Volo Innovations

I do not normally like to comment on a news article but sometimes it just seems necessary. Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle has an article about the cost of obesity and the huge obstacle that Americans face in trying to reform health care. The big concern is funding the rising costs that an obese nation is creating, $147 billion last year and 100,000 deaths that can be linked directly to obesity.

The article adds some other amazing numbers like 33 percent of children born in 2000 and 30 percent of adults in America are obese. This is just sad. It may not be a shock to most of you but I think it is really sad that so many people allow their friends, family and neighbors to get this fat.

So what is the solution?

The article talks about junk food taxes and legislation to change food outlets but are these solutions? One point glossed over in this article is that around the same time that junk foods were added to schools for their lunch programs the school boards started to eliminate PE (physical education) as well. Instead of getting people active the solutions provided are to tax and limit access to foods and warn people about the effects of excess weight, like death (a pretty big negative effect). I personally don't think is going to be effective because as the saying goes "Nothing is certain but death and taxes". These 2 "facts of life" don't deter people most of them just shrug and say they are inevitable why bother fighting it.

I feel the solution will be need to be divided into two areas;

1. The future children
   
2. The current generations

For the first group the answer is in educating the youth (and their parents) and reinstating physical activity in schools along with changing the schools food offerings.

This solution is only for the upcoming generations and does not address the current obese generations. For them I do not have a quick solution because by this time most have developed some really bad habits and they need to want to change in order for any change to happen.

This posting should reach a few hundred fitness professionals so my challenge to all of you is to put forward your solution to this problem write a comment and send the challenge on to others I think we have a great opportunity to have a really useful discussion. It is up to everyone to find a way to instill health back into America because other nations look up to this great nation and if America cannot solve the problem then this epidemic will reach global proportions. Who know it might help you find a niche to work with as well!

Here is the challenge comment on this post about:

1. How you feel the future child obesity dilemma should be addressed
2. How to deal with the current obese population.
   

Remember to be constructive and sincere because whatever it is that needs to be done will need to be done by all of us.

If one in three Americans are obese then every single person has a family member or friend that is obese. So what are you going to do to help that person? As President Obama says; “Together we can!”

Quick definition for those of you who have never heard of an elevator pitch; this is a 10-30sec or 100-150 word overview of a product, idea, project or service that is primarily used to entice investment. Entrepreneurs will need to master this if they wish to receive capital investment for their ventures but these wonderful tools have become a way for anyone to quickly describe what they do or offer. Sales people, project managers, job seekers and even speed daters have taken up the elevator pitch to help them succeed. The basic principle is to say enough about your offering to make the person you are pitching want, no desire more information.

An example for a personal trainer maybe;
"Hi my name is Barry Duncan, I am in the business of transforming lives by giving the people I work with the tools and skills they need to succeed in health and fitness, this easily transfers to the rest of their life and ensures success in whatever they do. My ‘Quick Fit' workouts allow people to achieve phenomenal results in short periods and they use my simple tools to maintain a healthier and active life style. "

You get the idea you want a "Wow that is fantastic!" or "Can you tell me more?" type response.

Why do trainers and fitness instructors need an elevator pitch? You are the ambassadors of the industry, everywhere you go and every person you talk to look at you as the example of what to do to be healthy. If someone asks you what you do you need something that inspires that person to become healthier or even better to use your advice and service to do so. A fitness professional is always selling at every function, party restaurant and especially in the grocery store.

The key to a great pitch is to be able to summarize the product or service you offer in a way that it elicits emotion from the person you are talking to.

A person that does Mommy Boot Camps may want to say "I motivate and inspire mothers to achieve greatness so they in turn can motivate their children to achieve greatness. My Mommy Boot Camps make mothers fit, healthy and confident to tackle the never ending expectations that are thrust upon them on a daily basis." or "I have transformed the mommy image from slippers and bath robes to running shoes and athletic gear from holding an iron fry pan to wielding iron dumbbells. This makes every mommy I know a force to reckon with and an inspiration to their children, friend and family."

Your pitches will need:

• A message for your target demographic
• A message that make people talk about you to others
•  Needs to be positive
• Needs to inspire people
• Elicits questions about what you do
• Motivates people to take action

My final tip is that once you have the pitch you will need to create a series of answers to potential responses from people. My next posting will be covering how to create a Q & A list that will wow your customers this should help you with these. Now all you need is a pen a piece of paper and some people to bounce the pitch off of.

