Passive Income Streams for Personal Trainers Online

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 410. Today we're talking about passive income streams for health and wellness professionals in a way that will AI prove and enhance your business. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase, increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson. If this is the first time you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super pumped that you're here. Let's go ahead and just dive right in. AI is coming for your client customer check ins. It's coming for your macro calculators, your macro programming, your meal plans, your progressive overload programming. AI is coming. It's not a matter of if, it's truly a matter of when. So if you thought that you were in the information age before, AI is taking the information age to a whole nother level. Now. Most people hear that and they think one of two things. Either AI is coming from my job and I'm, I'm going to become obsolete, or they think, oh, it's not coming, it's not true. People, you know, they put their head in the sand and they don't take action. Well, this reminds me of Netflix. Netflix tried to go to Blockbuster and asked to be bought for somewheres of, you know, I don't know, $50 million. And Blockbuster laughed and said, no, thank you. And then no one's heard of Blockbuster anymore and Netflix is now worth somewhere of $250 billion. So do you want to be like Blockbuster or do you want to be like Netflix? So it's really not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And more specifically, how you as a health professional can use AI as a tool in order to amplify your expertise, improve your productivity, and generate more passive income. So hopefully you're, you're just as excited as I am because today we're diving into passive income streams that health and wellness professionals can use inside of your business to generate more revenue, to make more of an impact and help more people. So let's go ahead and dive in. So I know I started with AI and That's not what this episode is entitled, but I think it's important that we address it because typically when people hear things like passive income streams streams, they automatically want to go to selling their workout templates, they automatically want to go to meal plan, they automatically want to go to creating digital courses and they want to go to creating these encyclopedia type products, which is great. I'm going to show you by the end of this episode how to strategically create those things so that you AI proof and AI enhance your products and services so that you can generate more passive income. But it's important when you start thinking about this, whether you are trying to optimize and, and really get more of your products and service out there or you're starting from scratch, regardless of where you're starting. These are all components as we as people become innovative. As things enhance. These are all components that we have to to be aware of, especially as people continue to be innovative and especially as this industry begins to grow. Okay, so let's go ahead and dive in. First, I want to just unpack specifically what I mean when I'm talking about passive income. Because passive is not the same as active and people have different interpretations of what passive actually means. Because I'll tell you right now that there isn't a single business out there that doesn't require effort. So this isn't like put a buy button on your website and then turn your computer into an atn. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about how to create a business that is going to maximize leverage. Leverage in resources, time, energy, effort and money. So that if I just give you a thousand customers, can your business handle it today? So when I'm talking about passive income, I'm talking about something that can be purchased without any interaction with you. So you could literally go to sleep at night and then wake up and someone could purchase. Is there something in your store, whether it's online in person, that someone can purchase from you without having to have a conversation with you doesn't mean that you didn't do work because all that work essentially is front loaded. So when I mean front loaded, you have a sales page. You've already created the asset or created the concept of the asset. You've already done the work and the steps for someone to purchase it. So the work's already done and now you're just sharing it and getting it out in front of more people. Other ways when I talk about active income is when you cannot get paid unless you are present and so we see this a lot in the health and wellness industry where you don't get paid unless you are doing the service. So you're trading time for out for your trading dollars for hours. And then what happens is when people try to translate their experience online, then they end up building another job for themselves instead of creating time freedom that they were hoping that they were trying to do. So for example, DMing a hundred strangers a day or you start selling sessions. So those are what I would call active income. Passive income is when the work and the effort is already front loaded. So you build it. It's like building a house. You build the frame and then, and then you share it with more people. And the beauty of this is you don't need a hundred million followers, you need a system and a strategy that works. In fact, it's funny because one of my clients, when we were working on this recently, she's now built up, she's built this beautiful system where she has a front off, front off, front end offer, 14 day challenge and then invites them into a premium experience and then invites them to become a client. And it took time, and not even really time. It took reps, it took effort, it took actual focused, efficient effort to build this machine. And now we're in this place where she's asking herself, well, what do I do with myself? What do I do? I've built it. Yeah, you built it. Now we need to share it. Now we need to get as many people to come through the machine and the system as possible. And that moment can be a little like launch free fall. Sometimes people will call it where you've