How Stefano Built A £14,000 p/m Online Fitness Business - TribeFit.co
- Hey Guys, Chris Lynton here from TribeFit and today we've got a very, very special guest with us Stefano, Stefano how you doing mate? - How you doing guys? Yeah I'm good Chris, thanks.
- Good to hear buddy. Where about in the world are you calling in from buddy? - I'm from London, actually originally from London, but I'm now in Saint Albans in half the check.
- Beautiful.
- I moved in out there, that's the quality of life over there. A lovely wife and two kids, it's a bit more kid friendly around here so, awesome.
- Fantastic mate, well well I guess first and foremost for those who've, the people listening who haven't or don't know a little bit about you, a background to your story, can you maybe give us a bit of an outline on how you got into the industry, and why, and I guess your journey of becoming from going from place to place through to an online personal trainer, online coach.
- Cool, so I started as a personal trainer in fitness first, you know did my qualification with Premier and did the whole paid the rent and work one to one. And I was kind of messing around at the start and one of them guys who owned the gym at the time and the manager he basically just mentored me and said you know you've got a lot of potential, come on you can do better. Started working hard and making some good money and was working very hard, worked on my, you know getting myself in good shape and did pretty well until I kinda got mentored by Angie Dowds from the Biggest Loser.
- Yeah.
- She brought me into kettle bells. And I basically started working for her really impressed her, and in fact when I went to do my set of creation with her, she had high expectations, and I was a body builder up until then, my only fitness, so when I started doing all this functional training, I was all big and muscley, I was dying. And she's like, you're crap, she literally told me, you're rubbish. Once I went away, well my buff came back and blew her away and she offered me a job. So I started working with her and then I got into kettle bells and basically I found out, you know, that she was Great Britain's official personal trainer. The year previously I thought, I can do that, so I really started working hard.
- Yeah.
- Got awarded as Great Britain's official trainer of the year 2009, I went to work on Big Sky.
- Beautiful - Got sponsored by USN, became a Grand Ambassador.
- Worked at a higher level, worked in some top gyms like KX and South Ken with celebs and stuff and had a really good career and then basically switched over to doing boot camps, selling private training, which was very lucrative. Got myself to about 15K a month. And then I just found that, you know, I didn't wanna continue doing that I wanted to be an online coach. Some people would sound crazy giving that up. But it wasn't my dream, it wasn't my passion anymore. So this work took about years here, you know.
Yeah, yeah - So it's quite long. And you know getting married, having a family I just wanted to be home more around my family so I wanted to be an online coach, work from home, maybe move abroad, and here I am today. That essentially is my journey.
- Fantastic man, I know your vision, your goal is to get over to Spain or what's the long term vision? - Well it was I had this vision on the wall of being working on a laptop with money mind of raining down on me. (laughs loudly) somewhere to stay motivated, and we were supposed to move to Spain but we're not sure what we're going to do now. We might just stay here and buy a house cause honestly my credit rates are the lowest thing here to get a mortgage, so we're not sure where we are going to move yet, but definitely have achieved my goals in terms of becoming a full time online coach now, which is amazing, I actually work full time. A couple of months ago, which is brilliant.
- Fantastic mate. Now I guess, I know we've been working together quite close for some time now and more recently, I guess your businesses had, I know you mentioned, I think it was last month you did the biggest month you ever done.
- Yeah.
- Could you maybe take us through I guess a couple of things that you felt that had allowed you to kinda break through to that next level and evolve and do, you know, your largest month you ever done.
- So, I came to Chris a while ago because I did his course, he's got a course. Is it a twelve week course I did? - Yeah, no you did a twelve week course, yep.
- And I kinda just smashed through it, you know, really quickly, I was just on it. And it was literally one of the most comprehensive courses that I've done in terms of being an online coach cause I found it was so useful from concentration strategy to kind of find an inspiration and advertising, just a very complete course, I was just so impressed with that. And I saw an opportunity to work with you as a one to one, get mentored, and after doing this business for a while, I kind of, my business model was arriving on a lot of new sells. Therefore I've spent a lot on advertising constantly. So I wanted to start building up my reoccurring revenue. So we basically came up with this idea of having a new backhand business for my existing clients to finish this while we can go into something which was a reoccurring revenue. I've got a higher ticket, one in my hat, and only credit came out of a lower ticket version. So we launched that and in my first 72 hours, I'm now, got a new business model which is lower maintenance. I'm with 25 new clients, that's gonna be an extra 1,100 pounds a month now I'm also quieter, on top of my inner circle programme that's about five and then I'm doing my 12 week transformation, so I did about almost 14K which is really cool. When I came to you I was kinda doing around 10-11K.
- Beautiful, beautiful, well congratulations.
- They're still moving up.
