Kelly: 

Peloton and Beachbody and Les Mills on demand are all competing for the same 20% of the market. And that we have this huge opportunity to serve these underserved populations. And we can serve them more effectively. And we can serve them more efficiently because we are now online, we are not bound by geography. So if you have got a special level of experience in working with people with Parkinsons, or working with people with diabetes, or working with people with a certain injury, you've really got an opportunity to make that into something big and something lucrative for yourself. 

Will:  

Hey, I'm Will Brereton, founder of Shift Fitness and this is Group Fitness Real Talk, a show about how to survive and even thrive in group fitness in 2021, and beyond. Over the past 12 months, instructors have been forced to completely rethink the way that we teach. We've been forced to wear more hats than we ever have before. Not only are we the instructor, but we also have to be tech support, the marketer and to hone our digital delivery, whilst also acting as a rockstar to our class goers to help them through this tough time. It's a lot. And when you're doing it on your own and feeling way out of your comfort zone, it's easy to fall into some traps or make some mistakes along the way. Today on the show, I'm talking to Kelly Coulter, the host of Fit Pros Connect. Kelly's here to talk about the three biggest business building mistakes that instructors make when they start out teaching online. Now you've probably made loads of mistakes during the actual class, maybe a video cut out halfway through one day, or maybe you sent the wrong link to your class goers. We've all been there. And while it can be a little bit embarrassing, these mistakes aren't going to make or break your business. But there are some big mistakes we see instructors falling foul of that if you don't deal with could mean an end to your teaching career. Kelly breaks down these mistakes and also give some tips on what you should be doing instead. What I love about these tips is that the focus is on keeping it simple. And doing the things that are going to have the biggest impact on your revenue. your bottom line there cash money, cash. Okay, so welcome Kelly to the podcast. How are you?

Kelly  

I am Great. Thank you so much for having me.

Will:  

And where are you dialing in from? So tell us I'm in New Zealand. Still on my extended sojourn. Where are you calling in from today?

Kelly  

Columbia, South Carolina,

Will:  

South Carolina. So what time is it for you?

Kelly  

Right now? It is four o'clock.

Will:  

Four o'clock on Thursday.

Kelly  

Four o'clock on Wednesday.

Will:  

Well, Wednesday. Oh, my Yes, Thursday for me Sorry. Tell you what, being in different time zones is really, really stressing me out. I have not managed to get it. And I've been here for almost three months. Right? So Kelly, you are host of the Fit Pro Show on Facebook, you have a group of 1000s of super highly engaged instructors. And you're also a business advisor for pros, which is one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on the show today. So why don't you tell us a little bit about about what you're doing. And then I know we're going to delve into some really useful tips for fitness instructors on what they need to know when building their business.

Kelly  

Thank you. Yes. So I have Fit Pros Connect hosted by Kelly Coulter on Facebook. And that is a group that I've had for about 12 years since Facebook first started doing groups. And it's the largest group of vetted fitness instructors and personal trainers on Facebook. And I say I say vetted because there are larger groups. But we actually go in and make sure that everybody that comes in is a fitness instructor. It's a private group, meaning that when you when you post in the group, your clients or people outside the group are not going to be able to see the things that we talked about. And I think that that's really important. 

Will:  

It makes it open and trusting with the question they're asking and not afraid that they're that they're not not lacking knowledge in a certain aspect isn't going to be known by their class goers.

Kelly  

Yes, 100% that's exactly why I did it.

Will:  

Yeah. And so that was really early on. So I know that there's that there's loads of big Facebook groups, but you've had yours for a long time. What motivated you to make it sort of early on and the days of everybody adopting Facebook?

Kelly  

Well, so I've been a fitness instructor since 1994. And I've been creating websites since 1999, which is when I graduated college, and I I had stopped, not stopped doing websites, but at one point I had kind of gone out on my own and I was creating a company to to train instructors and I thought that's what I wanted to do with my career. So it was kind of leaving the website stuff behind and and doing that and so I created the group as a way for us to all share choreography and share information and then I've just kind of gone back and forth. The website career, unfortunately, as many of us have found was more lucrative. And as websites got bigger, and as my career went on, I was leading big teams of website developers and doing these huge projects. So I couldn't completely leave that behind. But I always had the Facebook group, and I was basically just acting as the admin, letting people in, vetting them, making sure they were instructors, and then making sure that people weren't selling too much. And then when COVID happened, I was running my own agency. I had bootstrapped this agency over the last six years. And I just made a complete pivot, I just said, I need to start going online and telling instructors how to restart their income. And so started the Fit Pro Show in March of last year. And it was really just a response to make sure that people could get online and start to create income again. And then from that came the boot camp, which I do the sell out your online workout boot camp. And then I've got a virtual studio business accelerator, which is my 12 month business building program for instructors and personal trainers. Because so many of us found ourselves in the position of only having experience of being an employee. And now we need to know how to be an online fitness.

