Bodyfirm

Be aware of Availability Bias...
As humans, we tend to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent. The brain has its own energy-saving tendencies that we have little control over – the availability heuristic is likely one of them. Having a truly comprehensive memory would be debilitating. https://www.fs.blog/mental-models/
... What relevance? For PTs & Therapists, it’s tempting to apply an approach you’ve just successfully used with a client, to your next client, regardless how alike their personality, history or symptoms are.
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Let the silence do the work

Love to Buy, Hate to be Sold
Today, I had a discussion with an inspiring one-to-one professional who has been having problems with getting people to turn up to consultations or ’taster’ sessions and consequently couldn’t get their business off the ground.
"When you don’t like the big picture, dig into the detail"
... When I dug deeper, I discovered that the real problem had been with his choice of language. Hence, I encourage you to upgrade your language skills so that potential clients will be more inclined to trust you to help them achieve their goals.
If you also have this problem, I ask you, “What words do you use when you look to book someone in for a potential session to show them what you can do for them?”
This particular individual used these words, “Shall we get you booked in for your free first session?”
Even when you say these with good intentions, they can mislead and frighten clients. For now, let’s look at just one word in this sentence - “first". If you use this phrase with anyone when you haven’t provided specific information on how many sessions they want or will need, you’ve made a cheeky assumption. By jumping the gun and believing that this is just the first of many sessions when the individual doesn’t even know HOW you’ll help them, you’ll have succeeded in startling them. They’ll be afraid to show up and may never show up at all! Irrespective of how genuine your intentions are, they cannot commit until they have all the information they need. People need the whole picture before they can make commitments any kind and the bigger the commitment, the more understanding the potential client will require.
So, how do you upgrade your language skills? Start by reframing or reshaping that sentence. When you’re trying to get someone in to potentially sell to them by setting up a sale, say “I’d like to spend some time with you.” You could also ask, “Would you like me to show you some things that would help you achieve your goals/ overcome your pain or other issues/ solve your problem(s)?”
This type of question will most likely get an affirmative YES! Why? You’ve shown the person that you can have a session with them whether they continue or not. There’s no obligation to continue. Who’s going to say no to someone willing to help them? There’s no downside.
This shows your interest in giving them the information they need before they commit to sessions. Then you can say something like, “Great! Let’s find a time together so we can start with helping you.”
Your goal is to have a session booked irrespective of payment. By securing this session, you’ve gained an hour to convince, compel and show them the value and benefits they stand to gain from working with you.
Potential clients won’t be pleased with your assumption that you’ve sold your sessions to them and that they’re automatically going to buy. Always remember that people love to buy things but hate to be sold.
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A collection of advice to people trying to build a client base...
Focus on quality of instruction.
Get a body to fatigue and see what their cheating mechanisms are. Everyone has a ‘weakest link’ - it’s up to you to find it.
... Set your own technique standard very high. Be picky.
Don’t expect to have all the answers to what a body is feeling but make your position about wanting to help them become the best version of themselves.
Refresh your mind on the Bridge Model. Reverse engineer the person in front of you. Find out what they want, and WHY. Help the member establish clarity of how dissatisfied they are with their current situation and how excited they'll be should they achieve their goals. Then, create the bridge between them.
Don’t ‘sell’ or ‘pitch' until you’ve constructed two places, between which you can build a bridge.
You don’t sell sessions. You sell the outcome, which the session helps to achieve.
Stick to what you know and can empathise about.
Around each class, probe for information.
Ask questions. Be curious.
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On altruism...
To a large extent, altruism impacts your career in the health and fitness industry. It is a skill you need to learn and employ when you building a one-to-one business. But what exactly does it mean? It means being eager and prepared to put others before yourself. In effect, it’s the opposite of selfishness. Rational selfishness is actually where you need to start in building a 1:1 business (your own personal goals and motivations), but a successful practitioner... will balance that delicately with altruism.
We say “I want to get X clients and I want X amount of money.” We decide how busy we want to be and plan to work toward it. As soon as we’ve done that, we close the book on that chapter and get started. We begin to get to know people and then ask, “What do you want?”