done the work, now you just need to share the work and get the work out in front of as many people as possible. And that can feel like, oh my gosh, I'm doing nothing. And that can feel very like floating into the void. But once you get this and your work starts paying for itself, you're going to be gold. Now with that said, let's go through some of the top ways that you can generate some passive income, some revenue that's leveraged. But if I were just to hand you a thousand clients, you would be able to handle it, or a thousand customers, you would be able to handle it without, without reaching your capacity threshold. So let's go ahead and dive into some of the passive income streams that you as a health professional can implement into your business. Whether you are working in person and you want to add a hybrid component and add an online component, or you want to transition directly into the Online space. Now what's curious and interesting to me is typically what I see when people first come to me and they first want to build this online component is usually one of two things. Either they try to take their in person strategy that has worked for them and move it online. So that usually looks like one on one sessions in a zoom call and they want to move the experience online. But what's interesting is that the coach or the trainer oftentimes has not yet seen how that adds more value. And so their clients end up reflecting those beliefs back to them in ways like, oh, it's not as valuable because I'm not seeing you in person. Or they start to, they, the coach themselves starts to feel like it's not valuable and they're clients are agreeing with them and showing them as a reflection. Yes, you don't think that this is valuable and I'm communicating that back to you. But what coaches don't realize is that people actually, when they're thinking about value is that they're paying for convenience. And coaches have not yet seen how it's more convenient for them to train from home because now they don't have to get up, they don't have to work in a gym, they don't have to, they don't have to drive to a gym or find the time. They can actually maximize and leverage their time in a more convenient way. And people pay for convenience. But then people think, oh but Beverly, they need to also now buy some equipment. And, and I'm thinking my mind, well sure, if you, when you were a personal trainer in the gym, they also had to pay for membership. So it's the same thing. But people cannot translate or communicate and therefore communicate the difference for the, the experience of working from home, working out from home or getting the transformation from home. So, so that's number one. Then what happens is people think okay, I'm going to turn my, my one on one into this big group program and then that's great. However, they do not build their offers and their programs and services in a way that maximizes leverage. In fact, they accidentally build new jobs, meaning they end and they end up working in the red. And when I say working in the red, meaning that they just create, they, they over bloat their offers in a way that if I were to give you a thousand clients right now, you wouldn't be able to handle it without adding more team members and adding more expenses. So now your profit margins ends up being negative or in the red because your business isn't built to handle the influx. So that's one of the biggest mistakes that people get into when they're creat creating their products and services is they accidentally work in the red and they accidentally build a business that cannot scale. And that you do this without realizing it, and then you think, oh, I just need more customers, I just seen more clients. When in fact we need to strut restructure your business completely so that you can actually scale it. When I say scale it, I mean grow it to whatever revenue number that you want to grow it at so that you have healthy profit margins. This is going to require you to do two things. Really own the value that you bring to the market space. So you need to know that what you bring is worth it, that your work and service is of high value and deserves to be paid, not because of you as a person, but what you bring to the market space. And that you actually help people and solve a real problem. This will also require you to look at your relationship to selling. Selling has to feel good for you. So this is why passive income stream, number one, I'll say I like to call this the pressure free sales system. This is what we do and this is what we teach is that I like to have million dollar offer stack. So we start with the premium offer. So this is that transformation offer that is going to really solve for like a $10,000 problem. So if someone needs to end up, you know, like think about their medical bills and all the things that are going to potentially happen if they don't solve this problem, this is something that they really want. So we have that premium offer. This is going to use the least amount of leverage. Okay, in terms of, of, of things that you have have available to you, meaning it's usually going to be the most of your time. And then you can leverage curriculum, you can leverage group components, but this is going to be as close as you possibly can in terms of the, the transformation component. Now let's talk about the AI, because I brought AI into this world and I said, oh my gosh, it's coming for all of the things that you usually think about when you're thinking about putting together your digital program. So how can you use AI as enhancement as opposed to fearing its replacement? So this is what I'll say, and this is what we do and how we use it. So number one, AI will never, and I mean absolutely never, replace human connection. Think about it like this. When was the last time that you were so excited about, about talking to your bank or your doctor's automated telemonter like press 1 for more options. Nobody ever. We just want that human connection, okay, so that's never gonna get replaced. And think about it. I remember a time where Google first came on the map and everyone freaked out about Google and now Google has become part. Not only has Google created oodles of jobs that people really wanna