Will:  

It's a hard, it's a hard thing for instructors to do, right, especially instructors like so I think of instructors, as -- there were people that were teaching in the community, and there were people that were doing their own thing. But that required a level of, of confidence and have also willing to, you know, risk a lot of stuff. And a lot of instructors were very happy to just sit and be comfortable in their career, whether they were doing it full time or a hobby, but teaching classes at the gym with people that the gym provided to them and equipment at the gym provided to them and systems and timetables and schedules that were provided by the gym. And we were just thrown into disarray, which is something that we've talked about so many times on this podcast with other guests. What I'm really excited about talking to you about is that your focus is on ensuring that fitness instructors are doing the most important thing to keep going which is generating revenue. And I think that we skirt around the issue a lot. And we talk a lot about you know, building confidence and what you should use. But we often don't talk about the fact that in order to keep going, you need to be making money. So this is where I'm going to hand it over to you because I know you've got some tips for our listeners. 

Kelly  

Ah, thank you. Yes, that's that's so true. And we'll talk I've got three tips that are that cover kind of the biggest business building mistakes that fit pros make as they come into the business. And they are really all focused around creating the minimally viable product, so that you can start generating revenue, and then iterate on the business building piece, and create a business that is sustainable and automated over time. But in the meantime, you're making money now so that you can stay in business and serve your client. 

Will:  

Exactly. And iteration is something that we talk about a lot in, in tech and in the product building industry. And also in anything, we're creating a product, right. And so for anyone that hasn't come across that term before, that just means getting something out the door minimum viable product, as Kelly said. So just starting a product and then gradually improving it over time learning from what you've put out and the feedback that you get and gradually making changes rather than wanting something to be perfect and fully formed when you launch it.

Kelly  

Yes, yes. And I'll talk more about that in tip number two as well.

Will:  

Sweet. Okay, so let's just jump into it. what's what's the number one tip, tell me.

Kelly  

So the number one tip I like to call pretty womaning your audience. So I do these three tips. I do these three tips as 90s movie references, which may date me a little bit I already told you I've been an instructor for 20 years...

Will:  

Yeah, it's just up there. So we're good. We're good. We can link to all of these movies in the show notes for any xennials that are listening.

Kelly  

Yes, I've actually got little clips for each of them in the notes that will illustrate my point. And so the clip for this one is when Julia Roberts who was a huge 90s movie star, beautiful long red hair, and she is a sex worker in this movie and Richard Gere picks her up of course, innocently because you know, he has a car problem. And anyways, she's gonna stay the week with him and so she needs clothes because he's a bajillion air. And so she goes to the store and her sex worker clothes and he's at work and she's got his credit card and she's gonna buy clothes and the shop girls just shame her and kick her out and buy clothes. 

Will:  

Yeah, I know. I know this scene well, this is iconic. 

Kelly  

Yes, if you if you search YouTube for big mistake, huge then it'll come up. So she goes back to the hotel and ends up the concierge helps her go get outfits and then she is walking down Rodeo Drive in the next scene and she's got the bags on her arm and she's feeling good. And they're playing "pretty woman walking down the street". And she walks into that shop. She's got her hat on and her makeup done. And she says to the shop girl, you were working yesterday. Correct? And the shop girl says, Yeah, I don't think she recognized store at that time. And Julia Roberts says, you work on commission, right? And the shop girl says yes. And she says, big mistake, huge, huge mistake and just flips. Yeah, I've got to go shopping. And walks out. So that's the pretty woman. So many times we pretty woman our audience as new fitness instructors and personal trainers going online. We have no idea how to ask for money, and we get all in our heads about the price. So we're freaking out. We're saying what does the gym charge? What does the instructor next store charge? What do you think they would pay? What do you think they would pay?