- Mate you obviously you, yeah mate and reoccurring is fantastic obviously you're putting in the work and you deserve the results you're getting. I know also that we worked on some stuff in regard to your pricing and all that as well and you were able to increase your price and what you were charging for your programme. So I guess, just to take a step back on that. What would you say was the biggest break through for yourself to allow you, I think you increased your price about 25% and been doing just fine.
- That was amazing actually I completely forgot about that actually because a bunch has happened since then, just so much working.
- Yeah.
- So I was basically offering a one off payment, I was offering a monthly payment, and I was offering a weekly payment all at the same rate, right. Just to make it accessible so we just simply said give them your best rate at your, for up front. Give them a higher rate for your monthly and give them the full rate on your weekly. So just that tweak there has boosted my income by about 20-25% which is what has helped me generate more revenue. That was an amazing tweak, I did have a bit of a issue around doing it, even though when you told me, it was, I thought, it was the right thing to do.
- Yeah.
- I was hesitant, because of course you have to value yourself but when you're saying I'm gonna charge them more, is said, uh I don't want to do that, but I literally just had to register for the VAT because of the money I'm making. So I thought this is a good opportunity for me to help cover that, so I thought I'm just gonna do it, because being scared is not a reason not to do it. So I just did it and yeah, no one complained, so it's good. (laughs loudly) - Beautiful mate. Well I guess if there is anyone that can debate there, they've heard the prices they should be charging but they charge at a lot less than that and they're struggling you know, struggling being able to, or they feel that even if they are charging less they're getting, you know, resistance and they feel like they can't go any further from that. What would you, from the words of wisdom perspective what would you say kind to of embrace through things there, you need to change to be able to really get to those levels? And everyone else's kind of charging that are as good as them or probably not even as good as them? - I think that, you know, gotta start at a price that'll comes to the lot and just something that you can say when you have complete certainty that's like, Yeah, this is the price. You don't even have an issue with it so you know that is not you, out causing the conflict in the sale. Because if you don't really believe in what you're doing people will pick up on that. So if you're doing that and you're selling consistently at that price with no objections, no ones complaining, that just means that you can bring your price up and just keep going up until people start just saying no it's getting expensive. So for me you know, I charge double what I charged originally when I started this business. And people still say to me sometimes it's cheaper than I thought it would be. But then other people that pull out are gonna say, oh that is not in my budget, that's expensive. So the reality is you better have the attitude that I have an idea of what I do and it's not going to be for everyone. If you can't afford to invest in this programme you're not the right fit for this programme, that's it. And my time is valuable, so why are you selling yourself out at a lower rate? Do I give yourself some room for those higher paying clients, if you're not getting them then the question really is how can I can I get in front of those people? How can I get myself out in front of the right people? Do you see what I mean? That's the question that you need to solve.
- Yeah, yeah you're spot on mate. It's kind of like if you're selling Ferrari's you can't be trying to sell them to Toyota buys you gotta find the Ferrari buys, you gotta be out and position the right way.
- Never, never sell to broke people, that's one thing I say to myself now, as much as I know I've tried And if one of my clients ever come across this video in the future at some point or anyone that is working with me. I love what I do, I'm passionate about what I do, but at the same time, if someone's broke and they haven't got money and they've got a family for example, then it's probably not the best time to hire a coach, and they just have to accept that. And I accept that, and that's fine, they can come back at a later point.
- Yeah.
- But I know that. Some of my clients haven't been in my demographic in terms of who I target on Facebook. And they've found the money and have paid for it. Because they value it, and I believe that's some of your best clients will be people that don't necessarily have the most money, because if their spending that money, it means something to them. Therefore, they are gonna take much more action than someone who is really wealthy and can give you, you know, 600, 1,000, 15,000 pounds and not even lose any sleep over it, they're not going to value it as much. So, hurry up and it's done.
- Spot on mate, yeah it's so powerful what you're saying and I cannot agree more. Than if you're selling yourselves to less than what you're worth in people I think, hey I kind of saw that and then you'll just going, oh okay, well what about this, what about this, and you're just working your way down. Unfortunately, you're going to get a couple clients that you don't want anyway and because, not that they're bad people or whatever, it's just that if they don't really value your services they're not gonna value you're information, they're not gonna value you're education, they're not gonna action it, they're not gonna get results, and we all wanna work with people that are smashing it, we all wanna have results there. Our clients to get phenomenal results and exceed. And that part of the process, if they can't see the value in what you're offering, then they're not going to succeed anyway, they're not gonna be your ideal client. They're not the type to of, you know, those less motivated people are not really the type of people we want to work with. So, awesome point on that. One last question I've got for you mate, before we do wrap up. So in terms of yourself transitioning from phase to phase, moving online, now full time online. What would you say to people who are, well I know when we first spoke you kind of had hit a level and breaking through that level was kind of the main reason why you were reaching out. So if there is anyone that is an online trainer but they are still kind of 50-50 online cause they are at a feeling that they can't kinda break through.
