The 5 things that all successful Online PT's Do

1. Speak with authority and empathy to their audience
2. Run Ads
3. Have scalable coaching systems in place
4. Deliver meaningful result to their clients
5. Know their numbers

The first 2 points revolve around lead generation, 3 and 4 are all about delivering excellent coaching, and number 5 is about putting on your CEO hat and running the show like a true professional. We're going to buzz through them in order.

Authority and Empathy

This is a must-have for successful PTs in any domain and no more important than online. Online you have access to millions more potential clients than you do when working in a gym. You also have thousands more coaches to compete with. To stand out from the crowd you have to prove to strangers via the internet that you know what you're talking about when it comes to solving their specific problem. You also have to show that you understand their pain points and the barriers they have to achieving their goals. Boiled down to its bare bones all you are doing as a coach is helping someone solve their specific problem in less time than it would take them on their own.

The best coaches all speak authoritatively and practically to their target niche. Joe Wickes isn't diving into the intricacies of l-glutamine, carb-back loading or Maximum recoverable volume in his 40 minute zoom classes. It would be useless for his target audience to get into that - it isn't what they need, or what they want. They need a fun workout, someone that speaks to them on their level, and is the right mix of encouraging and accommodating. That's exactly what Joe is, and one of the reasons why he has been so successful. Conversely Menno Henselmans dives into the scientific nitty-gritty of evidence based muscle growth, because that is what his target audience desires. Why are you a great solution to you target market's fitness problems?

Run Ads

Dependable organic growth on social media is becoming closer to impossible with each updated algorithm. As Facebook and Instagram optimise for their own profit, and figure out more and more how to seamlessly integrate ads as part of the platform in a way that doesn't turn off their users, we are seeing a huge drop-off in the reach of organic content.

For now at least, gone are the days where you could put some valuable content out there for free and see it linearly increase the amount of eyes on your content.

So, what about the good news?

The good news is that you can pay Facebook or Google to put your promotional material in front of thousands of people you would otherwise never reach. If you target the right audiences with the right messaging this can unlock a dependable method of scaling your business that goes way beyond the possibilities of your organic growth.

All of the highest earners are leveraging the power of advertising to maximise their income, even the ones with tons of organic followers.

Scalability

When ads are working in line with your offer you have a dependable stream of clients coming through the door. Once that part is solved you need to be able to serve your ever-growing client base. If you don't fix this piece of the puzzle you max out around 20-30 clients. To many this is a success, but even managing this amount of clients can be made 10x easier if you work out how to leverage your time properly.

What this means in practice is automation, standardisation and potentially employing others. Many of you reading this might recoil at the idea of automating, or outsourcing your expertise but the truth is its what all the best people do. It allows you to help more people, and it helps you create a consistence experience for your customers. If, instead of automating, you were depending on your own brain power to juggle 100 different clients then you would provide a bad service. You probably overestimate your ability to do it with 20 clients. Automation prevent's the ups and downs of life and human experience from getting in the way of you delivering an elite level experience for your client base.

Get results for your clients

It may be obvious, but it is important not to lose sight of this. Your coaching should be delivering meaningful results. With a brilliant marketing and sales strategy you may be able to stick around a couple of years without doing much meaningful for anyone's life. Beyond that you will run out of steam, and the lifetime value of your clients will be so much lower, because people will find out quickly that you aren't good at what you do.

It isn't about fancy qualifications, it goes back to the first point about knowing your niches needs. You should be studying the best methods in solving the specific problems that your niche encounters achieving their goals. That is all you should be studying.

Know your numbers

To effectively run your business you need to analyse your outputs and utilise data to guide yourself towards future success. In practice this means having measurable points within your business that reliably signal growth (or lack thereof).

It's not overcomplicating and having a stat for every little corner of your operations. It's knowing the fundamental numbers that effect revenue at different points of your business. E.g number of new leads per week, conversion percentage and avg. client lifetime value.

With this data you can make rational decisions about which strategies in your business are proving effective for your growth and the efficiency of your time.

To hear an in depth conversation about all of the key numbers you need to be tracking listen to Jonny and Alex get into it on this podcast:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/64yJAZhXGyTorkTsAwNWl5?si=MefLhpywQhuL-29w6r-9Pg