Cutting-edge business advice for fitness professionals. Learn how to maximize your income as a personal trainer, gym owner, or nutritional consultant. Host and money-making expert Ben presents high salary tips and tricks each week, from the website www.trainfortopdollar.com.
Train For Top Dollar is a website devoted to teaching personal trainers, triathlon coaches, nutritionists, gym owners and fitness professionals how to make money and enjoy a successful fitness career. We teach personal trainer salary tips, triathlon coaching career advice, nutrition consulting business structure strategies, gym business tips, and career advice for fitness professionals. Whether you want to make more money as a personal trainer or enhance your income as a coach or gym owner, this website, combined with Ben Greenfield's book "Personal Trainers' Guide to Earning Top Dollar" will give you everything you need for a successful fitness career.
In my opinion, one of the greatest proofs that blogging is the most powerful thing that you can do for your fitness business is expressed quite eloquently by my fellow personal trainer Chris McCombs.
I first met Chris at a fitness expo in California, and he is an interesting character.
This is what Chris looks like:
Continue reading ‘Why Blogging Is The Most Powerful Thing You Can Do For Your Fitness Business.’
It doesn’t matter how much you exercise, how well you eat, or how strictly you control your caloric intake – your body is constantly stressed or your sleep is inadequate, you will constantly fail in pursuing your health, wellness, or performance goals.
But if these barriers are removed, you will vastly improve your ability to gain maximum benefits from a good nutrition plan.
As you explain the importance of stress and sleep to your clients, here is what to tell them:
The body has several neurotransmitters that are actively involved in control of appetite and mental motivation. Dopamine, one neurotransmitter, is your body’s pleasure molecule, acting to significantly affect desire for activity, eating satisfaction and food cravings. Inadequate dopamine increases the chances that you will have a decreased drive to exercise and be less effective at regulating your nutritional intake.
Facebook is taking the world by storm.
Half a billion people use it, for crying out loud.
So are your products on Facebook?
And can people buy those products using Facebook credits?
I asked myself the same question last month, and decided to do something about it. Turns out, it can be done…
So to see how I turned an E-book into a Facebook app, and how you can do it too, go check out the Shape21 App on Facebook. Leave your questions below.
So if your clients eat their fruits and vegetables, expose themselves to adequate sunlight, get plenty of sleep, and stay well hydrated, their body shouldn’t really need a supplemental source of vitamins and minerals, right?
Wrong.
Here are 5 powerful reasons that you explain to your clients about why they need to take a multi-vitamin, no matter how healthy their lifestyle may be.
1. Nutrient depletion in the soil. Modern farming techniques utilize fertilizers that actually deplete the soil of essential nutrients. Agriculture relies on the elements in the soil for absorption of proper amounts of minerals, and when this process is interrupted, the plant does not contain essential minerals and cannot form essential vitamins. And if the plant doesn’t have it then you’re not going to get it from eating the plant!
When if comes to fiber, the benefits are numerous, but the simple fact is that most of the people you train are probably not getting enough of it, although they will most likely think that they are getting enough.
Nine time out of ten, I’ll perform a nutritional analysis on an individual who tells me they’re “eating their fiber”, and this consists of a bowl of oatmeal in the morning, a small salad with lunch, and some roasted veggies with dinner. With all the benefits that fiber gives, there’s no excuse not be eating more of it. Unfortunately, it’s a rare person that has time to actually count how many grams of fiber they’re getting, so general recommendations make a lot more sense.
Not that your clients have to stock their refrigerator with wood chips, dump a gallon-size ziplock bag of flax seed on their morning cereal, or stroll around chewing on a crumpled wad of paper, but proper fiber intake *is* important – and offers free health benefits that shouldn’t be ignored. If they can decrease how much they spend on health care, increase the benefit of their exercise routine, and feel more energy and less stress, then they should take that extra step to hunt down some fiber!
In the last article of this series, you learned about the importance of water. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter how much water your clients are drinking if they are not consuming adequate electrolytes.
