[00:00:00] James Breese: Strength Matters Media. Video. Print. Podcasts.
[00:00:05] Josh Kennedy: Today's topic is a case study on how we help the single mum PT and massage therapist get 15 new clients in four weeks without any paid advertising. Basically, uh, this all started back in when we were doing the HCP in Essex. And, uh, that's our system of training.
[00:00:24] Basically, we teach our trainers how we do. Everything from assessments to programming, nutrition, basically how we do everything behind the scenes at Strength Matters. And we thought, you know, teaching trainers would be the fantastic thing. Everyone needs this. And then you spoke to Sasky and we realized there was a, maybe a little element missing that we hadn't even thought
[00:00:45] James Breese: of.
[00:00:46] Yeah, massively. I hadn't even considered that a lot of trainers are struggling to get to a certain level of recurring income with their PT clients in the first place, or they're struggling to attract leads. And then the more we spoke to her about it and we [00:01:00] uncovered what was going on was, well, it was quite a simple solution, really.
[00:01:03] No one could actually find her. There was no presence. She had no visible presence online. She wasn't posting. If people searched for her in her town, they couldn't find her. So it was like one of those... A ha type moments where Sasky just needs a website. Yeah, well we were trying
[00:01:18] Josh Kennedy: to solve, solve something up the chain here.
[00:01:21] Give them all the wonderful systems, tools and resources, weren't they, to train clients. Well they can't, if they haven't got any clients in the first place and a consistent income, then you don't need this up here, you need, you need this down here. That's essentially what
[00:01:34] James Breese: we found out. Exactly. It's that whole idea of where we, this is where, you know, we've spoken about in previous episodes where we talk about the black belt revenue model, like the first goal for us is to get people out of white belt from two and a half thousand to at least blue belt in earning about 5, 000 a month, because that's the way where you can have some security.
[00:01:50] So some relief, I think as well. So I'm like, what's the word? I think the word is just relax about your business as opposed to constantly [00:02:00] fighting to find new clients to just get pay your next bill, your paycheck, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:02:04] Josh Kennedy: Well, what's it says? Share, excuse me, some specifics about Sasky in terms of like, you know, her clients, uh, income, uh, systems.
[00:02:14] Did she have any of that?
[00:02:16] James Breese: So that was the thing. She was trying to build systems for personal training, online coaching. But she was struggling to get clients in in the first place. So that wasn't her priority. When you're first starting out as a trainer or coach or massage therapist as well, in Sasky's case, the first goal is to get clients through the door.
[00:02:30] You want some money coming in so you can relax and pay the bills that you have to pay and just live a little bit of life, right? Then the systems come to refine it, to grow and scale. So it's like you're in a launch phase, you then go to the grows phase, and then you go to the scale phase. Saskia was very much in the launch phase, but she was trying to do grow phase type activities, which is what the HCP is all about.
[00:02:51] But even
[00:02:51] Josh Kennedy: more, even simpler than that, she had no idea of her income month to month, did she? She had, you know, in terms of booking clients in, she was doing it on a [00:03:00] notebook. She had no, she had no consistency in terms of clients booking
[00:03:03] James Breese: in either. Yeah, there's, there's, there's multiple things here, but we love Saskia, by the way.
[00:03:06] And this is just the case show, which other people can relate to. So it was, yeah, absolutely. She didn't have the basics in place like that. But the, the real basic foundation was when we spoke to her and we had more conversations about it when she really need to get clients in because yes, she's a single mom, two kids, and she's, you know, having to work really, really hard to get everything, everything done.
[00:03:26] So it was like, well, okay, if I was back at the start, what would I do to get clients in consistently? So this is the, her case study, her story. When we went back to ground zero, we discovered that she had no website in place. And for me, having a website in place and being found on Google is your foundation.
[00:03:43] It's the first thing you should set up as a business owner if you're trying to set up. Having a website to tell them who you are and what you do. And secondly, having a website that can be found in Google, I think is the best way to put it. So if you can't be found in Google, there's no point having a website.
[00:03:58] And if you haven't got a website, well, there's no point trying to [00:04:00] do something in Google. No one's ever going to find you. So you need to do both right at the start. So we had a phone call. Me and Sasky spoke it out and I said, right, I've got an idea. Let me help and see what we can do with it. Let's run with it.
[00:04:11] And she said, yes, let's do it. And that was how it all started. So should we dive in a bit more to it, Josh, or where should we start? Well, I was just
[00:04:18] Josh Kennedy: gonna, I was just gonna quickly bring Andrew in before we dive into specifically what we did and let's say, Andrew, you've been a fitness business coach for a long, a long while.