Will:  

Yeah, it's a mess. And we get asked that all the time. It's so especially in the last year, and people have gone online and had to create their own costs or their own pricing for the very first time, right? They've just never got an experience or had any had any past experiences creating that, that benchmark for what they value themselves as? 

Kelly  

Yes, exactly. 100%. And then we take it a step further, and we say, we say, well, it's a pandemic, they don't have money. So then we're already assuming that we don't, they can't pay. So which is rude, right? Don't put your hands in other people's wallets and determine what they can pay what they can't. But so there are a couple problems with that. The first is that you're disempowering your audience. The fact is that if someone is coming into a fitness journey, I'm going to divert a little bit and say, we are not competing for the audience that is already working out. Because if they are already working out, and they are super into working out, they've got a good habit already. They're probably on Peloton, Beachbody, Les Mills on demand. We, for the most part, are all looking at the audiences that have been ignored and disenfranchised by the traditional fitness industry model. And what that means is that we are competing for the 80% of the population that doesn't have a good habit in place already that needs access to you, and needs your personal touch and your encouragement. So with that being said, they need to be able to place a value on the offer that you're putting out there in order to get themselves mentally committed. And get into the game. 

Will:  

Right? This is a standard marketing marketing tactic, right? That if you give something away for free people won't value it.

Kelly  

So true. And the value of free on the internet these days is it's nothing because everything is free. Yeah, the fact is, they could go on YouTube and do yoga with Adrian or Cassandra or whoever, all day long. They are coming to you because you have that extra level of personal touch, you have that level of accountability, all of those things. So don't disempower them by not charging them, let them place a value on what you have to offer. So that's number one. Number two is that a lot of us, me, including I grew up with not a whole lot of money for brothers and sisters, middle class family in Ohio, don't project your negative money stories on to your clients. So a lot of us are assuming because it's a pandemic or because we have never gotten paid a lot as fitness instructors, that these people don't have money to pay. And that's a huge, huge mistake huge. And then the third point I want to make about that is if you aren't going to sell this offer to somebody who is ready to make a transformation and let them their life ready to make a change ready to really start working out and making it happen. If you're not going to sell it to them, they're going to turn around and buy it from someone else. So it's just like if you were to go into CVS or go into the shop and on Rodeo Drive, and they won't sell you a dress, that person is going to turn around and go buy it from someone else who probably has an inferior product. 

Will:  

So yeah, if people like if people are in the market to be purchasing fitness, and you're not making an offer towards them that they can they can take them now probably going to take their service their cash elsewhere, right?

Kelly  

Absolutely. 100%

Will:  

and how do you deal with so you you're an instructor and you take that advice on board, but then you still don't know where your price points should be what's what would you advise to one of the people that you work with about figuring out what that value is. So they're, they're on board, they understand that they need to be charging the right price, and they need to value themselves, they need to appreciate that they need to value their customer as well, in the end, the importance of making a commitment, but they're like, I don't know what the value should be. What's the advice there?

Kelly  

So I've got a few methods that I use to help figure that out. And we actually do this on a live online in the bootcamp, a lot of times, I'll bring people on, and I'll do live laser coaching. And we've got this spreadsheet and I will plug some numbers in. We'll look at what were you making at the club? How many people do you expect to bring into this offer? How many times are you going to be teaching a week, and you can divide all that out and kind of extrapolate what you can charge. And that's one way to do it. But the the method that I like better, is what I like to call the puke test.

Will:  

Okay, tell me tell me about this. I like it already

Kelly  

The puke test is very simple. If you quote your price, and you don't feel like you're about to puke on your shoes for the first time, then you probably have gone too low. We really need to have value on these things.

Will:  

Right. And it's, it's something that's really difficult to do, right, it's and this is something that we've talked about on the podcast. And I've sort of shared my own experience here. So I've obviously created a fitness format. And one of the things I really wanted to do was to make it really cost effective. And so we have priced it at a price that I know is sort of market beating, beating in terms of the content that we give out. But there's and I know that it's valuable, but I sometimes like I still sometimes feel bad about the concept of charging for stuff that has cost me a lot of money to create and produce. Because it's just feels icky to ask people for money if you haven't done it before. And if you're starting out, and it's something that that like if you're a natural born salesperson, you don't have a problem. But a lot of instructors are not salespeople. That's why they're in a different industry.

Kelly  

Absolutely, we are not salespeople, but you know what feels really, really good. And what gets highly addictive is actually being able to charge money and see it come into your bank account and to be able to spend it.

