Ep85: The 5 Things I’d Tell Myself If I Was Starting As A PT In 2025

What's going on? Team Matt here for another episode. I actually literally just came back from doing this exact or not this exact presentation, but a similar presentation that we're going to go through today. And I got so much good feedback that I wanted to share it with the broader community. So the title of the. Oh, excuse me, the title of this is called Five Things I Tell Myself Starting as a pt. The reason why I'm going to go through this topic and the reason why I literally was only booked in for a 30 minute presentation for these students at Fit College that were just about to qualify as personal trainers. We ended up staying for an hour and a half, or almost an hour and a half. There was that many questions afterwards and going into more detail and it's really good to see. It's really good to see because, you know, just shows that they're curious and they obviously want to do well, which is awesome. So I'm going to go through the five things that I would tell myself if I was starting from scratch as a PT and like it's actually a lot simpler than you think. So make sure you stick around to number five as well because you know, it's not what you think it's going to be. So let's go through, we'll go through the five things that I tell myself again. So moral of the story is as well, when you first start as a PT and I don't really tell myself this, but I would now is you're going to, you're going to get started, you're going to struggle, you're going to learn and then you will scale. You're not going to figure it out straight away, you're going to, you're going to fail, you're going to learn, you're going to struggle. Okay? So it's just part of the game. Welcome to the game of business. You know, you got, you got to not so much like failing, but you need to be prepared that you are going to fail quite a bit running a business. So number one, your clients care about connection, not perfect sets and reps. Let me tell you a little bit of a story here. My longest serving client has been with me for five years, almost six years. And she, I'm not going to say the name, but she has almost never had any health and fitness goals. Almost never. And the reason that she stayed with me for so long is because we had a, like a mutual connection of just enjoying each other's company. Like it was still, still obviously trained. Um, but like it's not like she wanted to do powerlifting or bodybuilding or get super, super strong or lose heaps, heaps of weight. She, in, in most cases she's actually, her body composition has stayed very similar. So I'm gonna ask you this question. How long did your results take to happen? Or how many phases did you go through in different goals that you wanted to achieve? This person is exactly the same, she's gone through different phases. But you know, moral of the story is health and fitness is a lifetime commitment. So why would people leave, why would people leave your service if they have a connection with you or have a relationship with you or you know, obviously getting results. So food for thought. Relationships build careers, not counting reps. Okay, number two, you can't serve if you can't sell. Basically you need to be able to sell the service. Here's some stats for you, which I'm sure you guys have heard me say before. 80% of PTs quit within six months because they don't get enough clients. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that they're successful as a pt, it just means that they haven't quit yet. If you're an online trainer, only 5% online trainers make enough income for it to be a full time job or full time gig. Essentially most online trainers only have a handful of clients. It's always a side hustle. So if you can't, you can't serve if you can't sell. If you want to help people, which we all want to do, you need to be able to sell the service. So I've got a simple four step framework. It's just this is a very dumbed dumbed down framework. Obviously if you want more detail on sales, watch some of the other podcast episodes that I've got on sales. Or of course we can obviously work together if you want more advice. The four step process is ask, listen, prescribe, invite. If you think about a doctor, this is what happens. They ask what's going on, then they listen, then they prescribe and they basically, or once they've prescribed the best, you say here, you need to take this or you need to do this. It's exactly the same thing as health and fitness. Based on what you've told me, I recommend we start with this. Are you ready to get started or should we get started on that? Because if you think about it, the sales process essentially is the asking part is the questionnaire that you go through when you first start. And same with online, you go through the questionnaire, identify the problem, identify the pain point, and then naturally you're going to listen to what they say, then you're going to give them a recommendation on what they should do to get back on track. So you're going to provide a solution and then you just gonna ask them to get started. That's all it is. As simple as it can be with the sales process. Okay? That's number two. Number three, retention is the real business skill. It costs 10 times more to replace a client than to keep one. Now this is more, if we're talking financially, financially