Team Matt (PT Profit podcast) explains why a formal onboarding system matters for personal trainers: first impressions influence retention, set expectations, reduce ghosting and confusion, and project professionalism. He contrasts two approaches — manual (low-tech, customizable, risk of missed steps) and automated (scalable, consistent) — and lists practical onboarding components: welcome email, short how-to Loom videos (e.g., MyFitnessPal, app walkthroughs), onboarding checklist/form, initial tasks (track food for 3 days, upload photos, add trainer on social), booking a setup call or first PT session. He recommends using built-in automations in platforms like Trainerize/Everfit or a CRM + Stripe + Zapier workflow to send welcome emails, create accounts, schedule calls, and trigger weekly check-ins. Core takeaway: keep onboarding simple but consistent so every client gets the same clear next steps and support path.
What is going on? Team Matt here for another episode of the PT Profit, Leverage and lifestyle show. Hope you guys are having an epic day so far. So today we're going to talk about onboarding and the reason why it's so important and how to actually do it, do it right or do it correctly. And it's gonna be nice and nice and juicy, nice and simple as most of my stuff is full of value and straight to the point. Little update on me slowly getting better. But yeah, probably by the end of this week I reckon I'll be all good to go back to the gym. I've been to the gym in like three weeks and I am feeling weak, let me tell you that. All right, let's get into it. So I've got a couple of notes. I ran this super detailed training for my clients about a week or so ago about onboarding. So I'm just going to give you a couple of the highlights and if you do want the full training, just send me a message on Instagram or Facebook and I'll shoot it through to you guys. But let me just start by saying, like most personal trainers, they do not have any type of formal onboarding process. They kind of just wing it as people go through the, or as people join their program. And, and this sometimes means that it's, it's, it's not setting people up for success. And then one of the things that I learned from Mexico, as you guys heard last week on the, on the podcast, is onboarding can make or break your retention. So one of the problems, one of the problems that I've had, or not so much a problem, but one of the things I've realized is for the, some of the clients that have left my program, they weren't set up properly in my program. So it just goes to show, systems really do make a fair bit of difference in terms of the longevity of your clients. And it's like with any business as well. It's the same with your PT business. Whether you first to face or online, you need to have a streamlined process for onboarding to make sure your clients are set up correctly to have the ultimate success in your program. So let's go through a couple of things. I've got a couple of notes here that I'm going to refer back to. So let's go through why onboarding actually matters. So first impressions matter. First impressions equal future retention. So I just kind of talked about that a little bit briefly. It also sets expectations and builds buy in, reduces ghosting, missed check ins and Confusion and creates professional client experience from day one. If you think about it of how many pts are out there, how many pts do you know that actually have like a full onboarding process? I can tell you if I was working with a PT and actually had a proper process, I'd be like, dude, this guy is friggin on the ball and I can't wait to see what's next because this guy's so professional. He's got everything set out nice and neat, nice and easy to understand. I know exactly what's coming up next and I feel like I'm in the right spot versus how I'll go through everything with you in your first session. Okay, cool. I've got no idea what's coming up next and I don't know what the hell is happening. So that's like that part that I just explained, just. And that's what most personal trainers are doing. I'm going to show you an example of what you could do in terms of onboarding and then I'll show you like the manual way to do it and then how you can actually automate that process as well. So there's two approaches as I just said. There's one that's manual, which is obviously low tech, and there's one that's leverage switches, completely automated. Everyone gets the same experience, which is the key here. Everyone gets the same experience no matter what. You know, think about the top businesses in the world, people get the same experience no matter what. McDonald's, Domino's, you know, all these big franchises, you know, big W, Kmart, they'll get the same experience. Okay, so you want to avoid doing a lot of things manually if you can. So manual stuff is great for the early stages of business. Obviously you can customize it to the client if you like, but it's also easy to miss steps. But the automation side, it's ideal for scale, time efficient. You can repeat it obviously on autopilot and everything flows automatically so you're not going to miss anything. So there's a couple of examples of what you can actually include in your onboarding. And I'm not saying this is the exact way to do it. This is just an example of what you could do. Okay, you can do like a welcome email that gets that just kind of sets the tone. So you can do like a little, you know, sentence to say welcome to the team. You're so excited to have them part of the team. Here's the next steps. Download these apps, my FitnessPal trainer eyes, whatever. Watch this video which explains how we operate our service. This is how you do your check ins. This is when I respond to check ins. This is how you message me if you need extra support. Okay. You just want to give people the next steps. Now if you're an online training, you might actually book in like a setup call. So you might say, cool. Use this link to book in your first setup call to explain