Automating & Scaling Online - Dave Smith

I have clients all the time who will actually, this is weird to say, but they will use words like, you're like some sort of wizard or a magician. Like, how did you know that? And it's nothing about me. I just have some psychological tools that let me understand my clients better. Yeah.

What's up, Fitness fans? Welcome back to the Future of Fitness podcast and interview series. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and this is episode number one, two, three. I don't know why that's funny to me. Uh, it's episode number 123. It's just that easy, right? With Dave Smith, the man. So, Dave Smith, there are very, very few people who've been along online coaching space as long as Dave. Uh, he now hails from Vancouver, originally from Toronto. Uh, these Canadians, there's just something to it, what they're doing up there. And man, you know, just so much gate information. I'm gonna talk to you about more about it in a second, but if you're thinking about online coaching, the allure uh is obvious, right? You can work with a lot of clients, you can live anywhere in the world, uh, you work, work with anyone in the world, uh, you can make a great living doing it. And uh I've done online coaching for a while, really enjoyed it, and it's it's a real thing. But it's different, it's not as easy as everyone always uh suspects it may be. So we're gonna talk about that more in a second. But before I do, I just want to read a really great review from Lisa Box and Baum. Uh she says, information, informative and entertaining. Eric does an excellent job of selecting great guests and conducting interviews in a way that allows the guests to tell their stories and share their knowledge. I really, a really enjoyable podcast, whether or not you're in the fitness profession. Uh Lisa, thank you. Thank you so much. That was really kind. And uh if you haven't yet, you're listening to this, please go over to iTunes, subscribe to uh what we do at The Future of Fitness, and leave a nice review. I'll read it on air, just like Lisa's. So uh let's talk about Dave a little bit more and kind of what he's up to. So, you know, the market for online fitness services is growing. It's growing at an exponential rate, really. Um, many personal trainers really have no idea how to get in, what to offer, uh, or how to deliver the results they want for their online clients, right? Transformational results. That's what it's all about. Uh online personal training is not about delivering workouts or meals plans. You have to be a coach and you have to know a different way of coaching, you have to deliver it differently, uh, and then you have to have the systems to scale. So in this episode, David Smith, uh, he is with the Online Trainers Federation. He's the founder. Uh, he shares exactly how you can set yourself apart uh from the wannabe online personal trainers as you build your profitable and scalable online fitness business. So he's been nice enough if you go to Online Traders Federation Online Trainers Federation.com. Uh, that is online trainersfederation.com forward slash Eric E R I C. Uh there is a $200 discount code waiting for you for his certification. So that's $200. That's pretty solid, right? So go to Online Traders Federation.com forward slash Eric E R I C and use the promo code ModernFitPro. Got it? Modern Fit Pro. Online TradersFederation.com forward slash Eric, Modern Fit Pro. Discount code will give you $200 off his certification. So go check it out. It's well worth it. And you can tell by this interview, Dave knows his stuff and he's not going to mess around. He's going to deliver the value for you and help you grow your business significantly online because it's worth it. You're worth it. So without further ado, let's get into it. Episode number one, two, three, Dave Smith from the Online TradersFederation.com. Enjoy. All right. And we're live. Dave Smith. Welcome to the show, man. Eric, man. My pleasure to be here. Yeah, it's uh it's a lot of fun. I've I've had uh uh a lot of actually great conversations with you over the last like 60, 90 days, and uh I've very much come to respect uh the business you've built, um the way that you do business, and uh I think there's a lot that people can learn today. So um let's do this, kick it off. Let's tell us your story, man. How did you get into this great, this wild world of fitness?

