Ep71: What Took Michael From Inconsistent $1.5K Weeks to $2.5K/Week in Just Months

What is going on? Team Matt here from the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle show. I'm super pumped to have my amazing client Michael here with me today. How are you this afternoon, my friend?

I'm well, Matt, how are you?

Very good, mate. Thank you so much for joining us. Super pumped to have a conversation with you because anytime I basically have a conversation with you or check in, there's always some epic success that's happened in your business, whether it's the bodybuilding or whether it's the business growing.

It's been a nice. Yeah, it's been going well so far. So, so far, so good.

Awesome. So we'll obviously talk a little bit about your journey. I'd love to get into obviously some of the success, but also some of the challenges that you've had since we've been, We've been working together even before that. If you want to discuss before that. Um, but if for people who don't know who you are, do you want to give us a bit of a summary of yourself and what gym you're located in?

Sure. So my name is Michael. I've. I'm a personal trainer. I'm the head personal trainer at Anytime Fitness, Ballina. I've been that role now for roughly four years. I joined the gym just before COVID hit. Couldn't have been better timing and originally I decided to become a personal trainer just because I'd been training people on the side with my pre. With my previous job, the job beforehand, which was a management position, but I was training people on the side and they mentioned that I was doing pretty good at it and you should consider as a career, why not become a personal trainer? And I, I didn't really. I didn't really think about it that much. But the, the idea just burrowed into my head and then eventually I went and got my Certs research for. And I, I started apprentice. I was doing an internship at one particular gym and then I got snapped up by. By Anytime Fitness. They headhunted me, which was great. I really needed it at the time because I was transitioning between careers and I've been doing trial. I've been training people. I've trained hundreds of people. Now I've. I do group training sessions as well, do semi private. I wear a lot of hats and it's been going really well, especially in a small town like this. It can. There's a smaller pool of people as compared to say somewhere like the Gold coast up north or in Brisbane. But I've managed to carve out a Full book of clients. Quite a lot of times over the years. It waxes and wanes, but recently it's been. I've been fully booked and then close to it, but I've loved it ever since and can't wait to see what the future holds.

Awesome, mate. That's so good. And we actually started at a similar time actually. I actually started kind of just after the lockdowns for us in Brisbane. So I actually started as an online trainer during lockdowns. So whether or not you knew that or not, who knows? But now you do.

I do.

So I'm super curious. Let's obvious talk about the stuff more recently because I don't know a whole lot around the first couple of years. I probably only know around the last six to 12 months or so. You said obviously you've had a lot of success recently. Is there anything that you've done or what have you done differently, let's say over the last couple of months? Compared to in recent times?

I focused a lot more on lead generation. I didn't really go that hard on it because I had a lot of referrals from either clients, past clients or from management. But that can only last so long and especially in a smaller area like this. So eventually I had to look for other sources of other marketing sources. And so I've been honing my skills as far as lead generation goes, particularly with gym lists, member lists, the community outreach, that kind of thing. So focusing more on that and I found that I haven't really needed to go too hard on that. But that's definitely been a game changer as far as getting consistently generation. I wouldn't say it's massive leads, but there's consistent leads which are really important for personal training to have those consistent leads coming in. But I found that I haven't had to go down the. I've kept it very organic. I haven't had to go down paid advertising. I've done. I've dabbled in that a little bit over the years, but I've just found that with the strategies I have now, organic still really works.

Yeah, it's a great point you bring up because a lot of people like. Because obviously you're at Anytime Fitness, even a lot of people that I talk to struggle to get leads. But in reality, in a gym like Anytime Fitness or any of those upper commercial facilities Fitness First Good Life, Jets, Snap Fitness, all those type of clubs especially obviously the strategy that we do, they're all organic. Like we obviously we do teach paid advertising, but 95% of face to face PTs do not need to do paid advertising. And you can go into as much detail as you want with this, but in terms of finances, in terms of the revenue for the business, where is that kind of what's the growth been? Like you obviously said it's been quite good recently. Like what, what are we talking in terms of growth or even total revenue?

