If I asked you to list your three best lead generation strategies, my guess is that you’d fill some or all of the slots with traditional paid advertising options. Facebook advertising drives you leads. Google advertising drives you leads. Sponsoring events in your...
Sales & Marketing
Drinking Through a Firehose
Solve pain points, sure. But stop hitting them all in a single piece of marketing. Quality fitness instruction should check a whole bunch of boxes on your “get healthy checklist.” Get stronger Lose weight Increase athleticism Reduce injury risk Improve sleep quality...
The Selling Cop Out
The best coaches and personal trainers are world-class conversationalists, and the most effective sales pitches are just thoughtful conversations surrounding a well-differentiated product or service. If you’re as good at your job as you believe yourself to be, the...
4 Quick Thoughts on Gym Salez…
Coming in hot with four quickies… 1) Positioning - As a training gym owner, you want to control the messaging so you’re compared to personal training, NOT to open access gyms (like Planet Fitness). While you’ll never win this battle 100% of the time, you can support...
Facts & Stories
My business functions in an industry that is driven by metrics. How many kilos can you deadlift? How fast can you sprint 40-yards? How many pounds did you help a client to lose? Metrics are important. After all, they’re essentially the key performance indicators that...
Values AND Profit
First off, if you haven’t booked your tickets to Perform Better’s 3-Day-Summits… what are you waiting for?? BFU Coach Pete Dupuis is speaking in Orlando, and yours truly will be in Long Beach and Chicago. It’s one of the hands-down best events in the industry. I’ll be...
How Can I Sell Without Feeling Sleezy?
Today we’re going to cover how to sell your services without feeling sleezy. First point: if you’re concerned about this, you probably don’t need to worry. At the end of the day, those of us that are concerned about turning people off or being too pushy usually don’t...
Should You Bill Weekly or Monthly?
You know, it’s very rare that I speak in absolutes when it comes to success as a training gym owner. But this is one of those moments. Virtually all members of the Unicorn Society have made or are making this change. I promise you, this is a move you need to make...
Best Market for a Training Gym? (NOT What You Think)
And it’s totally upside down from conventional wisdom. (I’d sincerely love for you to give this a read and respond one way or the other ESPECIALLY IF YOU WANT TO CONFIRM I’M CORRECT jkjkjk.) Ya ready? “The easiest market to build a sustainable and high-margin...
Why Your Marketing Sucks (And How to Fix It)
It’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up! Not all of us had the good fortune to receive a BFA in musical theater, the widely accepted gold standard for education in fitness business excellence. *Mark humbly bows to you with a flourish of his top hat* Furthermore, the confusion...
Should You Offer a Free Trial?
Let’s dive head first into this hornet’s nest and answer another of the most common questions in all of Training Gymdom… Should you offer a free trial? Here’s how I suggest thinking about this… First off, we need to appreciate that unless you have some low barrier way...
Should You Have Your Prices on Your Website?
Let’s talk about prices and websites. The Fitness Business Thought Leader Industrial Complex has many strong — and conflicting — opinions on this topic. Here's my personal take. In a vacuum, your best bet is often something like this: “Prices start at X, but depend on...
How Much Should You Charge for Your Services?
If you’re in a market where the other options are low priced, volume gyms where people rent access to equipment. Now we know that’s not a fair comparison; you’re not selling equipment access, you’re selling coaching and accountability
How Do I Get More Referrals?
Quick suggestion for you to get more referrals for your training gym… Long time readers know we’ve covered this topic in depth (article HERE), but in the spirit of giving you a quick takeaway, here’s your move: Instead of bribing clients to get you paying members,...
What’s Working NOW In Marketing
If you’re looking to build a thriving business, the marketing piece is actually pretty simple. First, there need to be some systems that alert people to your existence. Then there needs to be some systems that help your prospects come to like and trust you over time....
The Big Three Questions of Marketing
In this video, I break down the three questions you MUST answer to effectively market your business. Give it a watch and let me know what you think in the comments below. (And for those that prefer to read or simply want to get the gist without watching the full...
6 Reasons Your Marketing Isn’t Working (And How To Fix It)
If there’s one goal all businesses have in common, it’s to get more clients and customers. And yet many business owners are reluctant to get serious about marketing. After all, most people don’t open up a business because they want to become marketers. For obvious...
Why Should People Listen to You? [5 Strategies for Establishing Your Credibility and Authority]
In nearly every type of business, it is essential to position yourself as an authority. You are an expert on solving a specific problem for your customers and you are asking them to trust you with their time, attention and money. The first question any responsible...