Man, I so my birthday was last Thursday, and I turned 39, and everyone was giving me a hard time because I've only got one year left of I guess being young. So this story's gonna make it 42. Take it easy. Yeah. You're over the hill, man. I'll be there in a year. So this story is gonna date me, but I became a personal trainer in 2001. So this is my 18th year in the industry. And honestly, I started it pretty much like every other personal trainer. I was like scrounging for clients. I was going to clients' homes, so I wasn't working in a big box gym at that point, going to clients' homes, um, putting ads in newspapers. I actually I was on a podcast yesterday talking about acquiring clients, and I was telling the story of how my first client actually came from a classified ad in a newspaper, which again tells how old I am. I don't know if classified even exist anymore. Yeah, they do, it just no one uses them. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I was grinding it as a personal trainer, and um my background is actually all business. I have two business degrees, but just love fitness. And so I've I kind of called myself like a businessman in the fitness industry, and I realized what an awful business model. I was driving all over my city, and on a busy day, like if I saw five clients, that was a really busy day because there's so much commuting in between. And so I'd run the numbers and think, okay, I'm kind of like maxing out a salary, I might be able to make like 50 or 60 grand doing this. That's like not a great business model. And so I scrapped that. I bought a new bungalow house with this huge basement in it. And again, like most personal trainers, we think about this dream of, well, if I just had a gym in my basement and people came to me, this is gonna be so great. So I opened up this little home gym and clients started coming to me, less commuting, that's fine. Then I realized like people are walking through my living room and they're using my bathroom and they're going into my kitchen. This was like kind of weird. Simultaneously, I got a cease and desist order from the city saying that I can't run a commercial, like a business out of my home. And I was like, okay, I guess this business model isn't gonna be the one. And so within the span of about six months, I'm I'm an action taker. Within a span of about six months, I went out and bought a commercial property, hired a construction crew, and had begun work on building a gym. And so built this physical gym, thought, okay, now my career has like reached a pinnacle. I hired a team of personal trainers, like had everything set up so that I could earn passive income. My goal was to kind of manage the facility and kind of sit back and watch my bank account grow. And I quickly learned that that's not the case. The gym owner is probably the busiest personal trainer on the face of the planet. I was training clients still, I was managing a team. And I think I told you this before, Eric, but honestly, like the straw that broke the camel's back for me was there's a night where my cleaning crew didn't show up. I'm in the gym, like on my hands and knees, scrubbing the bathroom floor, scrubbing toilets, just thinking, what does my life become? And so I was quite confident in that moment that gym ownership wasn't gonna be my lifelong career path. Funnily enough, so I'm in this place where I just want to divest and get out of this business. One of my competitors in the city where I was operating in comes to me within the span of two weeks of that moment and says, Dave, we're looking to expand. We want to buy your business, buy your gym, buy like your client roster, take over your personal trainers, take the whole operation from you. And it was funny because in my head, I was just like, Yeah, take it. Give me anything and I'll get rid of this business. I don't want it. Of course, I played it cool and was like, I don't know. I really love the business since we negotiated. He ends up buying my business. And from the time that I opened the business, it was less than two years to when I sold it, and I was all of a sudden unemployed. And it was the first time in my life where I was unemployed, and I had to non-compete with him, so I it's not like I could go and start at another gym in that city. I guess I could go back and get a job, like making 15 bucks an hour as a personal trainer at a gym or something. But I thought, well, what's the next evolution in this career path? And so this was in 2009. And at that time, there was virtually nothing in the way of online fitness coaching. And I had some ideas, had some ideas of some programming that I had done with the boot camps that I'd been running, and thought, you know, I can take elements of this and build this into an online program. And so I opened up a membership website and started delivering content on a weekly basis to my members. And it started making some money. Surprisingly enough, I had no idea if it would work. Started making money, and that was the birth of make your body work. And from there, uh we can I could talk all day about this, but it's pivoted so many different times, and there's so many iterations of the programs that I've gone through. But that that was the birth of my online fitness career. Yeah.

2009, man. That's that's early, right?

That's uh you know, it's early enough. Like Yeah, this is my 10-year anniversary since I sold my gym. You know, it's so talking about dating and feeling old. It's so early that my first business model, again, it was a streaming video content providing service. So people paid to get access to these home workouts that they could do, and I'd make two, like literally, I'd film two workouts a week, put them in the membership portal, and people would do the workouts. When I started, that model actually had like a lot of legs. Like I was acquiring a lot of customers. The first year was really good. And then you know what changed it was in 2010, the next year, was like really the rise of YouTube. And that just sounds so ridiculous. Like there was a time when there wasn't a ton of free, like high quality exercise video content online, and then YouTube just took off all these trainers, flooded YouTube with content, and all of a sudden, basically, my business model was obsolete. Wow. Wow.

Yeah, it's that's the funny thing about technology nowadays, is one business model can go obsolete like that. You know, I was gonna ask you if you started with selling DVDs um back in the day.

VHS. It was all VHS. VHS.

Oh, that's funny, man. Yeah, it's interesting. I reflect, I think 2009 is when I actually opened the doors uh of my first gym with with Traver. Um so I was just getting into the to the fitness business. And I was similar to you as I was a business guy getting into the fitness uh arena. And uh I'm so thankful I had the business background because I think it's something obviously that a lot of fitness professionals are um do not have that that mindset or skill set, and nor do they really want to learn it at times.

So you know, I love that you say that. Throughout my career, I get asked this all the time like Dave, if you could go back and do it again, wouldn't you choose to get like a kinesiology degree or a science degree or something that lends itself better to fitness? And like I said, I've got two business degrees and minored in psychology. And I'm sure we're gonna get talking about this, but the business degrees, like that's my competitive advantage in the online world. The psychology training that I have, that's my competitive advantage as a coach. So I say this all the time. I was chosen as the top personal trainer in Canada in 2013. And I'd say I'm an average or below average personal trainer, but I'm a really good business guy, and I really understand the way people think.

Yeah. Yeah. So let's get into it, man. I mean, we talked about um, you know, previous to recording about the difference between coaching and being a fitness instructor, right? And um, you know, it's interesting, I had the same conversation with a gentleman out of Southern California, uh, Coach Takano, uh Bob Tacano, he's really big in the Olympic weightlifting and um he's been a coach for 50 some odd years, right? And uh but he's not in the online space at all. But I'm I'm curious also to get your take on the differences, especially with the psychology background, because that's really the psychology of it is is tremendous. Anyone who's been training people for more than like a few days um realized that you didn't have some really deep stuff at times. You know, I had a lot of people uh break down and cry in my office, you know, you know, like that was just a normal thing. And I didn't sign up for that. I didn't think that's what I was gonna be doing, but there I was so yeah, man, tell us what do you think is the difference between coaching and fitness instruction?