When you consider the fact that over 75% of active athletes are deficient in magnesium, – an electrolyte that is crucial for muscular contraction, the pacemaker activity of the heart, and muscle repair and recovery – it becomes pretty easy to understand why so many individuals just aren’t able to perform to their desired capabilities during fitness sessions, and why they just don’t recover properly afterwards.
So what is the best way to explain electrolytes to your clients?
In order to educate you on electrolytes, I have actually prepared a special slideshow, entitled “6 Things Water Can’t Give You”.
Ready to learn more about how to teach your personal training clients about nutrition? Today, you’ll learn how to emphasize the importance of water…and remember: when you teach your clients, your clients get better results, and your business grows.
Consider the following facts:
• Your speed on a bike decreases about 2% for each 1% of body weight lost through dehydration
• By the time you feel thirsty, you can already be at 2% body weight loss
• A 3% weight loss indicates dehydration has occurred
• Loss of fluid during exercise varies, but averages about 34 ounces per hour (3x that much in hot and humid conditions!)
As you read through this series, remember that the goal is to give you basics of a simple way to teach your personal training clients about nutrition – and it is not meant to be a complete primer or university equivalent of Nutrition 101!
This means that you feel free to put your own spin on the information if you want to add more for your class. For example, if you’re into more plant-based protein sources, tell your clients about hemp can and flax seeds, quinoa, nuts and rice protein. If you are more a paleo-type, introduce them to healthy beef jerky, lamb, or cold-water fish. You can also include discussions about omega-3 eggs, greek yogurt, whey protein and other dairy based sources.
Speaking of omega-3’s, this article is going to cover the essentials of fat!
Now that you have a good idea of how to teach your personal training clients about the basics of carbohydrates and performance, let’s move into the next logical macronutrient: protein.
You’d be surprised at the number of people in your class who have only a very basic understand of protein, and often simply think that it is derived from meat and should be eaten with dinner.
Begin your discussion of protein with an explanation to your client of what proteins actually are: vital components of every organ and action within the human body, without which we would simply cease to function. In the absence of proper nutritional building blocks for protein, the human body will cannibalize it’s own lean muscle mass and organs, and experience a weakened immune system, poor performance, and inadequate recovery and fitness response. Proteins are comprised of amino acids – many of which the body cannot make on it’s own unless complete proteins are present in the diet.
You can literally take each manageable section of this ten week series on nutrition, and turn it into a ten week nutrition mini-class for your fitness business. This will give you a value-added service that you can feature in your marketing, and give your clients both a physical and mental benefit during your classes. I’ll write each article in a manner that allows you to easily a) break information into small chunks so you don’t have to be reading this article off a piece of paper and b) easily explain it to your clients, most of which will not have backgrounds in nutrition science and physiology.
Everybody knows that nutrition is important. Whether a client’s goal is fat-burning or human performance, if the proper fuel isn’t there, the goal won’t be achieved.
I recently had the honor of being interviewed by Erik Rokeach from Fitness Business Interviews. I highly recommend you click here to check out his website, which is full of more fantastic interviews and tips. In his video interview with me, which you can also download as an audio by clicking here, I reveal 14 of my top secrets, including:
• How I got started in fitness when I really didn’t like it.
• How I got into my first business with a partner and what my role was.
• Why I got rid of my personal training business.
• What fitness marketing strategies I used to bring in clients.
• The way I created training programs for two different niche’s
• Why “bleeding” your programs keeps your clients coming back for more.
• How I found college interns.
• Why I shifted to an online business.
• How I stay successful focusing on more than one niche.
• How I drove traffic and built my websites quickly.
• The one thing that is working best for me online.
• Where you can get your own phone app developed.
• How I find time to manage everything.
• What hasn’t worked for me.
This blog is about fitness business.
And if your business interest is in the specific area of endurance athletes or triathlon coaching, then this post is for you.
