Where To Find Your FIRST Online Fitness Clients

YouTube. It's been a while. Adam Hayley here. So if you're watching this video, judging by the thumbnail and the title of it, you are a probably a personal trainer or you're in the corporate world and you are wanting to know how to land your first few online fitness clients. What we are going to cover in this is a few things. Let me shift over to here so you know, we can definitely in future videos, go through content, go through sales, go through offer, go through pricing, all of that sort of stuff. But what we really need to begin with is to figure out, you know, which platform should we be using. Most coaches when they start out online, they're trying to post on everywhere, you know, they follow advice from Alex Hormozi or Gary Vaynerchuk and they try posting on LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, you name it. And I think it's a big mistake. Great when you've got huge resources and a content team, a full time content team. But if it's just you doing it, you need to pick the one platform that you feel you can dominate and grow on and go all in on that. And then over time as you, you know, the sort of the machine gets rolling, so to speak, then you can add other platforms in. So we're going to do three things. Platform. Once we've decided which platform, I'm going to run you through the setup and how it should look, the foundations of it, and then we're going to briefly run through some conversions that you can hopefully after this video, within the next week or so land your first two, three, four, five clients. So hopefully that sounds good. Let's switch to the horizontal view and let's talk through the platform choices. So I am aware that there are more platforms than this, but primarily these are going to be sort of the key ones. So Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, these right now are the kind of the, the main platform, so to speak. So let's go one by one. We might be here for a while but I'm going to give you my take on each platform when it comes to kind of the levers on the left hand side. So, so let's start with audience. So when I refer to audience, I'm talking through like which of these platforms has the highest chance suits body transformation content if you're an online fitness coach. So number one, Instagram is agreeing on this. Okay. So it's got, I believe it's like 2 billion active users right now. The majority of the people that use it are Typically between like you know, 18 and let's say 40ish. It's. And it's a visual platform. So for somebody wanting to get in shape, somebody wanted to watch video testimonials, for somebody wanting to look at before and after transformation photos, weight loss charts, it's in my mind Instagram is just, there's no better platform move up to Facebook. So Facebook is pretty good. Like the size of the audience is solid. Um, it's just that the algorithm is very hit and miss. Worse than Instagram. I'm going to give this, it's meant to be an orange. I don't know if it showed up my camera. Let's give it yellow instead. The other issue is that seems to be more for like I hate saying this, the older demographic now. So if you're trying to target people in their 20s, maybe Facebook is kind of, you know, maybe it's had its heyday so to speak. YouTube I would also give a green. YouTube has young audiences, older audiences, huge viewership base. So from an audience perspective, YouTube is amazing. Tick tock. So big user base, relatively young audience based. So I'm going to give this a yellow. It's a young audience base. I haven't really seen many people actually do that well from TikTok at all. So I'm gonna get that yellow and then LinkedIn, smaller user base than, than all the other apps that we've spoken about. Quite an affluent demographic on there, but gonna struggle to find like you know, a female, early 20s, wanting to get in shape for her holiday with her friends probably. Whereas Instagram, YouTube, you could probably find her now. Next up is content. Now I'm putting content out here in a couple of ways. How easy is the content to produce and then also what's the chance of it actually taking shape and growing you quickly. So with that frame in mind, I'm going to go for Instagram, I would say green and here's why. You can produce whatever type of content you want on the platform. You can do short form talking to the camera videos so you know, face to cam. Hey, here are the three things you should XYZ that performs really well on the platform. Carousels right now are doing really well. Which of text only if I go to. Let me try and give you an example. Let me just switch to this view. I go to my own account. Let's say this one that I put up yesterday, you know, very simple to do like non fancy and you know 69 saves 130 odd likes three and a half thousand Accounts reached from really a post that that was like took minutes to produce, you know. So I would say that that should definitely, that can work well Carousels then you can do talk, say you don't want your face on camera, you can do talk overs, you could do like recipe reels and talk over the top of it. Super simple. And then of course you just got classic photos. So whether it's client photos, your own journey, that sort of stuff. So I feel that Instagram's really, really easy and it can take off fast if you've got a relatively new account. If you put content out there that people can consume, then the rate of growth can be quite fast. Facebook, I would give a neutral in that the content really is very similar to Instagram except the rate of it pushed out is Nowhere near Instagram. YouTube. I'm going to give a yellow because the only option you've got is video. It's you know, landscape, relatively