As far as total revenue goes, I'm averaging now roughly over 2,500 a week. That's gross revenue, I want to say. I'd love to say it's take home, but it's, it's gross revenue at the moment. And as far as growth goes, I think around the time I started working with you, it was waxing and waning. I'd say roughly about the closer to the 1500 mark per week. But I found that it was yo yoing quite a lot between a thousand and fifteen hundred. And so I felt like I needed a different approach. That's why I approached you. And I've seen you on, you're on your podcast, but I'd also seen you on online as well. And I love the face to face PT thing because I think the online trainer thing is nothing wrong with it. But I think that there's also some room now for face to face PT that tends to get, that doesn't have a lot of focus on it. There's lots of online stuff, go online, do that sort of thing. So I've gone harder on the face to face, honing my skills on that, getting better at marketing, et cetera and being able to scale it up to that point. And it's been consistent ever since, which is, has been fantastic for me.

Yeah. And I think it comes back to what you were saying before. Like the leads that you are generating, it's not a massive, like huge amount of leads that you're getting, but it's consistent. Like week in, week out you're getting leads. Which is, I think it's one of the reasons you'll be able to relatively quickly go from, you know, that 1500 up to 2500. Not so much easily, but relatively, you know, it's been relatively consistent because as I said before, like pretty much every single time I did a check in with you, you're like, oh yeah, sign three new clients or sign two new clients. I was like, oh cool. Happy days. So, you know, a lot of, a lot of time when I'm talking to people as well, it's like you need to focus on the growth tasks, which is the lead generation you know, booking in the consults, doing the consults, obviously converting. And then more than likely, you're probably going to grow in the business, which is pretty much what you've done.

Yeah, absolutely. The other thing I've also been developing is my conversion rate sales. Obviously being able to take the lead from a prospect to a client, I, I was doing okay at that, but I felt like my conversion rate wasn't that great. I could get the leads in, but I just couldn't convert them that well. And so I've been working harder on that. So I think the combination of those two is killer. But I think for. In my experience, when I've worked with a lot of other pts, lead generation is one thing, but the other thing too is they just have trouble converting. They can't get the clients to buy, they can't get the clients to sign on. And I've just gone hard on that and made sure that, especially with objection handling that kind of thing, that I've got my ducks in a row, so to speak.

Yeah.

And I found that just by. It's nothing may. I wouldn't say it's anything complex or anything terribly advanced. It's just very simple stuff. But it makes such a difference.

Yeah, absolutely. Like when you say, like combining that as well, like if you're generating more consistently plus increasing your conversion rate, it's no wonder you've been able to grow so fast. So I'm just curious on your perspective as well. You obviously mentioned objection handling. Of course, yes. What were we talking in terms of? What was your conversion rate previously and what does it look like now?

So I would say it was more around the 50%, about 50 to 60% now it's well over three quarters. So it's a 75 and over. And that's been consistent. So I feel. And the, the, the, the good part about that is I feel confident when I'm doing the sales now, whereas before I was thinking, are they gonna do, are they gonna sign on? Are they not?

And you.

And that. I think the, the prospect could see that. So they backed off. But whereas now I think, well, it's just all I have to do is A, B, C. And as soon as I do that, fine, I just presented a certain way and we're good to go.

Yeah, that's huge because it also, like, obviously you'll be able to get more clients, make more money, et cetera. But if your conversion rate is, you know, in your case, an extra 25%, you're also saving 25% of time on that as well. Like it's works both ways. Extra money plus less time.

Absolutely.

I'd love to dive in a couple of the challenges as well along the way. Obviously, you know, business is never, never easy. Of course. Not at all. Yeah. Everyone obviously always sees the result and the success, but not a whole lot of people talk about the challenges or the roadblocks that they've had. So I'd love to dive into a few of those things.

Sure.

As well. So we can go kind of whether it's towards the start of your journey or even in more recent times. But what are some of the challenges that you faced with growing your face to face business?