That's a good question. Um fitness instruction, when I started Make Your Body Work, that's all it was. It was video fitness instruction. And like I said, the value that's provided in that is so easily usurped by something like YouTube. So there's fitness instruction all around us every single day. Coaching, I break it down into what I call the three C's. And if you can provide these three C's, you're instantly set apart from probably 90 or 95% of the other coaches out there. The first one is confidence. So as a coach, we instill confidence in our clients that they can actually move from point A to point B. Point A is like where they're dissatisfied, they feel frustrated, they feel hopeless. Point B is where they feel successful, they feel hopeful, they've seen some results. And as a coach, the very first thing that I want to do with every single client is to get them mastering little skills that previously they didn't have in their repertoire or in their arsenal so that they start feeling successful and that confidence just builds and builds and builds. And it's cool, like you've probably seen any coaches who are watching this, you've probably seen this happen without even thinking about it with your clients. You know, that day when they couldn't squat, you know, with proper form, and then there's something that just clicked and they got it. And it didn't matter if they lost any weight, didn't matter if they squatted five pounds or 150 pounds, it was just the fact that they mastered a little skill. And so as a coach, we're looking for those opportunities and building our clients up from day number one that they can do this. So it's that confidence. Awesome. Number two is consistency. And again, coaches, everyone who's watching this, you guys know this that we have to enable our clients to be consistent with action because you know the best action not done with done without consistency isn't gonna lead to any results. And these two go so hand in hand. Think about this. If your client is coached in such a way that he or she is actually confident that they can change and that you are the person who's gonna lead them to change, they are gonna be monumentally more consistent with their actions. Contrast that with, I'll use my video streaming service because it was it's such a bad coaching model. If I give exercise videos to clients, they're probably not that confident that it's gonna change their lives because they've tried workouts before, they've probably been on YouTube before, they've probably gone to a bootcamp class before. So the confidence, you know, it's kind of mediocre. Therefore, the consistency isn't there because, as we all know, no one gets results in a day. And so if they start doing this workout program here and there, you know, a month goes by, they haven't really seen any results because the consistency hasn't been there. That confidence completely goes away, and then they stop using my program and stop paying me money, and my business doesn't succeed. So it's the same thing for you guys, no matter what your model is, can you coach so that your clients have confidence? When you do that, they will then act consistently. And then the third C, and I know this sounds like kind of airy, fairy, but it's the most important one is do your clients feel cared for? When I go to the gym, so I I train at like just personally at many different gyms, and I'm always watching personal trainers. And some of the personal trainers are awesome, and you can see that there's eye contact, you can see that there's like true engagement, you can see that it's not just a personal training relationship, there's actually some interpersonal relationship going on there as well. And those clients that are cared for, you can tell that they really like being there. And Eric, maybe you've been there and you see the other personal trainers who like have a notepad or an app, and they're kind of like sitting there looking at their watch, and when their clients are doing something, they're like texting on their phone and there's no relationship. And I don't know, I I just feel like I can see the end of that business relationship. That client's contract's gonna come up in a month or six months, and they're out the door. Whereas the ones that feel cared for, they're gonna be there three years from now. And so these are some things that you know, coaches in person can naturally do or not naturally do. But as an online coach, we really have to build in a lot of systems that make sure that our clients feel that care without us actually having to be, I don't want to be on all my online clients on a call with them every single day, you know, telling them how great they are and building them up. So there has to be a system that does that care for me.

Yeah. Well, let's let's get into that, man. Because that was my next topic of of conversation with you is systems. Um, because you're great. You know, we are we were laughing before this because uh I I could easily have 10 conversations with people and build relationships all day long, right? But when it comes to like automation and systems and all that stuff, I gag. Like I just like if I have to write out an SOP, even though it would physically only take me about 20 minutes to do, um, it'll take me a month to get it done because I just would rather, you know, I don't know, do many other things. And uh so I I would find this very valuable, you know, like how like you know, how do you develop a system for something so human, right? As making people feel like they're cared for.

Honestly, Eric, I can talk about this all day. I love nerding out over this stuff. Yeah, so I'll tell you a couple like key pieces. So the onboarding process is so important because when you get a new client in the door, if right off the bat you can get them to feel like they're understood and cared for, then you can automate much of that process or that relationship afterwards because it's kind of like that first impressions thing. You know, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. It's very true in the online coaching world. So one of the things that I use is are you familiar with the four tendencies? It's um by Gretchen, Gretchen Rubin. Um, she's written a couple amazing books. One called Better Than Before that talks a lot about this idea. So the four tendencies are basically the ways that people respond to expectation. And this is huge for coaches to understand. Whether you if you're watching this, you're in person or online, start using this. So actually, Eric, I'll give you a link to there's a quiz so people can take a quiz and find out which of the four tendencies they are. So I'll go through these really quickly and talk about how this applies to coaching. So the first tendency is some someone called an obliger. And an obliger is the type of person who they love meeting someone, someone else's expectations, but they have a really hard time meeting their own expectations. And so you can imagine a lot of clients in the fitness world are obligers because they want to exercise, they want to eat well, but if it's just up to them, that's not enough motivation. The expectation isn't strong enough of a force. But if they have a coach and the coach is asking them to do these things, an obliger desperately wants to please that coach. And so you can imagine from a coaching perspective, obligers are dream clients because all we have to do is make sure expectations are very, very clear and make sure that there's a very clear set of accountability steps so that that client knows that they have to check in and please that person, please the coach, please the community, please the team. So that's an obliger. The next one is called an upholder. An upholder loves meeting external expectations as well as internal expectations. And so at first that sounds great. Well, an upholder just wants to do everything. The problem with an upholder is if the coach has an expectation for the upholder, and the upholder has an expectation for themselves, and those are different, there's this incongruency within the upholder, and they have to make a choice. So I'll give you an example in the fitness world, and this is something, again, you're gonna run into this all the time. Is imagine you brought on a new client and they were looking to lose weight, and you put them on a strength training program, but this client, maybe in a former life, had been a runner, and they had this rule in their head saying that exercise means I go for a run. And so they're getting an expectation externally and one internally, and it's very hard for them to make that decision. And so you might end up having to break these habits that an upholder is dearly holding on to. So an upholder can be good and can be bad. The third type is a questioner, and a questioner really pushes back or rejects external expectations, but they really hold true to their internal expectations. And so, just by the nature of the name of a questioner, you can imagine what happens is if you start prescribing nutrition or start prescribing lifestyle changes or exercise protocols, a questioner needs to know why. Because it's not good enough that their coach told them they need to understand the reason behind it. And so, for a questioner, it's really important that a coach is explaining the science behind it, showing them case studies, showing them the results they're gonna get and how they can be confident that that's actually gonna happen. But the third, then the fourth is called a rebel. And a rebel, it's a tough client to work with. A rebel rejects external expectations and internal expectations. A rebel wants to be unique. A rebel wants to be different from the crowd. A rebel wants to get results, but they want to do it in a different way. And so with a rebel, it's really important that we allow them to have that uniqueness. We don't give them a cookie cutter plan, we don't make it feel like they're confined within a box. With a rebel, it's really important that we have conversations really highlighting where they're going. They love the end result, but we need to highlight that's where we're going, and we're gonna take a different path to get there. And so there's a lot of conversation that needs to happen with a rebel. And so I know that was like a really quick overview before you get you get the idea, the four tendencies. Why this is part of we were talking about automation, why this is part of my onboarding process is because can you imagine as a coach, if you just took on clients blindly and coached every client the same way, three out of the four tendencies would never be satisfied. We generally, it's kind of like the love languages, love languages. If you've ever heard about the five love languages. We love other people the way we want to be loved. We coach other people the way we want to be coached. So when I learned this, I looked at all the way that I historically coached. I'm an upholder to a T, so how do I coach? I give things like checklists. Upholders love checklists because they get their gold star. They get to see that all of those rules are being met. And so I was all about checklists and like giving other people systems that work for me. And my clients struggled. And as I started like diving into these four tendencies, I realized, okay, I need to be more flexible in my approach. And so we got into this talking about care. When I do an intake process, whether it's me actually manually taking a client through this or it's built into a system of them doing the four tendencies quiz and then choosing a path based on their results. I have clients all the time who will actually, this is weird to say, but they will use words like, you're like some sort of wizard or a magician. Like, how did you know that? And it's nothing about me. I just have some psychological tools that let me understand my clients better.

