Tell The Truth – Why Being Yourself is The Best Route To Becoming A Successful Personal Trainer

One of the keys to succeeding in your own Personal Training business will be the degree to which you are prepared to step up and put yourself out there in front of the people who matter to you and your business. It’s no good being great at what you do if nobody knows about you.

Part of your business building journey will be about:

* Increasing your visibility and raising your profile
* Getting in front of new customers
* Building relationship with your potential customers and existing ones too
* Networking, speaking, writing
* Introducing yourself to potential joint venture or affiliate partners

But how you go about these things in your business will determine how successful you ultimately become. You see, I regularly meet personal trainers who are well qualified and equipped to do a great job with their clients but despite all of the certificates they are really holding back when it comes to marketing, self promotion and selling.

This is a problem because without getting out there you won’t turn your hard work into an income and if you can’t make any money, you won’t survive very long in this business. You’ll be forced to quit and go back to the job you never wanted to do.

So why does it happen?

There’s always more than one reason but I want to take a look at one of the big reasons today because it’s very likely that it is or will affect you at some point on your journey to success.

Before I go into this I want to tell you about an episode of the latest Mary Portas series in which she is on a personal mission to do something about the often appalling customer service in this country. Maybe you saw it – maybe not. This particular episode dealt with estate agents – now just about everyone has a view of estate agents and it usually ain’t great.

What is it that we dislike so much? Is it the fact that they use ridiculous phrases to describe properties like “low maintenance bijou garden” – meaning concrete slab with no room to swing a cat – or “ideal for a DIY enthusiast” which means in need of complete refurbishment before you can even think about moving in? Is it the fact that they are often poorly informed about the property they are selling so they can’t answer any of the questions that matter to us but they will happily tell us everything we don’t want to know because they aren’t listening or think they know best? Is it that very often we simply feel they aren’t telling the truth and that they aren’t to be trusted somehow – that they don’t have our best interests at heart – only their big fat commission?

So Mary Portas set about trying to change one particular firm of estate agents and the results were nothing short of a transformation. It was really enlightening for any service professional in relation to how they go about their business and their marketing. I’ll come back to this transformation that Mary achieved later on.

One of the things that is crucial to your business success is finding a way to do it so that you can be who you are. It’s like a law or a principle to adhere to because if you stray from this path you will find things infinitely more difficult.

The reason you need to be yourself is quite simply because that is what you do best. Anytime you try to be someone you are not, you hit challenges because you can’t keep that going for very long. People do most consistently who they are.

Whilst this might sound obvious it isn’t always as straightforward to achieve. What happens instead? Here are two common scenarios.

You Try To Become Who You think You Have To Be

Well you have an idea of who you think you have to be or become to be successful or to be the best PT or achieve the things you want. Now I’m not saying there’s no room for personal growth and development here – what I’m saying is that it has to be congruent with who you are.

Perhaps you think you have to be a certain way to market and sell or you think you have to be a certain way to attract the clients you want. So you try to behave differently, to speak differently, to treat people differently. Now, if this is really out of character and really incongruent with who you normally and usually are, it will show. It will most likely come across as being awkward; perhaps even dishonest.

You Learn And Adopt New Strategies

The second scenario is when you learn new strategies, new techniques or new marketing and sales tactics. You will listen to and learn from experts who are sharing their systems with you and telling you exactly how to do what they did. All useful stuff right?

So what do you do with all of that information and learning – with all of the strategies and tactics you see, hear and experience?

Well, in some cases you might do nothing with it – you never get started because it just seems so alien to you – or it doesn’t sit right with you or you can’t work out where it fits in your business. In other cases, You try to copy or model what you learn – you try to implement it in your own business. But very often it doesn’t feel right – it doesn’t come easily and at some point you look at what you’re doing and you read what you’re writing and hear what you’re saying – and you realise that somehow it isn’t working for you.

This is one of the dangers of learning just a little bit without really understanding what the real principles are behind what you are being taught and without having the business basics in place, or as I call it, the foundations in place. Many tactics and strategies might look like the answer and might seem easy enough to use. But often there is more to them and usually it’s the foundations that have been laid down prior to applying the latest sales or marketing strategy that will make the crucial difference to the results.

In both of these scenarios the only answer is to Be Yourself – Tell the Truth

Think about this for a moment – think about what this really means for you.

I can think of several occasions where I’ve strayed from this principle – I’ve allowed myself to be persuaded to approach something in a certain way or to communicate something in a certain way just because it worked for somebody else. And guess what?For me it didn’t work. Why? Because it wasn’t authentic for me – I wasn’t being who I really am. I was trying to be someone else instead of just taking the principles on board.

I can recall times when I’ve delayed approaching certain people or companies because I was imagining that I had to do it in a particular way. I was getting hung up on my own beliefs about how I had to come across or how I had to present something and it was stopping me from getting out there. And the thing I’ve discovered over and over again is that I always get the best results just by being me.

When I stop trying to be someone I’m not – when I just get on with being me, saying what I want to say in the way I want to say it – everything goes well. It doesn’t mean I always get the result I want but it always feels good to come away knowing that I’ve been myself. I can feel great about what I’m doing because it feels authentic, genuine and congruent with who I am and with what I do.

The best thing you can do right now is to stop communicating or behaving the way you think you should and start communicating in your own natural and unique way. When you do this the words start to flow and action becomes easier to take. There is no more right or wrong – just speaking the truth as you see it. Do this because this is the best way to attract the right people into your business for you.

Remember Mary Portas and those estate agents? This is what happened…

When these guys stopped trying to be what they believed was who they had to be – when they stopped trying to sell and instead focused on being present – when they stopped using all of the ridiculous cover up statements that most estate agents use and instead focused on providing a professional and informative service to their clients. When they really started listening to the clients – we witnessed an instant transformation in these individuals. You could see who they really were; their true personality came through and the reaction of the clients was overwhelmingly positive. And guess what? These estate agents suddenly started to enjoy their job far more because they felt like they were now behaving in line with who they are – with their values. They stopped the usual sales lingo of estate agent. They began to speak naturally and treated the people who were viewing the properties as people and the difference it made to the whole experience was just lovely to watch. One woman who had bought and sold many homes over the years described her viewing with this transformed estate agent as the best viewing – the most enjoyable viewing and most professional viewing she had ever had. Big praise indeed.

So, anytime you find yourself procrastinating or hesitating when it comes to launching, creating, communicating, promoting, marketing or selling – take a moment to check in with yourself to see whether you are being yourself, whether you are being authentic and genuine. Check whether what you are doing is the right thing for you. Or have you got distracted or sidetracked? Have you been convinced to go down a path that really doesn’t suit you? Have you tried to write something in a way that simply doesn’t sound like you?

If so, stop – think. Remember, in business it’s about applying the principles to what you do but at all times staying in touch with that all essential ingredient in your business – You.

One of the exercises you can do to start getting in touch with your kind of marketing – your kind of approach to promotion. – is to make a note to notice the adverts and the promotions and the communications both online and off that you like. Try to identify what you like? Which words and phrases do you really like? Which approach do you like? Which strategies do you like? Chances are that if you like them and respond to them yourself, then these are principles that you can use comfortably and successfully to build and grow your own business.