Will:  

I don't think you'll be getting anybody disagree with you on that.

Kelly  

Yeah, it's a matter of practice and doing it and it takes some, it takes some time. It takes some practice. But the first time you really do onboard a group of clients and you serve them, because you know, you know, because you are an instructor that you are here to serve, you are here to help, you're going to love these people and you're going to help them make positive changes in their lives. So the first thing you do onboard a group of people at a reasonable respectable price, and then you serve them and love them. And then the next time when that well even the first time so the first month feels amazing second month when that rolls around, because they're now on a monthly subscription feels even more amazing because you didn't have to work to get them in the door you're just doing the

Will:  

Yeah, that's the big takeaway, right is that all of these decisions and actions that you have to take are the most painful the first time and that can lead people to procrastinate and put them off but the sooner you take it the sooner it will be over like ripping off that band aid and then you can just get on with it.

Kelly  

100%

Will:  

Okay cool. So that's that's pretty womaning tell me what's number two on your on your three biggest mistakes that people make when taking them

Kelly  

Ah, so there's number two is The Full Monty. We Full Monty ourselves?

Will:  

Should we give a breakdown of the movie?

Kelly  

Yeah, are you too young to know this? 

Will:  

No, no, no, no. I know the full monty

Kelly  

So I'm gonna butcher it so you can correct me on the location for it. It takes place in a town in the UK?

Will:  

Yep, it does. I don't know what town though. I forgotten which town it is.

Kelly  

So I bet it's in the little clip it might be in the little clip but I'm gonna

Will:  

I'm gonna look it up right now. So you talk about the movie and I'm gonna Google quickly where the Full Monty is sits and then we can

Kelly  

Alright so, so it's a it's like an iron town,, the guys have lost their jobs. They're all feeling super disenfranchised and awful. And they see all the women leaving for a girls night and they're going to go to a like a male review. Wow, these are really seedy movies are making them sound seedy at least. But so they're gonna go to a male review and the guys get this idea like wait a minute, they're gonna go spend all this money that we need on going on a fun male review night. We should do a male review and these are just regular kind of townie guys. So they start putting up posters. They start practicing their dances and the the hero of the movie is coming. Have a chubbier, stouter guy. Somewhere along the line, the idea gets put out there that not only are they going to do this mail review, but that they are going to go full monty, they are going to take off all of their clothes. And so the movie progresses and it's kind of that classic hero's journey, the the main character becomes more confident. He doesn't like get all buff or lose weight or anything, but he goes full monty at the end of the movie. And so did you figure out what...

Will:  

Sheffield steel steel town north of England in the 80s. So that sets the scene for anybody that knows. So tell us how they relate to you. Tell me about how that relates to what fitness instructors need to learn.

Kelly  

I'm gonna make you wait till the end of the podcast. We think that we have to go full monty before we can put an offer out there. We think that we have to have the brand, have the wardrobe, have the website, have the color scheme, have all the messaging have a full like 90 days of social media posts all queued up and ready to go? Right. So we think that we have to hire a web designer, and we have to hire a graphic designer and we have to spend weeks on messaging. And the fact is that that is just not the case. Right?

Will:  

Yeah. Right. Like you don't need that there are there are sort of belts and braces gold plated options out there. But you simply don't need them. You can get started on social media super easily.

Kelly  

Yes, yes. And in the bootcamp, I teach you to go on Facebook Live and start delivering your classes using a paid private group.

Will:  

on a free platform that you will pay nothing for...

Kelly  

Yeah, yeah, completely free. The paid piece means that you only let people in if they have paid you. So the full monty with branding means that we think that we have to look like one of the big guys, right? We want to have like the super professional logo and the super professional looking website and like this really well defined color scheme and all of these things. Um, you know, the, there are two problems with that. The first problem is that you're a single instructor or a personal trainer, and you are serving single people. They don't need to think that they are working with a corporation. Right, right.

Will:  

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, in fact, the part of the reason that they are with you is precisely because you are not that sort of big, nameless, faceless corporation that potentially has instructors that they don't connect to, because they are too perfect or too well produced.

Kelly  

100% Yes, absolutely. Yeah, they relate to you, and they're paying for access to you. So be

Kelly  

It's a real strength of instructors, that the that your your class members and your users and the people that are coming to your community, they can probably relate to you. That's why they're there. That's why they're choosing to workout with you. But often instructors can see the fact that they are not like the bigger players as a weakness, whereas it's just not the case like you have to sometimes except that what you might think is a weakness is actually a strength for the purposes of your audience's connection with you.