Yeah. Yeah. So what what are you? Well, first of all, before we get into it, I feel like I'm I'm listening to you talk and I feel like I fluctuate between all four. Like in any game.

Seriously.

You know, like I look back and like, okay, when you know I hired my first coach, I was definitely an obliger, right? Um it also depends on the relationship with the coach. Like I, you know, I my first coach was James Fitzgerald recently on the podcast, and I was like, whatever this guy says, I'm gonna do because he knows his shit, right? Um but then I also see myself very much as a questioner and then occasionally as a rebel, right? And people kind of fluctuate through those, or am I just uh psychotic?

Like it's a spectrum, like anything, right? None of us are ever like perfectly in a box for anything. So there could be, depending on the situation, those different elements. But I will say, so your example that you gave of when you have a coach that you really um respect and trust, your questioner side can be suppressed because you've given way to the fact this person has found those answers. And so things that might raise like a red flag or question in your mind previously, yeah, you're able to internally just kind of do away with that subconsciously.

Yeah. And what have you what have you found about yourself?

Yeah, like I said, uh like upholder in pretty much every circumstance, um, which is good and bad. My fiance is also an upholder, and so the relationship dynamic when two people think that the set of rules is very important, and sometimes those sets of rules are different, that makes things interesting.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, for sure. Um yeah, I'm trying to think my wife is definitely a questioner uh of everything. Um that always makes it interesting. Uh okay, so we we have, you know, kind of an understanding now of the four tendencies and the interrelationships between the coach and the client. Um, so how do how do we start creating the systems behind that? How does that start to form?

So the way that I've done it is basically I took those four tendencies and I asked myself, if I truly want to automate and scale my business, I need to think of a coaching model that will appeal to each of those four tendencies. Otherwise, I'm left to be this bottleneck where I need to figure that out on each individual basis. And so I use a coaching framework that I call Believe Do Have. And the way Believe Do Have works is whenever I'm asking my clients to take on a new habit or a new action, we first talk about the belief. So I'll give an example. Say I wanted my clients to start sleeping, sleeping longer, going to bed earlier. We would talk about the reasons why sleep will impact their results from the gym, why being well slept allows them to make better nutritional choices the next day. Being well slept allows them to do all these things that leads to their goal of I only deal with clients that are looking to lose weight. So it leads to them losing weight. And so we go through if I was coaching someone one-on-one, we talk through this. My programs are all automated, so I'll have video content that teaches this believe. And then after that believe section, there's an ask. So there's a piece of homework where my clients will go into our Facebook community and they'll have to comment on it. And it's talking about do you actually believe this? What questions do you have? Is there anything that you're unsure about? And so you can imagine as I start talking about this, which of the four tendencies am I appealing to with the believe section? That questioner, they're getting all their questions answered. And if I miss something in the video, they talk about it in community. Well, after everyone believes that this is true, the next step is do. So we believe this is true. Well, what are we gonna do about it? Questioners already satisfied. The do is a list of homework steps. And so with the sleep example, we go through a set of experiments to figure out what your ideal time is to be going to bed at night. Now, an obliger, they're gonna love this because it's literally just follow the rules, check the box, and do it within a Facebook community. So everyone else has this expectation that they're gonna be commenting in there. They're coach Dave, even though it's just through video, there is this seemingly piece seeming piece of accountability, so they want to please me. So the obliger, piece of cake. The upholder, probably also a piece of cake at this point because an upholder, after they've gone through that believe uh section, they probably have adopted this to be true for themselves, probably. And if not, that will come out from the conversation within the Facebook group. So we've got the rebel left. How do you deal with the rebel? Well, the rebel doesn't like the external expectation or the internal expectation, they like to be unique. And so I will have a specific question within the list of homework steps that talks about what else would you like to do? And it's this sort of open-ended question that gives them this belief, gives them this framework to follow, but then says, is there something else? And the neat thing with a rebel is they do have a rational thought. So once they see this and they see the plan and they see the end result, this end result is really seductive to them. But we give them the opportunity to speak into it and say, I want to get to this end result, I believe this is true, but my path in getting there is gonna be different from all of you guys. And rebels, you know, sometimes it's a psychological trick because their unique path is usually like 2% different from everyone else. So it's pretty much the same path, but they just want to own it. Yeah. And so you can see how just that believe to have framework can appeal to all of the different four tendencies. The last piece that I do have, and again, this goes back to the upholders, is I'm all about habit stacking. So we'll do something like this sleep exercise, and there is a tracking form that I give to people to use and to report back into the group. And the upholders, man, they're checking that thing off all day, snapping photos, posting that in a group. Some of the other tendencies might not naturally do it because their needs are already satisfied. And so, Eric, you can see that's just like a quick overview, but a program like that can automatically be delivered to clients almost 100% automated. My role is to be a figurehead in the community and to kind of speak through these things as they're going through these steps now questions.