Oh, okay. Well, I'll start at the start. Obviously. Covid was a massive handbrake. It couldn't have come at a worse time. I actually started when I started as a pt. I basically started with nothing. I had no leads, I had no marketing, no sales, nothing at all. And I basically just, I built the airplane on the way down. But I managed to get to a point where in my first three or four months I was getting, I had roughly around. I built it up to about 15 or 20 clients. I was getting a nice steady stream of income. I hadn't let go of my previous job at that stage because I wouldn't say I was 100% all in with PT at that stage. And then Covid hit, that was. And that basically killed my business. A lot of clients just disappeared pretty much overnight, especially with the first lockdown. Then when the lockdown was lifted, then I started again. So I build it up again and then the next lockdown happened and that and same scenario repeated. And then we had the floods here and the major floods and that, that killed lot of my business too. And so I had three major hits, I think in the first year or so. That was a real challenge, I guess. I guess I had a period where I was questioning whether this would be a viable career path because it was just up and down, up and down. But it was, it was a massive down. Not. No, it wasn't. Just little bit, little bit. It was a big down and could I bounce back again? And I just thought, oh, let's just go all in and see what happens. And so I managed to navigate that and build it back up again. It was, it took a while, but I got there. As far as recently challenges, I'm. I'm a competitive runner and a bodybuilder. So to prepare for the races and to prepare for shows while you're doing PT and You have a full book or close to a full book of clients is quite a challenge because you've got to give time for those specific things. And I, I manage it, but it's, it's a lot. But at the same time, I'm the sort of person I can't live without either.

I've got to have both.

So I managed to make it work, but it's a real balancing act. And some days, yeah, I'm just rushed for to do anything. Other days it's all on point. But I like to cram a lot into a very small space, so that's a real challenge. But I've managed to build better time management skills over, over the, over the years. And of course I think I've come to you quite a lot about my time management foibles over the time that I work with you. So I've managed to build up a system now where everything works. Is it 100% perfect? No, there's days where it's great and other days where it's not so great. I'm just on the fly. But I'd say these days it's less about finances and more about time.

Yeah. 100. I think it's natural to make that shift. When you obviously start to make a bit more money or start to grow the business. It's obviously about being more productive with your time with the conversion rate as an example or the consistent lead flow. So you're not, you know, going all out with all these types of leads. But I'm super curious to dive into the, the COVID stuff for, for a second. The reason being is because not so much with COVID recently because obviously that happened in what, 2020 or whenever it was. But a lot of people start PT as a part time gig and they struggle to make the transition to like a full time. Whether it's a full time income or whether it's a full time job or not so much a job, but full time hours in the business. Firstly, how is that transition making, making the transition from like a part time PT to going all in. And I'd love to kind of hear like what the mindset was like and why you decided to go all in rather than taking the easy route and having a job for security. What's your thoughts?

I think I got to a point where especially with pt, it could really have gone either way. I could have, I could have just let go and it really wouldn't have mattered that much or there was potential and I could have gone the other way. I just Thought, I've got to make a decision here. I can't just sit on the fence because it's. Neither way was really working. So I decided, well, I'm good at this, I can do this. And I got really good feedback and the management were behind me and they've been fantastic from day one. And so I thought, let's just go all in, go all in, go hard, and let's see what happens. Worst comes to worse, hey, there's the minds.

100%. I think a lot of people, in my opinion, should have that type of mentality where it comes to the business, especially when they're first starting, like, yes, you can obviously test it out and see if you actually like it or not. But if you do like it, if you do decide to go all in, what's the worst case scenario? Worst case scenario is, okay, go get a job.

Totally, totally. And I think I've. I've worked with, just in my gym alone, I've worked with a number of pts. And I think in the first.

Year.

Year and a half, I actually, there were four other P2s that came and went in that space of time. Four of them that didn't, didn't stay around long. And the main reason why is just because of what you said, they're dabbling in it. They're not really going all in. They're just treating it like it's. Yeah, there's a little bit here, it's a little bit there. And then they. But they don't do things like they don't walk the gym floor, they don't have conversations with people, they don't do any marketing. And they sit in the front office on their phones and. And then they turn around to the management, they say, how do you get leads? How do you get clients? And it's, it's obvious you do you get into the gym. Because at least with me, I just went in the gym and people knew who I was with. The other PTs, they got no idea because they don't see them often enough. And so that's part of that mentality where they just. It's, yeah, yeah, it's something I do on the side, not something that I actually do. And so when you have that mentality, I think it's easier because you're driven that way and you have to do it that way. You have to go hard that way, otherwise it's just not going to work.

