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A viewer called George asked us a question, and this episode is the answer. He’d watched our video on going from zero to ten clients in ninety days and wanted to know what we actually meant by getting started in a gym. Fair question, because there are four different models now and they are not remotely equal. Two of them we’d tell you to walk away from. Not because they’re unpopular, but because the deal isn’t fair on you. This is a conversation between me and James from our video podcast, Coaching and Coffee. If you’d rather watch it, search Coaching and Coffee on YouTube. Worth saying this isn’t only for people starting out. If you’ve been in the industry a few years, the model you’re sitting in is quietly deciding what your ceiling looks like. In this episode: The revenue share model, and the trainer being charged out at £55 a session who keeps £22What happened to him over the summer when his clients went on holiday and the gym still collectedWhy being charged out at a rate you’re not yet worth sets you up to struggle on every frontThe fully employed route, who it genuinely suits, and why we’d both still want you to leave it eventuallyWhy the hybrid model is the same arrangement that got ruled unlawful, just restructured so it’s legalLosing control of your own diary, and why that matters more than the hourly rateWhy the money the gym pays you isn’t yours, and what to do with that number insteadThe one question to ask before joining any gym, which most trainers never think to askWhy trying to run hybrid alongside an existing job almost never worksFully self-employed, why it’s the hardest route, and why we’d both still pick it again86% of PTs leave the industry within two years. Plenty of them never got a fair deal to begin with. Find us on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@coaching_and_coffee Find me on Instagram: @mattrobinsonpt Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

I’ve got under 2,000 followers and I use social media to attract leads every week. That’s not a boast. It’s the point. Most of the frustration around social media comes from the assumption that you need a big audience before any of it works, and then watching your content go nowhere while you wait for that to happen. Your business doesn’t need more followers. It needs more clients, and those aren’t the same thing. So this episode runs through five types of content you can share as a fitness business owner that build authority and trust rather than reach. None of them require a big following. All of them work better with a small, specific one. In this episode: Why a large following gives someone authority by default, and how you build it without oneOpinion content without having to be the loudest person in the room, and why you don’t need to call anyone out to have a stanceThe two things I’m openly opinionated about, including why I think PTs should earn what GPs earnBelief shift content, and how one sentence can dispel a myth and prove your credentials at the same timeThought leadership through your philosophy and principles, plus an easier version if that feels out of reach yetWhy proof content is obvious but the frequency isn’t, and the places it needs to exist beyond your feedSharing your frameworks openly, and why giving away the system doesn’t cost you the clientWhat to measure instead of viewsI had a client with a video that reached 1.6 million views. It led to zero clients. Worth remembering when you’re waiting for the one that takes off. Find me on Instagram: @mattrobinsonpt Find out more: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/

This one's for the coaches who've been doing this a while. If you're two, three, five years in, you know how to coach, you know how to get results, and you know how to get clients. You're not starting from nothing. But there's a good chance you've hit a point where things feel a bit flat. Same number at the bottom of the month for two years. Same routine. And somewhere in the back of your head, the question nobody says out loud. Is this it? I've spent a lot of the last few months talking about lead generation and getting started, which has probably neglected this group a bit. So this episode is the other end of it. The thing worth knowing is that it's usually not the same cause twice. You might go through more than one of these phases in a year, for entirely different reasons. In this episode: Why the clients you've ended up with might be a messaging problem rather than a client problemThe bit of your onboarding you built once and haven't looked at since, and what it's quietly doing to the coach you've becomeWhy you have to subtract before you can add anything, and the one question to ask your clients that tells you exactly what to cutWhat a 100% conversion rate actually means, and why hearing the occasional no is a good signHow stripping back 10% of your delivery can open up 20 to 30% more capacityWhy the business growing doesn't count for much if your own life hasn't moved in three yearsThe four weeks off, with no catch-up sessions, that changes how the whole year feelsPaying yourself the same as you did three years ago means you've taken a pay cutIf you had a job where you hadn't had a pay rise in years, while putting in more effort every year, you'd start looking elsewhere. Worth asking why you'd accept it from your own business. Find me on Instagram: @mattrobinsonpt Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