Yeah, interesting. So, in the way that you work with people, um, is it individualized programs that you're sending them? Is it all one kind of template or system? Like how I'm trying to think how other online coaches can relate to this, right? How you actually deliver the goods.

So uh it's really parallel to how most coaches work in person. You think about as a personal trainer, most trainers start by working in a gym, working one-on-one with clients. Because that's what we learn. We learn how to talk, we learn how to instruct, we learn how to be flexible, all those things. And then we scale that by maybe doing a small group or turning that into group fitness. Usually that's sort of trajectory. Same thing online. Would I recommend going and building an automated program like I just discussed if you've never done online training before? No, I would say start taking on one or two or three or 10 one-on-one online coaches or online coaching clients. Take them through some of these things manually, and your process is going to get refined just through that. So, again, for me, when I talk about all this stuff, it sounds so easy, but I've been doing this for 10 years. It started at one-on-one. Like Eric, I would manually take you through the four tendencies. We would do it together on a call, and then I get the results. You'd go away, you come back for our next coaching call, and I would have gone through and thought about okay, Eric's a questioner. I think that he needs to take this first habit stacking step. What do I need to answer for Eric in order to get him to buy into this? I get you to buy into it. We practice that for a week or two, and then we get on to the next habit stacking step.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. And uh, you know, I look at automation or um I look at it like debt, right? So, you know, everyone maybe has accumulated a bunch of debt, whether you know numerous credit cards or things like that, and this is all time that's getting expended, right? And the first thing you want to do, like if you're, you know, um gonna pay down your debt, is you take it's a snowball approach, right? You take the tiniest piece of debt that you can pay off when you pay it off. Um let's say 50 bucks a month, right? Then you take the next level and you start putting that towards the next smallest amount of debt, right? And then you can see psychologically how that starts working too. It's like, oh, it's one less bill. Right. Um and then eventually you're working towards, you know, paying off the biggest ones towards the end, uh, which are the biggest chunks, but you've already got so much momentum going that it's it's working for you and you're paying less interest and all these things. And I look at time conserving automation kind of in the same way, right? So when you're looking at someone's business in an online, you know, fitness entrepreneur, health uh entrepreneur, you know, where do you suggest people start with their automation? Like what's the first step? What's that first snowball effect?

Yeah, oh this is that's a wonderful question. The first place is building your community and building the right culture within the community. So this everyone's gonna say, well, I already do this. Have a Facebook group. And everyone probably says, I have a Facebook group. Most personal trainers who I meet who have a Facebook group, they say the same thing. They're like, I'm the only one that's posting in there. I'll get a couple of likes and no comments. Yeah. And they they always point the finger. Well, the people in my group, they don't care about their fitness or they're not really there to learn. I'm like, no, it's your fault if you haven't instilled the right community. And so in my community, every person in there knows what the expectation is of them and what they're supposed to be doing. And so I'll give you an example. Again, we're going back to this. I talked about this believe do have. All of my programs drive people to take interaction in the Facebook community. So, for all the personal trainers who are watching, if you have clients who are sending you text messages and uh PMs on Messenger and talking to you through WhatsApp, all of that needs to be redirected back into your Facebook group. And I use a script over and over and over again. I use this pretty much every day. Someone will write me a question by a Facebook Messenger wanting my help privately. The problem if I help them privately is I'll probably have to answer that question, you know, 30 times this month. Plus, it eliminates some content that could have been in my Facebook group. And so I'll say, Eric, if it was you, I'd say, Eric, I affirm first. Eric, that's an awesome question. Can you copy and paste that into our Facebook group? Because I know there are some other people in there who have that same question and you can really inspire them. And so that does a couple things. It makes me seem like an awesome guy because I care about you, but I also care about my other clients. It makes you feel important because your question is going to get answered and you can inspire other people. And so, as you train your members to do this, not only are they getting homework from their programs, but all they're checking in with you as the coach is happening in the Facebook group, then your group is filled with user-generated content. So when I go into my groups, at first I had to push content. Now I go in there and I have a hard time keeping up with content, and that's okay because the original founding members, like some of my members have been in there for years, they've taken on that role subconsciously as coach and they start answering all those questions. So it's a simple automation, but it's just like such a nuance between starting a Facebook group and building a Facebook group with real culture.