On April 27th a bill was proposed to congress that would allow American's to use their medical savings accounts (MSA) or flexible savings accounts (FSA) to pay for fitness memberships, programs and exercise equipment with pre tax dollars. The main goal is to make fitness and health more affordable for the average family by allowing them to pay up to $2000 of health and fitness expenses straight from their MSA or FSA accounts. 

Why is this so good? Here is my top ten.

1. It will reduce the financial barriers that some people feel towards fitness
2. It will allow gyms, studios and fitness professionals to offer a mix of services and memberships to new fitness participants.
3. People will be more likely to invest in themselves if there is a financial incentive
4. With over 65% of adults falling into the overweight, obese and inactive category a change is long overdue.
5. Health related cost in the United States is expected to sky rocket with the aging population being followed by the obesity of the children an incentive is long overdue.
6. Currently MSAs are used for prescriptions and an alternative approach to health is refreshing and needed as exercise and fitness has long been known to be effective in the treatment of many medical problems.
7. The best time to get people active is during a recession as exercise improves modes, well being and helps to fight depression.
8. To truly help in fighting obesity it needs to be a family affair, so this will help with gym memberships, sports team fees and the exercise equipment to keep the whole family healthy
9. Currently I feel most exercise equipment is overpriced and my hope is this will be a start in making items more affordable as manufactures compete for these dollars. 
10. The PHIT Act is the first in many ways that congress can start to encourage people to be more active, next I hope to see nutrition such as healthy eating tax savings by an apple pay no tax.

There are probably a ton of other reasons and encourage everyone to post your top 5 or 10 I would love to hear them. Also for more information and how you as a health club owner or practitioner can voice your thoughts go to IHRSA and read more as well as find out how to join in the action to get this passed. 

Let's start with the definition of ‘Market' as it applies to your business the most common mistake I see here is when people refer to the industry as their market. The majority of the people I speak to are in the Health and Fitness industry therefore they say they're in the fitness market or health market. This is too broad of a definition for most businesses, a yoga studio can't advertise to all the potential clients in the world. Their market is smaller and needs to reflect whom they want to come to their studio. 

A good definition to use for companies and individuals in the fitness industry is; actual or potential buyers of services or products that you offer.

If we use this as a base then we can now start to narrow it down for our yoga studio example their service is yoga so their market is actual or potential buyers of yoga services. From this you can shrink it down to your city or even a few block radius around where you hold the classes. For most fitness companies this is about a 20 minute radius by whatever mode of transportation the potential client uses; the more specialised your service the larger the radius can be, maxing out at around 45min.

Take an even bigger step and achieve greater results. Now we are all speaking the same language when we say market, but those of you that are looking to truly excel and become a leader in your market you will need to take your business a step further. You will need to find your ‘Market Niche' to achieve it we will need to break down the services and offerings of your business. We will use Yoga Studio X as our example but you can sub in your business at any point and start to find your market niche.

Here is what Yoga Studio X needs to do:

• Start by breaking down their services and style of yoga that they do Flow, Ashtanga or Hot as an example.
• If they are a new company list out what type of clientele that they want or desire
• If an existing company look at your clientele to determine what your market niche is. Be very specific about who they are.
• Yoga Studio X is a start up and the owners have an extensive athletic background they specialise in Ashtanga and Flow yoga. After much discussion they decided to work with athletes in their early 20s to 40s. If you are a trainer you can take this right down to a sport, for yoga or Pilate's or other service providers I recommend staying with athlete and age groupings.

Answer the following questions to try to help determine your market and market niche.

