not to the level that the benefits are.

When it comes to shaping your own marketing material, answer some of the following questions and include these answers. Make them clear, impacting and very visual:

• What benefits do people receive as a direct result of spending money on your services / products? (3 or 4 is often enough)
• How will this make them feel?

It's as simple as that. Speaking to people on benefits and feelings is communicating to them on an emotional level and this is often where people make decisions. Consciously or subconsciously, people buy on emotion.
Hope this helps

After more and more interest being taken with Primal Flow, I thought I'd write a little more about about what it is, how it came about and how it can benefit both you and your clients.


Looking back at my coaching career so far, even from the very first courses I attended, I remember always thinking that repeating the same movement over and over again can't be that good, however, in the early days, I really didn't know any better and so just went along with the trends that were and very much still are instructed. As my confidence and understanding of the body grew, I started to experiment more with different ways of challenging and conditioning the body.
When it comes to exercise, for me, there are a number of absolute musts with any exercise or pattern:

• It must be functional - if the movement doesn't serve a purpose then isn't doing the body, posture or alignment any favours
• It must be safe - understanding the internal workings of the core, inner stabilising units and outer global units ensures that all the movements work with the flow of the body and not against them
• It must be progressive and effective - challenging the body is the only way that exercise truly benefits, by knowing your level, ability and making the programme progressive, you can rest assured that your programme will be hugely effective
• It must be interesting - exercise should never be numb, mindless or a duty. Looking at primal man, exercise was purposeful, demanded thought and deliberation and always had an objective be it hunting, building or escaping danger.

Having been working on PF for a a number of years, many clients will have experienced numerous sequences and flows without knowing but now, the concept is completely formed and ready to take flight.

The benefits of this type of exercise can be shaped in pretty much any direction:

• Physiological - Strength, power, conditioning, endurance, balance, agility, alignment and flexibility
• Goal driven - weight loss, shape, reduce body fat, increase size, build shape or tone
• General wellness - Increase bone density, improve cardiovascular fitness, improve posture

The list goes on. The reason it is so effective is because it brings together all 25 natural and instinctive movements of the body, organises them creating stability before mobility and then follows with gradual progression through a very unique method of programming

The 2 day course 'Primal Pattern & Functional Movement Specialist' provides you with all the tools to start using primal flow for yourself, gives you hundreds of brand new exercises and a system for creating a completely unlimited list of new patterns and sequences. Find out more and book your place here

Take your clients off machines into the realms of open body movement. Machines generally speaking distort movement completely, deactivate the core and result in pain, injury and never ending discomfort. Think about it, most people can relate with a bicep curl which serves to isolate the bicep. Ok, fine, however, with over 600 hundred muscles in the body, how can you possibly achieve a balanced work out for all of them by isolating? You can't! Even if you did isolate every single one relative to their function within the body, the body doesn't operate through segmented function, it is a single unit and should be used that way.

Well, that should be enough to give you a brief understanding of the background. Subscribe to stay updated with news, new flows and further courses and workshops.

I've decided to focus a little on the business aspect of development. After all, the fitness industry has a huge portion of self employed individuals including personal trainers, bootcamp instructors, sports therapists, sports massage therapists and much more. The question is - is yours a business or a job.

That may sound crazy and ironic but being self employed doesn't necessarily mean that you have a business. It means that you are taking your own income into your own hands.



In my experience, generally speaking, self employed people in the fitness industry fall into one of the following categories:

• Highly skilled individuals who are very busy delivering
• Highly skilled individuals who aren't as busy delivering as they'd like to be

The truth is that neither of those is actually a business. A business is a scalable and leveraged concept that makes money regardless of you being there or not.

Working yourself into the ground trying desperately to fill your diary, see clients and make more money can be a fairly draining life. I know as I've been there. The constant worry over where the next chunk of money is coming from or how you'll pay for your license fee can crack even the most positive people.

The good news is that if you feel like you fall into one of those categories, technology makes it easy for you start making your models and systems more business orientated.
In our industry, people buy people and they buy experiences. Having clients that keep coming back shows that people like what you do and believe in you. There is no difference in principle(aside of a few billion £'s) between the continued custom of your clients and those of Virgin or Apple. Trust, value and service. It's time to start asking yourself some questions.