Yeah. Yeah, that is that is huge. I manage uh two online communities, as you know, right? And it's accelerator, which I'm super happy to have you in there, and then uh elite gym insiders. And when I first started doing this, I'm like, well, I don't I don't really know. I know how to build a community in person, you know, like a gym community and what goes into that. But then I so I found a book um Building Buzzing Communities, if you're familiar with this one, but it's a great book for people who are out there, you know, trying to build their online community. Um, it's really powerful. And one of the things that you you mentioned is like you gotta really like at first it feels like you're pushing that rock uphill, right? And you're just like, God, like it's just cricket saw. Every time I go out there, it's just cricket saw, right? And then you start to train, like you actually have to train your community, you know, whether they know it or not, right? And like you say, it's beautiful thing, it's like, well, don't if you don't like if people ask me a question, you know, in a direct message of like, hey, do you mind asking that to the group? And I can answer there, right? And then all of a sudden you have like a conversation, right? And that's what you want. But there is a tipping point too when you start to get the user generated content, then it's like, whoa, this thing just took off, um, which is a really cool thing. And one of the things I found too is that within an online community or any community, you always want to reward and acknowledge the behavior that you want. Right. So um, you know, I'll send out a newsletter. And if people are active, you're gonna see those names in my newsletter all the time, right? Which makes people want to be like, oh, why is you know Dave Smith always being mentioned in all these comments? Well, Dave Smith is engaging, right? And that's what we want. Um, and I think that's a pretty useful tactic as well in doing. And I haven't, you know, I've of course the more the merrier, the more people you have in a community, way better it is. Um, but having those and then recognizing who those um those pillars of the community are, those super users, right? And then you're literally leveraging them and and tagging them in everything as well.

Yeah, that's that that's an awesome point and giving them like extra benefits. You know, some of my power users to use your language, I've invited them onto my Make Your Body Work My Fitness podcast and kind of just feature their story. And that, like, without me saying it, elevates them to basically administrative status within my Facebook group. And it's awesome because it relieves so much pressure from me. The other thing that I do all the time is I only go into my Facebook groups one time per day because I used to have the problem of feeling like I needed to answer everyone's question, and that's actually training the community in the wrong way. So I go in once per day, and that gives at least like 24 hours roughly for the other members to answer questions. Now, what I do is I'll go in and, for example, say Eric asked a question, Anne answered the question really well. I will still comment, I'll say what Ann said, and I'll usually do like a little thumb or a finger pointing up at Ann's comment, and that's it, and I'll tag Ann in that. And so that makes her feel really good because she's smart. She's doing what she should be doing, and everyone loves that. And so then, you know, basically my comments now are yeah, what he said, what she said, love this, you know, and it just kind of flows naturally.

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it's so much of it is just human behavior and what we want to be. We all want to be acknowledged, right? We all want to be part of a tribe, right? And there's different classifications of people, and you know, even in like a gym community, there's always people who are like never left the gym, always there, right? And uh, I would ask them to do things in the gym, hey, will you help me with this event? They're like, sure, right? Great, love it. And I love these people and they love to do it. They just wanted to be there. They love the community so much. And when you find those people, they are gold, absolute gold. Um, okay, so Dave, I've I've built an online community. It's it's it's starting to get traction, right? People are engaging, um, it's saving me time from individual interactions. Now, what's what's kind of the next level? Where do you start looking at your your automations and scaling?

So now it becomes programming. Like I said, coach first manually, learn all the tactics that work manually, and now think about how you can build that into a system. So we'll nerd out and talk a little bit about tech stuff here. So my programs, they all run through click funnels. And so people come into my different fitness programs, they buy different things, and they're all directed to what I call a dashboard. And in that dashboard, their programs are revealed to them, usually tripped out over a period of time based on when they joined. So they're always going back to the dashboard for the content. When I talked about, for example, that believe do have structure, that would be video content within their dashboard. Simultaneously, I have a series of email automations that coincide with what's being dripped in the dashboard. So you join my program, you get a welcome video, you get a welcome email. The next day you get a day number one email, and it tells you, hey, this is what I need you to do in the dashboard, and then you're interacting in the Facebook community. And so, for example, one of my programs is called Wink Waste Shrink, it's a belly fat program. It is a 72-day program. So I have 72 email automations coinciding with 72 lessons in a dashboard with 72 pieces of homework in the Facebook community. And so you can just imagine the volume of activity that's happening with me literally doing zero, I guess, except for showing up in the Facebook community and liking and giving people thumbs up. Yeah. So that's where it can go. And then from an automation standpoint, in terms of marketing, the other thing that's like really important, and I think a lot of fitness professionals they miss this. In your community, it's so important to have your clients plus your prospects. So people ask me this all the time, you know, who's in your community? Should it just be paying clients? Then you have another group. No, listen, when you have your clients doing all these automated steps, talking about their homework, and this little tribe of clients in that particular program is getting really tight and really excited. What are the other 90% of women who are in my group doing who aren't part of that program? They're joining in and sometimes they try and replicate. They don't really know what's going on, but they'll try and mimic what these people are doing and they'll comment and they'll ask questions, and these people become my salespeople. Happens every single day. Where did you get that meal plan from? Oh, I got it from Dave's Wink program. Ask Dave about it. Tag Dave, send Dave a PM. And then the sales, it just becomes this cycle. FOMO, watching the clients, then the clients refer back to these people who if you're missing out, these people become clients and then do the same thing for me.

