Ep6: How Hamish Went from $800/week to $3500/week in 6 months

What's going on, everyone? We've got another superstar in the house today. So my name is Matt. I'm your host, pt, Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle Show. We've got one of my awesome clients with me today. His name is Hamish. So Hamish has been. Been a client of mine for a little while now. I'm not sure exactly how long, but probably. Well, he was probably one of my first ever clients that I mentored, actually, and probably one of my highest success stories. So we'll dive into his story in a second. But welcome, Hamish. How are you, my friend?

Thank you, I'm doing well.

That's good, mate. Awesome, awesome stuff. So we'll get into your. Your story straight up because obviously people wouldn't know your story, but a lot of people that tune in to this podcast are obviously relatively new in the industry, so it's always good to hear other PT stories and know how they've become successful in the industry. So I won't spoil the story. I'll let you tell your own, your own version. But if you want to take us back, so just tell us like, how long you've been in PT for where. Where you're located, but then maybe take us back to before you were working with me and then perhaps what it's like now.

Yeah, sure. So. So I started. I got my certificates in 2015 and wasn't really doing too much with it. I was kind of just training friends, training family, training myself and working another job at that point in time. And then a few years passed, still wasn't really doing too much with it. And then I just decided to have a crack and open my own little studio while I was working another job. So just downstairs spent about five or ten grand on just pimping it out completely. It looked pretty sick. Like a small gym. Yeah. So I got a few clients there and then I end up going to a local gym, Big River Gym, and did a little bit of work there and then move to Sandy beach and.

Then.

Just started to come in at Anytime Fitness in Cops and a resume pretty well started straight away and started to slowly build up a few clients. But I didn't really know the whole process. It was. It was kind of hard work. Like, doesn't matter what you know about exercise. You can't sell to people, you can't market. Like, good luck. You just not. You can't do it. That's where like probably 70 of my resources are gone. Trying to get better at sales and communication and all that sort of stuff. So, yeah, suppose I would have had. And I was probably making about 800 bucks a week before. Before you reached out to me. I think I reached out to you, actually. I followed you on Instagram. Didn't think too much and then kind of got the conversation going. And, yeah, I started from there and, you know, I had a little bit of a sales process going. Some of it was still applicable with you, some of it wasn't. But I think just going through the process and refining things and just having someone in your corner telling you, keep doing this, don't do this, let's do this. And it's just. I think that's what's really helped so much. Just. Yeah. Trying to refine everything, knowing what you're doing is the right thing to be doing.

Yeah.

100.

100. Yeah. It's always. It's always good to have someone in your corner that has obviously got the results before. So I actually didn't even know you had a little studio. That's. That's news to me, actually. I didn't even realize that. So there you go. So, yeah, so currently you're at any time finish, you're making 800 bucks a week, which isn't too bad, actually. Like, it's not too bad as a pt. Like, a lot of pts struggle to make enough to pay the rent.

Yeah, I was pretty happy with it at the time.

Yeah, a lot of times. Yeah, at the time. A bit different now.

So tell us.

Tell us. Like, obviously I know the results, but can you give the listeners a bit of an. A summary of where you're at now in terms of.

I don't.

You can talk about income if you want, or sessions or income. Where are you at now in terms of your business?

Yeah, so right now I'm just dead broke. Can't do anything. Just kidding. So now I do about 40 sessions a week on average. Sometimes a little bit more. That's not including consultations. And obviously hired a trainer as well. So he's doing about 12 sessions at the moment. So, yeah, making some good money now.

Awesome. So that's. What's that, 52 sessions per week for your business?

Yeah. Boom.

So it's gonna be almost getting pretty close up there to almost 4,000 a week. Because your pricing is 75, right?

Yeah, I still have older clients on the old pricing, and most of them have been with me for, like, ages. Like over a year. A lot of them. So like you said before, I really seem to have really good retention with all my clients.

Yeah, I do want to dive into that. So Hamish was telling me before we jumped on that he's only lost two clients in the last 12 months. So we're going to dive into how that's how it's possible because, like, I've experienced this myself. Being a PT in the industry for the last four years, people do tend to come and go, but Hamish obviously has a different. Different side of that. So we'll dive into that in a second. But one thing that you kind of skipped over a little bit, you kind of threw it under the radar a little bit. You hired a trainer, which is super excited. Exciting. Sorry. So obviously you're fully booked now. Now you're leveraging your time a little bit to, you know, obviously keep growing your income, but then, you know, not having to do the actual PT sessions yourself. So what's it. What's it like to, yeah, obviously be fully booked yourself, plus having a trainer as well.