[00:04:29] You worked for, used to work for a large company. Um. In terms of getting clients, is that sort of the number one problem that you've seen from day dot to now? Is that generally the consistent problem that most
[00:04:43] Andrew Wallis: PTs have? It is. And if, if, you know, we're all qualified coaches, if we think back to, for me, it's a little longer to think back.
[00:04:51] But if I think back to where, when I first did my training through the likes of Premier and FutureFit and the likes, we, [00:05:00] we, we focused on. Becoming a great coach or certainly the introduction to becoming a great coach. But I can't think of any real marketing assistance or, um, programming or training I was showing over then speak to people, you know, go onto Facebook, um, send out some flyers, uh, and that was it.
[00:05:24] So it's a big challenge when, when we've certainly, when we first enter the industry. So absolutely, I see that. And I mentioned Facebook because, you know, Meta is omnipresent. We're all comfortable on that to a degree. And that's where most fitness professionals I see today. That's where they put their focus as opposed to.
[00:05:45] As we all believe we should be getting our own foundational pieces in place, and that starts with the website. Yeah,
[00:05:52] Josh Kennedy: absolutely. As I keep saying, Facebook now it's changed. Maybe it was a place to advertise back in the back in the day. Now it's [00:06:00] generalist. It's not, it's not specific and you need to be specific.
[00:06:02] So go on James, let's talk about the specifics of what you did, what we did.
[00:06:07] James Breese: So that was it. So again, the strategy was this. So how we got her to this, these 15 clients in less than four weeks, and it was all organic growth. It was no paid advertising involved. It was just doing the basics and basics very well.
[00:06:19] So this is where the whole website design and free website design idea kind of was born basically thanks to Sasky. So we literally, I said to her, right. I'm going to build your website so I can use my expertise and knowledge to do that and do it quite quickly. So I said, right, in the space of a week, we're going to get this up and running and we're going to make it happen.
[00:06:36] What I need from you is a certain number of things. So I said, right, we're going to build a website and I will do it and I'll put it in and I'll do all my SEO tactics and get you found on Google. Here's what I need you to do. So I asked her to go on to Fiverr to create a logo with just her name. That was the first thing.
[00:06:52] So I said, don't spend hundreds of thousands because a lot of people spend thousands on this sort of stuff. No, I want you to spend less than 10 to 15 and get a simple [00:07:00] logo, something that's standard so we can just put on your website and look professional. You're speaking
[00:07:04] Josh Kennedy: from experience there because how many, how many thousands did you spend on, on ours?
[00:07:09] James Breese: Lots and don't do it again. And that's my advice because you have to then make the money to pay for it off again. So I wish I could do things in reverse. That was the first thing. In the meantime, I went to have a look at the local competition in her area. I looked at personal training. I looked up the town where she is in Montmorency or in France.
[00:07:25] And I looked at what the competition could be. Now, Saski is both a fitness professional and a massage therapist. Okay. Now in the economic times that we're in, I promise you this. Massage therapy is easier to sell than personal training, right? It's a much easier sell. People just see the benefits of it straight away.
[00:07:44] So what I said to her, I said, right, I think we should focus on one thing and that's massage therapy and sports massage. Because I think that's going to be easiest way to get money coming in through your door. And then once you get a recurring revenue PT side of things after that, because the town where she [00:08:00] lives in is quite small.
[00:08:01] Alright, so we thought, right, massage therapy is going to be the main focus. We'll come back to personal training at a later date. And I'm going to build and optimize a website around that. So, I went away, Sasky went away to do the avatar and the logo. So she had to do an avatar of who she wanted to work with as well.
[00:08:20] And I went away and started building the website. So in two days... We had a website, we had an idea of where we want to focus on, we had a logo from Fiverr which came back within 24 hours, and we had everything online within the website. I also said to her, we need a domain name. So let's buy the domain name sasky4.
[00:08:39] com, that's her website name. Because it's her personal name, it's personal branding, a great way to start off is to personal brand yourself to begin with. Don't worry about big names, people buy from people they know, like and trust, and they want to buy into who you are. Straight away. So let's go sasky4.
[00:08:53] com. So we install the website. We got the logo and then I then set her off because in the back end of the systems we build for [00:09:00] people is a system of Google reviews. So to do part of the SEO stuff, you need to show intent that you're an active business and people like you. They trust the work that you do.
[00:09:11] So for Sasky, I said, right, go and speak to all your past clients and get them to review yourself, uh, review themselves, not themself, review themselves on Google business, right? As part of the SEO strategies. So she went away and did that. I put the website live and online. I made sure all the right tags.
[00:09:31] All the search consoles, Google Analytics could be found on Google and suddenly I launched it to the website with reviews then coming in automatically on this automated review system we have. Here, and that's what we kind of focused on. So I hope I've not gone too far on technical speak, but that's in a nutshell what we did.