1. Who are you? This is the hardest question and you may need to ask friends and family and be brutally honest; likes, dislikes, activities, patience level, mannerisms, education, speaking ability and the hardest what is your approach to life are you positive or negative.
2. What do you do? List all services and offerings from your business
3. Profile your ideal customer? Do not limit to age and sex, instead broaden the scope to include their interests, activities, type of work they do and what makes them who they are. Example; our training studio went after medical professionals so their profile was 40-60 year old M/F that are driven, A type personalities, quick decision makers, high stress jobs, long work hours, highly educated, above average income, sporadic recreational habits and some knowledge of the human anatomy and physiology. Note you can do more than one profile.
4. Does your profile(s) of your ideal customer (#3) want the services you offer (#2)? Take a minute to actually think about it before answering.
5. Now the Jeopardy question this will make sure you were honest when answering #4 "Why does your ideal customer want the services that you offer? It is very important that you know the answer, if you don't then there is a good chance that they might not actually want your services and you are going to spend all your time trying to convince them. It is best to know this now because you can go back and redo these questions but it is way harder to redo your business.

Good luck and I hope this exercise will help you capture your market niche and surge ahead of your competition.

So you start out working for a gym and then after a year or so you realize that you love what you do and you want to turn it into a CAREER! OK how hard can this be? 

Here are just a few of the things that you need to think about when you start your own business:

• Corporate Structure
• Insurance
• Location
• Licence
• Tax ID numbers
• Website
• Marketing

So let's say you get all of that together without a hitch and then you start promoting your training and other programs. Now of course you are super keen to get some clients and you know that once they start working with you they will never leave! So of course you discount your price as a sign up now special, but what happens after? Have you figured out your profit margin, your marketing costs, your break-even point?

So often we hear trainers say I am too small I don't need to think about this but it is that attitude that will keep you too small! Treat your business like a business and you will not be "too small" for long!

Here is some quick advice for all the future entrepreneurs out there. If you skipped math and hate numbers then you need to hire someone. It is critical to your success that you know math and that you have an understanding of numbers in order to have a successful business.

Here are some of the "Critical Numbers" or" Key Performance Indicators " you will need to know:

• Total Sales
• Sales by Product
• Cost of Sales
• Gross Margin
• Cost of Labor

In order to be successful you will need to know what these terms mean and how to calculate them. For example if I want to know my gross profit margin so that I can one day sell my business or calculate it's worth. Then I not only need to know the equation ----but I need to know where to find the numbers.

Your club software can help you access the information much faster but as an owner you should know what your critical numbers are that you want to use to track your business and how to calculate them. Then you need make it a habit to review them at least once per month. 

My advice is this if you are the product; a great trainer, teacher or instructor, then hire a numbers person.  For a small business, a business coach would be perfect they can help you determine the critical numbers and either prepare them for your monthly meeting with them helping with your accountability or teach you how to prepare them yourself. For a larger operation it would typically be the book keeper or one of the managers with an aptitude for numbers.

Any way you look at it the more knowledge you have about your business the more you will be able to react to changes in the market and stay ahead of your competition.  

Donna Hutchinson is a passionate educator and deeply committed to the growth and development of fitness industry professionals. Not only that but she lives in the same city as I do so when I heard that she had a new book out on growing your personal training business I thought I have to let everyone know about it!

Throughout her career Donna has worked in all facets of the industry, parks and recreation, corporate health & wellness, privately owned facilities and finally culminating in the successful operation of her own personal training and fitness education business.

Here is a bit more about her and some of the great resources she has to share with you!

Name: Donna Hutchinson

Education: Diploma in Human Performance

Bio: Over the span of her career Donna has had the pleasure of training and educating thousands of emerging and veteran fitness leaders. She has authored over a dozen fitness resource manuals and is a contributing author to many industry publications.

Donna is a strong advocate for the development of fitness leaders into community leaders who can then inspire people to add movement into their every day life.

Donna travels extensively, consulting and speaking about business growth and development. She shows how individuals and organizations can improve their business by creating innovative and creative work environments for employees to take charge and reach their full potential.

Born in Montreal, Donna now resides in Vancouver in the beautiful Province of British Columbia where she shares her passion for life with her husband Brian and dog Bailey.

Company name: On The Edge Fitness Educators

Favourite exercise: Trail Running

Favourite fitness moment: Completing the knee knacker 50 km race in the top ten

Favourite Dr Seuss book: Green eggs and ham

Books you have written:

• The How-to guide to starting your own personal training business
• The How-to guide to growing your own personal training business

New product you are offering:

• Go for Gold: The Complete Personal Training Business Bundle
  

How can they buy it: Go to my website at www.edgefit.ca and click on book or online store

Business philosophy: I'm passionate about helping industry professionals start and grow their businesses.

