The Business of Fitness Podcast

In this episode Dan uncovers the pricing mistake leaving fitness professionals underpaid, and shares the four-step approach he used to help one trainer charge $25,000 per client. Four things you'll learn in this episode: Why the traditional "build first, price later" approach keeps fitness professionals stuck in a scarcity mindset and earning less than they deserve The exact reverse-engineered pricing method Dan used to help one exercise professional collect $250,000 in pre-payments every January How to flip the pricing conversation so $25,000 a year feels like an obvious bargain to the right client Who you actually need to be selling to, and why trying to be for everyone is quietly costing you a fortune   Transcription: There's a really big mistake people are making with how much to charge for the service they're offering. And this big mistake means they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Whether you're selling personal training, semi-private training classes, gym memberships, or anything else fitness related, you're earning less than you should. Here's the problem. This is what people are currently doing: People have an idea for a service they want to offer. They build a business that will provide that service. They look at the business they've built and try to work out how much people will be willing to pay for the service. They release that business out into the world and hope that the right people will find them and pay them money. The big problem with this is it really comes from a scarcity mindset. And it often seriously limits how much people are able to charge. The issue is that they are starting with the service they're going to be offering and then they work out how much it's going to cost their customer. They decide they want to sell personal training. They look at what people charge for personal training and they match their pricing to what everyone else is doing. This is the same mentality as the people who spend their entire life to build their business and hope that at the end of the day there is some time and energy left to give to their life. The people who live to work instead of the people who work to live. So how do we switch this thinking? Let's talk about a more abundance-mindset approach to pricing your fitness service to ensure you're earning what you're worth. It comes down to four simple steps. Step 1. Find a problem that needs solving. Step 2. Look at how much money you want to earn, or how much you want to charge people for solving that problem. Step 3. Find a way to give more value than the cost, or how much you're charging people to solve that problem. Step 4. Find people who can afford that cost. Let's unpack this. Firstly step one: find a problem that needs solving. Too many people start their business with an idea. But an idea is not a good idea – unless it solves a real problem. You need to start by identifying a problem. A real one. Ultimately every single successful business solves a problem. If you can find a big enough problem that has a negative enough impact on people's lives, they will pay you handsomely to solve it. So once you've identified a problem that needs solving, we get to the most important part of pricing your service. Determining how much you want to earn. And this is the big shift from a traditional approach to pricing a service. Normally what people do is they work out what that service involves and then how much they can justify charging for it. But we're gonna flip that. First we're going to decide how much to charge for it and then we'll work out what that service needs to be to justify the price. This is the exact process I used with an exercise professional that I mentored a couple of years ago. He came to me because he had been running his business for many years and had reached a ceiling where he just couldn't work any harder to earn more money. He determined that he wanted to earn a quarter of a million dollars a year in revenue, that he wanted to be a sole trader, and he only wanted to work with 10 clients. So some simple maths showed us that he needed to charge each client $25,000 a year to hit this target. Now $25,000 seems like a lot of money for a fitness professional to charge for personal training. And it is but only if you start with personal training and work out how much to charge for that. Instead what we did was start with that dollar amount and worked out how good that personal training would need to be for $25,000 per year to be a good deal for the client. Fast forward to today and this exercise professional receives ten payments of $25,000 (quarter of a million dollars) in his bank account on the first of January every year for his clients to pre-pay their annual fee. Needless to say the service and experience that these clients are getting is pretty exemplary and it's so good that they all think 25,000 is a great deal. And that's step three: finding a way to give more value than the cost. Once you know what you want to charge (and that should be high), work out what the client needs to receive so that the price seems perfectly reasonable. And finally to step four, where we find people who can afford that price. It won't be everyone and that's fine. You shouldn't be for everyone. You need to find the people who have the problem that you have built your business to solve and who have the money to pay you to solve that problem. And that's how you price your service. Find a problem that needs solving. Work out how much you want to earn to solve that problem. Provide a service that makes that amount seem like a good deal. Then find the people who can afford to pay you. Your action steps: Identify a real problem you can solve Pinpoint a specific, painful problem in the market that your business is genuinely equipped to solve. Decide how much you want to earn Start with your target income and client load, then do the maths to work out what each client needs to pay. Design the service around the price Build out a premium offer so your target fee feels like a good deal for the person paying it. Define who can realistically pay you Get clear on the exact profile of person who has the problem and the budget, and stop trying to appeal to everyone. Put your offer in front of the right people Focus all your marketing time, energy, and messaging on reaching those specific buyers.   If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: How to Raise Gym/PT Prices Without Losing Clients | Read | Listen 3 ways to make it easier to earn more in a fitness business | Read | Listen How to grow a fitness business WITHOUT more clients/members | Read | Listen

Summary: In this episode Dan explores agentic AI, how it differs from chat-based AI, and why delegating to it rather than using it can help you earn more and reclaim time. 5 things you'll learn in this episode The key difference between chat-based and agentic AI. Most people are directing AI step by step. Agentic AI works differently: you give it an outcome and it figures out the process, much like delegating to a trusted person rather than micromanaging every move. A practical filter for deciding what to hand over. Any recurring task, anything involving multiple tabs or tools, and anything that doesn't require knowledge only you possess are now prime candidates to delegate. This alone could reshape how you spend your days. What to keep for yourself, and why it matters. Writing your own articles, generating ideas, doing creative work. The benefit comes from the doing, not just the output. Knowing where to draw that line is just as important as knowing what to delegate. 13+ real examples of tasks being delegated right now. From content suites and podcast show notes to Canva assets, email campaigns, and data organisation. These are live examples from the past few weeks. Where the real opportunity lies. It's not just about saving time. It's about what you do with the time you get back. When the tasks that don't require you are removed, what remains is the work that genuinely moves things forward. How most people are currently using AI At the moment, most people are using AI in what I'd call a chat-based way. You open up something like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you type in a prompt, and it gives you a response. Then you type another prompt, and it gives you another response. And so on. It's essentially a series of individual tasks. You are directing every step of the process. You are telling it what to do, one instruction at a time, and it is responding to each of those instructions. There's nothing wrong with this. It's incredibly useful, and for a lot of people it's already a big step forward from how they were working previously. But it does have a limitation. You are still doing the thinking around how to get to the outcome. You are still breaking the task down into steps. You are still effectively managing the process. The shift to agentic AI Agentic AI works differently. Instead of giving it a series of steps, you give it an outcome. You don't say, 'do this, then do this, then do this'. You say, 'this is what I want done', and it works out the steps required to get there. The way I've found it easiest to think about is to compare it to working with another person. If you were delegating a task to someone and you had to micromanage every step, telling them exactly what to do at each stage, that would feel very similar to using chat-based AI. But if you were working with someone you trusted, you would simply give them the job and the desired outcome, and allow them to figure out the process themselves. That's much closer to what agentic AI is doing. It's not just responding to prompts. It's completing tasks. What this actually means in practice Once you start thinking about it this way, the question becomes less about 'what can AI help me with?' and more about 'what should I no longer be doing myself?'. For me, a useful filter has been this: Any repetitive or recurring task, any task that involves moving between multiple tabs or pieces of software, any task that doesn't require knowledge that only exists in my brain, and generally anything that would take me somewhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours, those are now candidates to be delegated. What remains is the work that actually requires me. Thinking, decision-making, coming up with ideas, and doing the parts of the job that are inherently human. A quick note on what I'm not outsourcing This is important, because I think there's a temptation to go too far with this. I still write my own articles. I still come up with my own ideas. I still do the creative work. Not because AI couldn't do some of it, but because there's value in the process itself. It's a bit like journaling. You wouldn't ask someone else to do your journaling for you, because the benefit comes from actually doing it. So I'm not trying to remove myself from the work entirely. I'm trying to remove myself from the parts of the work that don't require me. How I'm currently using it To make this a bit more concrete, here are a number of ways I've been using agentic AI over the last few weeks: Turning a single written article into a full content suite, including blog formatting, internal links, images, social media posts, email newsletters, and drafts across all platforms Preparing for mentoring calls by pulling previous Zoom transcripts and summarising key points before each session Drafting personalised outreach emails in bulk, each tailored slightly to the recipient but based on the same core message Running monthly checks across all websites by submitting test enquiries through every contact form and verifying they are received Researching and shortlisting options, such as reviewing hundreds of website templates and presenting a refined list based on a brief Renaming and reorganising large batches of files in Google Drive to follow consistent naming conventions Extracting key ideas or quotes from long documents and turning them into usable content Creating Canva assets, including carousels and visual posts, using pre-built templates Writing podcast titles, descriptions, and show notes based on existing content Drafting email campaigns in Campaign Monitor, including summaries and links to relevant content Scheduling and queuing content across platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Google Business, ready for approval Analysing and organising data into spreadsheets, pulling from multiple sources and structuring it for reporting Logging into different tools and platforms to complete multi-step tasks that would normally require switching between tabs manually The real opportunity I don't think the opportunity here is just about saving time. It's about changing how you allocate your time. If you remove the tasks that don't require you, you are left with the tasks that do. And those tend to be the ones that actually move things forward. Thinking more clearly. Making better decisions. Spending more time on the parts of the business that create value. That's where this becomes interesting. A final thought Most people are still using AI in a very step-by-step, prompt-and-response way. And again, that's fine. It's useful. It's a good place to start. But the big change happens when you stop thinking of AI as something you use, and start thinking of it as something you delegate to. Once you make that shift, it opens up a very different way of working, it certainly has for me. Your action steps: Write a 'stop doing' list. Identify the tasks you do regularly that are repetitive, multi-step, or don't require knowledge that only you have. These are your best candidates to hand over. Start with one task. Pick the most time-consuming item from your list and experiment with delegating it to an agentic AI tool. You don't need to overhaul everything at once. Protect the work that requires you. Be deliberate about what you continue doing yourself, particularly the creative, strategic, and relationship-based work that has real value precisely because it comes from you. Track what you get back. As you delegate more, note where the recovered time goes. If it flows into higher-value work, you're using this well. If it disappears, you have a different problem to solve. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here's what I learned. | Read | Listen How my business earns me 23 hours a week | Read | Listen We Asked 8 Experts: Is ChatGPT now better at programming than you are? | Read | Listen

Summary: Dan explains why most business owners glance at numbers without using them well, and shares a complete KPI system to track what matters, focus your effort, and build a better life. This one works really well as a video, as Dan does a walk through of a KPI spreadsheet. You can watch that here, or read the article (including visuals) here. 5 things you'll learn in this episode Why glancing at revenue or checking the bank balance is not the same as having a proper KPI process, and what changes when you build one. How to design the life you want before you set a single target, because your numbers should serve your life, not just your business. The exact spreadsheet structure I use, including how to set medium and long-term targets and keep things clean across months and years. A complete list of KPIs across marketing, sales, customers, revenue, finance, time, and even life quality, with equations for every single one. How to use the traffic light system so your priorities are immediately obvious every time you open the sheet. Your action steps: Write down what you want your life to look like before you build or update any KPI spreadsheet. Set up a simple spreadsheet with a column for KPIs, a medium-term target, and a long-term target. Manually pull your numbers from Xero, your CRM, and other sources at the end of each month. Review your KPI sheet every week and identify the one or two numbers that most need your attention. Apply the traffic light system so your biggest constraint is always easy to spot.

Summary: In this episode Dan explores how MrBeast would market a fitness business, and what fitness professionals can learn from his approach to attention, storytelling, referrals, content, and growth. 5 things you'll learn in this episode How to make your fitness business website more clickable, clearer, and easier to act on Why storytelling and client journeys are powerful fitness marketing tools How MrBeast's approach to content marketing can improve your reach and engagement What fitness businesses can learn from Feastables and MrBeast Burger about referrals and shareability How to build a stronger fitness marketing system across email, paid ads, offline marketing, and promotions How would the most viral content creator of our generation market a fitness business? Success leaves clues, and I was interested in the clues that MrBeast's digital empire would leave for health and fitness business owners. I wanted to unpack his approach to business and see what we can borrow for our industry. I did a similar deep dive to how Elon Musk would disrupt the gym industry, which you can read here or listen to here. If you've ever turned on the internet, you know MrBeast, or Jimmy Donaldson. He's one of the most successful creators on YouTube, building an audience of more than 100 million subscribers by creating videos that are impossible to ignore. His content usually involves huge challenges, massive giveaways, and large-scale acts of generosity. But MrBeast is not just a YouTuber. He is also a very switched-on entrepreneur. He has built several businesses off the back of his audience, including MrBeast Burger, Feastables chocolate, and the viral mobile game 'Finger on the App'. He has also donated millions of dollars to causes such as food banks, environmental projects, and people in need. What makes MrBeast interesting is not just the scale of what he does. It is the way he thinks about his businesses. Everything he does is designed to capture attention, hold attention, and be shared. He constantly experiments, studies what works, and reinvests almost everything he earns back into making even better content. So what can he teach us? I've studied his approach and broken it down into what I see as the eleven most important marketing strategies. I covered each of these in more detail in my article and podcast 'The One Page Fitness Marketing Checklist', which you can check out on episode 79 of the podcast. You can also download the one page marketing checklist here. The eleven areas we'll be examining through the lens of MrBeast are: Website Documentation and Storytelling Content Marketing Micro-Influencer Marketing Referral Process Email Marketing Customer/Member Reactivation Paid Social Media Advertising Paid Search Engine Advertising Offline Marketing Promotions and Tactics Website Your business needs a simple, professional website that clearly explains who you help and how you help them, builds trust with social proof, and makes it extremely easy for the right people to take the next step. So how would MrBeast create a website for a fitness business? One of his biggest obsessions is making people feel like they have to click. He spends an enormous amount of time on the thumbnails for his YouTube videos because he knows that in an impatient, short-attention-span economy, first impressions really matter. MrBeast talks a lot about the idea of a 'purple cow', which is borrowed from Seth Godin's book of the same name. The idea is that if you're driving past a field full of cows, the only one you'll notice is the purple cow. In the Diary of a CEO podcast MrBeast said the best ideas should make people say, 'What the fuck, I've never seen that'. If he were building a website, he would be looking for a clear and unusual homepage that looks different from everyone else. If we look at the Feastables website, we can see that it's built around really low-friction next steps. It's very easy for people to purchase the product, find stores where they can buy it, or get support. He would build a website for a fitness business that acts as a central hub with clear calls to action and very obvious next steps. Ultimately, the business needs a website that not only looks good, but actually converts, captures leads, retargets visitors, and feeds the rest of the marketing machine we're building. Documentation and Storytelling You need to consistently document the life of your business and share client journeys so potential clients can see people like them overcoming problems with your help. Storytelling is at the heart of MrBeast's digital empire. It's worth looking at Beast Philanthropy to see how he uses real-world documentation to shape behaviour and tell powerful stories. The official positioning of Beast Philanthropy is to use social media to 'educate and inspire' an entire generation. Jimmy Donaldson has often talked about his desire to inspire a movement. This is exactly the way he would approach documenting the inner workings of a fitness business. It's about showing the life of the business in a way that builds emotion, gives people a story to tell, and creates belief in the outcomes you promise. One thing MrBeast does exceptionally well is show the before-and-after narrative. This is not just a visual transformation like weight loss. It's a deeper emotional storytelling arc. MrBeast isn't using storytelling just for entertainment. He's using it to create behavioural change. That's exactly what a fitness business should do. The purpose of storytelling is to influence behaviour, encouraging people to start with your business and commit to long-term change. Ultimately, people watch MrBeast's content because of the storytelling. It just happens that the moral of the story often has a philanthropic or legacy-building impact. Content Marketing You should regularly create useful educational content that solves the problems of your target avatar and positions you as the obvious expert in your niche. One of the big lessons from MrBeast regarding content marketing is the importance of making something people actually want to watch. Too many fitness business owners focus on the process of creating content or the systems they use to produce it. Instead, MrBeast judges content on three simple criteria: do people click it, do they keep watching it, and do they feel good about it afterwards? I often reference the Steve Martin quote about being 'so good they can't ignore you'. I think MrBeast would strongly agree with this idea. He aims to create content that people simply cannot ignore. He also talks a lot about the purple cow effect. If he were running your content marketing system, he would strongly discourage boring, interchangeable content that everyone else is posting. Instead, he would push you to create content with a stronger premise, clearer packaging, and higher curiosity. Ultimately, something different. Micro-Influencer Marketing Your business needs systems that encourage clients to share their experiences publicly so their stories create authentic social proof for people just like them. MrBeast leveraged his viral presence to launch MrBeast Burger. Originally it was a pop-up burger joint that has since evolved into a delivery-based burger brand. The initial MrBeast Burger launch was essentially a marketing stunt designed to be shared. This wasn't Kardashian-level influencer marketing. It was much smaller, but far more widespread micro-influencer marketing. On the MrBeast Burger website it describes the launch as a 'one-of-a-kind experience', featuring branded packaging, uniforms, signage, and a free meal. They even described it as the world's first free restaurant. This was perfect fuel for micro-influencer marketing. The whole point wasn't simply to get people trying the burgers. It was to get people posting about them. A fitness business should think the same way about member experiences. If we look at the Beast Philanthropy YouTube channel, we see the same strategy. Supporters are constantly encouraged to watch, like, and share the videos, with 100% of the revenue going to charity. In the fitness industry, the equivalent is creating shareable moments so your audience becomes the distributor of your message. I talk a lot about the importance of remarkable experiences. If your business gives people ordinary moments, they won't post them. If you give them extraordinary experiences, they will share them for you. Referral Process You need a clear and consistent referral system that makes it easy and rewarding for clients to introduce their friends to your business. Ultimately, the whole point of a referral process is bringing someone you care about to experience a business. One of the cleverest examples I've seen comes from MrBeast's Feastables products. Out of curiosity when they first launched, I bought a Feastables chocolate bar. As soon as I opened the wrapper, I saw the marketing genius behind the product. The first square of chocolate had the word 'share' embossed into it. MrBeast had literally built the referral process into the product. The idea is that the first square is designed to be shared with someone else. The best way to test a product, whether it's a chocolate bar or a personal training session, is to experience it. By making every chocolate bar shareable, every purchase becomes a potential referral. If MrBeast were applying this logic to a fitness business, he would look for ways to make the experience itself shareable. Email Marketing Your business should regularly email your network with helpful, problem-solving content that builds trust and keeps you top of mind. One of the big challenges MrBeast faces is that much of his empire is built on rented attention. YouTube owns his subscribers. Social media platforms own his followers. If we look at Feastables, we can see how he pushes visitors towards channels he controls. As an ecommerce brand, it moves people towards owned customer relationships. The lesson for fitness businesses is simple. You shouldn't rely solely on social media. You should build your own database. In terms of email content, we can again look at Beast Philanthropy for inspiration. Emails shouldn't just announce offers. They should tell stories, share wins, provide social proof, and teach useful things. Ultimately, the goal is to make readers feel like they are part of something bigger. Customer / Member Reactivation You need a system to identify past or disengaging clients and reconnect with them in a thoughtful way that reminds them they are valued. One of the things MrBeast often talks about in interviews is the importance of mistakes and weak performance. In the Lex Fridman podcast he said, 'They don't lie, the surveys'. His point is that businesses shouldn't guess why people disengage. They should go directly to the source and ask. Every departure is an opportunity to learn. MrBeast also talks about quality at the product level. In the Diary of a CEO podcast he explained that he didn't want customers to receive a broken Feastables chocolate bar because that would be the worst customer experience possible. The lesson is simple. Retention is not just about follow-up messaging. It's about fixing the experience that caused people to disengage in the first place. Paid Social Media Advertising Your business should run well-targeted social media ads that guide cold, warm, and lookalike audiences through the journey from awareness to action. MrBeast would take a very straightforward approach to paid social advertising. Creative beats everything. He says the key metrics are click-through rate, watch time, and satisfaction. Your ads shouldn't be judged by how clever they sound or how polished they look. They should be judged by whether they make the right people stop and take action. MrBeast often summarises the whole game like this: get people to click, get them to watch, and make sure they're happy. If he were running ads for a fitness business, they would need to hook fast, hold attention, and leave the viewer better off. He also emphasises constant experimentation. Compare outcomes, take notes, and remove emotion from the process. This is exactly the approach he uses with his videos. Paid Search Engine Advertising You should run Google search ads that capture people actively looking for your service and direct them to a clear next step. MrBeast would use the purple cow concept to make search ads stand out. But standing out alone isn't enough. The message also needs to make immediate sense. Search advertising works differently from social media. Instead of pushing a message to someone, you are responding to something they are already searching for. If MrBeast were running search ads for a fitness business, he would likely be ruthlessly focused on conversions. If the ad isn't generating conversions, it isn't working, and it should be changed. Offline Marketing Your business needs to be visibly active in the local community so people regularly see you, know you, and talk about you. For someone with such a massive digital presence, MrBeast also understands the power of real-world experiences. MrBeast Burger is a great example. Thousands of fans attended the launch because it was marketed as the world's first free restaurant. This real-world event created huge online buzz. Once again, we come back to the purple cow principle. People remember unusual things. If you want to become locally famous, it's not enough to simply be visible. You need to create moments that people actually talk about. That goes far beyond flyers and posters. Promotions and Tactics You should use occasional promotions to create bursts of new clients, but only as a supplement to a strong long-term marketing system. MrBeast cleverly combines promotions with content. He sometimes posts YouTube Shorts where he offers people money if they're subscribed to his channel. These short-term tactics aren't as powerful as his main videos, but they generate attention and tell stories. Again, MrBeast Burger is a great example. The launch wasn't just a promotion. It was a spectacle. The key lesson is that promotions should tell stories and create emotion. When done well, they become content and a referral engine at the same time. However, there is also an important lesson here. Over time, MrBeast Burger faced quality issues that damaged brand perception. This brings us back to an important truth. No matter how good your promotions are, they must sit on top of a remarkable customer experience. Promotions cannot replace quality. Final Thoughts Jimmy Donaldson has shown himself to be an incredibly smart businessperson. Although asking how he would run a health or fitness business is a bit of fun, it also allows us to apply an outsider's perspective to our industry. By benchmarking outside our own field, we can draw inspiration from other entrepreneurs and industries. That is often where the most interesting ideas come from. And sometimes those ideas help us create our own purple cow. Your action steps: Make your website easier to act on. Review your fitness business website and make sure it clearly explains who you help, how you help, and what the next step is. Share more real client stories. Use your marketing to document real client journeys so potential clients can see proof, progress, and people like them succeeding. Create content people actually want to watch. Judge your fitness content marketing by whether people click, keep watching, and feel helped afterwards. Build shareability into the experience. Look for ways to make your service easier to share through referrals, guest passes, memorable moments, and client-driven word of mouth. Strengthen the full marketing system. Treat email marketing, paid advertising, offline marketing, and promotions as connected parts of one fitness business growth strategy. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: If sales and offers make you feel dirty, there's a better way to grow: read | listen. How to bring back ex-members to increase revenue: read | listen. 9 unique ways to make your business stand out (to get more clients): read | listen.

