In episode 119 of the PT Profit Leverage and Lifestyle Show, host Matt Dart explains why relying on client referrals creates an unstable income stream for personal trainers (PTs) and presents paid advertising as the solution for building a predictable revenue machine. He outlines how referrals are unpredictable and why they cannot sustain growth, then makes the case that paid ads provide controllable, scalable lead flow that can be turned on or off at will. Matt contrasts paid ads with organic content, noting that organic reach requires massive audiences and constant effort, whereas ads can amplify high‑performing organic posts and reach ideal clients continuously. For PTs working in commercial gyms, he acknowledges that cold‑calling and gym‑driven marketing are common but argues that supplementing with organic and paid strategies is essential for independence. He stresses that a solid reputation—client testimonials, educational content, and proven results—is a prerequisite for successful ads, and that high‑ticket offers are needed to justify ad spend. Matt shares his own ad spend ($1,000 per week) and client ROI examples (10x returns), illustrating how scaling ad budgets can dramatically increase revenue without additional work beyond lead follow‑up. Finally, he invites listeners to contact his team for ad management assistance, positioning his service as a way to achieve stable, predictable income for PTs.
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Alrighty everyone, episode 119. My name is Matt from PT Profit Leverage and Lifestyle Show. I'm excited to be in our new home. We are finally set up. Most of it you can see in the background. Got some lovely pictures of the family and the wife, which is epic. If you actually, if you look at this one, that's from when we're actually dating. Before the whole fam bam came along. So yeah, finally we're getting there. It took us a couple of weeks, but we actually had to move twice. Had to move into a storage unit first, or all our furniture into a storage unit, and then had to move again the following week. So it's been a bit of a journey. But today's episode, episode 119, we're going to talk about how to turn your PT reputation into a predictable revenue machine without relying on referrals. So this is about like PTs who are very, very good PTs, um, but they're not necessarily good at the business side of things or marketing or sales type of thing. So let's, uh, let's firstly go through why this is a thing, right? If you're a, if you're a good PT, so if you know what you're doing, you know how to get people results, you give a shit about their training and their results, then more than likely you probably get some referrals. Here and there, right? That's how you know you put a good service or a good product, that you get referrals. And generally without even asking for them, they'll generally refer their partner, their friend, their mom or dad to also do some training with you or to work with you in some type of capacity. So the good thing about that is that strokes your ego, that obviously you got a good product and they're obviously easy to sell. What's hard is making a predictable revenue machine. Um, when you're a really good PT. So the referrals, generally they feel safe because they're actually the most, um, or they're the easiest ones to, to get, but they're actually the most unpredictable way to grow your business. You have zero control over when they come and who they are, and it relies on the other person doing a lot of the work for you. Okay, so what we're trying to establish here is How can we get predictable revenue time and time and time again? Because referrals will come and go. Sometimes you'll get a bunch in a week, sometimes you won't see any for months. And to tell you the truth, most PTs have a good reputation, but they've got no systems sitting behind them to convert your reputation into consistent clients. So let's talk about— let's talk about that for a second. Now I'm going to talk about paid ads. I'll give it away. I'm going to talk about paid ads today. Paid ads is the only way to get a predictable, predictable lead flow, predictable income, predictable clients. The reason being, once you have a formula that is attracting your ideal client, you can literally turn it on and off with the dial as much as you want. If it's working, you could spend $1 million on ads and more or less it'll still performing, it'll still perform to that similar standard. So I'm talking about paid ads. Once you understand and get some paid ads working, you can scale it to the moon. And generally, most of the time, uh, it's going to continuously bring you in more and more money. You cannot do that with organic content. You can only post so many times per day. And even if you do want to post 4, 5, 6, 7 times per day, it's a lot of work. Whereas the ads, you can literally go from spending $50 a day or $20, $30 a day to $500 a day with zero extra work. The only extra work would be you calling the leads or closing more clients, or maybe you need to hire an appointment setter as an example. Highly leveraged task. It works for you 24/7, doesn't take breaks, doesn't call in sick. It works for you all the time. Okay, so this is how you're going