Kelly  

Yes, yeah, absolutely. 100% I can't tell you how many times in my life I've heard, I really appreciate that you're out there putting yourself out there and I can really relate to you. Because I'm not a super skinny person. I'm, I'm a larger person, I wear a size large and I always have and people appreciate that. Now if I looked exactly like, you know, Chalene Johnson or anybody else I want to say I'm thinking Les Mills, people I know you have a Les Mills history. I'm a huge fan of Les Mills. And I do it every day. So

Will:  

yeah, but they do look like, if you're doing Les Mills on demand, then you are seeing like extremely young usually fit people that have a specific kind of style that some people like but that a great number of people and if we think back to that 80% a great number of people might find intimidating and that's something that as an individual instructor, you can break that intimidation down.

Kelly  

100% I love the way that you said that that's perfect. But there's another piece of that too. So we Full Monty ourselves in terms of like the branding and the marketing collateral. We also full monty ourselves in terms of the video production. So we think that we have to paint the room, get the wardrobe, have all the lighting have the big website camera, past having high quality Audio. It has been shown and you've had Cal on your show before. So you know, he's talked about this. It has been shown by studies that what really matters to the online fitness consumer is the audio. Yeah, yeah. So you can get away with having a grainy video, especially in the first few months of your new business, where you're collecting up the funds and letting the business pay for the new equipment. Yeah, so you don't have to go into debt to go buy new equipment, you can let the business pay for the new equipment.

Will:  

Yep. Totally. And then is there anything else on the full monty before we move on to number three?

Kelly  

You know, my last note that I've got here is what to do instead. Get started serving a paid audience first, allow this business to make the money to pay for the equipment right.

Will:  

As in, don't go Full Monty. Don't do what so many, actually, bigger companies did, I think like studios and gyms, which is they jumped onto Instagram and gave all this stuff out on Instagram Live for free, and then realized that they couldn't commercialize it right. And I work. I know that we both work with instructors, I also have a consulting business where I work with gyms and studios, and they to service their customers and make sure that they were still connecting with their customers, they very quickly often did Instagram lives. And I'd, like in London, every big like boutique studio was running Instagram lives. And they have all pivoted away from doing that some of them still do it like once a week, but they now all have paid offerings. And those paid offerings are actually quite expensive. Because they realized that it is not sustainable to give stuff out for free, you have to you have to be generating revenue, if you want to continue it. Otherwise, it is a hobby that you are paying for.

Kelly  

You know, and we've all been there because over the years, I'm not sure about in the UK or in New Zealand, but in in the States, a lot of us have been on a race to the bottom for a long time, the gyms all race to the bottom in terms of pricing. And then with that instructor pay just stayed the same for the last 20 years and

Will:  

While the prices of houses tripled, like like 3,000% up, your average teaching wage remains the same,

Kelly  

Remains the same.

Will:  

It's terrible isn't it, when you think about the buying power, like I have been in the industry for 20 years. And obviously, I meant different currencies in New Zealand and in the UK. But the 13 years ago, when I moved to the UK, I was on a certain amount per class and in the financial crisis that got sliced down. And it's only gone down since. And so I think the average, like the average payment that an instructor would get for an hour long class is probably 75% of what it was 15 years ago. But inflation is obviously gone up. So really in real terms, you probably earning 25% of what you're earning, say 10 to 15 years ago. So yeah, it is it's a difficult place to be in and we talked about this as well as an instructive, but the opportunity that you have now, it being able to go digital connect with your audience directly is that you can reset that value.

Kelly  

Absolutely, I really do believe that 2021 is the year that the individual personal trainer and fitness instructor gets out there figures out how to either do a hybrid model where they're doing some in a facility and some out on their own, or they're going out on their own, and they're really starting to claim their value and their worth.

Will:  

Yeah, and we did a a podcast episode with Shannon Fable recently where she made a really good point about instructors being the guide and the consumers and the hub that allows them to connect with all these other fitness experiences. Not feeling like you need to be the one stop shop not feeling defensive. If your client also has a Les Mills on demand membership for you know, 12.99 per month, that can still be something that you integrate with and so you can be like great, you're gonna come and see me you're gonna do my classes Monday, Wednesday, and you're gonna do a body pump on Friday. That's great. Let's make it work for you.