These are the 14 things I include on every website I build to turn the site into a lead generating machine. Here are five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: Why a good-looking website is not enough to get more gym leads How simple psychology can help turn website visitors into enquiries Why speaking to one clear type of client improves conversions How small wording changes can increase trust and action How to structure your fitness website so people feel understood and ready to join Need a website? I can do that for you.  

Dan chats with Jade Webb. Jade was already a successful business owner prior to purchasing a gym. She shares the process of buying a business, from initial negotiations, through to a complete business overhaul. 5 things you'll learn: How Jade went from mechanical business owner to gym owner. Why she bought a gym, not built one from scratch. What due diligence she did and what she missed. How she completely rebuilt culture and customer experience after a chaotic first 30 days. The KPI changes and why experience has driven her growth and retention.

In this episode, Dan Williams explores why traditional sales and discount-driven marketing make fitness business owners feel uncomfortable, and how shifting to an experience-focused approach can create trust, authenticity, and lasting client relationships. 5 things you'll learn: Why the 'sales and offers' model feels inauthentic and unsustainable for fitness professionals. How the most trusted brands win by creating experiences, not chasing sales. What an 'experience-focused approach' looks like in a fitness business, from first enquiry to ongoing service. How to design remarkable client touch points that make people feel valued, not sold to. Why genuine connection, care, and hospitality outperform every script or discount. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of Dan's most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: Episode 79: 'The one page fitness marketing checklist. Just do these things.' Podcast | Article. You can also download a PDF of the checklist here. Episode 69: 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of Being Different'. Podcast | Article. Episode 74: 9 unique ways to make your business stand out (to get more clients)'. Podcast | Article.

In this episode Dan Williams sought out nine of the most successful fitness and health business owners of 2025. He asked each of them to share their one biggest lesson that will carry them to more success in 2026. You'll hear from Emily McPhillips, Jason Lim, Sam Cassells, Jake Morgan, Emily Moore, Jade Webb, Grant Hancock, Scott Hook, and Ben Luckens, as they share the lessons and decisions that shaped their year in business.

In this episode, Dan is a guest on Ben Lucken's podcast, where he sits down for a really wide ranging conversation about business mindset. Benny asks Dan about how he thinks about building a life that aligns with your own definition of success. They also discuss some of the frameworks Dan uses to think about the world, including: Why mindsets are trainable skills. The magic of 3-hour deep work blocks. The 7 words that define business success. The 4 Archetypes of happiness. How to balance journey vs destination. Why experience always beats technology. They dive into Benny's journey with Life's Peachy FIT: The meaning behind the name. His rebrand away from F45. What's next as he launches franchise opportunities built around leadership, member experience, and genuine human connection in an AI treatment future.

Summary: In this episode I explore how a professional photoshoot can transform your fitness business marketing, with practical steps to plan, capture, and use high-quality photos that attract the right clients. 5 things you'll learn: Why professional photos are one of the most effective marketing tools for fitness businesses. How to choose photo subjects that reflect your target clients and build connection. The types of scenes and interactions that create powerful, versatile images. Why staged photos deliver better marketing results than spontaneous action shots. How to plan and run a photoshoot that maximises time, efficiency, and usable photos.   Done well, a photoshoot can be one of the most powerful marketing tools for your gym. The right type of photos can give potential clients a glimpse into your business, and can transform both your website and your social media presence. Great photos are an important part of all the websites I build for fitness businesses. This guide will cover some of the considerations for a photoshoot, including examples of the sort of photos you're looking to acquire from a photo shoot I ran for my business (you can find these at the bottom of the page). Firstly - it's highly recommended that you use the services of a professional photographer with professional equipment. The difference in quality is noticeable, and brings a new layer of professionalism to your business. If you're using a professional photographer, this guide might help to give them some direction on what you're looking for. Photo Subjects: The subjects of your photos should match the types of people you're looking to attract to your business. We're not looking for perfect, airbrushed models here - we want real people. We want your target customers to look at the photos and think 'those people look like me'. Well in advance of the photoshoot, you want to contact some of your current clients to ask them to appear in the shoot. We're looking for at least 12 people. Make sure you've got a broad representation across different ages, nationalities, skin colours, shapes, sizes, genders, sexualities etc. You want to get any staff you have to be available for the shoot. If the shoot is for a website, it's also important to get photos of the people who you'll be featuring in testimonials and client feature stories. Photo Subject Matter: As mentioned, the photos themselves should be of people who match your avatar (target customer). They should be working with your staff (ideally in a one-on-one capacity, like hands on technique corrections etc). They should be smiling, laughing and having a good time - while still working hard. The more interaction the better (between staff and client, and between client and client (if you have multiple clients in each photo). Fist bumps, high fives etc are great. We want photos of all the services you provide. If you offer one-on-one coaching, get photos of that. If you offer small group training, include multiple people in you photos, but there should be one person who is featured in the image - the others are just there for context. If you offer any sit-down consults, make sure you get photos of them. Photo Composition: As tempting as it it to have a photographer roam around during a class, or following a PT around during their session, these 'action shots' never come out as well as staged photos. With this in mind, the best approach is to stage the photos, and take multiple shots of each 'scene' - each being slightly different. This will give plenty of options to choose the best shot.  We want these photos to have as many uses as possible. To help with this, the subjects shouldn't be shot from too close. We don't want them filling the frame. This will allow use to 'cut in' the photo to get both portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) images - based on what we need to use them for. Lighting is really important - we want the photos to be light and bright, with natural lighting being ideal. Be aware of what else is in the scene. We don't want busy, untidy backgrounds. Keep things clean, simple, minimalist. Planning the shoot: To ensure as many uses as possible, plan to have around 12 subjects, with three to four scenes each. For example, one scene might be pushing a prowler, one might be doing a deadlift, one might be doing a dip. Getting 10-20 photos of each scene should result in a choice of 2-3 good shots to choose one great shot from. You'll end up with 36-48 great photos from your entire shoot. Here are some examples of potential scenes that a strength and conditioning facility might use: Air squat Deadlift set-up Deadlift lock out. Barbell front rack position. Bottom of a front squat. Air bike. Rower. Bottom of overhead squat. Ring row Russian KB swing Prowler push. A group of 3 people people training together. Dumbbell bench press. Coach and client fist bumping. A bunch of your members chatting and talking (maybe while sitting around / mobilising etc). Where possible, costume changes between scenes will ensure the photos don't end up looking like they were all taken on the same day (even though they were!). You need to be super organised, with all exercise equipment pre- set up before the photographer arrives. Five minutes for each scene, three scenes, equals 15 minutes per 'model'. 12 models means a total of three hours. You'll probably need to pay the photographer for four hours to allow set-up, pack down time. Your models don't need to be there for the entire shoot, as long as they're there for their allotted time. You should create a run sheet / shot schedule which will look something like: 9am: John with PT prowler push. 9.05am: John with PT deadlift. 9.10am: John with PT dip. 9.15am: Sarah and John rowing. 9.20am: Sarah and PT front squat. 9.25am: Sarah and PT KB swing. etc. *]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" tabindex="-1" data-turn-id= "request-WEB:9d6a7a53-0e7b-4103-a4ed-33c8106cd0bf-2" data-testid= "conversation-turn-6" data-scroll-anchor="true" data-turn= "assistant"> A well-planned photoshoot can elevate the way people see your business, creating a professional and approachable first impression. With the right preparation, you'll have a library of images that showcase what you do best and attract the clients you want.   Your action steps: Hire a professional photographer to ensure your fitness business photos look polished and trustworthy. Select a diverse mix of clients and staff who represent your ideal customers. Plan multiple staged scenes that showcase your services, interactions, and client enjoyment. Prepare equipment and create a detailed shot schedule to keep the session efficient. Use the resulting images across your website, social media, and marketing campaigns to strengthen brand presence.

In this episode Dan Williams explores how goal dilution contributes to the identity crisis in Exercise Physiology and shares how defining what EPs don't do can help the profession stand out. 5 things you'll learn in this episode: Why Exercise Physiologists struggle with public recognition and a clear professional identity. How goal dilution weakens the perception of Exercise Physiology for clients, referrers, and allied health partners. Why defining what you don't do creates stronger positioning and clearer boundaries in a crowded industry. How choosing a niche and sticking to it leads to greater credibility, referrals, and brand differentiation. How EPs can shift from the red ocean of competition to the blue ocean of being in a category of one.

Today we bring you an episode of the Kinetic Careers podcast with Jeremiah PEIFFER. Dan Williams was lucky enough to be invited by Jeremiah for the very first episode of his podcast, which helps sport and exercise science students and graduates to develop their career. Jeremiah and Dan had a wide ranging conversation where they covered: Dan's pathway through exercise and sports science How the EP profession and ESSA have evolved The way Dan has designed his businesses around being a present dad and building a lifestyle not just an income The role of failure, networking and lifelong learning in career growth Practical advice for students and new grads on positioning themselves, building business acumen and creating remarkable client experiences in an AI-shaped future.

If you are an online coach, or you program for your clients, this is for you. In this episode, Dan Williams talks about the very real threat that AI is bringing to people who provide programs for their clients.  Dan explores how AI is transforming exercise programming, why online coaches face potentially career ending risks, and how fitness professionals can pivot to protect their careers in the AI-driven future. 5 things you'll learn in this episode: Why AI-powered exercise programming is advancing faster than most fitness professionals realise. How real-time data from wearables, sleep, mood, and recovery can reshape training sessions instantly. The limitations of empathy and human connection as a defence against automation. Why online programming is becoming a commodity and what that means for pricing. How to pivot your business towards unscalable, in-person experiences that AI cannot replicate. If you are in the business of exercise programming, everything is about to change. You may think that empathy and human connection is going to save you, but in this episode Dan shares a story that shows how difficult it will be to compete with AI. Your action steps: Reassess whether online programming is your long-term career plan, given AI's rapid advances. Explore ways to integrate AI tools into your business as a facilitator, not a competitor. Build in-person, non-scalable experiences that prioritise connection and value beyond what AI can deliver. Educate clients on the unique benefits of human-led training and the experiential side of fitness. Begin shifting your offers towards services that are harder to commoditise, such as bespoke coaching or community-driven experiences.    