I got a message recently from someone who'd found me through ChatGPT. They'd asked it to recommend podcasts about PT coaching and building a fitness business, and it told them to listen to me. That's happened a few times now, and it isn't luck. I started taking steps about 18 months ago to give myself a chance of showing up in places like that, and I told my clients to do the same. One of them signed a client last week who came from exactly that. She'd had a conversation with ChatGPT and it hadn't just recommended personal training in general, it had gone and found the specific coach it thought was right for her. She's been training a few weeks and has already referred somebody else. Here's why this matters right now. Almost nobody in our industry has done anything to prepare for the way search has changed. That's the advantage. In this episode: The difference between a list of ten personal trainers in your area and the best personal trainer for you, and why people act on the second one differentlyTwo basics you need in place before any of this is possible, and the detail in both that most trainers get wrongWhy the wording inside your Google reviews matters more than the number of them, and how to reply in a way that helpsWhy a twelve month old five star review is treated almost the same as no review at allRenting your digital home versus owning it, and what a smart website actually needs to doWhy long form content does something short form can't, and the one sentence in a one hour video that could become somebody's answerHow to build this one step at a time instead of all at onceI'm not claiming to have cracked the code on AI search. Nobody has. This is just what I've actually been doing for the last 18 months and the thinking behind it. There's also a 30 day Fitness OS trial in this one, limited to five slots across the podcast and my newsletter list. Details near the end. Find me on Instagram: @mattrobinsonpt Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

Kris wasn't struggling when we started working together. His clinic was full. He'd been treating running injuries for sixteen years, had a colleague working alongside him, and there was no shortage of clients. On paper there was nothing to fix. In the last eighteen months that business has doubled. He's also taken a full day off every week. What changed wasn't that he got busier. He stopped being a running injury specialist and became a running specialist, which sounds like a small distinction and turned out to be an enormous one. In this episode: Being nearly deaf until he was four or five, the stammer that followed, and being the first child in his school to have someone sit next to him in classThe teacher who read his ambition to become a professional runner and said there wasn't much money in itWhy he built a free running group for faster runners in East Yorkshire, kept it selective, and got called elitist for itConverting his garage into a clinic, and what it cost him before it earned anythingThe move from £45 physio appointments to £125 performance tests, and the conversation where I pushed his pricing higher than he wantedWhy his online coaching is deliberately low touch, and what that protectsTwenty online clients filled almost immediately, plus a steady stream of people coming back for retestingHow he's built almost all of this with barely any social media presence, and why he's not convinced that will changeWhy specialising opened doors rather than closing them, including his first overseas clientThere's a moment in this where Kris says he knew he'd fail if he didn't try, which is different from being afraid of failing. If you're already doing well and quietly wondering whether this is as far as it goes, that's the bit to listen for. Find Kris at The Run Performance Lab on Instagram. Book a Business Breakthrough Call with Matt: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

Most personal trainers have the same problem with promoting themselves. They know they should be doing it. They don't want to come across as pushy. So they end up doing almost none of it, all year round, and then wonder why the business feels stuck at the same level it's been at for three years. There's a better way to think about it, and it starts with accepting that you shouldn't be selling at the same intensity in November as you were in September. This episode maps out four pillars across the fitness year. When to push, when to ease off, and what to be doing in the months in between so that pushing actually works when you come back to it. In this episode: The two periods every year when people are actively looking for what you sell, and why they're not the same as each otherWhy your current clients should be the first thing you look at, before you think about new onesThe collective challenge idea, including the year my clients tried to walk the circumference of the earthHow direct you can afford to be in September and October, and why most PTs are nowhere near direct enoughA client of mine who added six one-to-one clients in the first two weeks of the month doing exactly thisWhat to do in November and December instead of selling, and why that's the bit that makes January workWhy January is not a repeat of September, and the one thing you need to change in your messagingHow to run the same cycle again through March, May and JulyThe people coming back in September are usually trying to get a routine back. The people arriving in January often haven't been near a gym in ten years. Same offer won't do. Find me on Instagram: @mattrobinsonpt Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