work for and sure it did make some other information components like encyclopedia, door to door selling obsolete, but it did not, it did not eradicate people's jobs. Okay, because in theory I couldn't say the same thing about and health professionals jobs because in theory, remember people still joke about it. People say, oh, they got their medical advice from WebMD. So the same, the same concept is, is present here. This is a pattern that we are repeating. But instead of trying to pretend it's not coming, we need to enhance it and use it. So what we like to do is use it as a productivity tool. I use it, it's never going to replace the skill and your IP and your I in your context. So when I mean IP is, it's just, it's a tool just like a hammer is a tool. It could be used to build a house and, and destroy a house. So AI is only as good as the skill of the user. So for me, when I'm using it, I, and when I help my clients use it, it's interesting because my clients will say this is what the AI tool said. And when I review it, I can fix it within 10 seconds. And when I say fix it, there are things that, there are certain things. No matter how many times I prompt it, AI can't do. So for example, AI doesn't do well right off the gate, the disc credit. So it'll make a claim, but it won't back it up. And it won't, it won't instruct you to back it up and it won't show you how to, how to, to, you know, insert your proof of concept. Won't do that. AI also has a very specific cadence. So anyone who just blindly copies and pastes it, we're already starting to get none to that noise. And if you go back to breakthrough advertising and you think about the levels of market saturation, all that means is that we need to, to look at the market sophistication, meaning we need to spend time really focusing on, on increasing our sophistication. Why? Because what happens is people think that they already know what to do, but yet they're still in a problem and they can't fix it. So use AI as a tool and enhancement and especially to help you with productivities. And then what, what is the AI Difference is your skill, it is your implementation. So if we were in the information, if we have moved past the information age five years ago, this is a whole new level of it. It's going to require a implementation component which you can still do passively. And I want to just put a pin in this because I want to come back to, I'm going to show you where this goes as I'm fleshing out this pressure fee sales system. So, so number one is creating this system of, of a machine that is going to easily move people through your million dollar stack. So what this looks like is you'll have your premium offer and then you're going to have your front end offer. Your front end offer is usually a lower ticket. So when I say low ticket, I'm, I'm saying anything that is sub$100. So $9, typically $27 is like a really good sweet spot. And then you can, Some people have 47 and $97 offers depending on your, on what it is that you're using. But like your front end offer is something where some, where your sales page can do the work for you that can communicate the value of this offer that it's so irresistible they'd be foolish not to have it. And then you have a couple of other, you know, we want friends with that, additions to that. So then what ends up happening is that you use this offer to get your client a result in advance that's either going to deepen the sense of trust in your process and say heck yes, I want to be a client, or it's going to give them that first win and then they're going to want the next win which is required to be a client that's going to need a little bit more assistance and it's going to help deepen this sense of oh yeah, I want to work with you. Okay, so then you just put it out into as many people as possible. You invite, you build your email list of customers and then you invite your customers to a sales experience and then you invite them to become a clients and then it gets to just take what it takes until it takes. No pressure is required because your people show, they invest in themselves, they show up, they do the work, they get results and then it becomes easy breezy. Right? So now when you have this system in place, we can start thinking about, well, what are the components that are passive? And so for, and what, and what are Some of the things that we can do. So the first thing, so now that you've got your premium offer and then fix that premium offer so there's more leverage components. By the way, just side note, okay, then we can start doing some, some passive income digital products. But they're digital products which could be in that front end offer spot. In that front end offer spot. A digital product is something that they purchase one time. You create it, once they purchase it, they get results in advance. Now what are some of the things that you can do? So it's not just information that it's actually has an implementation component. Well, here's where AI can really help you. You could build a custom GPT which is, is free. I think you could do one for free or you just do the chat GPT plus which is 20 bucks a month right now at the time of this recording and you could create a custom GPT. And guess what is so cool about the custom GPT is that it will help serve as an implementation component. And if you meaning they can feel like they've got a coach in their back pocket, that, that will also, if you program it correctly, it could also help you for some facilitate purchases of your lower ticket offers or invite them to be to book a call or invite them to the sales mechanism. So a lot of the, the AI tool can enhance the experience and help add to the productivity components and help you get in front of more people and, and how because it's doing some of the work for you or really just amplifying the work that you've already done. So what are some of the digital products that you could think of? I want you to think about ebooks, right? So this could be like leaders, you know, leaders are readers. So put your process into an actual book, an ebook and you could sell that with some couple of like audio enhancements. Another thing that you could do especially as a fitness professional is that you could