Summary: In this episode Dan explores why business owners should stop measuring success only by money and start valuing time as their true currency, helping you design a more profitable and balanced business life. 4 things you'll learn in this episode: Why revenue and profit can be misleading measures of business success How tracking hours worked reveals your true hourly rate and workload What it means to switch from 'dollars as currency' to 'minutes as currency' Practical ways to redesign your business to earn time, not just money Need a website? I can help.   Transcription: I think just about every single one of us is measuring the wrong thing in business. I'd like to share something I'm struggling with a bit at the moment. My very first business was selling shells I'd picked up off the beach. My business premises was the top bunk of my bed. My customers were Mum and Dad. I was six. From this moment, the measure of success of my little business was how much money it earned. And from that moment forward, every business I had was measured by the same metric. Money. And it makes sense. We live in a capitalist world. And I'm fine with that. I believe that people should get paid for solving other people's problems. But living in that world makes it really hard to gauge the success of your business by anything other than the size of your bank account. That mindset has been drilled into us since before we could walk. Money is our measure of business success, and for some of us, it's also a measure of life success. Society tells us that dollars are the currency that matter – they're the scoreboard that tells us if we're winning the game. And we know it shouldn't be like this, but it is. So back to the thing I'm struggling with. I'm struggling to break way from a lifetime of 'money as the measure of success'. Within the last couple of years, I've made some major structural changes to the businesses I run. Let me take you back to what business looked like before these changes. I was working around 45 hours a week on multiple businesses, I had a team of 12 staff, brick and mortar premises, and my wife and I owned a home and three investment properties. Revenue was high – I was earning more than I ever thought I would. But the nature of running businesses in that way meant expenditure was high too – but not so high that there wasn't a very tidy profit margin. And it's that profit that was my scoreboard. If I profited more in February than I did in January, I was becoming more successful. Sure, it was pretty stressful, and I was always worrying about something, but that's just a cost of doing business right? But then, I made some very deliberate and intentional changes to how I worked. Fast forward to today. Zero staff, no premises, no investment properties, lower revenue. By most traditional measures, you'd say I'm now less successful than I was. However, expenditures dropped by about 75% and profit (which is the only financial metric that only really matters to me) dropped by only about 10%. And importantly, most importantly by far is something the accountant can't see. I'm achieving this off the back of an average of 22 hours per week of work – that's all types of work – billable work, admin, business development… everything. You'll remember I was working 45 hours a week. And it's now about 22. That means I'm doing HALF the amount of work I was. 50% of the work for 90% of the profit. That's a massive increase in profit per hours worked, and probably a 90% drop in stress too. But you know what, there's a tiny little niggling part of my brain that's still telling me I'm less successful than I used to be. Because of that small drop in profit. Part of me is still a slave to the notion that dollars are the true and only measure of success. I'm working really hard on this, and I think I'm slowly winning. I'm slowly honestly believing that the currency that measures the success of my business is not money, but time. Time is the currency. Time is the resource I'm earning. I'm flipping my thinking. I no longer engineer my work to optimise for financial earnings, but to optimise for temporal earnings – earnings of time. I base business decisions on the time they'll earn me, not the money. The changes I've made are paying me 23 hours a week. That is the value of the business I've built. That's the salary my business pays me. Not money, but time. A traditional approach would see people put that 23 hours back into their business. For my highest financial value tasks, I charge my consulting out at a rate of $300 an hour. That's just under an extra $7000 a week if I was to trade my free time in for money. But you know what, I'd rather have the extra 1,380 minutes per week than the extra $6,900. Bear in mind that I started my business 19 years ago – and I'm not denying the need for hard work and long hours. But I am denying that that mindset needs to continue just out of habit. Just look at the number of depressed, divorced billionaires. I believe there is a better way. How could your life be changed by switching from 'dollars-as-currency' and adopting more of a 'minutes-as-currency' mindset? It's a change that's worked for me, and something I explore in great depth with the business owners I mentor. If you want to start making this change, I recommend you start by introducing some new KPIs to the metrics you track. Start tracking your hours of work across all work types, and then calculating your TRUE hourly rate. How about also implementing a self-administered 'quality of life' scale each month – just as a regular reminder of what's most important. What get's measured get managed, and you can't manage your time without first measuring it. Episode 61 of the podcast is called 'I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here's what I learned.'. Listen here, or read the article here. I'd recommend you check that one out if you're interested in how I track my time. And all the way back in episode three, I spoke about 'Your REAL Hourly Rate: The True Cost of Running a Fitness Business' (podcast | article) Those two episodes are a great place to start if you want to switch to a minutes-as-currency mindset. If you're interested in the philosophy of money, time, work, and life in general, I've got one more resource for you. This is an article I wrote and released as a podcast, where I break down my general philosophy of how to live a full and good life. In it I attempt to answer questions around: The role of pain and suffering in life. How do I remove them? Should I remove them? How can I balance ambition with contentment? Striving with settling? Journey and destination? How can I balance work, productivity, time and money, to give me a 'good life'. When I strip back the work I do, who am I? Do I use busyness and work as a distraction from the question of what I actually want to do with my life? What are the elements of a 'good life', and how do I get more of them? That episode was published in May of 2025, I hope you check it out (article | podcast). And I hope you can consider a switch to a 'minutes-as-currency' mindset. My life has never been better than since I made that change.   Your action steps: Start recording every hour you spend on all business tasks to calculate your true hourly rate. Add new KPIs that track time, such as weekly hours worked and a monthly quality-of-life score. Analyse which tasks or structures reduce your hours without harming profit and adjust your business model accordingly. Resist reinvesting every freed hour into more work; protect and use reclaimed time for life and health. Revisit your definition of success regularly to ensure it aligns with both profit and lifestyle goals.

In this episode Dan Williams explores the six essential sections every fitness business website needs and the psychological strategies you should include to convert more leads into paying clients. Check out the demo websites Dan has built to accompany this episode. Let Dan help you build a beautiful, one-page website that generates leads for your business: Learn more. 6 things you'll learn in this episode Why your website should be the centre of your fitness business marketing The six must-have sections that guide visitors towards taking action How to write customer-focused website copy that speaks directly to your audience Psychological principles like scarcity and loss aversion that boost conversions Practical examples of how to apply these strategies to your own fitness website Your action steps: Redesign your website around the six core sections to guide visitors from interest to action. Use customer-centric language that speaks directly to your target audience's pain points and goals. Add short, clear testimonials and client stories to build trust and social proof. Apply psychological principles like scarcity, loss aversion, and the endowment effect in your calls to action.

In this 'quick thought' Dan asks us to rethink identity, not as what we do for money, but as how we actually live and spend our time.

Like a lot of poeple, Ben Luckens from Life's Peachy FIT has a great conversion rate when his leads come in for a trial. But the issue is actually getting them in the door. In this episode, Ben asks Dan about his strategies for less ghosting and more conversions. You'll learn: Why adding friction can actually improve lead quality and boost show-up rates. The surprising response time that multiplies your conversions by nearly four times. How to deliver remarkable client experiences before someone even sets foot in your gym. Five psychological triggers that ethically nudge leads from enquiry to committed member.

Dan explains a simple client reactivation system for fitness businesses, show how to track resurrection rate, and share easy steps to win back ex-members. 5 things you'll learn: How to build a list of ex-clients and calculate a monthly resurrection rate for your fitness business. How to improve offboarding with quick exit interviews that record clear reasons for leaving. How to trigger win-back messages the moment a client's original blocker is removed. How to use Fresh Start timing and milestone contacts to lift replies and bookings. How to reach past clients with Meta Custom Audience ads and a direct booking link.   Transcription: If you're looking for a new way to grow your business, generate a list of all your previous clients and members. I've never seen anyone do this and not be shocked  by how long that list is. There's a huge number of people who, at some point, used your service, but are no longer paying customers. People who once needed you, but who, for some reason, got to the point where they didn't need you any more. And this list provides an opportunity for reactivation – converting ex-clients back into current clients. And that's what I want to discuss, a strategy guide to client reactivation. Generally, we spend most of our time on two things, client retention, and lead generation. We build systems and pipelines for lead generation, and we design client journeys to provide valuable experiences to keep people around. But once they leave our business, too many businesses cut them lose, going back to focus on retention and new leads. And sure, these things are important (particularly retention), but reactivation often seems to be forgotten. I want to fix that. But first, there are five things you need to do before even beginning to think about client reactivation. I've spoken a lot about these before (and I'll give you some recommended content if you want to dig deeper), but I'm not going to go into detail, but let me summarise what you need to do BEFORE you start the process of reactivating past clients. 1: Provide a remarkable experience so people don't leave in the first place. Check out my article 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of 'Being Different' or listen to episode 69 of the podcast. 2: Build a system to alert you of your three clients who are at highest risk of departure each week and add value to them that week. Read my article 'Increase retention to 98% using this 10 minute strategy' or listen to episode 26 of the podcast. 3: Conduct an exit interview with all departing clients, and identify the reason they're leaving. Keep a table of all the reasons for departure in seperate columns, with the list of all the people who left for that reason under the heading. 4: Identify how long into their client journey each customer is when they leave. Identify the most common time to leave (for example, it might be between four and 6 months, and increase the experience people are receiving for the eight weeks leading up to that point. This will plug your biggest leak. Read: 'The Only Thing Fitness Business Owners Need to Do For Retention'. 5: Make sure memberships on hold (dormant customers) receive weekly contacts of some kind. Ok, so assuming you're doing those five things, we can move onto some ideas to help you reactivate your past clients. If you're not doing those five things, the strategies we're about to discuss won't work as well. It's really common for business owners to bump into ex customers who say to them 'oh, I've been meaning to get back in touch with you guys'. It's definitely something I've experienced. This tells me people are open to working with you again, they just need a bit of a nudge to take that first step. Firstly, what gets measured gets managed. So start measuring what's called your 'resurrection rate'. This is the percentage of past clients who you come back to you each month. We calculate this by dividing the number of returning clients in a month by the number of past clients at the start of the month. For example, if you start March with a list of 200 ex members, and during the month of March three of them restart, that's 3 / 200, or 1.5%. So your resurrection rate is 1.5%. This number will allow you to gauge the success of the reactivation strategies. Ok, so once you've started measuring your resurrection rate, we can start the process of increasing it.   Client departure: And we begin with the client departure. How can you make this a great experience? People expect a great experience to START their journey with you, but it'll really blow their mind if the END of their journey is equally remarkable. How you do this is up to you, but the litmus test is whether your departing client tells a friend about how good the departure experience was. That's the definition of 'remarkable' – able to be remarked about. As part of this departure, you need to have some sort of exit interview or survey which will tell you why they left.   Removing reasons for departure: And this brings us to the next strategy. Contact your ex clients when their reason for departure has been removed. Remember I spoke about keeping a table of all client departures, with each client listed under their reason for departure? This where you can use that. For example, if you launch online programming, contact all ex clients who left because they were moving away from your gym. If you're introducing a new, cheaper option, contact all clients who left for financial reasons. If you've built a new system to help clients exercise around an injury, let all your clients know who left due to injury.   Service updates: Similar to this, you can contact past clients with any announcements about new products or services you're offering, introducing new staff, announcing changes to the facility, or anything else that indicates a change in how you're doing business or the experience people can expect from you. If you're about to launch a service that is limited to a certain number of people, use this scarcity as a tactic to encourage re engagement – maybe you can offer this limited service to ex clients first, giving them 24 hours to register their interest before you open up the opportunity to everyone else.   The fresh start theory: With a bit of knowledge of marketing psychology, we can take advantage of what's called the 'fresh start theory'. This well research phenomenon tells us that people like to start something new or undergo a big behaviour change on a Monday, the first day of the month or the first day of the year etc. So, make sure you're timing your communications with them to be just prior to a new week, month or year. For example, you might contact your database of ex clients at the start of the new year saying something like, 'We know a lot of people are wanted to take back control of their health this year – just wanted to let you know we're here to help and ready when you are.'   Milestone contacts: You should also be contacting people during milestone moments in their life. Again, we're not trying to make a hard sell here – or even a soft sell for that matter. You'll remember I was talking about the number of people who express interest in returning to your business after bumping into you in person. Contacting people during milestone moments in their life just provides a 'virtual bump'. They should receive a handwritten birthday card in the mail for every birthday. You should make a particular effort when people are approaching a major milestone birthday. People who've just turned 29, 39, 49, 59, 69 etc. are more likely to be wanting to get back into exercise. The most common age for people to run their first marathon is 40, with peaks of participation at the start of every new decade of life. Take advantage of this to help them along their milestone journey. You can also contact them on their anniversary of starting with you. Maybe they initially started in the lead up to summer, or when the weather meant they couldn't get outside to run. Whatever their reason for contacting you at a certain time of year – that reason may reemerge on their anniversary of starting every year.   Content Marketing: Staying front of mind is key, and this is where content marketing becomes important. The purpose of content marketing as a general marketing strategy is to position you as an expert to your target client. This becomes doubly important as a reactivation strategy, as a way to remind your previous clients that you're still there, and available to help solve their problems. As part of your regular content marketing, you should be email everyone in your email network fortnightly with your latest articles, videos, podcast episodes, carousels, infographics, or whatever other medium you choose to use. Past clients should definitely remain a part of this email network. Make sure that a percentage of your content is about topics that are specifically relevant to people who you're hoping to attract back to your business. Maybe tips about how to restart exercise after a break, how to rebuild a broken exercise habit, or the psychology of loss aversion and the ease with which a person can maintain a baseline level of strength and fitness.   Paid Advertising: While paid advertising is commonly used for new cold-lead generation, it's not often used for internal marketing (for example upselling your current clients), or to attract old clients back in. For example, within Meta, you can create a 'Custom Audience from a Customer List'. This is where you can have an advert running that is visible only to past clients. You don't need to re-sell them on your service, or educate them about what you do, because they already know that. Instead, you should have a very strong call to action to make it as clear and simple as possible for them to restart. Because this custom audience list size will be very small, you can achieve a lot of success here from a tiny budget (the minimum Meta will allow).   General Engagement: Regularly engaging with your ex clients on social media by commenting on their posts is another great way to stay front-of-mind. Again, this should be 0% sales, and 100% general interest and encouragement.   Final thoughts: Ok, some final thoughts that run through all these ideas. Make as many of your communications as possible, as one-on-one and individualised as possible. A personal email is much more likely to be read than an email to a mailing list. And finally, the general feeling of all communications is 'we're ready when you are'. You just want to make sure you're remaining front of mind, so when they're ready to restart, you're the first business they think of. A strong reactivation strategy deserves a place right next to retention and lead generation on the podium of business growth strategies. If you're not prioritising reactivation, it's time to start.   Your action steps: Export every past client into one spreadsheet, add a 'reason for leaving' tag, and start tracking your monthly resurrection rate. Set calendar reminders to contact people when their blocker is solved, for example new pricing, online options, or injury support. Schedule Fresh Start messages before Mondays, new months, and the new year, and send birthday and join-anniversary notes. Keep ex-clients on your fortnightly email with 'restart' tips, simple plans, and a one-click booking link. Upload the past-client email list to Meta Custom Audiences and run a small-budget ad that sends straight to booking. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: 'The one page fitness marketing checklist. Just do these things' or listen to episode 79 of the podcast. 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of 'Being Different' or listen to episode 69 of the podcast. 'Increase retention to 98% using this 10 minute strategy' or listen to episode 26 of the podcast. 'The Only Thing Fitness Business Owners Need to Do For Retention'.