Yeah, it's good. Obviously, like you said, I can leverage my time a bit better and. Which allows me to spend more time working on my business instead of in my business, because, like, the most valuable thing to me right now is time. Have more resources than I do have time. So it's pretty critical to try and maximize on that. But obviously, I could also try and hand over some clients as well to Lucas, but I love all my clients, so I have decided not to do that. And, yeah, obviously, if I wanted to, I would. I could easily gain back another 28 hours a week and still make some really good money and then work on other things. So it's. It's definitely a great opportunity to have someone working for you.

Yeah, for sure. And it's good that you've obviously got that choice as well. If you like, you can, as you said, you can obviously leverage your time straight away. If you wanted to, you could, you know, hand over half your sessions pretty much straight away, because you've got the systems in place to be able to do that. But, you know, just goes to show, you've got really good relationships with your clients because you've obviously got really high retention. So let's dive into the retention side of things because that's obviously a huge part of growing a PC business, because, you know, obviously you learned a lot of stuff around sales and marketing from me as well. But it's one thing to be able to sell. You sell your services, but at the same time, if you're not getting client results or whatever, and if they leave, you're constantly having to keep selling and selling and selling, and then your income doesn't really grow, which is obviously probably the reason why we grow so quickly with you like to get from 800 a week to, you know, over 3,000 a week in, you know, six or nine months, however long it's been, we made it, made it a lot easier having a high retention. So have you got any, have you anything that comes to mind in terms of perhaps the reason why you've got such a high retention?

100% comes down to shitty jokes. No, no, no. Just making people feel good, making people feel comfortable being able to have good conversations with people and just like enhance their experience while they're at the gym. I could stand next to them and say, this is how much weight we're doing, this is how many sets we're doing. But it's, it's just about, you know, connecting with people, I suppose. And, you know, people like working with people that they know and trust. And I think it just comes down to that, just being people's friends and, and people just click with that and that's, you know, like some people, I think they panic because they just want to hang out with me some days. Obviously I get a really good results.

Yeah.

But that's, that's kind of how smooth it is for me at the moment, which is obviously pretty awesome.

Yeah, that's epic. Yeah, I think I can relate to that a little bit as well because a couple of clients come to mind that I currently train that they. Sometimes they don't even care about the results anymore. They just literally come in to catch up and, you know, obviously, like, they still, you know, you still train them. Of course, it's like you just go have a coffee and get paid to have a coffee or anything. So you still obviously train them. But, you know, you've got that relationship that you've built over, you know, a long period of time. I'm curious, from your perspective, how do you build those relationships, though? So it's one thing to obviously get the relationships, etc. But how do you actually build those relationships? Apart from the shitty jokes?

Personally attacked. Just learning about people asking questions. I ask so many questions. People, People probably don't. I don't know. I have mixed reviews. Some people hate how many questions I ask, but I'm always asking questions about people and I write stuff down. You know, if they tell me something that I should probably remember, maybe their, their interests, what they're doing on the weekend, before I go into that program, they'll just have a little note there and it'll just refresh my memory about Kind of what's going on in their life at the moment. And yeah, we can just talk about that. Yeah, it's like a mix, you know what I mean? Like a mix of what's going on their life, good communication, but also keeping them accountable while they're in the session and going through what they're struggling with the week, how their check ins are going, where's the weak link and giving them some actionable advice to focus on before their next session.

Yeah, nice. Obviously cover a lot in your, in your session then as well by the sounds of it. But question on that then. So that's interesting actually that you write stuff down because I actually don't do that. I try and remember everything. So that makes, that makes sense to write it down. There's a, do you think there's a fine line between asking too many sessions so that they don't or they don't complete the workout? Because I find a lot of people like my clients will try to get me talking a lot more so they have more of a rest between. It's like, how do you, how do you, like how do you still have enough control? Like obviously if you're asking questions, you've got a lot more control than someone else that's answering it. But how do you, how do you have that balance where you're still obviously building rapport, asking a lot of questions to, you know, build the relationship, but also still, you know, still fatiguing them enough that they're getting results in their session.

Yeah, well, everyone's got their own little quirks where they try and buy rest time. Yeah, you just got to find out what it is for everyone. But you know, because I am quite busy as well, I'll make it quite clear when I want them to do their next set and they'll know when they need to do it. If they choose to keep talking and coming of buying that little rest time. The sessions still only go for 45 minutes. So because I'm too busy, I can't kind of just hang around. And they know that at this point in time anyway. So I guess it's a little bit relaxed in that regard. But the rest isn't like ridiculously long if it does go over anyway. So I think there's a bit of a balance there.