long form video. So if you're somebody that doesn't like to do video, you can still grow an Instagram with voiceovers, with carousels and stuff. You can't do that on, on YouTube. TikTok. I'm going to give a yellow to TikTok because that's the same you've owned. In fact, I'm going to give it red and here's why. I'm going to give it a red. I'm going to give it a red because number one, you've only got short form portrait videos. You have to, to be there. Number two, to do well on TikTok you have to be following the latest trends, you have to be really creative, you have to be quite good at like the editing side of it or funny or quirky or so on. Just plain old educational type stuff probably won't grow you. Here's the biggest reason that I'm not a fan of TikTok is you'll hear about people saying that they grew fast on TikTok and that's because the algorithm works completely the opposite to how it does on the likes of Instagram. So on Instagram you will be shown for the most part your people's content that you follow. So if you follow me and you engage on my stuff and you indicate to Instagram that you like my stuff, Instagram is going to primarily send you stuff from me and other people that you follow. He'll then do maybe 10, 20% of like new people that you're unaware of. TikTok is the other way around. TikTok, it's very rare to follow somebody and to see their content again and again. It's always showing you new content, which is why people grow really quickly, but they struggle to monetize the audience because there's no trust building. Because typically you might follow me on Instagram, you'll see a post today, tomorrow you'll see a post. In a couple of days time, you'll see a post and you'll see my stories. And it allows you over time to go, okay, yeah, I'm getting a feel for this guy. Like, I start to know him, I like him, I trust him. TikTok is really hard. If you've just come across me once, there's not a lot of no like and trust. So for that reason, I would actually give TikTok a red and then LinkedIn, I would give a yellow because it can pretty much put whatever you put on Instagram, you can sort up on. On LinkedIn. The issue is LinkedIn doesn't really have its own voice. It doesn't really have its own unique style of content, whereas Instagram does. YouTube does, TikTok does, LinkedIn doesn't. And also the growth on LinkedIn is considerably less than on Instagram. So yeah, for that reason, I would give it a yellow. Now here is my favorite reason as to why. And you can probably see where we're going with this, by the way, as to which platform. Let me give you this. Instagram is by far the easiest platform to convert on. It has the best DM functionality. You know, somebody could, you could follow me right now and I could message you instantly and you'll receive it and you'll reply. It's unlike any other platform. Facebook, all the requests and stuff are like hidden in different folders. So that's not ideal. YouTube doesn't have a DM feature. TikTok, I believe. I can't remember last time I checked, they didn't even have one. Um, I heard that they were introducing it, but anyway, it's impossible. The only way that people really are growing, like monetizing TikTok is actually to send their traffic. So they're building an audience on TikTok and sending it to YouTube. Um, and then LinkedIn, the messaging function on it seems good, you connect with people and send messages, but there are limits to it and so on. So the conversion piece of Instagram is its huge, huge strength. And then the final one, I've put time. Now, what I mean by time is the time it takes for somebody to be new on the platform and to be able to start earning A few thousand a month. Now we have had people, we've got one, one lady in our program, Amy started with us with zero. She was a mum of two, didn't even have an Instagram account. She set up an Instagram account and within like four or five months she was doing four and a half thousand pound per month. So from zero setup, building a new account, hitting 5k a month or four and a half k a month within four or five months means you can get up and running on it really, really fast. Facebook, let's give a yellow YouTube. I'm going to give a red because you can post a video right now, but YouTube is a slow burn. But more importantly, because there's none of that DM feature built into it, it's really relying on you having to put like a link in the comments to either a video sales letter or a challenge or a lead magnet or so on. So you need other resources built out. Whereas in Instagram somebody can follow you, you get on a conversation, they could be on a sales call with you tomorrow and into your business. So it's, it's pretty cool like that. TikTok, let's give it yellow because you can grow really fast on it. But as I said, the conversions are slow and then this. So out of all of them, Instagram is just typically the easiest to grow. On YouTube you've got multiple size of content that work really well on it. It's got one of the largest user bases but of people that are into like visual stuff which obviously fat loss, body transformation, that sort of thing is. And it has the best conversion feature in terms of the dms. So it's up to you which platform you start on. But in my mind this is a no brainer if you're an online fitness coach. I think it just works really, really well. Of course if you're into real estate or you're a business consultant, these sorts of things. And of course you might want to lean towards LinkedIn if you're already young and you're trying to sell products and stuff, maybe take talk if your audience is slightly older, more mature, want to be really well informed, either Facebook or YouTube. But if you've got clients that are