Building a Fitness and Wellness Career
In this episode, we talk to Nick Ovenden of GreatLIFE Golf & Fitness Club about building a fitness and wellness career!
We discuss
– The difference of working in large corporate fitness vs being a business owner
– The challenges of asking for money (and how to work through them)
– How genuine connection and understanding increases sales
– The important of leaving on good terms
Here are some highlights:
Lindsey on The Challenges Many Fitness Professionals Have with Asking for Money
That’s almost the number one thing in our industry that is holding people back. For me personally, for almost anyone, is that you have to learn to be a sales person, and they don’t talk about this, you enter the field because you wanna help people, and you very quickly learn that you don’t help people unless you have clients. And you don’t have clients unless you learn how to sell, but it’s a lot.
There’s a learning curve, and it is something that if you don’t educate your trainers and really try to understand their whole inside story, ’cause I could present fairly well and I could turn it on but it was never fully genuinely me in terms of feeling good about it. Again, so much learning that you get after several years of working in it.
Nick Shares His Perspective On Sales
Don’t treat them [the client] like somebody that you’re trying to sell and over-sell. I think people get too caught up in the oversell of things. Treat it like it’s a family member and you’re just having a conversation, and if you’re genuinely listening to what their needs are, you will come up with some of the solutions ’cause you are the person who’s been in that industry for so long.
If you under-sell somebody, you’re actually doing them a disservice. Then over-selling them. So I think that was a big aha moment to me. It’s easier to have that conversation with people about finances once you know what their actual needs are.
Nick Shares Ways to Make Selling a Bit Easier
I think in our industry, a lot of trainers get a bad rap for being sales reps and not actually caring, and that is the complete opposite of most people; they actually don’t want to sell. They need to make a living, but they really wanna make a difference in people’s lives. So how do we match that and take that barrier of money out of there for the trainer? We just focus on the things that they do really well at which is connecting with people.
I think like what you did, you’re just listening. It’s really just an education, a listening, and I’m talking back to them and letting them know like, Okay, this is what I’m hearing that you need, and just steer them in the direction that they need.
Lindsey Shares her Insights on Selling
Even now, when I do sales calls, it’s so easy. I just have a conversation, so it’s easier from my end. I detach from the outcome and say “Okay, what is it that you’re looking for? And here’s how I can help you.” and then I just let the answer be the answer. I think before, there was just so much pressure to be attached to the number so that the numbers would go up. In a corporate setting, needing to hit your numbers and that was just a different pressure then now, it’s yes or no is fine. There’s no one asking me why these aren’t higher or lower.
How Nick Scaled His Impact Without Increasing 1:1 Clients
Right before I turned 30, I was trying to make up my mind, what do I need to do with my life? Do I wanna do this? I wasn’t quite sure at that time, but one of my mentors, which I would strongly encourage people to do, if you don’t have strong mentors, go find them. I sat down and talked to one of them and I said” I’m not quite sure what I wanna do, I love training people, but I feel like I’m called to the impact.” My personal mission statement is to impact people daily, no matter what, I gotta make sure that what I do.
He pressed on to me and said, Well, if you’re doing one-on-one personal training sessions, how many impacts can you have a day? And I’m like, 8, maybe 9. And he goes, okay, so what if you did small group training. I’m like, Okay, well, I was doing boot camps at the time, so I’m like, I can get almost 60 to 70 people a week impacted, so that’s pretty good.
He goes, so let’s take it to another level. How can you impact even more people without adding more time to your name? Obviously, it’s to lead trainers or change my role a little bit, so instead of doing the one-on-one stuff, I need to get more of a position that I can train the trainer or train the people to have the impact, so it’s like secondary impact. So I really started to explore that.
Why Leaving On a Positive Note Matters
When people leave, they either leave because they’re competent enough and confident enough to start their own thing, or they leave bitter. What I try to coach them through is like if you’re leaving because you’re bitter and resentful, you’re not gonna even start your new place in a good spot. One of my mentors talks about, you start how you leave. So if you leave bitter, you’re gonna start bitter, so make sure that you leave on good terms and you leave in the right mindset, so that you’re able to start in the right mindset in your next thing.
When you have that bitterness or that anger or whatever that is inside of you, it really clouds judgment. It’s almost like you’re trying to do stuff to get back at the other company or a or whatever it might be, and it’s like that usually isn’t the right decision. Take the emotion out of it and get right with where you were before you leave. Then you know what’s the right decision, and then if you wanna come back, you can.
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