Kelly  

Absolutely, our role has completely changed if we want to continue to work in the industry, we've got to pivot and our role is now more of a coach and a concierge.

Will:  

For sure. So I feel there's a third movie reference coming out. Let's let's get into it. What's number three?

Kelly  

and it does not involve nudity or sex workers.

Will:  

Oh, perfect! This one is G rated.

Kelly  

It is. So the third one is The Karate Kid.

Will:  

Okay. On point, Cobra Kai being one of the biggest Netflix shows of the last few months so this one This one has a nice link to the present.

Kelly  

Ah yes, it sure does. And have you watched Cobra Kai It is really

Will:  

I watched the first couple of episodes but I couldn't get into it. But I've seen a lot of people posting about it.

Kelly  

It's weirdly addictive. I think just seeing Ralph Machio grown up. 

Will:  

Yeah, for sure.

Kelly  

Okay, so the in The Karate Kid, if you remember he spends the movie kind of getting beat up getting underestimated getting getting made fun of and then at the end there in the karate tournament he's learned all his stuff. And the famous line you know, the the evil instructor says sweep the leg right. Last scene, very dramatic, Ralph Machio up in the swan and he stomps down on the good leg and kicks the guy in the face with the bad leg and wins the day.

Will:  

Iconic again.

Kelly  

Yes. Great scene. Great scene. So as fitness instructors and personal trainers, we underestimate our value, and it is a huge mistake. So we don't understand what value we bring to the market. And we underestimate ourselves. We don't learn, we haven't learned yet how to turn our weaknesses into strengths. So I want to talk about something that you have said in the past, and maybe not in these terms. But I remember listening to one of the episodes of your podcast just going Yes, yes, yes. It was with Barbara Brodowski. Yeah, that was that's the idea that Peloton and Beachbody and Les Mills on demand are all competing for the same 20% of the market. And that we have this huge opportunity to serve these underserved populations. And we can serve them more effectively. And we can serve them more efficiently. Because we are not online, we are not bound by geography. So if you have got a special level of experience in working with people with Parkinson's, or working with people with diabetes, or working with people with a certain injury, you've really got an opportunity to make that into something big and something lucrative for yourself.

Will:  

Right, niching down in the micro populations, in the hyperlocal community that you can target that these other big providers can't because they are volume based scale based players.

Kelly  

Yes, and that was something that I heard you say a while back that I really loved that the only way their business model works is if they are operating at scale. So they and

Will:  

And appealing to everybody because they need they need maximum number of eyeballs. So they have to be kind of vanilla in in what they provide. And yeah, that's a real great opportunity for us individually. Because we don't have to be that like, we don't need 100,000 people or a million people in order to make the business make sense, we might only need 100. And that might 100 might be a huge amount of people that come in and out of classes, it might be 20, regular class goers right, like it could be any number in there. And just understanding how to reach your niche is, is something that we've talked about before. And it's really important to understanding who you're going to be serving.

Kelly  

Yeah, I've got people in the accelerator that are doing a specialized type of exercise, maybe with a few accountability sessions or other things thrown in and they are charging $100 a month, they've got 20-30 people, they are now making five times what they made at the gym. So and I like to give the example that a few years ago, I had labral tear surgery in my left hip and that that surgery is you have to be non weight bearing for five weeks, and then you go through physical therapy. And it was the worst I hate physical therapy. And I've always said if there was some sort of class or group that I could have joined that would have helped me rehab that and have more interesting and fun exercises, something more like CX works or just doing a lot of core and tush. I would have paid anything for that. So imagine as an instructor, if you have got a special area of expertise, or if you have a special area where you could bring people through a transformation, right? Quit smoking, get them running, whatever it is, you can really name your price at that point.

Will:  

Yeah. And we all we all know this, right? We've all seen the excuse me, the fitness instructor who has a baby and then creates a special maternity program right and and uses the fact that they've just been through this experience. That's an obvious one, but you can you can iterate that out to any number of niches that you understand. And so it is you know, it could be working with older populations. It could be coming back from an injury, it could be building up to a marathon. There's all like understanding who you wish to serve and what sort of specific characteristics and community that you can target is really important. And it's something we don't think about enough because we think I need everyone to like me. And I, and it's just not the case.