have instead of like you could have like a seven day Jumpstart that has a AI component. You could have a, a, a restaurant guide. You think about any type of tool. Think about a tool that you could use that your clients want. Your plans are like oh yeah, I need that like a restaurant eating out tool guide or you know, a beginner's guide to, to navigating the gym for the first time or how to build your at home gym. And then oh my gosh, I just have so many ideas coming through. Well, ideas are not my problem. But once you create this guide, you could literally have affiliate links which we'll get to in a second. So that your, Your guide starts to generate. You start to increase your customer value because there's affiliate links in there. So now here's, here's another example of like, oh, it can be scary because AI could create my meal plan, sure, but they don't have context and they don't. AI doesn't know nuance and AI doesn't know. Know your. Your proprietary work. So what if you used AI to help you so that you could save time? Then you could use, you know, you could create it. And then you could go to Canva AI and be like, hey, Canva AI make this pretty for me. And then you have now elevated and added value to your macro calculator or your workout program. Why? Because it has a L that has an element of polish. So it's kind of like a, A, The. The. It's kind of like a hotel. Right? So the hotel, the. A Motel 8 and a Ritz Carlton serves the same purpose and function of home away from home with the bed and a shower, but the experience of the two hotels is different. And now by you using AI to enhance your. The polish, there is a level of, Of. Of elegance and, and elevation that comes. So this is an example of using AI to assist you, especially if you're anything like me, because I'm not a designer and I don't have an eye for that. And so I. Yet the, The. The brand recognition and experience is now raised and therefore added value. Now here's the truth of the matter. When you set up this passive income stream or this passive program that we're talking about, people get into their head, oh, I can't make a lot of money. I don't have a big audience. I don't. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But here's the truth of the matter. You can. If you make $1,000 from a $27 offer, that literally is just 37 buys, so that's two buys a month. You can take $1,000 and turn it into $13,000. I do it all the time and I don't have a massive following. I mean, a massive following compared to what? All you need to do is get really focused on selling two $27 products a day. That's it. And that could generate you upwards of 10,000 to $40,000 per month, depending. Okay, passive income stream number two, online courses. Okay, now this is what we need to be careful here with online courses. It's very similar to what I was saying in terms of digital Products, Right. So. Oh, what's the difference? Well, an online course can sometimes be. Think of digital products as like a tool. Right? So this is a tool or sometimes it's a book. Online course is usually going to be something like a master. Think online course or online workshop. This is usually going to be a educational component where you're going to teach them how to do something. Now, we want to be careful here that it doesn't sound like an, just an, an educational. Like here is a, a, you know, here is a encyclopedia. You. This is where you could use the AI tools to enhance the experience of the, of the online course. You can take other tools that will help with the implementation of the online course so that people actually do the work in order to get the result. So think of the online course not as just an information blast. This is more of an implementation tool to help them understand the why behind the do and then get them to do so they could do on their own, but they don't necessarily need you to do it for them. So this is how I help my clients think through what needs to go where is that? If you were to think about, you know, if you were to, to take the outcome, the desired outcome that they already want to solve the problem that they already know that they're in, if you were to do this for them, what would you do? Like, just literally, like, what would you do? So usually it's stuff like, okay, well, I would fly to their house, I would wake them up in the morning and I would make sure that they, they get up, they do their meditation. I would cook, cook for them, I would go grocery shopping for them, I would work out with them whatever it is. Like, as if you were to do it for them. And then take those components and start to package them so that you can start adding convenience, you can start increasing, you can start saving them time. Why? Because if they were to go to YouTube University and figuring this out themselves, it would cost them money and it would cost time. So when you start organizing it for them, it already adds value. So that's where I think, done for you, done with you. And do it yourself. And then measured against the do it yourself version, if you were to acquire the skill, because people think, oh, nobody wants my recipes, it's free. Yeah, but think about how much time they have to go to. Like, oh, I saved this recipe on Instagram, I went to Pinterest, I saved it. No, no, no, you're going to organize it for them. This adds convenience, this saves time, this increases implementation and Then your job is to communicate that so that they see it. This is how you turn someone who's never heard of you before into a customer because you make an airtight argument that removes doubt and moves them towards desire. Okay, number three, this is going to. In terms of passive income, let's go to affiliate marketing. Now, literally for every single one of these episodes, every single one of these, it could probably do its own episode. But we want to be thinking affiliate marketing is where you sell someone else's product and services. And there's a lot of different ways that you can do this. Now I already mentioned one way, which is if you've got an ebook, if you've got your, your tools that you are making recommendations for the stuff that you already use, this is like Amazon links. These are links that you can use to share products and