Between us, James and I have spent 27 years working in the fitness industry. So for this episode, we decided to try and condense as much of that experience as possible into 40 minutes. We each brought five lessons to the table. No idea what the other person had written down, no carefully coordinated list, just the things that have stuck with us most after years of working with clients and building fitness businesses. And interestingly, almost none of them were about exercise selection, programming or nutrition. We talk about: Why you need to stop trying to be the cleverest PT in the roomThe difference between selling Personal Training and solving someone’s problemsWhy we both wish we’d collected more reviews earlierHow to make sure your business actually rewards you as it growsWhy a full diary doesn’t automatically mean you’ve built a successful businessTaking time off before you desperately need itWhy “I don’t know” can sometimes be one of the best answers you give a clientThe importance of getting your policies right from day oneWhy your goal should be to create clients who don’t actually need youAnd why I wish I’d taken myself a little less seriously when I first startedThese are the lessons that tend to come from making mistakes, getting things wrong and spending years figuring out what actually matters. Hopefully, we can save you a bit of that trial and error. If you’re a Personal Trainer looking to build a better business, become a better coach and make the industry work for you over the long term, there should be plenty in this one for you. You can find me on Instagram at @mattrobinsonpt or visit mattrobinsoncoaching.com if you’d like some help building a high-profit, low-stress fitness business.

Nobody asks why you haven't signed a client this month. Nobody notices that three have just left. Nobody tells you your prices haven't moved in four years. Nobody points out that you stopped marketing the minute you got busy. And nobody knows you've had a really shit week. That's the bit of self-employment nobody puts on Instagram. This week's episode is a bit different. It's less about what to implement and more about something I've been thinking about for a while. One of the best things about working for yourself is that nobody tells you what to do. One of the hardest things is exactly the same sentence. In this episode: Why you can be surrounded by people in a busy gym all day and still be completely on your ownWhat freedom actually is, and why I don't think it's the money, the cars or the holidaysThe systems most of us are quietly trying to break away from, and why doing that is harder than anyone admitsFreedom doesn't mean having no structure or support. It means getting to choose your ownWhy the hardest periods of my own business weren't the ones where things were going badlyThe trap you can build for yourself after escaping everyone else'sTwo questions worth sitting with this week, including the one I'd want everyone listening to answer honestlyThe question isn't whether you're capable of doing this on your own. You clearly are, or you'd never have started. The better question is why you'd want to. Join the weekly newsletter: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/newsletter Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

Slight change this week. I'm sharing something that hasn't gone live anywhere else yet. This is a full training I recorded for Fitness OS, the second in a set of master resources we're building. The video version isn't out yet. You're getting the audio first, and I've made the workbook live early so you can use it as you listen. The topic is retention, which is the thing almost nobody in this industry talks about properly. Every bit of fitness business advice out there is about getting clients. Leads, marketing, offers. I've made plenty of that content myself. But almost nobody talks about what happens after someone signs up, and how you make sure all that effort doesn't quietly go to waste three months later. In this episode: Why retention, referrals and reactivation aren't three separate things, and what changes when you treat them as oneTwo trainers, same price, same clients. One retains for three months and one for six. The gap ends up being four times the profit, not doubleWhy the most expensive part of your service is the bit you keep repeatingThe two real reasons clients leave, and why the first one happens before they've even startedThe Loyalty Ladder. Two rungs, one rule, and why everything on the top rung is pointless if the bottom one isn't nailedWhat unreasonably consistent actually means, and why it's the basics rather than the technical stuffThe First 12 Weeks Blueprint, built on Robert Dunbar's work on how relationships deepen and Joey Coleman's research on the first hundred daysWhy the client review disappeared from personal training, and what you lose by replacing it with a check-in formThe birthday example. The difference between a half decent trainer, a good one, and the one nobody leavesYour clients aren't just comparing you to other trainers. They're comparing you to their hairdresser, their last hotel stay, and the bloke who was supposed to fix the boiler on Tuesday. Grab the free workbook: https://fitnessos.co.uk/how-to-keep-your-clients-as-a-personal-trainer Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