here, this is more targeted towards online pts because if you're a face to face pt, you shouldn't have to spend money on advertising, okay? If you're in a commercial facility, you absolutely should not be spending any money on ads. Anyone who's spending money on ads has no idea how to market in the gym. Clearly you need my help to be honest. So you only need to spend money on ads if or not so much if you're an online trainer. But majority of the time you only need to spend money on ads or advertising if you are a online page. So let's just say, for example, it might cost you $500 or let's just keep it simple. Let's just say it cost you $200 to get a client if you were to spend money on ads. So why would it, why wouldn't it make sense to look after your current clients way better so you don't have to spend the extra $200 to get a new client? Does that make sense? Now if we're talking face to face, this is in time. It costs you 10 times more time and also online time wise to replace the client then to keep one. So you know, for me, for my business, I don't know how many clients I've had in total, but I've had a lot of clients. If I was to tell myself this stuff when I first started, I'd be focusing way more on retention. My mentor when I first started was solely focused on sales and marketing, which is fine, still got the desired result, but it's a lot harder for me because I wasn't focused on the retention side of things. So if I had known back then how much work it costs and how much time it takes to get clients, then I would have been more focused on retention. Sales and marketing still has its place. Don't get me wrong, but if it was me, I'm sure you guys are the same. Or maybe not. You can let me know. Send me a DM if you think otherwise. I would much rather just Be spending time doing the sessions or getting people the results rather than having to sell all the time. That's just me. You might be different. That's number three. And a couple of tips on this one actually before we go into the next one. Couple of tips on this is three tips. Check ins celebrating wins and community vibe. So check ins meaning check in with your clients, especially online. If they're starting to not communicate with you or you're not getting much from them, they're going to drop out. Okay. So you need to make sure you checking in with clients, same with you, face to face. Of course you're gonna see them face to face as well. Of course. So you don't necessarily need to do as much. But specifically for the online guys, you need to make sure you're doing check ins. You need to have the communication going, celebrate the wins and the community vibe. It's kind of goes hand in hand. What I used to do is the face to face trainer is I used to go out for like monthly breakfasts. I used to put on like Christmas parties, Christmas and July parties, on a parties, but like events for my clients. What I was doing quite well. I used to pay for it all. But you don't necessarily have to pay for it either. You can just organize the event and people can just come along, they can buy their own food, buy their own drinks, et cetera, et cetera. But if you can imagine, if you imagine what is, if you think of the member experience, right, that all of a sudden They've got another 5, 10, 15 people to connect with that's on a similar journey. And guess what, they make some friends. Guess what? Then they go to a training partner. Then they've got more accountability, which therefore they're going to get better results, which means you look even better. Okay. Then everyone starts to know you in the gym. Oh yeah. Sally, you've got some epic results. How do you do that? Oh yeah, I've been training with Matt. Yeah, you should have a chat with him, speak to another person in the gym. Oh yeah, I've been training with Matt. You know what I mean? So community, you know, especially in the online world, people still want the community vibe. Okay, so one of the things that we suggest you do is in celebrating the wins is perhaps you could have like a group chat for all your clients. Perhaps they can motivate themselves in there. Maybe you just send like a motivational message on a Monday, for example, maybe you send some wins from the check in forms that you've done. Hey, congrats. Sally on losing two kilos. Congrats. John, on your PB on bench press, for example, celebrate the wins. That's also going to subconsciously provide more positive vibes for that community or for that individual. Or if someone's not on track, it's going to get them to strive to be on that win, that celebration win message that comes out on Mondays as an example. All this stuff will help you, your retention, being part of the community. Yeah, because they can get the same result from a million other pts. So why are they going to stick with you? Ask yourself that question. Why are they going to stick with you over someone else? Okay. All right, number four, start documenting. Don't wait until you're an expert. This essentially means start posting on social media. Don't wait until you've been a PT for a number of years. Just because you're a new PT doesn't mean you're not an expert in the field. Start posting. I was talking to some people from the FIT college students today and I was saying, I can't tell you how many clients I got from social media, my brand, and we'll talk about branding in a second. But my