I know we are all looking for ways to drive our business to have more success and I am always on the look out for tools that will help you succeed.

Today I learned about a "Fitness Professionals Licensing Act" that has been proposed in New Jersey. I am all for improving the quality of people that call themselves trainers or fitness professionals having seen too many people that love working out so they think this means they have what it takes to teach other people how to safely and effectively workout.

Here are some of the points in the proposed bill, new trainers that don't have a degree in a related field would be required to do a 300 hour in class course, and do 50 hours of unpaid internship. Everyone will need to write a board certified exam and apply for a license that requires renewal ever 2 years. There will be minimum hours of practical experience and minimum hours of continuing education hours required every 2 years.

There are also provisions for existing trainers needing to complete a certification course and apply for a license within a certain time frame after the bill passes.

If you live in New Jersey you might want to check out the bill and see if it is going to affect your business. It might be a good thing by weeding out some of the non-professionals you might have new clients coming your way. Or it might be a bit of a red tape nightmare with governmental bodies creating new forms and requirements that you need to do fill in to maintain your standing in the community. Either way I wish you luck with your business!

Surge ahead!

We all know that motivation is a challenge for our clients, for us as exercisers as well as business people. There are always "reasons" why we can't do something at a certain time or why we didn't do what we said we were going to.

Recently I learned about a great book called "101 Ways to Motivate Your Clients and Increase Retention" by Nicki Anderson this is a book that every fitness professional should read and keep with them to help keep their clients (and maybe even themselves) going all the time!

I decided to interview Nicki to give you a little background information on what motivates her!

Name: Nicki Anderson

Education: 27 years in fitness industry, NASM certified

Bio: Started working in a fitness center in 1979, with the original Nautilus equipment after losing 50 pounds.
During my time there, I realize that customer service was not something health clubs emphasized so I left promising one day to open my facility.
I took a break to raise my family and got back in to the industry in 1991 after years of study and research on my own.
My passion was and still is working with obese and deconditioned populations. As a once overweight/inactive individual, I understand what motivates these clients or what can derail them.
I started an in-home personal training business in 1992 and in 1998, I took the concept of privacy from my in-home training and opened up a one-of-a-kind studio in that it offers private training rooms. We have had great success in our studio and now serve a wide variety of clients and trainers. 
In 2003, I started lecturing to fitness professionals about business as I felt that was a missing piece. There were plenty of people that could lecture the business side of health clubs, but no one for the "little guy" and that is why I started those lectures. I lecture on marketing, customer service, management, working with deconditioned populations.  I find that talking to a group of independent trainers or small studio owners is very different from large clubs.

Company name: Reality Fitness, Inc.

Favorite exercise: ½ foam roll lunges

Favorite fitness moment:After I lost my weight and I discovered the joy of activity and realized it's a series of progressions. That is what I teach my clients.

Athlete you feel you are most similar to either in personality or physique:  I'm not really like any athlete, since I'm not one nor have I ever been. But if I had my ideal I'd like to have the body of a gymnast, strong yet feminine. I wouldn't want their injury history however.

Favorite Dr Seuss book: Oh the Places You Will go!

Books you have written:

1. Reality Fitness; Inspiration for Your Health and Well-being
2. 8 Steps to Create a Successful Personal Training Studio
3. Contributor to ACSM's 2^nd Edition - Resources for the Personal Trainer
4. Success Journal (for clients)
5. Lifestyle and Recipe Book (for clients)
6. 52 Days of Extraordinary Living (for clients)

New book name: 101 Ways to Motivate Your Clients and Increase Retention

Where do we buy it: My website under trainer resources or click here

Web address: http://www.realityfitness.com/

Business philosophy:  I'm of the belief that doing what you love, working hard and always striving for better will bring you success. On the other hand, settling for less, cutting corners when you shouldn't and not putting your clients first is the quickest way to run yourself out of business.

Here's to motivating our clients in any 1 of 101 ways!

Have a happy, healthy and safe holiday season.
Stay positive in the crazy weather.

We hope to talk with more of you in the coming year. 2009 is going to be a great year because of you!

Happy Holidays all of us at Volo