like 20 to 40, want to look better, want to lose body fat, in my mind Instagram is just the best. So let's run through setup assuming and you can probably carry this over to pretty much all the platforms, but let's assume you're like, yep, cool, I'm going to give Instagram a go. What do we need to get down on it. So let's go back to this view. Let me show you some accounts. So this is one of my coaches, Ellie, and here is a textbook Instagram account. So what we want is we want a profile picture where you look super friendly and approachable to your audience. We don't want you looking lean, jacked, shredded. If you do bikini or bodybuilding competitions and stuff like that, it can be really intimidating. We just want something where you're just typically like a lifestyle photo works best and where you just like, approach more and friendly. Look at this one here. Textbook. Next up is you'll have two bits that make you searchable. The bit in bold at the top, which is your Instagram handle, and then the bit in bold underneath it, which is your. Oh, by the way, the reason why this thing came on is just, if you want to check out how I've set up my account, just Adam Haley one forgot to say that. So just search that. And you can just reverse engineer everything that I do going back to Ellie. So the second bit that's searchable is the bold bit underneath the profile picture, which in this case has Ellie's full name and then has some searchable terms, fat loss and confidence coach. So these, if somebody searches fat loss, there's a chance that Ellie will rank. So you'll want to have ideally your full name in your Instagram handle. I wouldn't have like, say, trained by Ellie or Ellie Underscore Fitness. I would try and just keep it just your full name. Mine is just Adam Haley 1. Ellie's is just Ellie Mascue underscore. So do the similar. Then add some searchable key terms, whether it's like, you know, fat loss coach, women's health coach, menstrual, you know, perimenopause coach, all of these sorts of things. Next up, we want to have some form of promise. So who you help, what you help them achieve. And then typically you can add things in that are like, you know, what can you help them achieve without them having to give up X. So I help women who have tried everything drop 5, 10 kilos of body fat and build a new level of confidence. Perfect. Or you could have like, I help women who have tried everything drop 5, 10 kilos of body fat and without having to spend hours in the gym each week and without having to eat different meals to their partners or their families. So that's one style of it. If I go to Jake, one of my other coaches, you can do more of an authority play. So this one is like coached 100 plus rock stars to reach a phenomenal shoot shape without following a BS meal plan. So you've got that. If you look at mine, taken more fitness coaches fully online and hitting 5k months and any other mentors, I've gone for the authority route. But the like, typically the sort of who you help, what you help them achieve, that can work really well too. Let's look at Sam, what Sam got in here. Helping individuals simplify fat loss, get in shape and improve their health, fitness and confidence. We want some form of like, statement, some form of promise, that sort of thing. Now the next bit that we want is we need to be able to send them, we need a call to action effectively, which is where we can send them somewhere. So in here we've got are you ready to finally see results? And then you can see Ellie's dropped a link in here that goes to her application form. So in your case, a mistake that I see some people do is they put like, you know, apply for coaching. Nobody wants code like nobody wants coaching. People want the result, they want fat loss. Coaching is the vehicle to get there. So for me, for example, let me come back to my account. Nobody wants to work with me. What people want is to land their first three to five online clients. So you want to have a think about what is your promise if I can not click onto the wrong things. So is it like, you know, want to ready to drop your first five to ten pounds? Want some help dropping the last ten pounds? Ready to finally start seeing results like Ellie's done? So that's how you're going to set up your account. And then you'll want a link that will take people to a form where they can collect, you can collect some information and then reach out to them off the back of it. And then the final thing that we're going to run through here is how to convert. So we've now covered, if I scroll up a little bit, we've covered which platform and I would suggest Instagram. We've covered how to set Instagram up to get your account in what we would deem like, you know, the perfect setups, that when somebody lands on it, they've got a higher chance of clicking follow. And now we've got the conversion piece. So I mentioned in this bit here that Instagram is one of the best when it comes to conversions because of the DM process. So here is why is there's like unlimited possibilities to this. But I'm going to give you the entire flow that you should use when somebody starts following you. So you've created some content, you put some content out there, which again, I can come to in future videos. But now I want to teach you, I want to teach you, sorry, how to sign up your first client using it so you produce some content. Somebody's hit follow. Here's what you do is ideally, as quickly as possible. We call it speed to lead. Ideally, within the first 10 minutes of somebody following, you're going to slide into their DMS and you're going to go, hey. And then use their name. Really appreciate the follow. Are you here for the content or are you looking to drop body