In this episode Dan shares the one-page marketing plan he recommends to every fitness business he mentors, focusing on 11 proven marketing areas that consistently drive long-term growth without chasing fads. Download a PDF version of the one page marketing checklist here. Four things you'll learn in this episode: How to simplify your marketing by focusing on 11 essential categories that actually work. How to build systems for storytelling, referrals, and reactivating past members to drive growth. The most effective way to run paid social media ads without wasting money. Why consistent, low-glamour marketing actions outperform chasing trends and short-term tactics.   Transcription: I've spent 19 years in business searching for the magic bullet of marketing – first for my own businesses, and then for the hundreds of business owners I've mentored. And believe me when I tell you I've tried everything. Spoiler alert, there is no magic bullet. And the more people search for it, the more they're distracted from the tried and tested basics of marketing… the things that actually work. There's an exercise I've found myself setting for a lot of the business owners I mentor. I tell them to create a list of non negotiable marketing tasks. A one page marketing manifesto. A list of actions they need to regularly take to ensure they're covering all bases of marketing. Then, as long as they're ticking these boxes, I don't have a problem with them running off chasing the shiny objects and short term trends that they hope will be the next big thing that promises to bring them 30 clients in 30 days. Almost always, this thing will be a waste of time and money, but if they're incessantly doing the basics, at least they'll experience the consistent, persistent, regular, steady growth that comes from doing the basics well. So I thought I'd formalise this one page marketing plan, and share it with you guys so that in a world of distractions and broken promises, you've got something simple, tried and tested to come back to. Here's how I'm going to structure this. First, I'll give you a list of the 11 areas of marketing you need to focus on. Second, I'll give you a broad description of each, so you know how and why that marketing strategy works, along with a rough overview of what you need to be doing. Third, for each of the 11 areas I'll give you a very short and succinct, and HIGHLY actionable task list for that area of marketing. I'll tell you what to do, and how often to do it, with no bullshit. And finally, I'll summarise each of the 11 areas into a weekly task lists to give you your one page marketing plan. Two big caveats before we kick this off though. Caveat number one: The single best marketing strategy is to be so good they can't ignore you. Without this, your churn rate will be high, and retention will be low. You can build a solid business with no marketing strategy other than providing a remarkable experience to your clients. By the same token,  even if your marketing plan is absolutely world class, you simply won't be successful if the product and experience you provide isn't up to scratch. You should combine this with a system to identify clients who are at high risk of departure, and a system to minimise the risk of this departure. Caveat number two: If you don't know who you're for, don't waste your time starting the process of marketing. A marketing strategy needs to begin with an intimate awareness of your avatar – your target customer. You need to create highly detailed documentation of the avatars your business serves. This should include demographics, relationships, dwelling, occupation, education, values, personality, spending habits, content consumption, future goals, and roles in purchasing decisions. For each avatar, you should understand their level of awareness and summarise their pain points clearly. These avatars should guide your decisions about your products, services, and customer experience. Your marketing needs to be purposefully designed to speak directly to them. Ok, with those two disclaimers out of the way, and remembering that a red hot customer experience and an understanding of your avatar need to come first, let's jump in, we're going to cover the following categories: Website Documentation and Storytelling Content Marketing Micro-Influencer Marketing Referral Process Email Marketing Customer/Member Reactivation Paid Social Media Advertising Paid Search Engine Advertising Offline Marketing Promotions and Tactics WEBSITE: Your business needs to have a professional, functional website with a strong user experience. It should act as the central hub for both current and potential clients, serving as both a marketing destination and an educational resource. The site needs to be optimised for organic search traffic and include dedicated landing pages with clear, low-friction calls to action for each service. The messaging should focus on who you help and how you help them, not just what you do. It needs to compel visitors to take meaningful action. Actions to take: Build a one page website that has just five sections. A description of who the business is for and how you solve their problems. A brief description of the services offered by your business. Social proof through testimonials and success stories.  A call to action. And then, at the top of the page, a maximum 25 word summary of the entire website, so people can learn everything they need to know without scrolling. DOCUMENTATION AND STORYTELLING: You need to consistently document the life of your business on social media through tools like Instagram and Facebook Stories. These should offer potential clients a window into your business and help build a strong, authentic culture. You should regularly share client success stories using a structured narrative (e.g. a five-act story) to highlight their journey. Your business also needs to share real-time, day-to-day content and repurpose short-term content into longer-form storytelling. These posts should feature clients who match your target avatar and clearly show how your business helps them solve their problems. Actions to take: Every week, post one client story to all social media platforms (post to feed, not stories). Use the five act narrative: The Dream, The Obstacle, The Mentor, The Path, The Arrival. Ideally, this will be a video story, but a series of five carousel images with text is also great. Every day, post to 'social media stories' (Instagram and Facebook) at least five times. Feature videos and photos of clients who match your target avatar, having a good time, using your business to overcome their problems. With the text on the video/image, either tell a story (using the five act narrative), or teach people something. Tag every client who appears to encourage reposting. CONTENT MARKETING: You need to regularly create and distribute high-quality, valuable content across multiple formats — written, video, image, and audio. This content should be repurposed across several platforms including social media, YouTube, Medium, and LinkedIn. It needs to position you as the go-to expert in your niche and directly solve the problems of your target avatar. Actions to take: Every week, solve the problems of your avatar by posting educational material. Choose one topic each week, and leverage this content into as many different media (article, carousels, video, podcast) and platforms (Your website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Podcast Player etc) as possible. MICRO-INFLUENCER MARKETING: You need to have systems in place that encourage your clients to share their experiences with your business. This content should then be featured through your social media channels, helping build social proof and trust with others who match your avatar. Actions to take: Build a program that rewards clients for sharing their experiences at your business – every post gives an entry into the draw to win a prize worth $200-$300 every two months. Every week, distribute something about this micro-influencer marketing program either through online private members groups, in-house signage/announcements, or face-to-face (e.g. before a group class). Complete everything in the 'documentation and storytelling' section. REFERRAL PROCESS: Your business needs a structured and consistent referral process. You should make it easy for clients to refer their friends and provide both incentivised and non-incentivised options. Every client should understand how the referral process works, how to use it, and what their friend's experience will be. You also need to run ongoing messaging that keeps referrals top of mind. Actions to take: Build a referral reward program where you make a donation to a charity on behalf of your referring client for every referral. Every week, distribute something about this referral reward program either through online private members groups, in-house signage/announcements, or face-to-face (e.g. before a group class). EMAIL MARKETING: Your business needs to maintain a well-organised email database of current, past, and potential clients. You should be sending regular newsletters that focus on solving client problems, not just promoting your services. While some sales messages are fine, most of your communication should add value. You also need to use your email list to create targeted social media audiences for social media retargeting. Actions to take: Send an email every fortnight to all clients, and anyone in your wider network. Include any content marketing you've done in the previous fortnight, any client stories, and one mention of both your referral reward program and your micro-influencer incentivisation program. CUSTOMER/MEMBER REACTIVATION: Your business needs a system to track and reconnect with past clients. You should know why they left and be able to reach out with personal, timely, and relevant messages. These reactivation efforts need to be warm, low-pressure, and connected to seasonal or life-stage triggers. Clients should return because they feel remembered and understood. Actions to take: Build a system to alert you of your three clients who are at highest risk of departure each week. Every week, do something to improve the value of the experience you provide to these three high risk clients. PAID SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISING: You should complete the latest courses from Meta to learn the up-to-date best practices. Your business needs to run social media ads that match the customer journey. Cold leads should see helpful content, and warm leads should see testimonials or direct calls to action. Use batching. Run short, high-spend campaigns, then pause to review and reset. Ads should blend into the feed, with strong visuals and clear messaging. Target three groups: people likely to be interested, people already familiar with you, and people similar to your best clients. Test, refine, and make decisions based on performance. Ads should support your broader marketing system and move leads to act. Actions to take: Spend five hours doing Meta's 'Facebook Blueprint' courses. Find a way to justify a $500 monthly paid social media advertising budget. Run a social media ad for two weeks with a $500 budget, then run no ad for two weeks. Repeat. PAID SEARCH ENGINE ADVERTISING: You should complete the latest courses from Google to learn the up-to-date best practices. Your business needs to run search ads that appear when people are actively looking for your service. These leads are warm and highly motivated. You need clear messaging that matches what people are searching for and reflects your unique value. Ads should target your local area and link to relevant pages on your site. Your business should test different ads, track conversions, and improve over time. Google Ads should support your wider marketing system by capturing intent-driven leads ready to act. Actions to take: Spend five hours doing Google's 'Skillshop' ads courses. Run Google search ads year-round. OFFLINE MARKETING: Your business needs to be a visible and valued part of the local community. You should show up at events, cafés, sports clubs, and community hubs, proudly representing your brand. You need to form real relationships with local businesses and professionals and support them publicly. When people say, 'I see you everywhere', that needs to be true — because consistent community presence builds trust and word-of-mouth. Actions to take: Do three offline things every week to make you and your business famous in the local community. PROMOTIONS AND TACTICS: Your business needs to avoid relying on short-term promotions or reactive marketing tactics. Instead, you should have a proactive, long-term strategy that builds brand value over time. Occasional short-term promotions can be used strategically but must never replace a strong foundation of consistent marketing. Actions to take: Every quarter, promote and run some sort of promotion to get a bulk influx of new clients.   Ok, so that's the overview, and here's your one page marketing checklist. One-time tasks: Be so good they can't ignore you. Define your avatar. Build a really good website. Build a program that rewards clients for sharing their experiences at your business. Build a referral reward program. Build a system to alert you of your three clients who are at highest risk of departure each week. Spend five hours doing Meta's 'Facebook Blueprint' courses. Spend five hours doing Google's 'Skillshop' ads courses. Every day: Post to social media 'stories' five times. Every week: Post one five-act client story to all social media platforms. Create problem-solving content and post it in as many forms as possible to as many platforms as possible. Distribute one piece of information about your micro-influencer marketing program. Distribute one piece of information about your referral reward program. Every week, do something to improve the value of the experience you provide to your three highest risk (of departure) clients. Do three offline things every week to make you and your business famous in the local community. Every fortnight: Send an email to all clients and your wider network with all the content marketing and storytelling from the previous fortnight, as well as one mention of both your referral reward program and your micro-influencer incentivisation program. Every month: Run a paid Meta Ads campaign for two weeks and at least $500. Every quarter: Promote and run some sort of promotion to get a bulk influx of new clients. Every year: Run an ongoing Google ads campaign.   Do these things, and it will be almost impossible for you not to achieve persistent growth. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: Your missing marketing strategy. The power of storytelling. 20 Strategies to become locally famous. Struggling to get clients? Try these 19 strategies. A gym advertising guide for every budget.

Dan spoke with three leading fitness business owners to discuss their top five books for fitness business owners. Jake Morgan, Ben Major and Scott Hook give us their most impactful and business-changing book recommendations. The boys also discuss their reading habits, and why reading (or listening) to books has been instrumental in every level of their success. Add these to your wishlist! Jake Morgan, Habitual Strength and Conditioning. 1. Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara 2. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath 3. 10x is Easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy 4. Atomic Habits by James Clear 5. Happier by Tal Ben Shahar Ben Major, PrimeFit: 1. Man Up by Bedros Keuilian 2. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle 3. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne 4. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath 5. Endless Customers by Marcus Sheridan Scott Hook: VSC 1. Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape 2. Get Different by Mike Michalowicz 3. Cult Status by Tim Duggan 4. Built to Serve by Evan Carmichael 5. Beyond Entreneurship by Jim Collins Dan Williams 1. 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman 2. Company of One by Paul Jarvis 3. Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara 4. Deep Work by Cal Newport 5. Influence by Robert Cialdini

In this episode Dan breaks down how he'd build a fitness business from scratch in 2025, including the exact model, setup, pricing, and marketing he'd use if he were starting again. What you'll learn in this episode: Why Dan would start by designing his ideal lifestyle before building the business The overlooked role of community in delivering long-term client results How he would structure semi-private sessions to maximise both coaching quality and social connection The type of space he'd choose to operate from, and why less is more Who he would and wouldn't work with, and how he'd attract natural referrers Why he'd charge premium rates and how he'd justify the price How he would keep admin, payments, and scheduling simple and low-cost What he'd do differently when it comes to equipment, technology, and gym setup How he'd market the business without spending anything on advertising

This is part two of a conversation between Tim Karajas and Dan on the Extension Fitness podcast.  Tim and Dan we explore how to improve retention by helping our clients and members build long-term exercise habits within your business. They talk about practical strategies and mindset shifts you can use to turn your customers into life-time exercisers. We work so hard to increase retention rates in our business, but if you're not building habits in your clients, you're fighting a losing battle against human psychology. Today, Dan explores how to win that fight. 5 things you'll learn in this episode Why making exercise laughably easy at the start is essential for building lasting habits. How identity-based motivation increases adherence to exercise and turns actions into lifelong behaviours. Why loss aversion is a powerful psychological driver—and how to use it to help clients stay consistent. How to apply the minimum effective dose to avoid burnout and ensure sustainability over decades. What mindset traits, like growth mindset and life-structure alignment, are common in people who succeed with long-term exercise. Your action steps: Help clients design a starting exercise habit that feels so easy it's impossible to fail. Ask clients to picture their worst possible week and build habits they can still stick to even then. Reinforce identity-based language by helping clients move from "I exercise" to "I am an exerciser." Use loss aversion by tracking progress and helping clients see what they risk losing by stopping. Check for alignment between a client's stated values and their calendar—then help them close the gap.

Dan was recently interviewed by Tim Karajas on the Extension Fitness podcast. This is part one of a two part conversation between Tim and Dan. Today, you'll hear Tim ask Dan about whether there are clues he can pick up on when first speaking with a business owner that let him predict whether a fitness business will be successful. Dan talks about the importance of being unique, how to test new ideas quickly, and the importance of designing your business around the life you want to have. Tim finishes by asking Dan to distil what it takes to be successful in business down to three points. 6 things you'll learn in this episode Why being different is more achievable (and more effective) than being better than your competition. How niching down—sometimes to an extreme—can unlock loyal client bases and long-term business success. What a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is and how to use it to test ideas with minimal risk and effort. Why quitting fast can sometimes be smarter than persisting with the wrong business idea. How Dan reverse-engineered his business to support the lifestyle he wanted as a dad. A simple 3-step framework for building a successful business through value creation, marketing, and value delivery. Your action steps: Define a unique problem your fitness business solves and make that the centre of your offering. Build a minimum viable product that looks complete from the outside but takes minimal time and cost to test. Use feedback and traction (or lack of it) to decide quickly whether to evolve or abandon your business idea. Focus your marketing on making your uniqueness obvious, not just your qualifications or features. Deliver an experience so good that clients can't help but talk about it—make referrals effortless.

Dan Williams explores nine powerful ways fitness business owners can stand out by being truly different, because in today's crowded market, being better isn't enough. For each area of differentiation we'll look at a well known business case study, and Dan will brainstorm some unique fitness business ideas. 5 things you'll learn in this episode: Why competing by being 'better' traps you in a red ocean, and how to escape it. How to define your unique selling proposition (USP) with one sentence. The nine key areas where your fitness business can stand out from the crowd. Creative, real-world examples of differentiation across gyms, PTs, EPs, yoga and martial arts studios. Why living your USP through repeatable actions is more effective than generic claims.   Episode Transcription: The single most important thing that people need to get right when they're in the early stages of building a successful fitness business is also the most difficult thing. It's one of the very first things I work on with the business owners I mentor, and is without a doubt, the thing they struggle with most. This incredibly important, yet incredibly difficult task, is how to make your business different. So today, I want to make it easier for you, by giving you the nine ways you can be unique. I've seen hundreds and hundreds of businesses either fail, or just as bad, slowly fade away into obscurity while paying their owners a fraction of what they deserve based on the work they put in. It's hard to be different. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and if everyone was doing it, you wouldn't be different any more. And yet, if you're not different, you have no advantage over your competition. Why would people choose your 24 hour gym over the one on another street corner? Why would they choose you as a PT over the ten other options they've got in the same gym? Why would they come to your semi private classes, when there are five other businesses offering the same service within 2km of your door? You might have heard me talk about this before. It's a topic I often explore when I'm giving live, in person talks and keynotes to business owners, and I recently covered the need to be unignorably different in episode 69 of The Business of Fitness Podcast, "Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of 'Being Different'". If you haven't listened to that one, I recommend you check it out, because it's a great accompaniment to this episode. But basically, I spoke about a blue ocean strategy. Most business owners are in a red ocean, where they're fighting with their competitors to try and be the best. There's blood in the water – hence the 'red' ocean. Everyone looks the same, competes on the same points, and fights to be slightly better. But being 'good' isn't good enough. The goal isn't to be ten times better than your competitors, it's to step out of the fight completely. The goal is to be different. To build something so unique, and so remarkable, that you create your own blue ocean, a space with no competition. In that episode, I gave two action steps. The first is to define your USP – your unique selling proposition, and the second was to make of list of the actions you take in your business to make that USP true. To define your USP, the exercise is simple. Complete this sentence. 'The thing that we do that is different from everyone else is…'. But as I've said, finding the thing that makes you different is really hard. When I ask people what makes them different, I'm met with boringly predictable answers. Boutique gyms tell me they have the best community. Personal Trainers tell me they're empathetic, offer an individualised approach and meet people where they are. Again and again, I hear words and phrases like 'individualised care', 'going the extra mile', 'building relationships', 'a science-based approach', 'world class programming', 'professional coaches', 'a non intimidating environment', 'amazing communication', and the list goes on and on. But this is what everyone is saying, so it's not different. It's brainstorming your unique selling proposition that is the challenging part. Working out what it is that makes you stand alone. And in that previous episode about being unignorably different I teased at nine different areas you could be different in. They were: Your target market, price point or revenue model. The problem you solve, the tools you use to solve that problem. Your location, the experience you provide, your area of specialisation, your use of technology, or your support of a cause. People told me these were a great starting point, but that they were still struggling. So I thought now we could go a bit deeper, and have a look at some case studies of these nine areas. I wanted to get your creative juices flowing by looking at some very well known global brands that are a great example of each of the nine areas of differentiation. Then, after each case study, I'll give you a couple of examples of how I might use that area of differentiation for a few different types of fitness business. Some of the ideas I've come up with are pretty out there – but that's the whole point. Unique Target Market: Let's start with a unique target market, where you stand out by choosing a specific group of people to serve. A good example is Barbie by Mattel, which stands out because of who they chose to serve. While most toy brands try to appeal to kids broadly, Barbie focused deeply on young girls' aspirations and identity play, and more recently, expanded that target market to adult collectors, feminists, and even critics. Mattel's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… we sell dolls that reflect cultural identity and ambition.' In the fitness and health industry some examples might be Personal Trainer: Coaches only postnatal mums with twins, offering dual-pram-friendly outdoor sessions. Martial Arts: Teaches self-defence exclusively to FIFO women in remote Western Australia. Pilates/Yoga: Runs men's-only yoga retreats for FIFO workers with stress and sleep challenges. Unique Price Point or Revenue Model: Our second potential area of differentiation is a unique price point or revenue model where you stand out by charging or earning money in a different way. One company that took a different approach to how it makes money is Spotify. Where most music platforms sold tracks or albums, Spotify used a freemium model, offering unlimited music streaming for free, monetised by ads, with optional upgrades to premium. Spotify's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… free music access, anytime, anywhere, on any device.' Fitness examples could be: Group Fitness Gym: Pay-as-you-go model, no memberships, priced per visit with tap-and-go access. Exercise Physiologist: Subscription model includes unlimited consults, plus remote health tracking via app. Online Coach: Offers $5 weekly challenges with leaderboard prizes, instead of long-term coaching packages. Unique Problem: Let's move on to the next area of difference – the problem you solve, where you stand out by helping people fix a problem others ignore. During the pandemic, the video call platform Zoom took a different route by solving a problem others overlooked. While competitors focused on corporate-grade video conferencing, Zoom simplified remote connection for everyday people, solving the problem of 'video calling that just works.' Zoom's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… make video meetings effortless for anyone, anywhere.' I came up with three examples of this for the fitness industry. Pilates/Yoga: Focuses only on helping women with endometriosis manage pain through movement. Online Coach: Solves the "I hate exercise" problem with gamified home workouts requiring zero equipment. Martial Arts: Designed specifically to help neurodivergent teens improve focus and emotional regulation. Unique Tools: Our next area is the set of tools you use to solve a problem. This is where you can stand out by using unique tools or methods to help your clients. Tesla shows what it looks like to solve a problem using entirely different tools. Instead of relying on existing automotive supply chains, Tesla vertically integrated everything from battery production to software, using proprietary tools to change how cars are built and upgraded. Tesla's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… we build cars like software, not hardware.' In fitness: Exercise Physiologist: Uses AI gait analysis to assess and optimise walking patterns for injury rehab. Group Fitness Gym: All programming built using heart rate zone tracking via wrist sensors. Semi Private Coaching: Coaches use VR visualisation tools to teach Olympic lifting mechanics. Unique Location: The next way you can make your business different is through a unique location – being based somewhere unexpected or delivering your service in a creative place. The Burning Man festival is a great example. Few brands have made location part of their identity the way Burning Man has. Held in the middle of a Nevada desert, its remote location is not a limitation, but a feature, enabling an environment where radical creativity and community are pushed to the extreme. Burning Man's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… create a city in the desert that disappears.' If we apply that to the world of fitness: Martial Arts: A dojo on a restored train carriage in rural WA. Personal Trainer: Offers mobile training from a fully kitted-out fitness van that parks at beaches. Pilates/Yoga: Hosts sunrise sessions on remote clifftops only accessible by kayak. Unique Experience: Our next area of differentiation is one of my personal favourites – the experience you provide. You stand out by making the experience feel special or different. When it comes to creating an unforgettable experience, Disneyland takes a different path. They don't just sell theme park rides, they sell immersion in a magical world where every detail, from trash cans to character actors, is part of the show. Disneyland's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… turn fantasy into reality, every step of your visit.' In fitness, this might look like: Semi Private Coaching: Every session ends with a cold towel, smoothie, and gratitude journalling. Group Fitness Gym: Gym with themed workouts: '80s dance, jungle survival or a natural disaster scenario. Online Coach: Coaching via voice notes only. Unique Specialisation: The next way we can be unique is by having an area of specialisation, standing out by focusing deeply on one specific skill or type of client. The online design software, Canva, does this really well. They offer a great example of what it means to specialise in a specific user. While design software giants catered to professionals, Canva specialised in democratising design for beginners, helping people with no background in design to make beautiful graphics quickly. Canva's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… design tools for people who aren't designers.' If we transfer this across to our industry: Exercise Physiologist: Works exclusively with kids with cerebral palsy in regional communities. Pilates/Yoga: Specialises in strength-based reformer Pilates for ex-powerlifters and strongmen. Personal Trainer: Coaches amateur golfers on building rotational power and injury-proofing their swing. Unique Technology: Our next potential source of difference is the use of technology. You can stand out by using technology in a smart or surprising way. Let's look at Uber, who carved out a unique space through the way they use technology. They didn't own cars or employ drivers, they used tech to connect people in real time, fundamentally changing how we think about transportation logistics. Uber's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… turn your phone into your driver.' There are a few ideas for how we can use tech in the health industry: Online Coach: Uses AI to auto-adjust workouts daily based on Apple Watch recovery data. Group Fitness Gym: Gym built around live hologram coaches delivering sessions globally. Exercise Physiologist: Remote consults conducted via interactive 3D body scans and motion capture. Unique Cause: Our final area of differentiation is the support of a cause, using your business to support something bigger than fitness. Let's look at the Aussie company, 'Thankyou', a great example of purpose-led business or what's called a 'social enterprise'. They don't just sell consumer products, every product funds life-changing projects in developing countries, and their entire business is structured around giving. Thankyou's USP might be: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is… sell products to end global poverty.' Here are some fitness examples. Pilates/Yoga: Every membership funds trauma-sensitive yoga programs in domestic violence shelters. Martial Arts: Profits go toward providing free training for refugee kids to build confidence. Semi Private Coaching: Partners with Indigenous health orgs—every 10 sessions funds one rural health check. Hopefully some of these ideas get your creative juices flowing. I don't have all the answers for you, and only you can find out what makes your business unique, but I hope this deep dive will help you in this journey into the blue ocean. But what I do know is that business is hard. And if you're trying to just be better than everyone else, you're making it even harder. You either need to be different, or you need to be ten times better. And it's easier to be different than it is to be ten times better. Maybe not at first, but once you've got your point of difference, once you've got your USP, there's a much higher chance of your business becoming a runaway success.   Your action steps: Choose one of the nine areas of differentiation and brainstorm how your business can apply it in a bold, specific way. Write out your USP by completing the sentence: 'The thing we do that is different from everyone else is…' Create a list of 20 consistent actions that prove your USP is real and not just a marketing slogan. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: Episode 69: Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of 'Being Different'. Episode 68: Your missing marketing strategy. The power of storytelling. Episode 59: The only 5 reasons your fitness business is failing. Episode 58: How to grow a fitness business WITHOUT more clients/members. Episode 55: The 19 ways to get more gym clients.