The paradigm has shifted for triathlon coaches. You may be a triathlete looking for a coach. You may be a triathlete evaluating your current coach. Or you may be a triathlon coach struggling to get better results for your athletes. Whoever you are, it is crucial that you are aware of critical evolutions in the triathlon coaching industry – evolutions that are going to directly effect your success in the sport of triathlon, whether you’re a coach or an athlete.
Triathlon Coaching New Rule #1) Workouts Are Not The Holy Grail.
In the day of training plan wizard writing software, libraries of pre-written triathlon programs, and a glut of free online workouts, it basically takes a chimpanzee to tell a triathlete when to swim, bike and run (that, or good copy-and-paste skills on the computer). With technology, the complete amateur coach can now design training programs that rival the guru expert coaches of triathlon.
Folks, if there’s one thing I’ve been accused of, it’s getting lots of stuff done.
And no, I’m not a multi-tasker.
Simply put, I have several key strategies (which I call “Rules”) that I use to be more productive every day and to multiply myself. Although I discuss these Rules in great detail in my book, I wanted to share the basic quick tip versons with you now. Without further ado, here are the top 5 Rules to become a more productive fitness professional:
Continue reading ‘Ben’s Top 5 Rules to Become a More Productive Fitness Professional’
In my fitness career, there are a collection of personal training business books and personal training business development books that have really helped with growth in a fitness career. I’ll put links to them at the end of this post, but they include:
“The New Psycho-Cybernetics” – this book changed the way I approach tasks that may seem impossible…
“How to Win Friends & Influence People” – the quintessential guide to working with your clients and understanding/adapting to their personalities…
“Get The Edge by Tony Robbins” – this is an audio program; the best motivational audio I’ve ever heard in my entire life…
Continue reading ‘Top 8 Books For Personal Training Business Development and Your Fitness Career.’
This article recently appeared at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, but I wanted to give you a chance to look at it too, since many of these applications are very good for fitness professionals who need better client management.
In this article, I’m going to give you insight into some of the more popular iPod and iPhone nutrition and fitness apps that are currently available on the market. After you read this post, I’d like to hear what YOU think…
…specifically what would YOU want to see in the “perfect” iPhone or iPod nutrition or fitness app? Have you used any of these? In your opinion what is missing from these apps? Do you want me to make an app that fits your needs? Let’s talk about it…leave your comments below!
“Tap And Track”:
Continue reading ‘Top Rated iPod and iPhone Fitness & Nutrition Apps — What Do YOU Think?’
I’m going to give you an easy to understand blueprint for How To Send Your Personal Training Clients or Subscribers Physical Mail…And Make Money Doing It.
Here’s how this whole physical mail/making money thing works: I offer a service called the “Ben’s Body Transformation Club”…which you can read about by clicking here.
Every week, people from around the United States sign up and pay a small membership fee to get weekly postcard mailings from me with nutrition and training tips, and each weekly mailing includes access to a “secret” password-protected video and details page, where I demonstrate exercises, give recipe specifics, etc.
Continue reading ‘How To Send Your Clients or Subscribers Physical Mail…And Make Money Doing It.’
You gotta admit, it’s pretty cool that anybody, including you, can now deliver audio podcasts to iTunes and have more people and a bigger audience listening to you within 24 hours than listened to Elvis during the era of his biggest hits.
I get alot of questions about how to record a podcast, how to publish a podcast, how to produce a podcast, how to make a podcast…you get the idea!
If you follow the three steps below to creating a highly profitable online triathlon coaching or fitness training website, you’re going find that it’s so easy, even a monkey could do it. Have fun!
Step 1: Get A Web Host
I personally use Bluehost for all my web hosting. Not only are they inexpensive, at $6.95 per month, but they have excellent customer service and a huge range of options, including some pretty good looking, pre-designed website templates and the ability to add things like blogs and forums to your website with literally one click.
Are you a triathlon coach? Aspiring triathlon coach? Interested in an endurance sports career or triathlon coaching career?