Simply, succeeding in the health and fitness industry is about figuring out what others want and helping them achieve it. It is expected that we commit our (work)lives to being courageous and strong for them so that they can realize who they really are and who they can be.
To achieve this, we start by asking questions. As we listen to them, we need to try to understand what they’ve been through and are still going through. Also, it’s important that we sympathize with them and empathize when the opportunity presents itself. And believe it, those times will come. You’ll have to be patient and show them how much you care about their health, wellbeing, and overall success.
Clients need to be convinced that we’re more interested in them than we are in our personal gains. Any form of 1:1 is literally a case of “less of me and more of you.” It should never be about us. We need to do all these without thinking of ourselves. And you know why?
If we think about our motivations at this point, we’re interrupting the flow of how truly we can help someone. Our minds get clouded by our own wants and needs that we lose sight of them – their wants, needs, and problems. Altruism helps us to realise that in order to help someone, we need to understand what they want and why they want it.
When we recognize this, we can truly connect with them and realize what we need to deliver. Without focusing on them, we cannot possibly help them solve their problems. But when we’re guided by the weighing scale of altruism, our goals become clearer.
In all, let’s always remember that people employ us to solve their problems. And before we can help them, we need to really understand the fullest extent of these problems. With altruism as your watchword, achieving their goals (and your goals) will be a lot easier.
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Volunteering to work with people goes a long way in the industry. It helps you gain the experience you need to become an incredible practitioner. Experience is the only way up, and you need to treat every client as a privilege.
Volunteer to work with people and when you get the first “yes,” see that client as a privilege. And treat every client thereafter as a privilege. When you treat every single person that agrees to work with you as an opportunity, you’ll naturally pour e...very single ounce of effort into helping them. In other words, you’ll have your heart invested and won't lose the focus on that person and their needs or goals.
During your first encounter with a client, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re not going to get it all right. But if you can learn from every single thing you do, those experiences will remain valuable throughout your career.
Be willing to learn from every encounter. Draw lessons from every single hurdle that faces you, whether you jump over them or fall. As a matter of fact, if you do fall and get up, this will make you stronger.
First Attempt In Learning
As much as possible, never lose the sense of privilege. Never lose that sense of gratitude for your first opportunity to have someone ask you to help them. Appreciate the person that comes to you and says, “I’m going to put my faith in you to help me with a set goal or problem.” Every personal trainer should see such trust as a privilege – that’s what it is!
One practical way to achieve this sense of gratitude is by returning the gratitude. When a client thanks you, the first thing that you do is turn around and say, “No, I thank you.”
Obviously, they’re thankful to you for putting effort into helping them achieve a goal or solve a problem. However, if you treat every client as a privilege and exercise your sense of gratitude, you’ll be quick to say, “No, thank you. Thank you for working with me. It’s a real pleasure because every time an issue or a goal comes up, that’s another problem for me to solve. And I know that every problem that I solve helps me to get better as a practitioner. So, thank you.”
In all, when you treat every client as a privilege, you increase your opportunities and improve your problem-solving skills. Not only will you be helping your clients but also will be helping yourself get better at what you love – helping people find success in life.
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“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” - Ben Franklin
It’s much easier to prevent a bad habit/ pattern, than to change it. Because...
Our brain conserves energy by being reluctant to change.
... Attention residue is a good example of this. Sophie Leroy, a business professor at the University of Minnesota coined this term which refers to the cost we pay when switching tasks - some of our attention remains ‘stuck’ on the original task. It requires much more effort to twist than it does to stick.
This is linked to Charlie Munger’s doubt-avoidance tendency - how we’re inclined to rush through decision-making processes. An example of how we’ve combatted against this is the judge and jury system, which employs a long, arduous barrage of questions and mitigation before arriving at a conclusion. After all, no-one wants to see the wrong decision made when it affects human life.
First conclusion bias is another problem - the first conclusion is usually assumed as the right one.
What can we learn? Actively seek out good habits. Question yourself. Test all theories, even when you really think you’re right.
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"The man who chases two rabbits catches none"