Paul phoned the course provider to ask if he was too old to become a personal trainer. He was in his late thirties at the time. He's now 51, working full time as a PT, with a target market of 40 plus who specifically want someone with a bit of life experience. The thing he thought was a problem turned out to be the whole point. Paul's also been a listener of this show since before the pandemic, so it was good to get him on the other side of it for a change. What makes his story worth hearing is that he's built this with zero footfall. No gym floor, no passing trade, nobody walking past him on their way to the treadmill. Everything has had to be created from nothing in a local area. In this episode: Going from a finance career in the city to full time PT, and the two things that nearly stopped himWhy his age is now one of the biggest reasons his clients choose himHow he went from the messy middle of not really knowing what he offered, to exercise therapy and a genuinely prescriptive serviceThe trial offer we built together, how it's evolved from four sessions at £29 to three at £75, and why it still converts into packages of £200 a month and upWhat his three session structure actually looks like, including the whiteboard session that does most of the selling for himGetting clients from local Facebook groups with a proper rotation system rather than posting when he feels like itSix new clients in six weeks, in August, which is not supposed to be the good monthWhy he got a coach early rather than waiting until he'd struggled for three yearsThe second pillar he's building around youth speed and strength work, and why it doesn't have to be online coachingPaul's honest about the wobbles too. Worth a listen if you're building something without a gym floor underneath you. Find Paul on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pmfitness74/ Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

What would you do if tomorrow you had no clients, no testimonials, no social media following, no website and no email list? Just your PT qualification, your experience and access to a gym floor. In this episode, James and I set ourselves a simple challenge: Get 10 Personal Training clients in 90 days, starting from zero. We break down exactly how we would approach it, what we would focus on first, and just as importantly, what we would completely ignore. We cover things like: Why becoming an influencer would be nowhere near the top of our listWhy speaking to people on the gym floor still gives you one of the biggest advantages available to a PTThe daily targets we would set for conversations and new contactsHow we would turn those conversations into consultations and paying clientsWhere a simple front-end offer can help reduce risk and make it easier for someone to get startedHow we would use referrals, local businesses and gym staff to create more opportunitiesWhy training in the gym you work in can become a genuine business-building activityWhat to do if you reach week five, six or seven and things still aren’t moving quickly enoughThis isn’t about chasing followers, building complicated funnels or trying ten different marketing strategies at once. It’s about focusing on the opportunities directly in front of you, building relationships, collecting data and staying consistent long enough for the numbers to start working in your favour. If you’re a newer Personal Trainer, struggling to build momentum, or you simply want to strip your business back to the fundamentals, this episode will give you a very practical place to start. You can find me on Instagram at @mattrobinsonpt or visit mattrobinsoncoaching.com if you’d like some help building a high-profit, low-stress fitness business.

You’ve probably been told at some point that you need to find your niche. But I think there’s something more important that most Personal Trainers barely think about at all: Your marketplace. In this episode, I explain the difference between a niche and a marketplace, why finding the right places to be visible can be far more valuable than endlessly refining your ideal client avatar, and how I used this approach to generate clients throughout my own PT career. I’ll walk you through five marketplaces you can start thinking about within your own fitness business, including: The marketplace that could already exist inside your gymHow to find local “starving crowds”Why an “able audience” can become incredibly valuable over timeHow I used golf clubs and local businesses to consistently generate enquiriesThe online marketplaces that can help you reach people already looking for what you sellWhy simply being present isn’t enough — you need to be visibleNone of this requires a huge social media following, complicated funnels or some ridiculously specific niche. It’s about putting yourself and your business in the places where the right people already spend their time, then showing up consistently enough to become the obvious choice. If you’re a Personal Trainer or Fitness Professional looking for a more practical way to generate leads and build a high-profit, low-stress fitness business, this episode is for you. You can find me on Instagram at @mattrobinsonpt or visit mattrobinsoncoaching.com if you’d like some help with your fitness business.