If so, then you should absolutely keep reading.
The sad truth is that there isn’t much information out there that helps you be a better triathlon coach, or even learn how to become a triathlon coach. As a matter of fact, just about everything there is to know about triathlon coaching can only be found by traveling to expensive conferences or buying big books.
In this free, November 2 audio episode from Train For Top Dollar, I discuss how to create a relationship with a local grocery store, and creating password protected websites. If YOU have a question for the Train For Top Dollar podcast, simply e-mail ben@trainfortopdollar.com .
Listener Moji asks: “I will be starting grocery tours shortly in local markets and/or grocery stores like Super target, Publix etc, anywhere where my clients that are local shop. Have you ever run into an issue with the store manager not wanting you to educate your clients?
Continue reading ‘Podcast Episode #17: How Personal Trainers Can Do Grocery Store Tours.’
Technology allows you as a personal trainer or fitness professional to leverage your time and ensure that you’re not just clocking in for 8-10 hours training clients face-to-face all day long, with a very low ceiling on your personal training salary.
On August 22nd, in Toronto Canada, at one of the world’s largest fitness expos (Can-Fit-Pro), Ben Greenfield spilled all his money-making secrets to training with technology to a room of personal trainers and fitness business owners. As a special promotion for Ben Greenfield’s brand new book “Personal Trainers’ Guide to Earning Top Dollar”, you can now view this entire video for free!
Continue reading ‘Make More Money By Training With Technology in the Fitness Industry: Part I’
Personal Training Career Presentation: "Training With Technology" by Ben Greenfield [ 1:34:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
I’m going to turn the tables. It is possible that the internet police may prosecute me for this, but rather than providing you with instruction, advice, and tips on having a career as a personal trainer, how to make money as a personal trainer and how to profit in the fitness business…
…I instead need advice from you.
You see, I want to give away a copy of a few of my DVD’s: “100 Ways to Boost Your Metabolism”. But I don’t just want to throw them to the wind. I know how to make a fitness DVD and I know how to sell a fitness DVD. But I want to actually profit from the publicity generated by a free fitness DVD giveaway, in this particular case, one which features me walking the viewer through 5 different body-weight workouts.
Continue reading ‘What Is The Best Way To Sell A Fitness DVD?’
Here it is (and after reading this, let me know if YOU have a Craiglist tip…just leave a comment!): the three simple steps to posting your ad on Craiglist and including an image in the actual body of the ad.
This is an incredibly useful way to keep Craiglist from “banning” your bootcamp or fitness class ad because it is the same as the one you posted a few minutes earlier. Just change the post title, put the ad code in, and you’re set.
Important: this is much different than just “adding an image” to your Craiglist posting. I know you’re smart enough than to have to read an article to figure that one out. Instead, this technique actually allows you to place an image in your ad BODY, as the primary content.
Check out this video. I initially recorded it for a nutrition company called “Impax” who wanted their members to make bigger money blogging. It’s in a “GoToMeeting” style format and I guarantee, you’re going to pick up TONS of cool tricks about how to launch your first blog…and now it’s yours. For free. You can download this straight to your computer as a Quicktime movie to watch later, if you want (or just right click here to do it). There’s a little button on the right side of the player below that lets you do that.
If you care to count, I list 17 different benefits during the video, on why you need to blog for your fitness business and exactly how to do it, from initial set-up all the way to your first post.
Continue reading ’17 Reasons To Blog for Your Fitness Business. And Exactly How To Do It.’
They’re actually called “Profile Cards” and they’re made by a company called “Zazzle”.
Continue reading ‘How To Get the Coolest Little Head-Turning Fitness Business Cards on the Planet’
Ben Greenfield, the author of this blog, is the 2008 NSCA Personal Trainer of the Year, a worldwide expert on triathlon coaching, a published sports nutritionist, and a fitness business guru. To find out more about Ben's book "Train For Top Dollar", and how you can make more money as a fitness professional, just click here.