services to your audience. And you get a affiliate commission or sometimes a referral fee. And if you don't do this for your products and services, I would highly implement this. Like, I would highly recommend implementing this because if people buy your stuff, they love it, they want to share it with their friends. So you could have a, like a $500 referral fee. You could have a affiliate link where, hey, you could get some commission if they as well, if they love your stuff. We use these and implement these all over the place. Now some people have made an entire business just on affiliate marketing. I'm not a huge fan of that because I want to be able to, I want my products and services to be out, but I, I use it to, in improve my. I use affiliate marketing to increase my lifetime customer value. Okay, now on the long, along the same lines as affiliate marketing, we've got number four, five, four. We have YouTube ad revenue. So literally, if you have a blog or you're creating videos, you can make your content generate money through YouTube ads. The work you're already doing with YouTube ads and with even, even TikTok shop, but that I would probably put TikTok shop in affiliate marketing. But you have, you know, you could generate revenue from ads whether it's on your blog or whether it's on YouTube. So that's still a viable option. And I want to, I want to help you think outside of the box because everyone wants to think one on one group coaching. No, let's think bigger. There are so many different ways that you could generate revenue then other ways that you can generate revenue. So now along the lines of, of YouTube ads and blogging, if you want to go down that route route, you could also create a subscription model. Now, a subscription model is different than a membership. And we're going to talk about this because remember, we're trying to create and think through passive income streams. So when some. So what that means is that you upfront the work and then you sell it, right? So as you start to go into things like group coaching or maybe even memberships, you start to use less leverage, which makes it almost less passive, but still passive. Okay, so. And ways to make it passive. So again, we're not trying to set it and forget it. That's not the intention of this. This is looking for the ways that we can maximize our leverage, the time, energy, effort that we're already putting into our work. So memberships, for example, or subscriptions are for things like, you know, newsletters. Like, I know that sounds weird, but there used to be a time where we used to generate, you know, we used to pay for newspapers and newspapers would come and, you know, every Sunday or, or every morning drop it off and you know, we would see commercials of dogs coming in to like grab the newspaper and bring the newspaper to the owner and so forth. Now Internet kind of made that obsolete, but people still pay for subscriptions, but now it's on their phone or in their computer. Or you could create like a digital newsletter that you mail them. Right? So people think all the time, oh, this is going out of fashion. The truth of the matter is that things, pattern things come back all the time. I mean, I'm a 90s baby and I'm seeing the 90s come back. Okay, so, so it's net, you know, when people zig, look for the zag. So other. So subscriptions. Right now people are using substack. You could use a, a, you can use. Like for me, I'm turning my conversion club into a subscription, which means that there's no, I'm not going to have any type of, of training or additional coaching from me, but I'm going to have a, a monthly tool that is going to share with them their, their set of conversion templates. So that is a, a subscription that I plan to implement as opposed to the next sort of passive income, which is what we'll call it six. I'm, I'm losing track of how many I had, but we'll call that a membership. Now a membership is where it's going to require probably a little bit more implementation from you. But this is where you are creating community. This is where people come for content, but they stay for community. And I think about this as pathway Content bonus content that's so good. They're like literally could just pay like they're coming for the bonus and then you're going to have your monthly, your, your monthly reasons first staying in the container. Okay. That's what we're looking at when we are looking at that like a membership model, which is why it's a little bit different than a subscription model. And of course if you have questions, just reach out to me at BSIMS and Fitness on Instagram. I'm there in my DMs. It's me and I'd be happy to share with you some things about it. Then you also have the and then another way that you can create a passive revenue income stream is a mobile app. You can take some of these comp. These components and create your own app. And they're so it's so easy to do these days. When I say easy I just mean accessible. It's not necessarily easy to implement as I had a client that she created an app and it was quite a. Quite a extravaganza but possible and can be a re an added revenue stream for you. And then last but not least, I am not a financial advisor so so this is not my area of expertise. But I do definitely want to point this into at least highlight this for you. And I will link in the show notes an episode I did with Mel Abrahams who is someone who is more. This is more of his zone of genius, but really make your money make money and there are so many different ways that you could do that. And I this is not my expertise. But once you do that, once you have your money make money, then you're going to be in a really good spot. So with that said, there are a whole slew of ideas that you can use to generate passive income and build an email list of customers, invite them to become premium clients. And if you need help on how to do this, then in the show notes there is an option to schedule a free profit plan and either me or someone from my team will will show you how to implement this process specifically inside of your business. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today and I'll catch you on the next episode.

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