Yeah.

So it's a beautiful ecosystem once it's all set up.

Yeah, but it takes a lot of work. Right? I mean, you just mentioned 72 emails. Like that just made me nauseous, right? I was like, geez, but I guess you know, if you're building it as you go with your current clientele, you know, it's just something that you do for 72 days.

That's exactly it. The first time that I went through that wink program, literally, I was one day ahead. I took an Excel spreadsheet and kind of listed out in general the topics that I wanted to cover. So it'd be like, I want to talk about intermittent fasting for eight days. We're gonna do some sort of activity and talk about it. I don't know what it is. And then I just had to come up with a video for you know eight days of intermittent fasting, which sounds like a lot, little two-minute video, piece of cake. Once it's done the first time, geez, I've been rolling that program uh for three years now and literally haven't touched it since the first time.

Amazing. Amazing. So, you know, if there's probably a point where people are not ready for automation and scaling, right? Like they just need to do the work. And I think that's a big thing that a lot of people are missing, especially, you know, we were talking previous recording of these, you know, all the business coaches who are telling new online trainers that, hey, we'll get you to, you know, six figures in you know, three days. And uh, you know, it's just no, you actually got to go out and do the work, right? You can't just especially if no one knows who you are. That's the other thing is you gotta have an audience too. So at what point do you recommend, and maybe I'm sure it's different and it's case by case, but you know, is there a generalization of when people are ready to scale?

100%. Um the way I like to describe this is picture a bullseye with concentric circles. And Eric, maybe you've heard me talk about this before. The bullseye center is what I call your inner circle, and that's your former clients. So I'm imagining that you're an in-person personal trainer trainer right now. Your former clients, your existing clients, your former coworkers, uh, your friends and your family, they're all in your inner circle. You have rapport, you got that no like and trust. Launch a program to them. You can, when I get trainers that come to me and say, I don't have any audience, in a nice way, I say, Yes, you do, like kind of give me a break. You've got this inner circle. Everyone thinks that I need to run Facebook ads, and they're trying to go out here when they haven't even proven that they can sell here. So you sell here, five or ten people in, start working through your programs manually, start to figure out your systems. Then what's the next step? After you've exhausted this inner circle, the next easiest way to get clients is through partnerships. Eric, like imagine if I saw you on the street and was like, hey, I've got this business program that's gonna help you grow your business. You should buy it. Like, my name's Dave. Hey, nice to meet you. You're not gonna buy it. But if you know our mutual friend, you know, someone from a Slack community said, Eric, you gotta meet this guy, Dave, because he's crushing it online and can help you do the same. I've instantly got like this halo effect because our friend, mutual friend, connected us. And so for everyone listening, if you think you don't have an audience, here's my challenge to you. Think of five people in your industry who target a similar demographic as you. They can't offer the exact same product or service as you, otherwise, you're just a direct competitor. So think of someone who offers something different. What can you do in terms of a partnership to instantly expand your audience? So easy. So we go partnerships, from there we start thinking about organic traffic. And man, this is where I can get super nerdy talking about SEO and uh YouTube marketing and blog posting, all that stuff. And then comes your PP, your PPC, pay-per-click. So for someone who's like trying to get into this right now, man, inner circle, just start grinding it out, and very quickly you're gonna figure out what works, and then we start moving out.

Yeah, yeah, it's great. It's brilliant. How important when you're working with your online coaches is finding Niche. Is that something that you coach them right up front to do, or is that something that people kind of find as they go?

Yeah, that's a good question. Um I I actually say the opposite of what most business coaches say. One of the first steps in many business coaching programs you're going to get into is going to help you like quote unquote nail down your niche or niche, however you want to say it. Yeah. Yeah. Here's the problem is, and I see this all the time. Um, coaches will say, okay, I need a niche. Who would be a profitable niche? And this is one I hear all the time. I'm targeting busy business executives who travel all the time and don't have time for the gym. I had a guy actually two weeks ago, he uh messaged me on Facebook and he was saying that this is what he wanted to do, and he had all these grandiose plans of how much he was going to charge these people. And so I asked him, I was like, Well, how many of those clients have bought your program right now? And he's like, Well, none. I've never like sold any of them online. How many of those clients are you working with face to face? Well, I'm not working with any of them face-to-face, but you know, and you get this idea that we're told to pick a niche, but we have no experience in that niche. And so instead, I talk about starter niche, and a starter niche is simply we don't want to target everyone. We want to have some sort of focus. I typically find that targeting men and women at the same time is tough. It's not impossible, but it's tough. And so maybe that's it. Maybe I'm targeting guys who want to lose weight. Is that a niche? Nah, not at all. But it's a market segment. And as I start speaking to those guys and interacting with them manually, my niche is gonna come out. And so, anyone who's listening, if you feel like you're stuck on the niche, geez, don't let that be your stumbling block just launch. It'll be revealed to you within your first year for sure.

Yeah, yeah. Great, great advice, man. And it's um, you know, generally too, is you have to find out who you enjoy working with. And that's that can only be done by working with a wide variety of people. And then you kind of and then I also look, you know, I was talking to um Andrea out of, I think she's out of Florida, but you know, she started working targeting busy women, you know, 35 to 55 in her online coaching. But she had been a police officer for 18 years. And I was like, Well, don't you know a lot of police officers? She's like, Yeah, I know a lot. Like, well, have you talked to them yet? And she's like, Well, no. Like, well, maybe you could be the coach for female law enforcement officers. She's like, Whoa. And I think a lot of it comes from like, you know, don't discredit your personal life experience and your relatability to a specific audience. And, you know, that comes, that's that inner target that you're talking about, right? Um, I think that's really powerful too, is look at you know the communities that you've been a part of for a long time and the ones that you've already built trust in. Um, and that's that's a brilliant place to start too.