Yeah, so it sounds like there obviously comes down to expectations as well. So if you set the expectation that you know the session's 45 minutes and you know it's 45 minutes, it's not 48, 49 minutes. So you Know we gotta get, we gotta get cracking. Do you? I'm just more curious as well. Just see if there's any tips you can give me as well. Do you, for your, for your rest time, do you, do you have your phone and just actually have like a timer on there or do you just like try and roughly know how long the time's gone or do you look at a clock somewhere in the gym?

I'm pretty regimented with everything I do. I gotta watch. It's broken now. I fixed it yesterday and it's already broken again. But. So right now I'm using the stopwatch on my phone. But usually I'll just have a stopwatch, a wristwatch, whatever, and I'll make sure they, I'll remind them when it's time to go because like my program's very structured, the rest times very structured. I write down notes when I need to, like whether it's the exercise order has changed slightly because someone else is using the equipment. Therefore I know next week or this week that they're probably a little bit weaker in that exercise than they should be. So then when I do come in next week, I'm not like, why has this person lost so, so much strength? I'm like, oh, well this explains it. No big deal. Now let's keep moving through the program.

Yeah, now that makes sense. Well, let's go into a bit of detail and then in terms of what's actually included in the program because obviously there's only so much you can do in terms of building relationships. You obviously need to make sure you're getting results. And it sounds like you've got a lot of structure in the programming side of things. So what's actually included in your offer?

Lots.

Give us, give us some, some of the things that's included or specifically that, that you think would help towards retention.

Well, I cover obviously the PT sessions, meal plans, more flexible ways of eating. Yeah, your weekly check ins that, you know, like cover Nutri, nutrition, fitness, accountability, some questions about their lifestyle so I can get a gauge on where their weak link is. Yeah. Training programs, update the programs as needed, contact with me whenever they need, just sending messages, just trying to keep the communication going as much as I can. Like some, some weeks it's bloody hard because I have so many clients and you're trying to solve everyone's problem and. But I just try my best.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think obviously it sounds like you include a lot of stuff in your, in your offer, so I suppose we might just touch on this how do you, how do you manage your time? I mean, we always obviously talk about this a fair bit about managing time, but I got, I'd say you're still doing quite well with managing your time considering how many people you've got to look after. But at the same time you've got a very good system set up so you don't have to do too much outside of when you're actually at the gym. So you got any, you got any tips for us for time management? Especially when you're, you know, fully booked, plus looking after another trainer.

Time management tips. I just, whenever I have new jobs come in, like new things to do, new client problems, that's probably the majority of where my time goes when I'm not working one on one with my clients, whether it's making a meal plan or finding a solution to a problem which could be on my, my back saw when I do sit ups. So I just try and find out the answer and then incorporate that into their plan. Whether it's trying to count calories for them. Essentially my tasks build up and then when I've got some time, I just open my task list and I find what's the most important one or who's been waiting the longest to get this solution or this problem solved. And I just spend my time there. Some things are more important than others, but like my schedule is just pretty hectic so I just do the best there's. I don't really have a magic time management secret. I just kind of do what I can when I can.

Yeah, sounds like obviously your clients appreciate it as well because they understand you're so, so busy. So they're probably, you know, they'll obviously message where possible but at the same time, like I feel like a lot of the stuff in terms of client problems, a lot of the stuff you can probably solve their problem during sessions as well. There shouldn't be too much extra time outside of the session that you should be spending. Like I know obviously they get access to you behind the scenes, but yeah, I feel like everything needs to be solved during the session.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And for some people it is. But you know, you got those clients where they leave the session and you know, you've talked about some things, but a week or two weeks or three weeks go by and that's still the same problem. So you know, I might set an alarm on my phone for like 6 o' clock in the morning because Briany needs to get out of bed and go do a swimming that she said she was gonna do the day before. Otherwise, she's got to do 20 burpees.

So.

So I'll just set that alarm, and then when that time comes around, I'll just shoot off a quick text and, like. Yeah, I don't know where I was going with that, but.

Oh, clearly. It sounds like you go above and beyond for your clients, and based on what you said before, it seems like you focus on more their whole lifestyle as well. It's not just about their health and fitness. It's about, you know, all areas of their life that you're obviously trying to help them in. So it's no wonder why you're able to keep people for such. Such a long time as well. So what's. What's the plan? What's the plan now? So you, obviously, you're fully booked. You've got a trainer doing 12 sessions a week, which is awesome. What's the. What's the plan for Hamish this year?

Lots of holidays? No, no, I actually enjoy work. I. I'm pretty sure I'm. I'm addicted to it. It's pretty. I don't know, gratifying, I suppose. It makes me feel good. I feel like I'm achieving things. So the plan would probably be just to crap into their online marketplace and just build that so I can help more people. It's a little bit more affordable in some regard.