The lumberjack was trying to cut down a tree with and was swearing and cursing as he laboured in vain.
“What’s the problem?” The man asked.
“My saw’s blunt and won’t cut the tree properly.” The lumberjack responded.
... “Why don’t you just sharpen it?”
“Because then I would have to stop sawing.” Said the lumberjack.
“But if you sharpened your saw, you could cut more efficiently and effectively than before.”
“But I don’t have time to stop!” The lumberjack retorted, getting more frustrated.
The man shook his head and kept on walking, leaving the lumberjack to his pointless frustration.
Sometimes the hardest thing you can do is to stop and do some deep thinking. It's much easier to just keep on hammering away, unbeknown to the fact that there might be a better way. A quicker way. An easier way. The fact that you're here reading this suggests you're aware of the need to improve yourself in some capacity, so you're ahead of the majority of the world (no exaggeration). Keep at it, and sharpen your saw.
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On Delayed Gratification...
When building a one-to-one business in personal training, delayed gratification is crucial. You should never let short-term stress stand in the way of maintaining a healthy relationship with your clients.
In this post, you’ll understand how your long-term goals become attainable when you focus on the right things. To stay aligned with our true values, we need to shift our attention from our needs to the needs of our clients. We need to embrace dela...
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You’re better than you think you are.
Recognise that voice in your mind that brings you down and kill it. Chose never to listen to it again.
What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
... How would you act differently?
What would you let go of?
What’s holding you back?
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“To a man with a hammer, the world looks like a nail”
It doesn’t necessarily you need to own all the tools in B&Q, but you need to know they exist and where to find them.
If someone has knee pain, who do you send them to?
... If someone is anaemic, where should they go?
If someone is overweight, who should they see?
The list goes on...
It’s not always what you know, it’s who you know.
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Learn from every mistake made. Then, put something in place to avoid making that same mistake again.

"Be the silence that listens" - Tara Brach

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished” - Benjamin Franklin

There are always opportunities, and it’s really up to you to recognize them.
Clients come and go, and you may often wonder when the next one will arrive. What should really count is how intentional you are about noticing the opportunities for clients.
People want trainers and therapists that will help them improve their health and stay in shape. How then do you get more clients and extend your personal training lifespan? I’ll explain that using a concept called the reticular ...activation system (RAS). Getting clients is like trying to buy a car. What’s the link?
When you think you might like to buy a new car, you’ll probably go on Auto Trader or Google Images. You sift through the images and settle on one you like.
All of a sudden, you start noticing that exact car more often! But it wasn’t like the car didn’t exist before you looked at the pictures…
If our conscious would allow it, we’d get thousands of stimuli every day. But the fact that you didn’t notice the cars doesn’t imply that they weren’t there. You just didn’t see them. As a matter of fact, our conscious can only manage a few things at a time. Hence, seeing a picture doesn’t create a new thing. It only takes us back to what already existed in our mind.
Your RAS takes what you focus on and creates a filter for it. It then sifts through the data and presents only the pieces that are important to you. All of this happens without you noticing, of course. The RAS programs itself to work in your favor without you actively doing anything.
So, when you look at the picture of a car, you prime yourself to come up with space and ability to see that car. It becomes etched into our subconscious mind. Once your head notices the car, you say, “There’s that car!”
Time and space are two key parts of getting new clients. And to create opportunities for clients, you need to have a dialogue with your mind. One-on-one opportunities are closely tied to this car analogy. When you walk into the studio or get to work, there are a couple of things you need to do.
Let’s assume you’ve said, “I’m a personal trainer/ I’m a therapist, and I’m looking for opportunities to help people with their health and fitness journey. I’m looking for them.”
Next, allow yourself some time to actually notice them. This means uses silence as a tool when teaching. Don’t talk constantly and fill up gaps with meaningless babble. Open your eyes and act on what you see.
You cannot undermine the value of time and space in creating opportunities for clients. I want you to consciously admit that they are always opportunities. As soon as you do, they’ll appear.
Hence, to achieve your objective to help people, you need to admit that it’s UP TO YOU. Prime yourself to identify these opportunities for clients, and you’ll actually see them.
Once this first step is done, everything else will fall into place.
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What excuse have you got?

You are paid in relation to the size of the problems that you solve