A client asked me recently what the ones hitting six, seven and eight grand a month are doing that he isn't. The answer was short. They're unreasonably consistent. That's really what this episode is about. September is the second busiest month in fitness and it's worth preparing for, but the preparation isn't a September thing. It's the same handful of simple actions done for longer than most people are willing to do them. I go through what to do with the people you've already got first, because that's where the money is and almost nobody starts there. Then everyone else. In this episode: What the latest data says about the busiest months, and why the year is steadier than it used to beWhy a September enquiry is often a better client than a January one, even though January brings more of themThe three things to do with your current clients, ex clients and leads before September arrives, none of which involve speaking to a strangerWhy I don't want you giving as much attention to people who don't know you yet as you probably think you shouldHow to speak to the September mindset, which is not the New Year, New Me mindsetWhat unreasonably consistent actually looks like in practice, and why it's the same thing you already tell your clientsDo a decent job of the first section and you could pick up three to eight clients in September. That's a couple of hundred a month recurring, or a couple of grand. Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

I went to Disneyland with my family and came back with a notebook full of business lessons. I'll be honest, I wasn't that bothered about going the first time. That was 2019. We've now been three times, and each visit has been longer and more expensive than the last. Which tells you something in itself. In this episode I go through what I noticed while I was there, and how it maps onto what we do. Not the theme park stuff. The bits underneath it that most people never consciously register but absolutely feel. In this episode: Why the details you think nobody notices are the ones doing the most workHow Disney turn queuing, the most mundane part of the whole experience, into part of the experience itself, and what that means for the six days a week your client isn't with youThe reports I used to write for my accountant clients and my teacher clients, and why they became the thing those clients looked forward to mostWhat standards actually means, and why you can still look scruffy in a uniformHow easy is it to be your client? Really?Why your clients are comparing you to their hairdresser and their last hotel stay, whether you like it or notAround two hours of a four day trip were spent on rides. Everything else was the experience. Worth thinking about if you only see your clients for an hour a week. Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt

Most people think online coaching means a laptop, a beach, and total flexibility. Ajay Sidhu is here to tell you that's not even close to reality. Ajay works full-time as an online coach, managing 60+ clients at once, delivering body transformations for a US-based client base. In this episode, he breaks down exactly what proper online coaching involves, the structure it requires, and why it's often more demanding, not less, than working in person. Matt and Ajay cover the biggest mistake coaches make when someone first signs up, how to build genuine rapport without ever meeting a client face to face, why a single Loom video can save you hours of back-and-forth messaging, and what coaches should actually be charging for this kind of service. Matt also shares his own take on the business model he'd recommend to any in-person coach looking to add online coaching properly, without sacrificing what makes their in-person work valuable. This episode is genuinely one of the most detailed, practical breakdowns of online coaching delivery you'll find anywhere in this space. In this episode: What online coaching actually is, and why most people misunderstand itThe mistake Matt made himself when he first tried online coachingWhy front-loading the relationship matters more than jumping straight into training and nutritionHow to structure check-ins, calls, and ongoing communication properlyWhy Loom videos build more trust and save more time than text messagesWhat to do when a client stops being compliant or goes quietWhat coaches should really be charging for online coachingThe hybrid business model combining small in-person groups with premium online coachingIf you're a personal trainer considering adding online coaching to your business, or already doing it and wondering if you're doing it properly, this episode will give you a clear, honest picture of what it actually takes. Find Ajay:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ajaysidhucoach Book a Business Breakthrough Call: https://mattrobinsoncoaching.com/speak-with-matt