Kelly  

Niching down is so hard and so scary and what you hear over and over again, even what I did before I started saying, I'm only working with instructors and personal trainers from now on, is I would say, Well, if I only work with them, I'm leaving out all these people. The problem is, if you don't only work with these people, you can never craft a marketing message that resonates with any of the people.

Will:  

And so the you've been obviously reading, reading some of the stuff that you put out, and you talked about creating connection and letting go of perfection. So it that that's kind of the summation of this point, right, like, just just get on with it. What would you describe to a an instructor who was struggling with this point? Like, do you have any specific strategies or tips?

Kelly  

Let's see. Um, uh, yes. So I would say create connection. Let go of perfection, definitely. The other thing that I would say is have conversations with the people who are following you with you and resonating with you online. And I can't stress that enough. It's something that's really hard for us to do. But so many times as new business owners, we want to go in and automate all of that marketing, because it feels weird, it feels uncomfortable, it feels like maybe we're hassling people. But if you can, instead go really, really deep and start having conversations with the people who are liking your posts and watching your lives, then you can really start to understand them. And that's where your niche can come from.

Will:  

Right. And it's, and it's just as much as if someone goes, that was great. Just say, What did you like about it, like getting dig drawing a further level of conversation out of them. And the more you do it, and the more you get comfortable with it, the easier it becomes

Kelly  

100% so true.

Will:  

Great. So those are the three key things, we have The Pretty Woman, the Full Monty and The Karate Kid. And we will obviously link to all of your your website and also linked to the Facebook group of people want to be part of a if people aren't already part of it and want to be part of a vetted community of fitness professionals, then we'll link to that. And you've also got some training coming up, right. So maybe if you just want to talk about some of the stuff you're doing and then we can also stick some links to that in the show notes as well.

Kelly  

Thank you, I would love to so on March 8, we're going to do the sell out your online workout boot camp again. That is five days of I come on every day I teach for at least an hour, I have special guests pop in and we can maybe get like a Will Brereton to pop in. Usually Denise Imbesi from Muscle Mixes comes in we have Cal from onpodio come in. And we we the, the goal is to get you teaching your first class online, if you have already been teaching online, then the goal is to get you to make $500 more than you did the week before. So that's really what I strive for. For my participants, I want you to make at least $500 or $500 more, and it's the kick in the pants. That's what it's all about is just getting you going toward creating that product and putting it out there. It's a $37 boot camp, it's not free, but it...putting my money where my mouth is. And I'm saying Guess what? Free is the F word.

Will:  

You know, like I talked to a lot of instructors. And I think that we'll all done with free and looking forward to a time when it's not quite such an important word within the industry. Because as my friend Emma Barry likes to say your poverty serves no one and knowing your value is super important. Well, thank you so much, Kelly for being on the podcast. We will put links to the bootcamp and also the Facebook group in the show notes. It's been great to talk to you you've taken me down a memory lane of 90s movies. Actually, The Karate Kid was 80s, no?

Kelly  

Yeah, I think you're exactly right. And by the way, I did not give the URL for the bootcamp but it's fitprosconnect.com/bootcamp.

Will:  

Kelly, thank you very much.

Kelly  

All right, thanks. Will.

Will:  

Now if you listen to this episode, and it's got you worried that you're making one of these big mistakes, please don't. I see instructors making them every day. And so long as they can recognize where they're going wrong and make changes to correct it you can get back on the right path super quick. The two things I want you to think about from this episode are number one, you don't need to go the full monty on delivery. The fact that you don't have any money to invest in fancy equipment or staging can actually be a positive because people get you the real authentic and relatable you. And that's something that Peloton or Apple fitness can't compete with. Remember that once you've got some momentum going, then you can start to invest in small, iterative improvements. And secondly, and this is something I've said on the show many times, but I'm gonna say it again, please don't undervalue yourselves. I'm pretty confident in thinking that you probably didn't get into group fitness for the money, you got into it to help people. But that doesn't mean you don't need and deserve to be rewarded fairly for what you do. Let's look at 2021 as a time to finally reset the years of underpayment that instructors have experienced. For the first time for many of us, we're in control of what we charge. So let's use that as an opportunity to finally be paid what we deserve. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe for all the latest episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please drop us a review. You can also get in touch with me at will@sh1ftfitnes.com. I'm Will Brereton and you've been listening to Group Fitness Real Talk.