[00:09:51] We built a website. She made a logo. We got bought a domain name of sasky4. com. She collected reviews to go into Google My Business because she had to create a Google business [00:10:00] profile as well. I forgot about that bit. And that was the starting point of what we were trying to achieve to get her presence online.
[00:10:08] And we were targeting sports massage and massage therapy in Montmorillon in France. Here's a special
[00:10:14] Josh Kennedy: message from our sponsor.
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[00:10:52] Josh Kennedy: So basically she can now be found in her local area, which is, you know, it's the key is to try and dominate your local area before you do [00:11:00] anything else.
[00:11:00] James Breese: Yes, absolutely. And then when I was looking at the competition, there was no real other personal trainers in the area. But there's a few massage therapists in the area and the massage therapists websites were awful.
[00:11:12] They were slow, they were clunky, you couldn't do anything with them. So that was the main thing. We made it clean, made it fast loading because it's important to be fast. And we created a simple booking appointment calendar for people to book in automatically with her. And then on the back end of that, we created an invoice payment system as well.
[00:11:29] But that's not how we can help to find it. But here's what happened. When she launched the website, she then shared it with her friends because it was a good quality website against very poor competition, Google ranked it high, very, very quickly. So she shot to number one within a week, right within a week.
[00:11:48] She got to number one, both on the website side of things and also in the Google map pack, which is so important. Now you can Google sports, massage, Montmorency or massage Montmorency in France and she'll come up [00:12:00] number one, right? Because the competition was so poor. It really was extremely poor. And that's why she rose up so fast.
[00:12:07] What's happened during that time is how she got the 15 clients. She posted about her new website online, right? She posted within certain community groups. I was saying, Hey, I've just launched my new website. Check it out. But more importantly, people were actively Google searching massage near me, sports massage near me.
[00:12:25] So 11 of those 15 people were people who came to her and found to her directly on Google search terms, right? So important. Google search in four weeks helped her get 11 new clients that weren't through social media posting in groups. Okay. The other four were, but 11 were direct, which we could track and see what was going on.
[00:12:45] That is the most important thing that most people miss out on is that people are actively searching on Google to find your businesses and services. But if you can't be found, you'll never get clients. And I think this is the best, most [00:13:00] evergreen strategy you can have as a personal trainer or gym owner is to optimize your website.
[00:13:05] Google my business to be found where people are actively searching for you who want your services and they want to find the best competition because the competition in personal training and gym ownership is extremely poor in terms of website quality, getting the message out and speed. Yeah,
[00:13:22] Josh Kennedy: absolutely.
[00:13:23] Well, speed is absolutely key. And Andrew, this is away from fitness. This is something that we've talked about, right? In terms of when we are looking for coffee shop or food or whatever. What do we do? We google it, right? We do. We do. What are some of the, uh, what are some of the key takeaways, Andrew? Well, I
[00:13:38] Andrew Wallis: was going to say just before I go into that, I think it's a fundamental point that James brings up in that when people was using Google, it, their, their Buyers.
[00:13:49] It's buyers intent. That's why they're searching and it's fitness professionals and in other service industries. We don't appreciate that to the degree [00:14:00] of its importance and where basically we're focusing more so on our social media, um, where people aren't at that level of the commitment to wanting to press the go button and purchase.
[00:14:13] So that's why we believe in the in them going to Google and having that website positioning. But the key takeaways, as we say, uh, making sure that you've got, you're visible, you've got that foundation, uh, having a website. Making sure it's optimized, that you've got all the correct SEO elements to it, and then going into getting Google My Business set up, and then tapping into past clients, getting the reviews, and having offers that are enticing enough to encourage them to take advantage of it.
[00:14:48] Thank you. Pull the trigger and invest in that service that you're offering. Yeah,
[00:14:52] Josh Kennedy: absolutely. James, any closing thoughts before we
[00:14:54] James Breese: wrap up? No, just, just keep an open mind. Just keep an open mind about this. I know no one else is really talking about this [00:15:00] right now, but you want to do the social media stuff as well at a later date, but have the foundations first in place with this.
[00:15:06] So the social media stuff will drive them to find you online. And that's the purpose of it. That is the whole purpose of it. It'll make you sound and look more professional. And I promise you, it's a very simple way. To get, I'd say a minimum conservatively two to five new clients a month. If you get it right, and you were living in a high intent area.
[00:15:24] Yep, absolutely.
[00:15:25] Josh Kennedy: That is it for today. Please don't forget to rate review and subscribe. And if you want to find out what's holding you back from growing your fitness business, go to strengthmatters. com forward slash quiz.