brand was so. Was so established in the local community that I used to, you know, in community groups where it's like, oh, looking for a personal trainer. Does anyone have any recommendations? I used to get tagged, tagged, tag, tag, tag, tag, tag. Can you imagine how easy it is to sell to those people? There's been recommended by six different people in the community that work with me. It's a community, you know what I mean? I used to have a Facebook group that I ran for free. I grew that to 1100 people and I use that as a nurturing, nurturing tool. So when the time was right for them to get some help, I was the, I was the point of contact. I was, I was top of mind. I was, I was the one that they wanted to work with because I provided value all the time. I got clients results, posted it in there. So document the journey. And I promise, when you look back like I've done, I look back, I'm like, holy Jesus, I can't believe what I've done. Yeah, I could literally look back from what I used to post about 5, 6 years ago and see it all unfolding. It's very cool, very cool to see. Now, one thing I brought up today with the FIT college guys was cool. Well, you're starting from scratch, for example. Cool. Just start somewhere. Don't. You don't have to recreate content or you don't have to create content, just document what you're already doing. You know, film a video of yourself. Hey, I just actually put together this program for XYZ client that wants to lose weight. This is what I did. Here you go. This is what I'm thinking of doing now. We just did a block with Sally. She's. She actually dropped five kilos in those eight weeks. So what? I'm Sally. Here's what we did. Provide value. Another. Another thing that you could do. Just recap conversations that you've had with clients. I just had a conversation with my client today about meal prep. This is the advice I gave her. You're already doing the stuff. You're just documenting it, posting it. Okay? So, yeah, start documenting. Don't wait until you're an expert. So, number five, actually, sorry, a little quote to. To finish off from my epic client, Ibrahim, shout out to you. Ibrahim, you're absolute superstar. You don't need a huge audience to grow. Just good content and a system to turn attention into action. Boom. This guy's gone from $200 a week to over 2k. I think it's just over 2k per week now. He's got 300 followers on your social media. Don't tell me you need a big audience to grow on social media. Look at mine. Like right now, I've only got 2,500 followers, and a lot of that has. I think when I was a PT, I think I only had 1500. It's not a big audience. It is not a big audience. Especially when I only work with. When I used to only do face to face. I never used to really do online. You do not need a big audience. And the other thing is your online presence is your resume or your cv. These days, people are looking on your Instagram and your Facebook rather than your reviews. They're looking on your social media. So you need to start documenting or start something. Number five, speed comes from learning from others. Here's a nice little quote for you. If you want to become the coach who changes lives, first find the mentor who changes yours. Oh, mic drop. So proof in the pudding. I just came back from Mexico last month, where I flew over to Mexico, learning from multiple six, seven, eight figure business owners, because that's the next step for me. I wouldn't go to an event full of people that are making 50, 60, $70,000 a year. I'm well past that. I want to make, you know, 50, 60, $70,000 a month, for example. So I need to be surrounded by people that are already doing that to spend time with people who are doing better than you. Prime example why I almost always have a mentor. You become the person that you surround yourself with. So you need to surround yourself with other successful people. Okay? So if you want to become the next success story or if you don't want to be a part of that stat, that is 80% of people fail within the first six months as a PT, then find someone who you like. And if you like me, then sweet. Maybe we should have a chat and see if we can work together. If you don't like me, that's fine. Find someone else that you like that suits your personality, that can help you. Because when you pay for a mentor, you pay for. You get back. You bet. Yeah, you get your time back. So you can either figure it out yourself and it take an extra 10 years, or you can pay someone to learn what will take 10 years into 10 days. Either way is fine. But that's what I did. And guess what happened when I invested in multiple mentors. I went from 0 to 15k in 2 years. 15k per week. You know, I've done the same thing with my business coaching. I've invested in the right people to help me grow and expand the business. So I think you should do the same. So if you want information on that, send me a message. Send me a message right now, right this second. See if we can help. At least I can point you in the right direction. But that's it. That's the five things that I. I would tell myself. So if I had to summarize them, it's focus on people, learn sales early, build your brand, master retention, and invest in guidance. If you do these five things, you're already ahead of 90% of personal trainers. Cool team. I'll leave it there. Have an epic day and I'll see you in the next week's episode.