Yep, completely agree. So many. I don't even know if you know this, but I think the stat is 80% of PTS quit within the first six months of starting. And it might be even more these days because as you said, a lot of people obviously targeting the online side of things and kind of leaving Face to face for a number of reasons, like there's pros and cons to each each one. But in my opinion, face to Face is by far the easier business to build. You know, if you think about it, how many online pts are there these days? Everyone and his dog is an online pt, let alone obviously the AI stuff that people can do on their own these days.

Yeah, 100% agree. 100%. And I think that in my mind, in the future, I think there's going to be a dearth of face to face pts because everyone's going online. But there's not much face to face. And I still find even now there's no real demographic, but you still get people asking for face to face pt. They don't really like the online version. Sure, there's a lot of people who do, and that's a thing for sure, but there's still lots of people who like that face to face connection. I don't think that's going away anytime soon. Obviously, AI presents a challenge. Sure. And there's. And there's definitely the online version, which is more convenient for a lot of people. I get that. But at the same time, there's a lot of people who want someone in front of them telling them what to do, rather than having someone from remotely who's just got sort of an idea or can't really see them, that kind of thing. It just works better for them. So I think there'll be, There'll still be a market for Face to Face.

For quite a while.

Yep.

I completely agree. I don't think the. I don't think PTs are in trouble at all in terms of AI and stuff. I think if anything, you'll just probably have more efficiency with certain things. And speaking of efficiency, I wanted to kind of dive into the productivity stuff that you were talking about before because obviously we've had a lot of conversations regarding productivity, but do you want to share with us a couple of things that you've done, whether it's from me or from your own stuff around how you've been able to be a bit more productive, especially with your bodybuilding shows and stuff that you've been doing?

Yeah, absolutely. The biggest thing I've done product wise, but productivity wise is the day before I write down what I'm going to do. And so I've got it Scheduled so that I do this at this time, this at this time, this at this time. Does it always pan out like that? No, but at the very least I've got a plan and then basically all I have to do is just do that. Whereas before I just thought, oh well, if I've got time I'll do this, if I've got time, I'll do that, et cetera. But now it's all sequenced. Now for me that works great. It may not work for everybody else, but I find that, yeah, it's the, it's the, the, the moniker was that prior planning prevents piss poor performance, that kind of thing. That definitely works in my case and I think planning ahead definitely works. Other strategies I've, I've found, if I'm just working, I found the Pomodoro works really well for me. So 45 minutes on 15 minute break. Let's keep going like that. That works really well. And, and in the end I end up just going straight to anyway, so I'll just keep going until the job's finished. But I find that just having that break in between when I'm either programming, doing some marketing or something like that definitely helps.

Yeah. 100. And just going back to one of the things you said about, you know, writing stuff down and you know, scheduling, scheduling it in. It obviously comes from more of a. What's the word I'm looking for? The opposite to reactive. Not reactive. You're like, you're proactive. Proactive. That's. Thank you. I was like, what's the opposite of reactive?

It happens.

It happens being proactive rather than reactive. And obviously that's going to make you super time efficient. And as you said, it doesn't always go to plan, of course, which nothing ever does. Nothing ever goes to plan. But you can obviously if you've blocked it into your calendar, for example. And this is what I do as well, I block everything into my calendar. You just move it to a different day that you've got time so you're still going to obviously get the task done. It's just, you know, something urgent came up that you needed to do, for example, or you weren't as productive as you thought you were going to be, which is awesome. One of the things that we worked on together relatively early was more of the hybrid type of approach. I wanted to kind of dive into to that because it's a big opportunity that personal trainers don't really take advantage of. Can you explain what we did and kind of what that looks like now in the business. Yeah.

So I, at the time, from memory, it's a while back now, but from memory I had a lot of. It was just basically face to face and then I had an online version of training as far as delivery of the program and they were basically separate but I never really combined them until we started working together. And I found that doing having the face to face delivery but having an online system works really well. And the best part about it is that you can transition between the two so much better. Whereas if it's just fully face to face and fully online, I don't think the client really gets to the, the, the difference between the two. Whereas if you combine them together it's just seamless. So if they want to downgrade, so to speak, they want to go completely by themselves online. It's just basically a shift. All you have to do is get them to go online but everything else stays the same. And that's been, it's, it's been a godsend for me as far as delivery system delivery goes, it's much easier for me to deliver packages and having different packages is not something where I have to explain three different things. It's basically just one blends into the other.