to build predictable income long term. So because referrals will come and go, the difference between a PT who is busy and a PT who is growing is one thing: predictable ways to bring in clients that doesn't depend on them. That's paid ads. Now if you're in a commercial gym, which I know a lot of my audience is in commercial gyms, you don't necessarily need to do paid ads. Um, the, the marketing that you guys will require is a lot of cold calling Um, and actually it is what it is. Um, if you want to do like proper marketing and not have to rely on the gym, then organic and paid advertising is the way to go, of course. Um, but paid ads is where, where the juice is. Organic marketing, I still get a fair bit of traction from organic marketing and you still need it for sure, but you cannot rely on organic marketing unless you've got a huge audience, like hundreds of thousands of people who already like and trust you, then that's easy. But for the average person like me and you, it's just not, it's not reliable and it's a lot of work, um, a lot of conversations, a lot of time on your phone, whereas you can just pay the platform to get people or to get your ideal client in front of you. That's the far easy, easiest option. So you still want to have the organic side of things, and if you're in a commercial gym, of course you still want to be contacting like new member leads. We're still going to obviously run some giveaways to attract the right type of people. We're still going to run some workshops, seminars, Um, that part is the easy part. I'm talking about people who are pretty established already that don't necessarily want to rely on the gym anymore, because paydads, paydads aren't about spending money. They're about building a system that puts your reputation in front of the right people every single day without you doing anything, because you've already got the reputation. You're already a good PT, but how can we make like videos or creatives that put that in front of new people who don't know who you are yet, build trust, build rapport without you doing anything, and then them reaching out to work with you, or them filling in their details to work with you, or even just buying something from you from the start. So that's the power of paid advertising. Now, I've been talking about paid advertising a lot in these recent episodes, and it's because me personally, personally, I've made a shift over the last 12 months or so from solely relying on organic to now using organic and paid advertising, and the difference in results is extreme. Now for me, it's a little bit different because I'm in a very competitive niche in terms of business coaching, but for you guys that are doing health and fitness, everyone, pretty much everyone has a freaking PT, whether it's face-to-face or online, and It's pretty common knowledge that people will get help with their health and fitness because it's not a super expensive thing, right? Like you're talking about business coaches, you know, $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, even more, $30,000, $50,000, whereas, you know, health and fitness, maybe $100 a week, maybe $5,000 for a whole year. Show me a business coach that charges $5,000 for a whole year. Doesn't exist. Okay, so Don't get me wrong though, like when you're doing paid ads, you need to have a high, high-ticket product because it does cost you money to get that, that client. But that's how you get predictable income. So this is how you can turn your PT reputation into predictable income. Use your reputation that you've got, client testimonials, your education that you've already been giving your clients, turn that into content, and then put that towards paid advertising. What we generally suggest is post good organic content first. If it performs well, gets good engagement, good watch time, if it's a video, turn that into an ad. The simplest way to do it is even just boosting the post to get more attention onto your profile, which will attract more followers, which you can then, then start conversations with. This is the starting point of how you can build predictable income, predictable income growth, predictable audience growth. It all comes from paid advertising. But of course you need to be good at what you do. You need to have that reputation first. So if you don't have that reputation, don't bother yet because all paid ads does, it gives you more eyeballs. Okay, so if you're good at bad service, bad product, bad content, there's no point running ads. Okay, I'll leave it at that. If you guys want help running ads, This is your calling. Send me a message. I have been spending a fair bit of money on ads right now. I'm spending about $1,000 a week on ads right now. So I'm in the trenches. Let me show you how to do it properly. We've got clients that are doing a 10x return on investment, putting in $1, getting $10 back, putting in $100, getting $1,000 back, putting $1,000 in, getting $10,000 back. It is the predictable income that you need to give you the peace of mind. Everyone says PT is unstable. It's not unstable if you know what you're doing. So get the help that you need. Send us a message. We'll see if we can help. And I'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now.