fat? Whatever your sort of your message is, whether it's you're trying to help somebody build muscle, tone up, lose body fat, drop weight, you want to go like, hey, Adam, really appreciate the follow. By the way, are you just here for the content or are you wanting to, you know, fill in the blank with the goal? So we're going to do that. They'll often come back and they'll be like a mix of both hip, the content and yeah, I'm trying to drop some body fat. So you go, instead of going straight into trying to sell you, asking for permission and you go, amazing. Maybe I'll be able to help you with a few things. You call if, ask you a couple of questions to see, you know, how I could best help. They'll come back saying, sure, cool. Hit me with it. Two, three months from now, everything goes to plan. What do you want to achieve? Give me, like, is it dress size, certain body weight you're after? What do you want to achieve? 2 to 4 months from now, they'll come back and they'll tell you what it is. They'll go, I'd love to lose 15 pounds. I want to get back to a size 10. I want to do this. You confirm it, you go, amazing, I'm 100% on board with. And then fill in the blanks. Let me ask you a question. And now we go into this and we stretch the gap and we go, what do you feel currently isn't working as well as it could be and that maybe if you manage to fix it, would fast track this whole process. You can even add in a couple of prompts. You could say, like, is it the nutrition side of things? Is it like the exercise routine? Is it sort of sleep and health, you know, implications? They'll come back and they'll be like, it's just my food. You know, I just, I find it really tough to stick to my plans, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You give them some relief, you go, I gotcha. The good news is, and then you either talk through your backstory briefly or a client you've worked with, don't worry, I've got you. Actually, this is exactly what I struggled with when I first got into X, Y, Z or gotcha. Don't worry. Actually, this is the most common issue that I see and deal with with my clients, like literally week in, week out. So you want to give them relief that they're not alone here. Then we make an offer. And the offer, for most people watching this should be a sales call. So you're going to go, listen, if you're quite serious about trying to fix this, I'm happy to jump on a 15, 20 minute call at some point. And on this call we can look at kind of realistic timeframes for this. We can do a full nutrition and training audit for you and then I'll map out, if I was in your shoes, what are the first steps that I would take towards, you know, getting you to. And then fill in their goal. This is the important bit, send. Then you do what I call the one liner. So under the message where you've sent the, the offer of the call, you're then going to just write, what do you think? The reason for this is that how the Instagram DM inbox works is it will always show you the, the first sentence of the most recent message. So what we want is if somebody's a meeting or if they're out and about and they open their phone, they want to. When we, when they open their DM inbox, all they're going to see is what do you think? And then it will cut off. And as humans, we're curious, we like to close loops. So of course open that message so it has a higher chance of them opening it. And then again, because we're humans, we don't like open loops, we like to close them. There's a higher chance of them replying to it as well and going, yeah, sounds great, cool. Here's the link to my earliest availability. And this is where we'll send them a calendar link. Or you can just suggest, you know, a time. Here's the next thing. If we send them a calendar link, obviously we don't want them to ghost, we don't want them to just see the link and think, I'll do it later. So once you drop the link, you're going to put a quick message. It's just going to go by the way, just let me know once you've locked a date and time in. I've got a quick bonus for you. And that bonus can just be a super simple guide, a PDF. It can just be some advice, anything. Don't like, don't overthink it, don't make it out bigger than it needs to be. Just see if you've got a resource that perhaps already currently exists, like a you know, how to eat out the weekends guide, or an alcohol cheat sheet or any of this. You can just DM me on Instagram and I'll send you a free template or something and then send this to them once they've booked the call. That way it just gives emergency. They're like, oh, instead of looking at it and going, yeah, I'll do that later. It's like, oh, I want to know what this bonus is. I'm going to do that now. So I hope this has been useful. I know I speak 100 miles an hour, but I'm trying to deliver this to you as concisely as possible. So in other trainings we're going to go deeper on content, call to actions, DM process, sales process, offer refinement, pricing, all of that sort of stuff. But for now, hopefully you are just a little bit clearer on out of the platforms. Which is the one to use My suggestion, Instagram. Go all in on that and forget the others for now then if you're going to use Instagram, roughly how your profile should look and then thirdly, when you start getting your first wave of followers through, or your next wave of followers, exactly how that DM flow should look step by step. So you can start getting some calls booked and then start turning those calls into clients. And of course, if you need help with that, then future videos will be based around it. So I hope this is useful. If it is, let me know in the comments below. Give it a double tap, massively appreciate it. Catch you in the next video.