Well said, well said. And just for context for people at home when he's talking about the transition here. So this is super easy. Like for example, if you're sick or go on holidays, if someone's doing face to face pt, what usually happens, and this is what most personal trainers do is they'll, they'll only charge for their, their time, they'll only charge for the face to face session, but they don't charge for the programming, the check ins, the reviews that they're doing on their progress. So what we actually did was we combined that into a one package price. So obviously that to start with that increases your price point by a good, at least 10, 20% instantly. But it's a seamless transition as you said. So if, if you're going away, for example, they just go into the online model while you're away and you're still going to make income while you travel. Yeah. So a lot of pts don't understand how that works. So that's one of the big things that I do with a lot of people as soon as I start is change that mindset of cool. Well, I know you're not wanting to travel for example, right now, but when you do, you'll thank me later and you'll be able to travel super easy.

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree More and I've done that in the past where I've just gone away and I haven't got any income. And you, you worry about it because you, because you think, well, I need money, it's been hard to go away and then you've got to start budgeting and it's not that it ruins the holiday, but it's stressful because you're thinking about, well, if I spend this much money, am I going to have any more for this? And so on and so forth. Whereas if you transition into an online system. Well, usually what I do is that you have the face to face delivery, the hybrid delivery, but then you go away, you just say, well, two or three weeks beforehand, this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to go away. This is how we're going to go down to training, we're going to go to an online model. So basically everything's the same except I'm not going to be there. You just keep training, blah, blah and they get it. Whereas if you, in the past, what I said was, I'm going away, they said, oh great, well then I'll just pay you when you come back. Well, you know what I'm going to do in the meantime, you know, I need money to travel so I highly recommend any PTs out there. Definitely get that sorted out because it's, it, it will be, it's, it's such a relief to be able to go away and know that you're getting paid because if you, if you don't, if you've got enough cash behind you, great, then it doesn't really matter. But I think for a lot of pts they don't and so it's definitely good to have that consistent income coming in.

Yeah, could not agree more. And that's where like, for me this whole show is about profit, leverage and lifestyle. You're not going to be able to have the lifestyle if you're always trading time for money and only getting paid if you're trading time for money, which is what majority of people do when they have a job, etc. But that was super insightful. What's kind of next for you? Like, obviously you're doing quite well with the face to face business. Obviously you've got the bodybuilding stuff as well. So what do you, what are you kind of focusing on over the next kind of 6 to 12 months?

I'd say I'd like to, eventually I'd like to bring someone else on board another PT and transition away from for myself as a lead role. More as a supervisor type role, I guess you could say. And then grow business that way. I'd like to do a lot more online and scale down my face to face for sure. So I have a balance. But I definitely don't want to get rid of face to face completely. I do like training people in the flesh and I do get a buzz out of it still. But at the same time I would like to have a lot more leverage in my business for sure so that I can do other things, explore other things. As I mentioned before, bodybuilding in particular running to a degree as well. But bodybuilding in particular is a very big time investment and it's almost like a part time job. Right. So it requires that you give energy to it, otherwise it's just not going to really work. So I definitely in the next six to 12 months building a business where I can work that in so that I still can focus on the business, not in the business, but on the business, but still have my other interests on the side and still give enough time to them as well.

That's super exciting. So obviously you've got the profit now. Now we're going to more into leverage and the. The lifestyle.

That's right, absolutely.

People, if people want to kind of follow along on your journey as well, where's best to kind of follow you? On the. On the socials? Sure.

I'm on Instagram. It's at forward underscore and underscore upward or just put forward fitness in there in the search. You'll find me there. Yeah, I post as often as I can, but yeah, got lots of exciting stuff coming up.

That's super exciting, mate. I'll put the link to your profile in the description. Thank you so much for this interview. This is really insightful and thanks again for trusting me to help you in the business. I'm super pumped to keep growing and give you more leverage, more time.

You bet. I appreciate it Matt, thank you very much.