In this episode, Dan explores how successful fitness professionals are building multiple income streams. He covers real-world examples, lessons from failed ideas, and a repeatable framework to help you test your own. Dan is joined by Bodie Webster from Intent Strength and Fitness, Jake Morgan from Habitual Strength and Conditioning, Aidan Dawson from CrossFit Access, Lucia Tennant from Formotion Physio, Scott Hook from Vasse Strength and Conditioning, John Quinn - an online course creator, Jade Webb from Sixty7Six Strength and Conditioning, Rob Dicey from the Chasing Better Group and Ben Luckens from Life's Peachy Fit. 9 things you'll learn in this episode: Why building extra income streams early in your career is crucial for long-term success. How to test ideas quickly using a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach without risking time or capital. A simple way to rank ideas based on effort vs. return using a 2x2 matrix. The most common mistake fitness professionals make when adding a new revenue stream. How to avoid cannibalising your core business when launching something new. Real examples of income streams fitness professionals are using, like retreats, apparel, online coaching, retail, and courses. The benefits of 'psychic income' and why non-financial returns also matter. Why personal connections often outperform paid ads when growing a new venture. How to use Google's '20% time' concept to build new streams without hurting your main business. Your action steps: Start a list of all the income stream ideas you've had and add to it every week. Choose one idea that excites you and solves a real problem your clients have. Build an MVP in under six hours - no polish, just enough to test if it works. Allocate a weekly time block to your MVP project and protect it from distractions. Use early feedback to double down on what works, or cross it off and move on.

Today we're talking about how to create better videos for your fitness business.  In the first half of the episode, you'll hear Dan talking to professional videographer, Bruce Garrod from Gingerbeard Media. This was part of a webinar he ran for the business owners he mentors. Bruce teaches us how to create better video content with our phones. He covers the fundamentals of filming, lighting, audio, framing, composition, camera techniques, editing tips and the tech needed to get the most out of your phone. Then, in the second half of this episode, Bruce analyses your Instagram feed, as well as those of other fitness business owners and shares his advice for how to improve them.

Here's something very different from my usual stuff. Here's something I wrote for myself to help me 'work out life'. It helped me. Maybe it can help you too. I cover: The role of pain and suffering in life. How do I remove them? Should I remove them? How can I balance ambition with contentment? Striving with settling? Journey and destination? How can I balance work, productivity, time and money, to give me a 'good life'. When I strip back the work I do, who am I? Do I use busyness and work as a distraction from the question of what I actually want to do with my life? What are the elements of a 'good life', and how do I get more of them?

In this episode, I explore how Jesse from Bloom Allied Health consistently converts short-term trial clients into loyal, long-term customers, sharing her proven strategies to double client conversion rates. 5 things you'll learn in this episode: - How Jesse consistently converts 30–50% of trial sessions into long-term paying clients—double the industry average. - Three practical strategies to effectively turn short-term or trial clients into committed, long-term customers. - Why shifting your client's motivation from external referrals to internal goals dramatically boosts retention. - The importance of offering flexible, affordable entry points to build client commitment without compromising premium services. - How Jesse built an award-nominated business while balancing motherhood, lecturing, and research commitments. Your action steps: - Set clear expectations from day one that short-term sessions are just the beginning of a long-term journey. - Ask deeper questions to uncover your client's real, personal motivations for engaging with your service. - Provide financially accessible options that allow clients to remain involved beyond their initial sessions. - Use future-focused language consistently to shift your client's perspective toward ongoing commitment. - Automate and systemise key business processes now to create freedom and flexibility in your future. Listen now on The Business of Fitness Podcast: podfollow.com/the-business-of-fitness-podcast

In this episode, I explore how Grant Hancock built a thriving fitness business with a 167-person waiting list by uniquely positioning his services, overcoming burnout, and balancing growth with life priorities. 5 things you'll learn: - How Grant created overwhelming demand in a regional location with minimal competition. - The hidden downsides of rapid business growth—and how to handle them. - Practical strategies to use scarcity ethically in your business to boost demand. - How Grant transitioned from burnout to a balanced business model that supports his lifestyle. - The power of defining a niche to become a market leader, even in competitive industries. Your action steps: - Clearly define your ideal client and position your services uniquely to meet their needs. - Regularly assess your pricing and adjust based on market demand rather than guilt or undervaluing your services. - Implement a waiting list management system that regularly engages your audience through valuable content. - Focus on building your business to fit your ideal lifestyle rather than letting growth control your personal time. - Prioritise your wellbeing by creating non-negotiable boundaries around work hours and personal activities. Listen now on The Business of Fitness Podcast: podfollow.com/the-business-of-fitness-podcast

Exercise Professionals shouldn't sell 'exercise' or even 'results'. To create positive, long term change, they need to deliver an EXPERIENCE. In this episode, Dan explains why the best business strategy is to be DIFFERENT, not better. 5 things you'll learn in this episode: Why trying to be better isn't enough—and how being different creates your own category. How to write a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) that actually makes you stand out. Why common claims like "personalised care" are no longer differentiators, but expectations. How to prove your USP with 20 repeatable actions that back up your claims. How to create micro and macro client journeys that make even mundane moments memorable. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular podcast episodes on topics similar to this one: 63: 10 ways to ensure your side hustle idea will make $50k. 53: The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses 48: 9 Ways To Pivot Your Fitness Business To Earn More

Stories are the most powerful marketing tool we have for sharing ideas and experiences. In this episode, Dan shares the content from a presentation he's giving at the Exercise and Sports Science Australia National Conference in Hobart. He'll teach you how to craft and share stories to benefit your business, your career and the impact you have on the world. 5 things you'll learn: Why stories outperform facts in driving behaviour change and building trust with potential clients. The evolutionary reason storytelling is hardwired into human communication—and why it still works. A five-act storytelling formula used by top-grossing films and how it applies to fitness business marketing. Why your clients should be the heroes of your content, not you or your business. Practical ways to tell stories across social media, Google reviews, video, memes, and more. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: 45: A gym advertising guide for every budget 44: How to get more clients using marketing psychology

In this episode Dan unpacks the six-step system he uses (and recommend to fitness business owners) for launching a successful fitness side hustle – from identifying real problems to testing and scaling the idea. This is based on the process we follow in the Fitness Side Hustle Project. 5 things you'll learn in this episode: Why starting with a problem, rather than an idea, is the key to building a viable fitness side hustle. How to generate and filter multiple business ideas using your avatar's real pain points. The frameworks I use to evaluate and prioritise ideas with low risk and high reward. What a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) actually looks like in the fitness industry – and why you should never build before testing. How to assess whether your side hustle is scalable, sustainable, and worth growing.   Resources mentioned: The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses. Read the article | Listen to the podcast 9 ways to pivot your fitness business to earn more. Read the article | Listen to the podcast 10 ways to ensure your side hustle idea will make $50k. Read the article | Listen to the podcast A strategy guide to generating multiple income streams for Fitness Professionals. Read the article

Dan sits down with Renee Cabassi, who gets 80% of her new clients and members by being 'locally famous'. Renee walks us through the actual steps she took to make her fitness business widely known and talked about in her local community. This episode is extremely practical, and offers up clear and immediately actionable steps you can go out and take starting tomorrow. If you want to create local buzz around your business, this is the place to start. Renee offers up this actionable take-away you can implement immediately: 'Put on your branded shirt, go to a local café, buy a meal or coffee, post a photo or video online tagging the business, leave them a positive review, and genuinely engage in your community.' Here's a summary of the key strategies Renee and Dan discuss: Offline Profile Building Strategies: Tell people what you do Strike up conversations at parks, playgrounds, sports training, etc. Don't hide what you do; be friendly and approachable, not salesy. Network with Local Businesses and Health Providers Connect and regularly meet with local healthcare providers (physios, acupuncturists, nutritionists, coaches, etc.). Actively share and tag them on social media; promote each other. List these trusted advisors or partners publicly (website, social media). Support Local Businesses Regularly visit local cafes, businesses, and actively promote them online. Tag local businesses on your social media. Host events or meetups at local businesses. Attend and Engage with Local Community Events Participate in council events, community gatherings, markets, fairs, etc. Share and promote these community events online. Use Car Magnets for Branding Place branded magnets on your car; strategically park where your target audience will see them. Increase local visibility through regular presence. Wear and Gift Branded Clothing Create appealing branded clothing that clients proudly wear. Gift branded clothing to local business owners and community members. Consider meaningful branding (e.g., core values printed on clothing). Donate or Sponsor Local Events and Fundraisers Provide prizes or vouchers for local fundraisers, school P&C raffles, quiz nights, sports clubs, etc. Offer free training sessions or events for local clubs (e.g., youth sports clubs, netball clubs). Volunteer and Get Actively Involved in Your Community Volunteer for local groups or committees unrelated to your core business. Show genuine care for local issues; build authentic community connections. Use Studio or Facility Signage Ensure clear signage if you have your own space. Leverage visibility even if in a shared/community space (car magnets if signage is limited). Distribute Flyers and Posters (Strategically) Place posters and flyers strategically at locations your target audience frequently visits. Give Talks or Workshops at Relevant Local Groups Offer free educational talks or workshops to mother's groups, daycares, community groups. Enter Local Awards and Recognition Nominate yourself or your business for local business awards, community awards, or similar recognitions. Online Profile Building Strategies: Build a Strong and Clear Digital Presence Maintain a clear, consistent presence online (website, social profiles). Ensure it's immediately clear who you are, who you serve, and your USP. Create Valuable, Authentic Content Consistently create content aligned to your niche. Focus on authentic, relatable, observational humour, or real-life struggles relevant to your audience. Engage in Community Facebook Groups Be an active, helpful, genuine contributor in local community groups. Rarely, if ever, directly promote your business; instead, participate as a community member. Leverage Client Testimonials and Word-of-Mouth on Social Media Encourage clients to mention you in online groups when relevant conversations occur. Actively thank or acknowledge these recommendations publicly. Create Facebook Events When hosting events or fundraisers, create Facebook events and encourage clients to share. Have a Cheerleader Group (Micro-influencers) Set up a group (e.g., Messenger or WhatsApp) of loyal clients who can promote and share key posts. Sparingly use them to amplify important social media content. Create Locally Relevant Guides or Articles Write articles or guides (e.g., "Pram-Friendly Walks in Bayswater," "Family-Friendly Bushwalks"). Share these resources widely online, tagging councils and local groups. Regularly Perform the "Google Test" Regularly Google yourself and your business to ensure your online presence aligns with your desired personal and business brand. Make sure top results reflect positively, demonstrating active community involvement, quality content, and clear branding.   If you enjoyed this episode, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: Episode 55: The 19 ways to get more gym clients (podcast | article). Episode 54: How his referral network earns him $3000 a week (podcast). Episode 45: A gym advertising guide for every budget: (podcast | article). Episode 41: 13 Habits of Highly Successful Business Owners: (podcast).