5 Quick(ish) Thoughts On Luck, Survival, and Success
Behold! Some useful and provocative business musings to make your life and business better. ************************ Beware Of Advice From Successful, Lucky Idiots A strong operator can handle a crappy market. An amazing market can prop up a sloppy operator. The right...
Getting More Leads By Multiplying Your Clients: 4 Questions For Effective Referral Programs
We all know word of mouth from satisfied customers is the cheapest, easiest, and best way to grow your business. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a relatively new business owner to brag about “not doing any marketing.” And to be sure, organic growth from word of mouth...
What’s Cash Flow And Why Should You Give A Sh*t?
You have heard the expression cash is king, right? Well, in business that couldn't be more true. Let's start with the basics. What is cash flow? Cash flow is the total amount of money being transferred into and out of your business on a regular basis....
The Ultimate Booklist for Entrepreneurs: 48 Books to Supercharge Your Business
For anyone who knows me in real life or follows me on the interwebz, it’s no secret I have a problem. You see… I’m a junkie. Every day I wake up and live a life of servitude to my addiction. It’s all consuming. It’s obsessive. And at times, it’s truly a burden for...
MFF’s Best Blog Post of 2018 (And What You Can Learn From It)
One of the most common issues I heard from business leaders in 2018 was how difficult it can be to create online content that gets traction. With so much noise on our social platforms these days and the rising cost of online advertising, it can harder than ever for...
The Power of Emotion on Purchasing Behavior
Guest Post by Chris Burgess, Business for Unicorns Adjunct Faculty and Founder of Lift the Bar “People buy using emotion” is one the of the most common phrases in marketing and sales across the three different industries I have been lucky to have been a part...
How to Onboard New Clients for Long Term Relationships
The beginning of any relationship is always a delicate thing. You’re setting the tone for how things are going to go. Your actions and behaviors are telling the story of how you’ll be showing up for the other party. And understandably, the other party makes a lot of...
How to Build Instant Rapport and Trust by Being a Better Listener
Most of us are crappy listeners. We think we’re paying attention, but we’re not. All too often we’re just waiting for our chance to talk. Or we’re judging what the other person is saying so that we can quickly agree or disagree. Or we are lost in our own mental...
Getting More Dream Clients By Being More Who You Really Are
When we look at the skillsets that make up “marketing,” we’re actually talking about many distinct creative and technical facilities; copywriting, building out “funnels,” analyzing FB ad performance, creating landing pages, writing value-building content, creating...
BFU TV #5 IF YOU HATE SALES, WATCH THIS
Oh booooy I’m excited for this one. For this week’s episode of Business for Unicorns TV, we have MFF’s “Minister of Belief” Brian “The Manimal” Patrick Murphy. (Yep. He has not one, but TWO unicorn names.) There are few topics more important to master in all of...
BFU TV #4: NETWERRRRRRRKING
Hi! It’s Mark! In this episode of Business For Unicorns TV, I talk about one of my all-time favorite topics; relationships! (Or netwerrrrrrrking.) “Networking” often has a dirty connotation. And this is probably because people often do it so poorly. I prefer the term...
BFU TV #3: DEVELOPING A TEAM OF SUPERHEROES
In our last video blog, we talked about a few topics related to building and supporting your team. In this post, we’ll be taking a deep dive into how to set up systems to develop your team on an on-going basis. Although this can be time consuming, your job as the...
5 WAYS TO INCREASE YOUR SALES CONVERSION
… AND EARN YOUR PROSPECT’S TRUST ON THE FIRST VISIT For most brick-and-mortar fitness facilities, our greatest sales tool is the 1-hour personal consultation. Whether you call it a Success Session, or tour, or some other clever thing, the goal is to get a prospect...
BFU TV #2: EXPECTATIONS, DISSENT, AND EVALUATIONS
In BFU’s second vlog, I’m gonna be talking about building a team. I’ll talk about how to balance setting clear expectations while setting the stage to make disagreement safe. I’ll also share my VERY STRONG opinions about what makes an effective performance evaluation,...
BFU TV #1: EXPANSION, COMMUNITY, AND FEAR VS. INTUITION
In our very first ever video blog (vlog??), I’ll answer some questions from BFU readers. You’ll see me address how to know if it’s time to expand, how to drive more community (very specific actionable strategies here!!), how to write content that gets engagement, and...