Do you see yourself doing what you're currently doing in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years time?

What do you want to be doing in 10, 20 and 30 years time?

How can you put your passion, knowledge and focus into something that can provide you with cash flow?

Wouldn't it be great to only do personal training for the love and not for the need of income.

Over the coming weeks, I'll be adding some absolute business musts when it comes to identifying yourself, keeping it simple and making your marketing a magnet for new customers.

Phill

Just a short blog today but one with great importance when it comes to giving your client the right type of training programme and mechanics.

When it comes to the consultation, this is where you'll make or break success with your client. It's not how many fancy exercises you know or can give your client but how well you understand their body and preference.

Without knowing whether your client is slow or fast twitch dominant leaves you in the dark regarding how their body will best react to exercise prescription. There is a simpple test that you can do to get this information. One important note though is not to assume that just because you get one result from one exercise means the same applies for all. Different patterns and areas of the body have differing balances of muscles fibres and so must be treaten as individual. We suggest that you look at the biggest driving areas for best results. Including squat, push, pull and extend.

Ok, so how do you find this out? There are a number of different ways and ultimately, over time with your client, you'll get the most accurate picture just watching and experiencing how their body moves and performs through different patterns and challenges. An initial way though is to use the following test:

- Determine your one repetition maximum (1RM) on an exercise
- Rest for 15 minutes
- Perform as many repetitions as possible with 80% of your 1RM

Analysis:

- Less than 7 repetitions - fast twitch (FT) dominant
- 7 or 8 repetitions - mixed fibre type
- more than 8 repetitions - slow twitch (ST) dominant

Important to also remember that over time, this can change. Checking on an annual basis can help you stay accurate.

Any questions or experiences, just drop me a line phill@creatingchaos.co.uk

Phill

One of the most important aspects when understanding, communicating with and motivating yourself and your clients is knowing how they view and approach the world. People are either the cause of their own reality or the effect. People who are the cause of their reality accept full responsibility for themselves and their situations. They are resourcefful, responsible, in-control and commonly see the bright side of any situation. However, people who are the effect of their own reality often blame external factors, feel out of control and struggle to see the bright side in many situations. The fact is, we can only ever control things that are within our control. This sounds blatantly obvious...and it is, but many people focus on things that are not within their control which often has them feeling miserable, upset and restricted. By looking at things that you can control, you're able to always affect change for yoruself and find ways of creating positive situations. The one constant is that you can always change what you are thinking. We all have the power and ability to do this. One of the most powerful examples of how focussing on a positive I have ever come across was from my days in the forces. I completed a course which was to train soldiers in knowing how to act and behave in the event of becoming captured. We met and were given stories of incredible situations that had occured. Back in the conflict of Vietnam, an american pilot was shot down over a jungle and was taken prisoner by the viet cong. He was stripped naked and help captive within a cage, physically abused, mentally tortured and in a horrible situation. Having found a photograph of his family and some of his details, the captors told him that they were going to abuse his wife, children and family. This went on for not just weeks but years...in fact, almost 10 years. He was completely mentally broken down and conditioned. However, during all this, in his head he decided that a great way to escape the situation was to distract himself. In his own mind, he decided to build and develop a hotel complex in Mexico. He built it brick by brick, hired staff, calculated a rosta, set holiday periods, pay packets, management structure, marketing strategies, client retention programmes and eventually, he turned it into an international franchise. The reality of the situation was horrible, he had very little hope and wasn't aware that the threats against his family were purely loose threats. However, he had full control of what he thought about and mentally focussed on. He knew that focussing on the what he didn't want to know would do him no favours for his own sanity and survival. He knew that getting angry and emotional would lead to further torture and abuse. After over 10 years of being captive, the pilot was eventually released and returned to his healthy and pining family. Remarkably, the pilot was still, after all that horrible exposure, very emotionally balanced on his return and had full sanity.
Needless to say that ideally, being at the 'cause' side and taking responsibility for thoughts, life and reality helps us remain much more focussed on what we want in life and not what we don't want. The mind is an amazing and powerful thing but is something that we are all able to control like a muscle. Before you decide what to think about and spend your emotional energy on, it's always worth while checking that it is what you want. For more on how you can very simply help to motivate or reframe situations for yourself and clients, send me an email and I'd be happy to advise.

Phill