You know, I love your example because that was an obvious niche. And some people have that, like they have a very obvious one. Other people don't, and so they just start grasping at things that they think will be profitable, and that's what we want to avoid. I have um one of my business clients, uh, her name is Kat, and her mom is a nurse practitioner and quite a well-known one who does a lot of speaking and traveling around at different conferences and such. And so Kat's an online coach. Um, I started coaching her business. She was already doing quite well, but just like you were talking about, the police officer example, we started dialing on dialing in on nurse practitioners, and we actually did a split test with Facebook ads. It was the exact same funnel. The ads, one of them just spoke to women in that age demographic, so it's sort of like 55 plus, like an older demographic. And then the other one was speaking to nurse practitioners. And the nurse practitioner one, like it wasn't even close. Honestly, within about three days, the data was so obviously pointing here. And so now her entire business model, and she's selling like thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars of coaching only to nurse practitioners. It's great. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, I love it. And it's uh, yeah, I urge people to really look at what they're familiar with because, you know, especially when you go online. The one when I found, you know, going from a you know, a brick and mortar, a local business to online was like, oh, and my first thought was, well, I'm gonna have, you know, now I'm a global audience. There's gonna be people everywhere, right? I can grab anybody and they'll be a client, right? But no, there's so much noise, and you really have to learn how to speak um, you know, specifically to to the pains and needs of an audience. And I think it helps, it's a lot easier when you have nurse practitioners or police officers that you know, you know, have particular problems that you can solve. Um Dave, man, you so you you obviously help coaches do this, all of this, right? And is that I know you just uh released a certification program too. Is this the is this stuff that you cover or what do you cover in your certification program?

Yeah, honestly, my goal with the certification is really to two things. Number one is to level up online coaching skills. Awesome. I it's been it's painful for me to see this. I see so many personal trainers who, like you alluded to, they see these dollar figures and think, I love working out, I love being in the gym. I'm gonna create workout programs online and earn a million dollars this year. And that's not being a coach, that's not actually adding value. There's all that content already out there for free. Yeah. And so I want to help personal trainers who have a passion for fitness learn the psychology and learn the processes to be awesome coaches so that their business can really scale. So, yeah, the certification is it's to become a certified online fitness coach. And basically the program, I take you through everything that I do as a coach and then also the business building, the marketing side of things so that you actually know how to sell.

Yeah, awesome. Awesome. And there's very few people out there who have 10 years of experience in the online coaching space because it just didn't exist, you know, that long. It hasn't been around. You probably are one of the very first people. So uh you're you're head and shoulders above most with the experience on it. Well, you know, Dave, man, um, if people want to find out about that certification, where do you send them? Or just find out about you, right?

Yeah, people can go, well, two places. I highly recommend you join the Online Trainers Federation Facebook group. And man, you want to see a culture in action, join that Facebook group and watch everything that we talked about today. Like watch it unfold, and then I tell my clients this mimic this in your business. So if you go to Online Trainers Federation.com slash Facebook, you can request to join and I'll let you in. Just tell me that you came from Eric. And if you want to check out the certification, if you go to Online Trainers Federation.com slash Eric. Eric, you're the star of the show. That'll take you over to the certification and uh you guys can check it out. And yeah, I highly, highly recommend. We're actually gonna have, you can put this in the show notes. I'm gonna give your audience, I don't know if I told you this, Eric, but I'm gonna give you guys a special discount code that's gonna save you a couple hundred bucks off your certification. And this is a course, if you need your continuing education credits, your CECs or CEUs, this is one way to get it. So if you've ever thought about becoming an online coach, building an online business, and you already need to up level your skills for your certification, um, this is a great place to do it. So online trainersfederation.com slash Eric, and I'll give you a discount code and you can, you know, share that with your audience and they can save some money at the same time.

Right on, right on. Dave, man, it's always great talking to you. Uh in this one, we really got in in deep on some cool stuff. So it's a lot of value they're brought today, and I appreciate it. Uh my pleasure, man. Uh yeah, I love chatting with you as well. So anytime. Yeah. All right, man. We'll talk soon. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Smith. Hey Fitness fans, don't leave yet. It's your host, Eric Malzone, and I have a quick favor to ask. Actually, three favors. So, number one, if you're a fan of our show, I ask you to do something that takes under three minutes. Go to iTunes, please, and subscribe to our show. Please, please, please. It means so much to us. It's so important. And then give us a favorable review. We would really, really appreciate it. And uh, I can't tell you how much it means and helps us out. So I know it takes two minutes of your day, and uh, it means a lot to us. So please do that. Number two, go to our YouTube channel or Fitness Marketing Alliance, and uh please subscribe to our YouTube channel there. Number three, if you like this episode or any of the episodes that we've released, share it on social. That's huge, that's a big deal for us. And when we put a lot of work into these episodes uh trying to give you great actionable content uh for the fitness industry. So that would mean a lot. And that's it. So we have some big plans coming up for this show. I'll be talking about that in the next couple episodes. But thank you so much for listening. It means so much. And uh if you have any questions, please reach out to me. I'd love to hear from everybody. Eric, E R I C at Fitness Marketing Alliance.com