In this episode I explore whether gym owners should add Hyrox training to their fitness business, by unpacking six key questions to help decide if it's the right strategic fit. 6 things you'll learn in this episode How to assess whether Hyrox actually solves a meaningful problem for your specific target market. Why understanding your gym's USP is critical before adding new programs like Hyrox. How offering too many services can dilute your positioning and weaken your brand. The importance of being either 10 times better or meaningfully different when competing in crowded fitness trends. How to spot hidden opportunities by zigging when other gyms are zagging. The risks of aligning your gym's brand with external brands like Hyrox, and how that can impact your reputation long-term.   TRANSCRIPTION: Gym owners are always looking for the next big thing. That thing that can add a couple of zeros to the bottom line of their bank statements. So when Hyrox came along, a lot of gym owners saw dollar signs. Here was a global fitness movement that has captured the attention of both recreational exercisers and pro athletes. If you've been living under a rock, Hyrox is basically a cross between a fun run for people who get bored easily, an obstacle course race for people who don't like getting mud in their hair, and a CrossFit competition for people who can't walk on their hands. This is a movement that is expected to reach almost 500,000 participants this year, across 85 events in 26 countries. There are around 5,000 affiliated gyms worldwide. For gym owners, the barrier to entry is really low. Most, if not all gyms already have all the equipment needed to offer their clients and members the Hyrox experience. The initial financial outlay is virtually non existent. But here's an interesting observation. If you look at a map of Hyrox Gyms, a lot of the 5,000 gyms listed as offering Hyrox are actually CrossFit Gyms, F45s, or other existing 'functional fitness' businesses. With astronomical growth numbers, and this low barrier to entry, it almost seems like a no-brainer that you should consider adding Hyrox training to your service offerings. But there's a pattern that repeats time and time again in businesses that are easy to start. Because people don't have to work hard or invest heavily to set them up, and because the hurdles to clear are so low, there's very little filtering. There's nothing to keep out and protect the people who maybe aren't cut out to run a business like that. And that means everyone gets to play. And things start to get pretty crowded. It's like the PT industry. It's getting easier and easier to become a qualified PT. And the rates of people leaving the industry are getting higher and higher. I've spoken about ways to pivot your fitness business before, in episode 48 of The Business of Fitness Podcast, 9 ways to pivot your fitness business to earn more (read the article here). So it got me thinking, is there a filter we can apply to Hyrox to help you decide whether it's a smart business move for you? So before jumping aboard the Hyrox train, there are the six questions you should be able to answer 'yes' to. Let's run through them and unpack each one. Question 1: Does Hyrox solve a problem your avatar has better than the solution you're already providing? Every single successful business on earth solves a problem. Coca Cola solves thirst. Disney solves boredom. Amazon solves lack of time to shop. And each of these businesses has a very clearly defined avatar who they solve this problem for. And your business should too. Without thinking about it, you should be able to clearly and easily complete the sentence 'My business helps [type of person you help] to [problem you solve]. For example. My business helps over 60s build stronger bones. My business helps isolated mums build healthy social connections. My business helps skinny blokes build bigger muscles. If you can't complete this sentence for your business, you've got a bigger problem than whether or not to introduce Hyrox. Start by working out who you're for and how you help them. The type of person you target is called your avatar, and how you solve their problem is called your value proposition. But let's say you can complete the sentence. You know who you're for, and the problem you solve for them. And this brings us back to the first question you need to be able to answer 'yes' to, 'does Hyrox solve a problem your avatar has better than the solution you're already providing?'. Dumping your current avatar and disregarding their needs isn't a smart business move. It's like McDonalds deciding to stop selling burgers to their loyal clientele of convenience-chasing Big Mac lovers, and instead switching to pizza. Their customers simply don't want pizza. It doesn't solve their problem. You shouldn't switch to Hyrox because it's trending, you should switch because it's a better solution to the problems of the type of people you've decided to help. If your avatar are competitive people who like to have something to train for and love doing cardio, and you feel like Hyrox does a better job of providing this than whatever you're currently doing for them, then yes, adding Hyrox to your gym might be a good idea. If this isn't your avatar, or you feel like the unique experience you provide is better for your people than what Hyrox offers, maybe question making the switch. Question 2: Does it strengthen your USP? One of the very first things I work on with the fitness business owners I mentor is establishing their USP – their unique selling proposition. This is the thing that their fitness business does that is different from everyone else. In a cookie cutter, copycat world of gyms that seem to be dodgy photocopies of one another, being different can be the biggest advantage you have. When establishing a USP – the thing that's unique about your business, there are two paths we can take. We can work out what you do better than everyone else, or we can work out what you do that's different to everyone else. It's easier to be different than better, so that's what I focus on. You should be able to complete this sentence for your business: 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is…' For example the environmentally conscious clothing brand, Patagonia might say, 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is we build outdoor gear that supports environmental activism, not just adventure'. Tesla might say 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is we make electric cars desirable by combining high performance, innovative tech, and sustainability'. And Ikea might say, 'The thing we do that is different to everyone else is we make stylish home furniture affordable through flat-pack design and self-assembly'. Once I've helped a business establish their USP, I then ask them to list 20 things they do (or things they need to start doing) that make that USP true. I need to be able to read that list and think 'Wow, yes, this business truly is unique, and they back that up through the daily actions they take'. If Patagonia, the environmentally conscious clothing brand, were to list 20 points that support their USP, they might include things like: We donate 1% of sales to environmental causes. We actively encourage customers to buy less through campaigns like Don't Buy This Jacket. We run the Worn Wear program, which buys back used Patagonia gear for resale. We run a self-imposed Earth tax to fund environmental initiatives. We publicly share our supply chain information for full transparency. You can see that each of these points adds evidence to their USP being true, that they really are the best at building outdoor gear that supports environmental activism, not just adventure. So my question for you is, would adding Hyrox training to your gym support your USP or detract from it. If your USP is something along the lines of 'we support recreational athletes in their preparation for community-based physical challenges', then the answer is yes – Hyrox would support your USP. If your USP is more focussed around creating a friendly, inclusive, non-intimidating environment, then perhaps the addition of Hyrox isn't in your best business interests. Question 3: Does it dilute the services you're already offering? Picture this. Your walk into  gym as a potential client of that gym. Your goal is to get strong. As you walk through the door, you're greeted by a series of posters proudly displaying the bios of the Personal Trainers at that gym. Below a cringe quote that says something like 'true growth happens outside your comfort zone', there's a list of the areas of expertise for each PT. Remember, your goal is to get strong. Under 'areas of expertise' the first bio you look at lists weight loss, sports specific conditioning, injury rehab, pre and post natal training, toning, hypertrophy, pilates, boxing, weight loss and strength training. Under 'areas of expertise', the next bio simply says, 'strength training'. If you want to get strong, who do you choose? You choose the trainer who specialises in strength training… and only strength training. This is called goal dilution. It's a psychological phenomenon that basically tells us that the more things we claim to be good at, the less people perceive us to be good in each of those things. Now, if the services you're offering in your business are focussed around improving cardiorespiratory conditioning, the addition of Hyrox may add to that goal. If you're F45 or a high intensity interval training centre – the goals might be supported. But if that's not what you're famous for, addition Hyrox might only act to create a goal dilation, which can lead to your marketing dropping the perception of the value your can provide. Question 4: Can you do a better job of offering Hyrox than anyone else OR can you offer Hyrox differently to everyone else? In 2005, the book 'Blue Ocean Strategy' was published. It talks about two different 'oceans' your business can operate in. The red ocean is one where everyone is competing to be the best. You're all doing pretty much the same thing, with everyone trying to be better than everyone else. There's so much fighting going on that there's blood in the water – the red ocean. The blue ocean is an ocean that only you are in. You're not spending your time trying to be better – instead, you're trying to be different. If you're different to everyone else, there is no competition. To succeed in a red ocean, you need to be ten times better than everyone else. To succeed in a blue ocean, you just need to be different. And it's easier to be different than it is to be ten times better. And this brings us to the question. 'Can you do a better job of offering Hyrox than anyone else OR can you offer Hyrox differently to everyone else?'. Let's break this question into two parts: Part one: 'Can you do a better job of offering Hyrox than anyone else?' This one is really tough, because to do this you're in a red ocean – fighting with everyone else to be the best. And it's really hard to be the best when there's a lot of competition. I wouldn't recommend introducing Hyrox because you can do a ten times better job than everyone else. It's unlikely. Part two of this question, 'Can you offer Hyrox differently to everyone else?'. Ok, this one has more potential. If you can find a unique twist on Hyrox, you might just be on to something. Maybe you target a certain demographic, like masters or teens, maybe you treat training as a periodised 'season' rather than just ongoing classes, maybe you offer a high-tech, sports science, data driven approach. Whatever you choose, you need to either be ten times better, or different. If you can't be one of those things, Hyrox may not be worth the inclusion. Question 5: Is there a hidden opportunity to go in a completely different direction? One of the best pieces of business advice I've ever heard is to 'zig while everyone else is zagging'. If everyone is moving in the direction of Hyrox, maybe there's a hidden opportunity to go in a completely different direction. Maybe you surrender in the battle to be the best Hyrox gym and stop trying to chase the highly competitive type A market of Hyrox participants. Maybe you go in the opposite direction and zig while everyone else is zagging. This might look like anything from a boutique studio focussing on breath guided work, mindfulness, and movement flows, right through to an intuitive-based strength training gym, that focuses on tempo training and movement exploration. Where Hyrox is competitive, intense, measurable, time-based and standardised, your alternate path could be non-competitive, gentle, unmeasured, intuitive and personal. If you're interest in some of the other ideas I've had for fitness models that are a little out of the ordinary, check out 8 crazy fitness business models you haven't considered, episode 38 of The Business of Fitness Podcast (or read the article). Question 6: Are you confident Hyrox won't dilute your brand? Your business's brand is one of the most precious things you can own. I don't mean your logo or your website. I mean everything your brand stand for. The culture, the experience you offer, how people feel when they think about you. Brand is something you should protect with your life. Your brand is yours and yours alone – it's something you have built and nurtured to be exactly what you want it to be. You have complete control over your brand. It's deeply personal. The risk in aligning yourself with an external brand like Hyrox (or CrossFit for example) is that you take on some of their brand – the bad as well as the good. You're handing over creative control. Look at what happened to CrossFit in 2020. The founder and CEO, Greg Glassman, posted a racially insensitive tweet. This is widely accepted as a turning point for CrossFit where its growth trajectory slowed. The public lost trust with the brand, and thousands of CrossFit licences had their brands damaged by association. You need to decide if you align with the values of Hyrox's leadership and company brand, and are willing to accept any negative blow back that might occur in the future, or whether you'd prefer to be the master of your own destiny. Look, I'm not anti-Hyrox in any way. I'm not 'anti' and fitness movement. I think anything that gets one more person exercising that otherwise would be is a net win. But I am contrarian. To repeat a line I've already used, I like to 'zig' when everyone else is 'zagging'. I covered a similar topic in episode 42 of The Business of Fitness Podcast, How to Boost Gym Profit with Ice Baths/Saunas. And I know how hard it is to run a successful fitness business. So I wanted to play the Devil's Advocate, and at least encourage people to question their choice to go down the Hyrox path, and examine the option from all sides. Ask yourself these six questions. Does Hyrox solve a problem your avatar has better than the solution you're already providing? Does it strengthen your USP? Does it dilute the services you're already offering? Can you do a better job of offering Hyrox than anyone else OR can you offer Hyrox differently to everyone else? Is there a hidden opportunity to go in a completely different direction? Are you confident Hyrox won't dilute your brand? If you answered 'yes' to all of them, Hyrox might just be an excellent business decision for you. If you answered 'no', it might be worth digging a little deeper before taking the plunge.   Your action steps: Review your business's core avatar and value proposition to determine if Hyrox training directly solves a top priority problem for them. Clarify your gym's USP and evaluate whether adding Hyrox strengthens or dilutes that unique positioning. Audit your current service offerings to ensure adding Hyrox won't create goal dilution or confuse your ideal clients. Brainstorm ways you could offer Hyrox training differently to stand out, rather than just competing to be the best. Consider alternative services or training models that could appeal to underserved segments instead of following the Hyrox crowd. If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: Episode 63: 10 ways to ensure your side hustle idea will make $50k: Read the article | Listen to the podcast. Episode 48: 9 ways to pivot your fitness business to earn more: Read the article | Listen to the podcast. Episode 42: Saunas/Icebaths: A Money Maker for Gyms? Read the article | Listen to the podcast. Episode 38: 8 crazy fitness business models you haven't considered. Read the article | Listen to the podcast.