Yeah.

I just. I don't know. I feel like I've done a lot of what I'm doing now, and I don't. I've lost a bit of fire to, you know, I don't want to keep my own personal trainers. I feel like I've been there and I've done that, and I'm still going very strong, and Lucas is still getting built up, so I'm still working there. I think the only other thing to do is just go to that online area.

Nice, mate. Very, very exciting. Let's. Let's change pace a little bit because this is obviously all the highlight reels, and as we all know, there's always challenges with the highlights. So I'd love to know some of the challenges that you've experienced over the last six to nine months of going from doing okay to being fully booked with a trainer on the way to be fully booked. What's been a couple of big challenges that you can discuss with us.

Challenges would be definitely not having enough time to do everything. Yeah. When you hire a trainer, because I like to be involved in everyone's progression. I find, like, sometimes things aren't communicated through, say, like, Lucas to me. And then I've always got in the back of my mind I need to check up on the client just to make sure everything's going well, because I know how I train my clients and. And what I do afterwards. And I just. I guess I want it to, like, a similar standard. And to me and Lucas is bloody awesome. He's a great pt. I think it's just that unknown aspect of, like, you don't really know what's going on because sometimes I have people message me saying I need to reschedule and all this sort of stuff, but I have no control over his schedule. So then I've got to. It's like a double communication with a lot of things that I think's a bit unnecessary and very time consuming. And it just adds that extra bit of stress as well.

Yeah, can completely, completely relate because, like, I'm the same when I, you know, when I had, you know, 12 trainers, you know, imagine. Imagine what 12's like. If this is what it's like at one.

Yeah.

12 at once with six locations. So I was the same, like I, you know, once that we had over 150 clients, not session, 150 clients that we were looking after at once. So can completely relate to that because communication is like the key thing to running, running a team. And if there is clear communication between client and trainer, or client trainer and, you know, owner of the business, then it's a. It's a lot smoother sailing. So I think obviously that's one thing that we're still working on each week in terms of communication between you and Lucas and stuff. So definitely a big challenge. What about. Was there any challenges that you had? Like, I know obviously you grew relatively fast, to be honest. Was there any challenges that you faced with. With marketing or. Or sales, or was that pretty. Pretty or not easy, but was it pretty straightforward?

Yeah, there was a lot of challenges. I'm sure you've heard about them. I don't know if you remember them in our cause. I don't even remember half of them, to be honest. But I know they were always there, I suppose. Objection. Handling was a big one. Yes. And just trying to isolate problems and challenge people a little bit because you got to get. You got to get comfortable being uncomfortable in that regard because, you know, people, if they're not emotional and they don't really care about what you're talking about or the result, you're not really going to sign them over and they're not going to get Any benefit out of it. And they're usually just gonna come to the gym three or four times and they're going to leave again. So, yeah, just sales and conversations and objection handling. Just trying to work that out. I was. That was a big problem because I never had any objection handling the way that you told me to isolate certain problems. So that was a big help.

Yeah. Yeah, it's a big thing. Hey, I think, yeah. As you said at the start, if you don't know how to sell your service or your product, then you don't really have a business at all. Doesn't matter how good you are at training someone or you're the strongest person, it's irrelevant when you're building a business. So you need to be able to market and you need to be able to sell the service. So. Yeah, I completely agree. I think objection handling is. Is huge for. For all pts, really, because, you know, they don't get taught that in the course. They. They might teach you the basics of how to present a pricing offer to someone, but what happens if they're not confident enough or they don't trust you enough, or as you said, they're not in that emotional state to make that buying decision. So how would you actually do that? So it takes a lot of practice and a lot of skills. So for people listening, there's a. There's an episode that I did. I think the third episode that I did was actually how to get an 80% conversion rate in your sales consultation. So if you haven't watched that, chuck that a listen. Because that. It's one of the reasons why Hamish has been able to scale up so fast, is continuing to scale up as well. But that was really awesome conversation. So if people want to follow along your journey, Heish. Where can they find you? Are you on Instagram? Facebook? Tik Tok? Where. Where can people find you?

I'm just on Instagram. It's out. Hamish Bankrupt.

Awesome. And you're down in Coffs Harbor. Yep.

Anytime Famous Cops.

Very good.

Represent.

Good old coughs the harbor, eh?

Yeah.

Yeah. It's not too, not too, not too good down there right now, is it? It's pissing down range, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. Hopefully we'll clear up soon so I can ride home. Otherwise I'll be blaming you.

Jeez, never mind. All right, mate, have an awesome afternoon and we'll. We'll talk to you later.

Cheers, Matt.