your training program. Or let's book in your first PT session. Here's a link to booking your first PT session. Okay, now, little rule of thumb, anything that's harder to explain, use like a loom so you can actually share your screen and show people what it's like for example, how to use check in or how to use check ins, how to use like trainerize Ever fit, whatever platform you're using and just make it super simple for them to understand. What I used to do is I used to send people a 5 to 10 minute video on how to use MyFitnessPal. Because I found every single frigging week I used to have conversations with clients on how to track their food. And I was like, I'm just repeating myself every single week. So I just made a training video that I sent to every single client when they first started. So everyone knew how to do it. They could refer back to that video, of course. They can ask me questions, of course. But everyone got the same training. So if one person knew how to do it from that training, then everyone should be able to know how to do it from that training. Okay, um, that's an example. And then what you can also do as well, you can be like, here's your next task that I want you to do. I want you to track your food for the next three days. I want you to upload your progress photos and I want you to do whatever. I want you to add me on Facebook, add me on Instagram. Okay, Whatever it is that you want them to do, give them the next three steps that they need to do before xyz. People want to know what's next, what are they working on? Okay, cool. They've already invested. What's the next things that they're going to work on? Okay, now that one can be done manually of course, or you can automate it so what they could look, what it could look like if you automate it. You can use like a full CRM system. You can do some automations in the the PT softwares like trainerize Ever Fit. I'm not going to share my screen and show you, but I'm Just going to tell you kind of what it looks like. But if you go into, I think it's in settings and trainerize, because I personally use trainerize. If you go into settings and you go like automations or auto messages, you can see in there that it's got welcome email. So every single person can get a welcome email as soon as they become a client. And like if you really want to go deep into this, you can actually automate clients getting the email to create their trainerized account as well. If you have like Zapier or a CRM client relationship management software, you know we can, we can, we can set up an automation so as soon as someone pays a zap can happen where it automatically sends the client the link to make an account through trainerize. And then if you really want to as well, you can also have trainerize set up. So like everyone gets the same base templates and you just edit the templates, you know what I mean? So if everyone's looking for weight loss, you can have like a basic weight loss training program and then you just edit the exercises to suit the individual. Save you a bunch of time. But anyway, that's this whole separate topic that we can dive into. If you want to know more about that, just let us know. But other things you can do, you can do, you can do like a welcome video as well. Doesn't have to be tailored, just a quick welcome video. You can do like a PDF guide, an onboarding checklist to make sure they've done it. So the client has to tick off the things to make sure it's done. Then you might get them to do like an onboarding form or an app walkthrough. There's so many things you can do, but just pick what, pick what's relevant to you. Don't just do all these things by the way. Pick what's relevant to you and what your clients need. A couple of. Just an example of what it could look like as a automation. So for example, you might set up your payments through a CRM which is also usually using Stripe as the payment provider. Once that payment goes through, it automatically marks the opportunity or marks the person as a one as in you won. The customer automatically sends them a text message and an email. The email then has all the next steps. It adds that to a workflow which automates the weekly check ins and then automatically sends a link to booking their first onboarding call or first PT session. All that part can be automated. Okay, that's as simple as it can get. That's pretty much it really. So moral of the story here is keep it simple, but keep the same process for every single person. Okay? Every single person should get the same experience no matter what. Give them the next three things they need to work on. Tell them what's coming, tell them how they get support, how to use the service, and what's next. Simple as that. Team, if you do want the full training, as I said, just send me a message on Instagram or Facebook and I'll send you the worksheet so you can actually see the visual of this stuff. And also I can send you the live recording of what I did. But any of these softwares like Trainerize, Ever Fit Train Heroic, you can do basics of your welcome email through there, but if you want to send like multiple stuff, being a little bit more advanced, you can, you can get a full CRM system, but at a bare minimum, bare minimum you should be using like the welcome email through Trainerize or Ever Fit Train Heroic. Train Heroic, whichever platform is relevant to to you. That's it, team. If you got value from this, make sure you share it. The only way this podcast does grow is if you share it with other people. So we are getting a lot of good feedback from the podcast. So make sure if you do like it, please let me know because otherwise I will. I don't know if it's actually any good or not. So do me a favor, if you do actually like the episodes, send me a message and actually tell me that you like it so I actually know it's resonating with you guys. Otherwise it's just me talking to myself. So have an epic day. I'll see you next week and enjoy and make sure you make the onboarding process from now on.