Download the PDF accompanying this article. Summary: In this episode I ask eight experts to rate the quality of ChatGPT generated training programs. I explore how AI-driven programming frees up hours for PTs by automating routines, preserving personal style, and allowing you to shift your focus to empathy and human connection.  5 things you'll learn in this episode How to use ChatGPT prompts to create programs for a wide range of fitness goals. Ways to systemise programming to make your work more time efficient. How you can balance AI collaboration with your personal coaching voice. Techniques to preserve your unique style and ensure the highest quality of programs for your clients. The importance of human connection and soft skills in an AI-driven programming future.   Download the PDF accompanying this article. TRANSCRIPTION: One of the biggest uses of time for a PT, gym owner or online coach is programming. The problem is, all the hours we spend programming doesn't actually get us anywhere. It doesn't move our business forward. I'm not saying it's not important – because it really is. I'm saying that this type of work would be classified as working 'in' your business. It's something you need to do as a bare minimum to keep your head above water. Like replying to emails or invoicing, it's a non negotiable to be able to serve your clients and members. And because it's a non negotiable, it's not something you can eliminate from your monthly task list. For a previous episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast, I tracked every minute of work time for a year. So many of the business owners I mentor spend WAY too much time on programming. One of my recommendations that came out of this was around what we should aim to do with the time where we're doing unbillable hours, working in the business. Programming fits in this category. In that episode of the podcast, I said: 'For this use of time, we want to build systems to automate the tasks in this category as much as possible. There is no direct financial return for the hours we spend working in the business, so we obviously want to turn the dial down here. The asterisk on this is that no one should be able to tell we're spending less time on admin. The whole point of systemisation is to be able to automate processes so they are still done as well as, or actually probably better than they would be if you were grinding through each individual step yourself.' So how do we do that for programming? I wondered, can we use an AI agent like ChatGPT to create programs that are even better than what we could do ourselves – without losing our unique programming style and philosophies, and the personal voice that only we can bring to programming? I've done an episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast previously where I interviewed ChatGPT, but now I want to focus on programming. I spoke with eight of Australia's leading health and fitness professionals – each an expert in their field, to get their opinion on the quality of AI generated exercise programs. Now before you disregard using AI to help write exercise programs, let me make one very important point around using AI for programming (or using AI for anything really). It's the concept of 'garbage in, garbage out'. This is a computer science phrase that basically means if you write poor quality code, you get a poor quality program. Think of it like an elite athlete fuelling their body with junk food. If you use poor quality fuel, you get poor quality performance. When we're talking about using ChatGPT for programming, the 'garbage in' refers to bad prompts. If you use specific, detailed, well constructed and well constrained prompts, you'll be amazed at the world class quality of the programs you can create. It's important to note – ChatGPT is not doing the programming for you. It's doing it with you. It's a collaboration between you and AI to produce a higher quality program for your clients. Your role changes from being a solo programmer, to being a prompt engineer who uses your knowledge of exercise science to work in collaboration with technology. You'll see I go pretty deep into some exercise science in the prompt examples I'm going to share – it just shows that it helps to know how to drive if you're behind the wheel of a supercar – otherwise it won't perform like it can. Until recently, I didn't feel like ChatGPT was advanced enough to offer the quality of programs that our clients need and deserve. But with recent upgrades, that has all changed. I've used ChatGPT o1 which was released in December 2024. This is an updated version of GPT-4o that has an improved capacity for complex tasks and logical reasoning. So I've engineered some ChatGPT prompts to help us explore the power of AI as a collaborative programming partner. The potential of this is almost limitless, and growing by the day, but for this example, let's look at how we might work with ChatGPT to create eight different programs: A hypertrophy program. A high intensity interval training program. A powerlifting program. A pre-season sports strength and conditioning program. An Olympic Weightlifting program A running program. A hybrid program. A CrossFit or functional fitness program. I've also create a PDF you can download with all of these prompts, so you can use and modify them to suit your purposes. I've included the full programs that each of these prompts generates. You can find the link to download the PDF here. So let's go through these eight prompts. For each, I'll also discuss some of the key elements of the program that ChatGPT generates, as well as some of the sample workouts. Let's start with the hypertrophy program. Prompt: I would like you to help me create a 12 week hypertrophy training program for an intermediate level exerciser. Use a push-pull-legs split. Four sessions a week, each lasting between 45 and 60 minutes. Build the program around compound lifts. These lifts should comprise 60% of the program, with the remaining 40% being isolation. 50% of the program should be in the 8-12 rep range, 25% should be in the 3-6 rep range, and 25% should be in the 20-25 rep range. The program should indicate how many reps and sets of each movement to complete, as well as movement speed and the amount of rest between each set and/or each exercise. Use a 1-10 rate of perceived exertion scale to determine intensity. There should be a progressive overload through the 12 week program. To ensure this progressive overload, number each session, and indicate in future sessions where the exerciser should refer back to previous sessions that they should be increasing intensity from. Assume full access to pin loaded equipment and free weights. It's important that the program has enough consistency and repetition of exercises over the 12 weeks to create a training effect through the principle of specificity, but also important that different exercises are used to keep the program interesting. It's more important that the compound lifts are repeated throughout the program, and it's ok to have more variation in the isolation movements. Where appropriate, use the following hypertrophy techniques as part of the program: drop sets, stripping, negatives and accentuated eccentric training, tempo training, supersets, giant sets, post-exhaustion, partial reps and forced reps. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. To get some feedback on this and on this program, I spoke with the head coach of Total Physique Performance, Tim Williams. Tim is an experienced hypertrophy expert who specialises in bodybuilding comp prep. Hear Tim's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast. Let's move to a high intensity interval training program. Here's my prompt: Create me a 12 session high intensity interval training program that can be completed on an exercise bike, rower, ski erg or treadmill. Don't indicate which option to choose, just make the program suitable for whichever I like. Over the course of the program, the aerobic threshold, the lactate threshold and the anaerobic threshold should all be trained. The purpose of the program is to improve the ability to use the phosphocreatine, glycolytic and oxidative energy systems to produce energy over varying time domains. For the aerobic threshold intervals, follow the following guidelines. Interval length should be 10 mins plus. RPE should be 5-6/10. For the lactate threshold intervals, follow the following guidelines. Interval length should be 1-3 minutes. Work to rest ratio should be 1:2 for the longer lactate threshold intervals 1:3 for the medium length lactate threshold intervals and 1:4 for the shorter lactate threshold intervals. Use active recovery, not passive recovery. RPE should be 7/10. For the anaerobic threshold intervals, follow the following guidelines. Interval length should be 15-30 seconds. Work to rest ratio should be 1:3 for the longer anaerobic threshold intervals 1:4 for the medium length anaerobic threshold intervals and 1:5 for the shorter anaerobic threshold intervals. Use active recovery, not passive recovery. RPE should be 8-9/10. Three sessions should only train the aerobic threshold (sessions 1, 5, 9), three should only train the lactate threshold (sessions 2, 6, 10), three should only train the anaerobic threshold (sessions 3, 7, 11), and three should train all thresholds in the same session (sessions 4, 8, 12). Where all thresholds are trained in the same session, the anaerobic threshold intervals should come first, followed by the lactate threshold sessions, and finally the aerobic threshold sessions. For the sessions that train only the lactate on anaerobic thresholds, have at least three different lengths of intervals. For example instead of ten 30 second intervals for an anaerobic threshold session, have a variety of intervals between 15 and 30 seconds. The aerobic threshold and mixed sessions don't need to have different interval lengths. Indicate the required RPE for each interval of the program. Each session should be between 20 and 40 minutes. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. For this HIIT program I spoke with Greg Maserow. With his brother, Seth, they co-own BodyMBrace, a group of very successful boutique studios that specialise in small group HIIT classes. BodyMBrace has been around for over 15 years and bring a strong scientific slant to their programming. Greg is an Exercise Physiologist. Hear Greg's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast. Let's create a powerlifting program. Create me an eight week powerlifting program that will increase my absolute strength in deadlift, bench press and back squat. Three sessions per week, each a maximum of one hour. Use principles of the Conjugate Method and the teachings of Louie Simmons. The program should include max effort upper body, max effort lower body, dynamic effort upper body, dynamic effort lower body and accessory work. However, unlike a true conjugate method, I want to make this more time efficient for a novice to intermediate lifter by combining some of these session types into one session. Each session should begin with part A, which is the dynamic effort work. Part B will be max effort work. Part C will be accessory work. Part D will be general physical preparedness work. 10 minutes should be allocated to dynamic effort work, 35 minutes to max effort work, 10 minutes to accessory work and 5 minutes to GPP. If dynamic effort work is upper body, both max effort and accessory work should be lower body, and vice versa. For dynamic effort work, the priority should be bar speed. Use any form of accomodating resistance, including, but not limited to bands and chains. Weight should be 40% of max, plus 25% band tension or chain weight. The program should indicate how many reps and sets of each movement to complete, as well as movement speed and the amount of rest between each set and/or each exercise. Use a 1-10 rate of perceived exertion scale to determine intensity. There should be a progressive overload through the 12 week program. To ensure this progressive overload, number each session, and indicate in future sessions where the exerciser should refer back to previous sessions that they should be increasing intensity from. Assume access to a fully equipped powerlifting gym. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. For a review of this program,  I spoke to Corey Miller. He's a veteran of the powerlifting scene as both a coach and a competitor. He trains and competes out of Perth's strongest gym, the Muscle Pit, and has competed on the platform over 25 times. Hear Corey's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast. I was interested to see what ChatGPT could put together for a pre-season sports specific strength and conditioning program. Here's what I asked. Create me an eight week pre-season strength and conditioning program for an elite level basketball player. Three sessions per week. The program should focus on the five key areas of the force-velocity curve: max strength, speed-strength, peak power, strength-speed and max speed. The program should also improve both agility and change of direction ability. The program should be periodised in such a way that all points on the force-velocity curve are improved, but so that 'peak power' is optimised for by the end of the eight week program. The max strength work should include very high loads (90-100% of one rep max) and include movements like powerlifting exercises (squat, deadlift, bench press). The strength-speed work should include high loads with increased velocity, including Olympic Lifting work at around 80-90% of one rep maxes. The peak power work should include moderate loads at high speed (30-40% of one rep max). Elements of the 'second pull' of Olympic weightlifting (like hang power cleans), loaded jumps (jumps with weight added), weighted sprints (like sled sprints or prowler push sprints) and ballistic moderate-weighted throws. This peak power work should aim to increase rate of force development. The speed-strength work should involve low load, high speed work (30-60% of one rep max). Include movements with a slow stretch-shorten cycle but no repetitive ground contact – like a max height counter-movement jump. The max velocity work should include very low load, very high speed plyometric movements with a fast stretch-shorten cycle like sprinting, depth jumps and hops. Use repetitive ground contact with very high ground reaction force and low contact time. Organise the training for the different points on the force-velocity curve in such a way that they are not impacting or compromising each other either during an individual session, or in subsequent sessions. Assume full access to a fully equipped strength and conditioning gym and basketball court. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. For this program, I spoke with Ryan Gaias, the Director and Head of Performance at Ludus Sports Performance. An Exercise Physiologist, Ryan is also the High Performance Manager for the Fremantle Football Club Women's team and South Fremantle Football Club's Head Strength and Conditioning Coach. Hear Ryan's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast. Next, I wanted to create an Olympic Weightlifting program. Here's the prompt: Write me a 12 week Olympic Weightlifting program for an intermediate lifter who will be training three times a week. The program should increase their snatch and clean and jerk, and peak them for their first lifting competition immediately following the 12 week program. Combine the best elements of a Russian approach (wave loading and block-style programming with an emphasis on assistance exercises, pulls, squats, and general physical preparedness) and a Bulgarian approach (a focus on the competition lifts and very closely related variations (for example, power snatches, power cleans and front squats). Where appropriate use technique specific drills, strength development exercises, accessory work, plyometrics and explosive training, segmented and paused variations and complexes. Assume full access to a fully equipped Olympic Weightlifting facility. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. I spoke with Gabi Scaffidi to get her thoughts on this program. Gabi is one of the most exceptional coaches I know, and is a national level weightlifter with thousands of hours of weightlifting training, coaching and programming to her name. Hear Gabi's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast. Next, a running program. Write me a 12 week running program to help a beginner runner run 12km in under an hour and 12 minutes. Their current 3km PB is 20 minutes. They will be running outside three times a week, with a maximum of 60 minutes per session. Two of the sessions should focus on lactate threshold training and the third session should be a longer stamina or tempo run. For the lactate threshold sessions, the aim is to raise the lactate threshold and train the glycolytic and oxidative energy systems. Interval length should be 1-3 minutes. Work to rest ratio should be 1:2 for the longer lactate threshold intervals, 1:3 for the medium length lactate threshold intervals and 1:4 for the shorter lactate threshold intervals. Use active recovery, not passive recovery. Program the work interval as a certain run distance, but the active recovery as time. For the tempo run, the aim should be to increase aerobic endurance using the oxidative system. Include Three different measures of intensity for all running in the program, a 1-10 RPE scale, a target heart rate, and a kilometre pace goal. The pacing should progress in such a way that it build towards the 1:12 12km run is achieved on the final day of the program. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. For the running program, I wanted to speak with Tim Karajas. An accomplished long distance runner, Tim is a qualified Physiotherapist and a running coach who provides both high level running programs and biomechanical running assessments. Hear Tim's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast.   We're going to combine powerlifting and running into a hybrid program: Create me a 12-week hybrid training program that maximises both my 5 km run time and my absolute strength in the bench press, deadlift, and back squat. The program should be structured so that at the end of Week 12, I am prepared to test my 5 km run at maximum effort and attempt a near-max or 1RM in each of the three powerlifts. I want to train four to five times a week, with each session lasting between 60 and 90 minutes. Within these sessions, two to three days should focus primarily on powerlifting work, and the remaining two to three days should focus on running. The lifting sessions must include the bench press, deadlift, and back squat as central movements each week, with accessory exercises (such as rows, overhead presses, posterior chain work, and core stability) included to address potential weaknesses and maintain balance. For the powerlifts, please provide sets, reps, rest intervals, and RPE (1–10 scale), and clearly lay out how I should progressively increase loads or volume over the 12 weeks, culminating in a peak or test week. My running sessions should be structured to progressively improve my 5 km time. I would like a balance of easy or moderate runs to build my aerobic base, interval or threshold sessions to develop speed and lactate threshold, and occasional longer runs to enhance endurance. Please specify target paces or RPE for each run, along with approximate distances or durations. A brief taper in the final one to two weeks is important so that I feel fresh and ready to perform both my best 5 km time trial and my heaviest lifts. Because this is a hybrid program, organise the weekly schedule so that high-intensity runs do not fall immediately before or after very heavy lower-body sessions, in order to reduce interference and fatigue. Include strategic rest or active recovery days where necessary. Also note that each training session should fit within 60–90 minutes, so please keep the workload realistic and well-distributed across the week. Assume that I have access to a fully equipped powerlifting gym (rack, bench, bars, free weights, etc.) and adequate running facilities (whether outdoors, track, or treadmill) to complete the running sessions. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. I wanted to ask Joel Redman for his opinion. Joel is a strong proponent for a more scientifically-backed approach to hybrid training. Previously a national level long distance running, Joel is now an Exercise Physiologist and a strength and conditioning coach for long distance runners. Hear Joel's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast. Finally, here's the prompt I used to create a CrossFit / Functional Fitness program: Create me a six week program for a CrossFit Class. Five sessions a week. Each class is 60 minutes. There should be four parts to each class. Part A: 10 minutes for briefing and general warm-up (I don't need you to write the briefing and warm-up into the program). Part B: 15 minutes for strength work. Part C: 30 minutes for a CrossFit WOD. Part D: 5 minutes for debrief and general cool down (I don't need you to write the debrief and cool-down into the program) The strength work should be four to eight sets of one to five reps. Weights can be ascending, building to a max, same weight each set, same number of reps per set, increasing number of reps per set, decreasing number of reps per set, or any combination of those. Choose compound Olympic lifting, powerlifting movements or complexes. For the CrossFit WOD, the length should be anywhere from five to 25 minutes, with a normal or Gaussian distribution of session length that has a mean of 15 minutes. Use sessions structures like 'rounds for time', 'EMOMs', 'AMRAPs', or any other widely accepted CrossFit session structure. Use a normal or Gaussian distribution to decide how many movements should be in each day's workout, with a mean of three movements. When choosing movements, at least one movement should be a bodyweight or gymnastics movement, at least one should be a movement lifting an external load, and at least one movement should be mono structural (like run, cycle, ski, row, skip etc.). If the session only contains two movements, a monostructural movement doesn't need to be included. I'd like the session to have a 'blood shunting' effect, where there is minimum localised or peripheral muscular interference between movements. To this end, I'd like the movements to be classified into four main movement types, upper body pressing (like push-ups, jerks etc), upper body pulling (like hang power cleans, pull-ups etc), lower body anterior chain dominant (like front squats) and lower body posterior chain dominant (like deadlifts). One exercise could be a combination of these movements, for example, a power clean and jerk is lower body posterior chain dominant, upper body pulling and upper body pressing. Each day's programming should ensure each of the four movement types is hit exactly once, with three of the movements in the WOD, and the remaining movement in the strength work. The strength work should involve progressive overload over the program, but the WODs can be randomised as long as the previously mentioned conditions are met. For the monostructural work, running and cycling are classified as anterior and posterior lower body, rowing is classified as posterior chain lower body and upper body pulling, skiing is classified as lower body posterior chain and upper body pulling and pushing. Assume a fully equipped CrossFit gym. You can check out the full program ChatGPT generated here. For the CrossFit program, I spoke with Chad Johnson. Since 2009, Chad has been a CrossFit Coach and owner of Chamber Fitness. An accomplished athlete in his own right, Chad specialises in programming not only for group classes, but also through customised training as part of their successful 'Individualised Design' program. Hear Chad's thoughts on episode 64 of The Business of Fitness Podcast.   So the expert opinions are varied – but remember, the abilities of AI right now are the worst they will ever be. As scary-good as they're becoming, they will never be this bad again. Outsourcing things like programming to AI is a really smart move, and if you don't start experimenting with this now, you'll get left behind. Remember, this is a collaborative approach. AI is not the way of the future, human + AI is the way of the future. And with more outsourcing of digital tasks, comes more time for you to spend on analogue tasks – those things that our current understanding of AI simply cannot do. The soft skills. Things like empathy, kindness and compassion. Because ultimately, our clients don't come to us for our great programs, they come to us for human connection. And human connection is something that AI just can't give. At least not yet. Your action steps: Use ChatGPT prompts to streamline your programming tasks, ensuring you maintain your signature coaching style. Integrate exercise science principles into your prompts so AI-generated programs meet your clients' unique needs. Allocate newly freed time to nurturing empathy, relationships, and personalized support for your clients. Stay updated on evolving AI tools to keep refining your programming approach and stay ahead in the industry.   If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: 8 crazy fitness business models to boost your profits. Read the article | Listen to the podcast Using ChatGPT To Grow Your Fitness Business. Listen to the podcast Elon Musk's Blueprint for Gym Owners. Read the article | Listen to the podcast Read more of my top articles on innovation.

Summary: This episode uncovers the ten key questions every fitness business professional should ask to evaluate their side-hustle ideas, boosting the chances of success while minimising risk.   5 things you'll learn in this episode: How urgency can determine the immediate success of your fitness side hustle. Why narrowing down your market size can help you attract paying clients faster. How pricing potential and client acquisition costs affect long-term profitability. The importance of creating a unique offer and protecting it from being easily copied. How to test and rank multiple ideas before committing time and resources.   You've probably got a great idea for a 'fitness side hustle'. It's part of your pursuit of multiple income streams as a fitness professional. And I'm all for it. I think it's a great idea in the health and fitness industry, where the badge of 'fitnesspreneur' is displayed proudly. And I know you've got no shortage of ideas. I know, because I'm the same. I call them 'projects' – side quests from your primary income stream. But all these ideas leads to one big problem… which one to choose? The biggest mistake I see people making when launching a new project is that they simply launch the first half decent idea they think of and try to turn it into a business. But honestly, what are the chances it will work? Out of the thousands and thousands of ideas you'll have in the next few years, what are the chances that the very first idea will be the one that gives you that financial freedom you've always dreamed of? Tiny. The chances are tiny. Just like the chances of throwing a dart at a dartboard and hitting the bullseye on your very first attempt. The best way to hit the bullseye is to throw more darts. Throw 100 darts, and you'll probably hit the centre with one of them. But what if we could increase the size of the bullseye? What if you could test your business idea before launching it (before even building it) to grow the bullseye and increase the chance of success. What if you could rank the potential of your ideas so you know which ones are most likely to succeed? Well you can, and you can do it by asking ten simple questions before you spend any time or money on turning that idea into a business. In his book, The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman gives us ten ways to evaluate a market. I've adapted these into ten questions a fitness business owner can ask to tip the odds of success in their favour. I've spoken about this book before, in an episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast called 'The only 5 reasons your fitness business is failing' (you can also read the article here). Let's look at these ten questions, and give a few examples from the fitness industry to help to understand how we can apply them.   Question 1: Urgency. How urgent is the need for the service you're providing? If the level of urgency is high, your business will experience success sooner. And for something that's starting as a side-hustle, immediate success is really important because it gives you the feedback you need to turn this idea into something bigger. A treatment program for diabetes or osteoporosis has a high level of urgency. So does a body transformation program for brides-to-be, or a pre-season sports program. A gym membership catering to general population isn't as urgent.   Question 2: Market size. How big is your potential market? This is an interesting one, because generally speaking, the bigger the market, the more people who will pay you money. But if you make the common mistake of trying to create a service for everyone, you'll find it's too general and not actually specific enough to solve a narrow problem and attract paying clients. But you do need to make sure your market is big enough to sustain your idea. Short, high intensity small group exercise classes run at lunch time in the CBD have a large potential market. Those same classes in a small country town don't.   Question 3: Pricing potential. How much are people prepared to pay for your service? So many of the business owners I mentor come to me with business ideas, but they collapse when you actually run the numbers. Many ideas just aren't financially viable. If people aren't prepared to pay enough money, the return on effort will be so low that you're better off trying a different idea. An intensive and all-inclusive exercise, heath and nutrition coaching program in high earning suburbs will attract a high price point. But people will pay a lot loss for an access-based gym membership.   Question 4: Cost of client acquisition. What does it cost to acquire new clients? This is a big one. Generally, if your business attracts more customers, it will be successful. But attracting customers will cost you time, money and effort. After school exercise classes on the school's oval for secondary school students will have a low acquisition cost. On the other hand, trying to build relationships with health professionals to refer to your business will drain a lot of your resources.   Question 5: Cost of value delivery. How much does it cost to deliver the service you're providing? It doesn't matter how much people are prepared to pay, if it costs you a lot of money, time or effort to provide a service, your profits will be low. The overheads of a modern, fully equipped gym with multiple staff are high. Online coaching and programming with well built systems has a very low cost of delivery.   Question 6: Uniqueness of offer. How unique is your idea, and how easy is it to copy your idea? This is one of the very first things I work on with fitness business owners I mentor. To be successful in business, you either have to be ten times better than your competitors, or you have to be different. And it's easier to be different than it is to be ten times better. This is called a 'blue ocean' strategy. And it's not enough to be unique, you also need a 'moat' around your unique idea to stop other people copying it. I spoke about this 'blue ocean strategy' in episode 55 of The Business of Fitness Podcast: 'The 19 ways to get more gym clients' (read the article instead). A personal trainer who also has a psychology degree and an interest in paediatrics is a unique combination which is hard to replicate. Functional training classes are common, and easy to copy.   Question 7: Speed to market. How long will it take you to build a business that can start earning? When you're testing the viability of a side-hustle, time is your biggest enemy. If it takes 12 months for your business to start earning, and it doesn't work like you hoped, you could have tested a lot of other ideas in that same time. If you're already working as a PT, it's very quick and easy to test partner assisted stretching sessions with your current clientele. But opening a recovery centre is a much bigger time sink.   Question 8: Upfront investment. How much will it cost you to build a business that can start earning? Most of the business I see that fail financially are due to a big upfront investment before the idea has been properly tested. And that's really hard to recover from. Offering online programming for family and friends using a Google spreadsheet has start-up costs of close to $0. Building a custom and state-of-the-art programming app could end up costing tens of thousands.   Question 9: Upsell potential. What is the upsell potential of the idea? A good way to earn more money from an existing customer base is to identify what related products or services they are already spending their money on – then offering them in-house. Sports-specific strength and conditioning offers opportunities to sell supplements, equipment and sports psychology services. Exercise classes for over 60s in the local community hall don't have an many upsell options.   Question 10: Continuing effort. How much ongoing work will this idea require to continue generating income? We have finite time. Everything we do has an opportunity cost – if we say 'yes' to one idea, we're saying 'no' to everything else. So if you enjoy the process of building and testing new ideas, be wary of building a business with a high opportunity cost that chains you down. Building a system that allows you to make individualised nutritional recommendations take a lot of work up-front, but very little to continue. On the other hand, a full roster of PT clients where you earn a set amount of money per hour requires you to trade your money for time. The only way you can earn is by giving away your time.   So those are the ten questions. Urgency: How urgent is the need for the service you're providing? Market Size: How big is your potential market? Pricing Potential: How much are people prepared to pay for your service? Cost of Client Acquisition: What does it cost to acquire new clients? Cost of Value Delivery: How much does it cost to deliver the service you're providing? Uniqueness of Offer: How unique is your idea, and how easy is it to copy your idea? Speed to Market: How long will it take you to build a business that can start earning? Upfront Investment: How much will it cost you to build a business that can start earning? Upsell Potential: What is the upsell potential of the idea? Continuing Effort: How much ongoing work will this idea require to continue generating income?   Josh Kaufman, the author of The Personal MBA suggests scoring each question on a scale of 1-10. He says that if the score is 50 or below, move on to a new idea. If the score is between 50 and 75, the idea has potential, but will take a lot of hard work, time, and money. Maybe move on to something a little easier (there are easier ideas out there, find a business you can roll down hill instead of one you have to push uphill). If you score over 75, you might just be on to something. Invest the time into building a minimal viable product to test the idea with a real market. Being an entrepreneur is so exciting. The ability to be in control of our future and be genuinely in love with the process of creating, testing and building is such a privileged position to be in. Generating ideas will never be your problem. The problem is in deciding which of these ideas to pour our valuable time into. By spending half an hour asking yourself the questions we've explored today, you're setting yourself up to make sure your next idea is your best idea.     Your action steps: Ask yourself the ten questions for your top three current side-hustle ideas. Use a scoring system (1-10 for each factor) to test multiple business ideas and focus on the most promising one. Build a minimal viable product for the highest scoring idea so you can test it in the real world.   If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses. Read the article | Listen to the podcast A strategy guide to generating multiple income streams for Fitness Professionals. Read the article 8 crazy fitness business models to boost your profits. Read the article | Listen to the podcast Ranking the most profitable fitness business models. Read the article | Listen to the podcast The True Cost of Running a Fitness Business: Your REAL Hourly Rate. Read the article | Listen to the podcast Read more of my top articles on innovation.

Download the 2025 Fitness Business Strategic Plan here. In this episode, Dan explores how to review your fitness business for 2024 and strategically plan for a stronger and more successful 2025 using a step-by-step framework and workbook. 5 Things You'll Learn in This Episode: How to assess the impact your business has on your life and make adjustments for improvement. A method to align your time usage with your top business priorities and avoid pseudo-productivity. The importance of SWOT analysis and how it identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your business. How to design a perfect week that balances business success with personal fulfilment. Strategies for pre-empting business challenges through a pre-mortem and using the 4 E's framework to prioritise ideas. Download the 2025 Fitness Business Strategic Plan here.

Five things you'll learn in this episode: How tracking every minute of work can transform your time management and life quality. The importance of balancing billable and non-billable hours for business and personal success. How to optimise your work schedule for deep, meaningful productivity. Strategies to increase your hourly rate while reducing overall working hours. Why time is your most valuable resource and how to prioritise it effectively. Episode transcript: In 2024 I worked for 1,433 hours and 25 minutes, averaging 27.5 hours a week over six different task types. This is my review of that year of work, and the lessons we can all take from it. But before we talk time, let's talk about money. Tracking your finances is a non-negotiable for building a financially successful business. You should at least be tracking revenue, expenditure and profit from your business, and business health metrics like number of enquiries, number of new clients, client departures, and overall growth rate. But you know that. And money isn't the only asset you're trading in. You're also trading in time. When your business is young, you're time rich but money poor – you use your time to earn money. When your business is more mature, you're money rich but time poor – you should use your money to buy back your time. The management consultant, Peter Drucker, told us, 'What gets measured, gets managed', and I wanted to better manage my time – knowing that how I spend my time is a direct influence on the quality of my life. So for every day of 2024, I tracked every minute of work I did. The results were pretty revealing, so I'd like to dig into the numbers. But first, some background info to give you a bit of context to better understand the numbers. First and foremost, I'm a Dad and a Husband. I've got two little girls, who in 2024 were four and two. Our four year old was in Kindy three days a week, our two year old is with us full time – with some really valuable support from the grandparents. We've never used daycare. My wife is a Director in a very successful Employee Relations and HR Consultancy. I work two full days a week, and two half days. That leaves me with three full days and two half days per week with my kids. Hopefully this bias of my time towards my family will tell you what my values are and where my priorities lie. This arrangement didn't happen by accident. This is my 19th year as a business owner, and it hasn't always been so 'balanced'. In the early years I was working seven days a week. The hard work through my 20s and early 30s is what earned me the freedom I now have. Three years before we were planning to have kids, I intentionally re-engineered my business to ensure I could be the best Dad I could be. I'm now benefitting from that planning. We have a two week holiday every Christmas, and do four two night mini-holidays a year. I also take three 'deload weeks' per year, where I don't do any client facing work, but focus on business development, writing, and any other little 'non business side projects' I've been thinking about (like writing a series of children's books to help instil the values we believe are most important in our kids). I do my absolute best to make my time with the girls as intentional as possible. They do organised gymnastics classes, swimming lessons, rock climbing and dance, plus all the other stuff little girls do. I'm proud to be heavily involved in all this. At risk of gender stereotyping, half the week, I'm a 'stay-at-home-mum'. And I love it. Two of my highlights of 2024 were teaching our four year old to ride a bike, and being in the water for swimming lessons with our two year old. My wife works three days a week, but also works a lot in the evenings. She's the heart of our family, and is completely and utterly extraordinary as a mum, wife and business person. I currently run three main businesses, with a few side projects here and there. Check out episode 53 of The Business of Fitness Podcast 'The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses' to learn about how I manage my businesses and projects. The first business is Range of Motion, a vehicle for my face to face Exercise Physiology and Coaching work. We have a 300sqm facility in Osborne Park, Perth. I work one-on-one with NDIS participants who rebate the cost of their consults through the NDIS. My rate for these is $167 an hour, and I do about five hours of this a week. My Personal Coaching sees me working primarily two or three on one with clients, where I earn $240 an hour for five hours a week. We also had long-term subleases set up with around 15 businesses and sole traders in 2024. The second business is my main source of income, Dan Williams Business Consulting, where I mentor business owners. I cap this service at 30 businesses at a time, and usually have a waiting list. My hourly income here is $280 an hour, though I do spend a lot of time outside these one-on-one consults communicating with and helping these businesses. This is about 7.5 hours of my week. The third business is Jibberjab.Digital, my digital marketing agency that creates and distributes content marketing and does website building and development for a wide range of industries. Ok, let's dig into the numbers and how I spent my business time in 2024. Every day of the year, I tracked the time spent in six different areas: Billable Client Facing: Working with clients (either Exercise Physiology/Personal Exercise Coaching through Range of Motion or Business Mentoring as 'Dan Williams Business Consultant') in a one-on-one capacity either face to face or over video calls. Jibberjab Billable: Billable work for my digital marketing agency, Jibberjab Digital. Paid Consulting: Business consulting work for other businesses. Events Billable: Paid seminars, workshops or keynotes that I either run myself, or have been contracted to run for other companies, agencies or organisations. Non Billable On: Deep work where I'm working 'on' my business – increasing the value of my business as an asset. Business development work. This is non billable work, but it increases the future earnings potential and/or makes my future work more productive and time efficient. Non Billable IN: This is the day to day 'admin' type work in my business. Things like client communication, email responses, business meetings etc. The stuff that doesn't earn me money directly, doesn't necessarily move the business forward, but the stuff that I need to do to keep the business operational and ensure my clients are being well serviced. Here are the numbers, we'll start with a bird's eye view and then zoom in. In 2024 I worked for 1,433 hours and 25 minutes, averaging 27.5 hours a week. 47% of my work time was billable client facing work. 26% of my time was on business development, deep work where I'm working 'on' my business. 14% of my time was working 'in' the business, where I wasn't directly getting paid. 6% of my time for billable work for Jibberjab.Digital, my marketing agency. 4% of my time was running events or speaking at events. 3% of my time was paid consulting. I want to make particular mention of the 26% of my time spend doing business development. I'm using this time to develop and exploit my current businesses, while also exploring new ideas by creating 'minimal viable products' to 'test the waters' on new business ideas. This is the area I see lacking in most of the business owners I work with. It's the deep work I've done over the last (almost) two decades, that has allowed me to engineer my life as it is today. The punchline is, you're probably not doing enough deep work. A two to three hour block of deep, focussed, uninterrupted work done once or twice a week will change your business and your life. 57% of my total time was directly income generating billable through either client facing work, digital marketing, paid consulting, and events. The remaining 43% of my time was non-billable, where I was working 'on' or 'in' my business. If we want to talk about time freedom, which is something a lot of people seem to want, there was an almost exact 50/50 split between what I call 'synchronous' work and 'asynchronous' work. Synchronous work is work that must be done at a certain time, like scheduled and recurring client consulting appointments. Asynchronous work is work that can be done anywhere, at any time, like building a website or business development. I spent a lot of time in cafes in 2024! Paul Graham, the founder of start-up incubator 'Y-Combinator' wrote a great essay called 'Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule'. He defined a 'Maker's Schedule' as something used by creators like programmers, writers, and designers who need long, uninterrupted blocks of time to focus deeply and produce meaningful work. A 'Manager's Schedule' on the other hand is used by managers, executives, and team leaders who organise their day into hour-long slots for meetings, calls, and check-ins. I've got an almost perfect 50/50 split between these two schedules. The average work time per month was just under 117 hours. But there was a fair bit of variation there. There were four months where I was knocking on the door of 140 hours a month, or 32.5 hours a week. While this is still below what is considered 'full time work', it was usually because I had extra consultancy work, or was running two-day events. There were also some outlier months with much less work. December had only 69 hours of work, but that's to be expected considering the time of year. Of more interest to me were August and September. For these two months I ran an experiment. I intentionally cut my work hours back drastically. My billable hours remained the same – so my income didn't drop, but I averaged just 89 hours work per month over these two months – or a fraction over 20 hours a week. I did less 'deep work', as I wrestled with the seemingly conflicting feelings of ambition versus contentment. This experiment was a big success, and shows that I can work 20 hour weeks without compromising financial success. I want to briefly share some of the things I do with this data on a month-by-month basis. Every month, I track the KPIs in my business – those key metrics that allow me to 'health check' my business. I track things like the results of my marketing, number of clients, number of consults of different types etc. I also look at basic revenue, expenditure and profit numbers, which I take from Xero, my accounting software. That stuff is all pretty standard, but there are two extra metrics I look at that fit into this discussion of time usage. The first is average income per hour. I always want the worst-case number here, so I divide total profit after tax by the number of both billable and non-billable hours I work. I talk about this in episode three of the podcast, 'Your REAL Hourly Rate: The True Cost of Running a Fitness Business'. This number is the best measure I have of how effectively I'm using my time from a financial perspective. The second thing I track is a basic psychology battery, the 'satisfaction with life' scale. I pose myself five statements, scoring each on a scale of zero to seven. I then add the scores together to subjectively measure my life satisfaction. The statements are: In most ways, my life is close to my ideal. The conditions of my life are excellent. I am satisfied with my life. So far, I have gotten the important things I want in life. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing. As I see it, success in any of my KPIs is worthless if I have a low satisfaction with life score. Ok, let's look to the future. Based on all this data, I want to talk about some changes I'll be making in 2025, then I'll move onto my recommendations for you. Firstly, I've added some time-categories. The new categories are: Client Facing (billable) Jibberjab (billable) Consulting (billable) Events (billable) Business Development (deep) (non billable) Working In (shallow) (non billable) Content Creation (non billable) Client Facing (non billable) Other Secondly, I've set some target KPIs for time usage. I want to reduce my average monthly work from almost to 120 hours to 110 hours. 64% of my time will be client facing billable work, 10% will be business development work, 7% will be working in my digital marketing agency, 6% each will be given to shallow work in the business and my own content creation. The remaining 7% will be split between consulting, events, non billable client facing work and other non classified work. But all this is secondary, as my priority will be remain on living a full and good life, with my family at the absolute centre of that. Let's move on to what I think you should you be doing to optimise your own time. I spoke about this in length in episode five of The Business of Fitness Podcast, 'The Time Management Meta Skill To Stop You Drowning in Business'. But here are some of the highlights. Most business owners can probably simplify into three main uses of time. 1) Working in the business with billable hours. 2) Working in the business doing admin tasks. 3) Working on the business. They should then tweak the dials on each of these three main uses of time to optimise their output. Firstly 'working in the business with billable hours'. Our priority here should be to increase our hourly rate, to earn more for every minute or hour worked. And as part of this, we should reduce the total hours we work, or at least earn ourselves the choice and freedom to do this. Ultimately, we want more money for less time – nothing groundbreaking there. Next, 'working in the business doing admin tasks. For this use of time, we want to build systems to automate the tasks in this category as much as possible. There is no direct financial return for the hours we spend on admin tasks, so we obviously want to turn the dial down here. The asterisk on this is that no one should be able to tell we're spending less time on admin. The whole point of systemisation is to be able to automate processes so they are still done as well as, or actually probably better than they would be if you were grinding through each individual step yourself. And finally, working in the business. We want to turn this dial right up to ten. Remember, these are the tasks that increase the size of the asset that is our business. Not only that, but by having time for big blocks of deep, focussed work, we can optimise the other two big uses of our time. We can build a business with a high hourly rate and systemised admin tasks. So to summarise. You want to work less billable hours in the business at a higher hourly rate; you want to work less admin hours by automating; and you want to work more ON our business. I want to leave you with a quote from Oliver Burkeman in his remarkable book, 4000 weeks. 'What's really morbid from this perspective is what most of us do most of the time instead of confronting our finitude which is to indulge in avoidance and denial. Rather than taking ownership of our lives we seek out distractions or lose ourselves in business and the daily grind so as to try and forget our real predicament. Or, we try to avoid the intimidating responsibility of having to decide what to do with our finite time by telling ourselves we don't get to choose at all, that we must get married or remain in a soul destroying job, or anything else, simply because it's the done thing. Or, we embark on the futile attempt to 'get everything done' which is really another way of trying to evade the responsibility of trying to decide what to do with your finite time. Because if you actually could get everything done, you'd never have to choose among mutually exclusive possibilities. Life is usually more comfortable when you spend it avoiding the truth in this fashion. But it's a stupefying, deadly sort of comfort. It's only by facing our finitude that we can step into a truly authentic relationship with life.' If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one: The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses. Read the article | Listen to the podcast How measuring APM will instantly increase profits (without more members). Read the article | Listen to the podcast The time management strategy the top Fitness Professionals use. Read the article | Listen to the podcast The True Cost of Running a Fitness Business: Your REAL Hourly Rate. Read the article | Listen to the podcast How PTs can earn $100k/year in 20 hours a week. Read the article | Listen to the podcast

For this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast, Dan has created a 12 book reading list for 2025. One book each month that will have massive impact on your fitness business.

Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: The five essential objectives every fitness business must meet to succeed. Why failing to create value turns your business into a hobby. How ineffective marketing leads to your business becoming a flop. The risks of undercharging and failing to deliver value. Why profitability is the ultimate measure of a sustainable fitness business.

If you're like a lot of fitness business owners, you're probably asking the wrong question when it comes to growing and scaling a successful business. And this wrong question might just be sabotaging your business and dooming it to failure without you even knowing it. The wrong question is… 'How do I get more clients?' In this episode, Dan Williams reveals the question you should be asking to truly achieve business success. Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: Why 'How do I get more clients?' is the wrong question to ask. The power of using 'five whys' to uncover the root problem in your business. Alternative strategies to increase profit without simply adding more clients. How 'satisficing' might be holding your business back. Why defining a 'full and good life' is essential for business success.

Owning a business is really tough. We can all agree on that. Whether you're a solo PT, or own a chain of gyms, this game is hard. And yet so many business owners Dan mentors and works with seem determined to make it even harder. Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast to make business easier: Why starting with a problem, not an idea, leads to better business outcomes. The importance of targeting clients without barriers to your service. How hustle culture can mislead you into effort without impact. Real-life examples of businesses solving client needs effectively. Ways to assess if your effort aligns with your business's priorities.

There's one number that not enough Fit Pros are tracking - APM, or average profit per member. Dan talks about why this number is so important, and how it can increase your profit margins. Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: Why revenue alone is a misleading metric for fitness business success. How to calculate average revenue, expenditure, and profit per member. The importance of focusing on profit over revenue for long-term growth. Actionable steps to cut costs and increase profit per member. Retention benchmarks and strategies for a more scalable business.

In this episode Dan looks at the 19 different strategies used by businesses to grow their customer base, and how fitness businesses can use them to attract new clients and members. Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: Why using multiple marketing channels is crucial for client growth. How viral marketing and referral programs can drive new client inquiries. Tips for leveraging traditional media and unconventional PR for your business. The benefits of using content and email marketing to build trust and authority. How to stand out by adopting a 'blue ocean' strategy for your fitness business.

In this episode, Dan sits down with the king of the referral network, to find out this health professional's secrets to building an army of referrers that earn him over $200,000 a year and how you can do it too. Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: How to build a strong referral network in the fitness and health industry. The benefits of persistence and relationship-building for long-term business growth. Why active networking can outperform relying solely on word-of-mouth marketing. Practical strategies for approaching and connecting with referrers. How patience and consistency play a vital role in developing a successful referral network.

  Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: The four Es model for organising entrepreneurial ideas and projects. How to balance creative passion with financial success. When to explore new ideas versus focus on existing income streams. The importance of minimal viable products (MVPs) in testing ideas. How to prioritise ideas from concept to successful business.

Today Dan is joined by Bodie Webster and Bryn Williams, his co founders in PT launch Academy. They talk about how we're providing a ladder between a PT qualification and a successful PT career. Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: The purpose and structure of PT Launch Academy. The importance of bridging the gap between Cert IV and a successful PT career. The value of real-world experience and practical internships. The role of ongoing mentorship and support in professional growth. How to balance earning and learning as a new personal trainer. Learn about PT Launch Academy at https://ptlaunchacademy.com.au/

Here are the five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast: Strategies to reduce membership suspensions and their impact on your business. The importance of identifying and addressing common reasons for suspensions. How to implement policies to manage and limit the frequency of suspensions. Innovative approaches, like session banking and using scarcity, to retain members. The value of tracking data to predict and plan for seasonal business variations.

Dan sat down with the founders of GOAT - a company shaking things up in the recovery space with their innovative mouth tape and nose strips. They spoke about building brand and launching a physical product. In this wide ranging conversation, you will learn: Why a partnership is important for business success. The exact process you should go through to launch a physical product. The founders' journey through entrepreneurship and business building. How to market an innovative product and send it mainstream. The importance of community in brand. Advice to fitness and health professionals who want to launch their own physical products.

Dan hosted Rita Franchina, a Digital Advertising Expert for a live webinar with a group of leading Fitness Professionals. This podcast is a bit different - it's the audio from that webinar. The attendees really enjoyed this Q&A format, and we thought you might get something from it too!