What would be your advice?
Do you have any tips whether it's mental, whether it's you support who you're working with advice, or whatever, what would you say? - I've got quite some good advice on this. So, I found that when I was doing my online coaching prep business and personal training at the same time, it got to point where the in-person business was actually sabotaging my online business because there is only so many hours in the day. And I did it in a smart way, just say I'm giving up, I'm an online coach, I hope it works out, I ciphered off that business gradually as I built this business. And I found that whenever there was conflict and that was getting in the way, I dropped a couple of clients, dropped a couple of clients, dropped a couple of clients. Until I'm now doing it full time. So the reality is, if you don't put yourself in a position where you have to succeed and your successful, you won't. It's like, you're not gonna take action and that's it. Whereas now that this is a full time job, I can't afford to sit on my butt and let other people take over or not action and not be successful, I've got a family to feed, this is who I am now, this is what I do, and I've got to do what I've got to do. I don't have a safety net and some people might think that is scary, but, that's how life works at the end of the day.
You have to put yourself in a position where you have to successful, therefore, you will do the work, and also give yourself time to do the work, so that's a really important thing for me, is that I have to go all in, and I just couldn't allow myself to do both and then be average at both things because I'm burnt out. So I let go of that. But also, systemizing your business is so so important so I found that I have a routine, like, there's things that I need to do to keep things going whether it's fulfilment of clients, marketing, sales, self-development, that's a big thing for me because if I don't stay in a good head space I sabotage myself and I don't take action, I shrink. So I basically have a fixed schedule into my diary, like Monday daily email, Tuesday podcasts, Wednesday, you know, and everyday has got some activity in a time slot. Where I know if I just follow that schedule my business will run smoothly. So I don't have to think about it, I just give myself a schedule to say, like you would with a client. And on Monday to Wednesday, Friday eat this at this time, this time, you need a plan, you need to systemize your business. And the last thing I want to add to this as well, again, your course your night to day program really helped me with that because, you know, I now have a concentration plan, I didn't even have that before.
I now have a white board with the amount of sales in need to make every week. I never had that before. Hunting, marketing strategy, I never had that before. You don't even know what you are doing or where you are at if you don't have a plan, you know? If you see that you need to do ten sales in two weeks, you have already done three, how do you know whether or not to invest more energy and stuff if you're not on target? So you need to monitor stuff, you need to track stuff. Also lastly, it's delegating out as much as you can. Whether it's gonna be an automated system you can create within your business, like email fill out with people, or using HootSuite to systemize posts. For me I built up a lot of assets, podcasts, blogs, I wrote so much content, put up so much content. And now it just goes out in autopilot on recycling mode. So I'm putting myself out there daily without putting myself out there daily. Does that make sense? I have these assets that I built. So systemize your business as much as you can, and lastly I'm taking on the sales guy who's actually done the programme, who's now account... coach who knows it inside out. He's helping me now so I'm not working from morning to night so I can focus more on generating more calls and marketing and then he can do the fulfilment of the sales calls. So I can have more energy to do that. So those are my tips.
- Beautiful mate, I love it, and now I guess just to wrap up, your business, what does your business look like now? Like how many clients do you get a month? The revenue figures, where it's sitting versus where your goals is in say the next two or three months? - I wanna get up to 20K now, I was originally 15K but I'm sort of around the 13-14K now. So that's good. So that's what I want to hit. And again I have ideas, I'm just looking at my board now, I've go things I wanna do over the next few months. So I'm just gonna read it to you. So I took resume adverts to my business to keep things fresh, tick, the next thing is I'm now creating a webinar for march, for my business, tick, doing that now. Month after, I'm gonna be using a different lead generation strategy, LinkedIn. That will be done, a new front tip offered in May. I wanna do a boot camp in June, and I wanna do a retreat in July. So that's what I've planned out and I'm mostly gonna be hitting you up for lots of advice on all those things along the way.
- Beautiful.
- Actually, hiring a mentor. So here is a quick story about why you should do that. So I had this idea, I've got this lead generation strategy which I do, which takes a lot of grit and hustle. I want to create an automated version of that, a challenge right? And this is something I've been thinking about for so long, I'm talking about almost a year. It has to be right, it has to be perfect, and all these stories, and then as soon as I hired you I did it in about two days because I thought I've gotta work with Chris, he's gonna tell me what to do, I've got things to learn, I better get this out of the way. And that was the power of having a mentor. I actually just got more done because when you invest money, then you have to get things done and not waste your time. And then you want to move forward so that gave me that motivation to kind of push myself more as a person.
- Beautiful, beautiful.
- Does that make sense? - Yeah 100% just like you were saying before about your clients are gonna give it their all, why? Because when they're paying the right prices they will value your advice, they will value your information they will action and they will get results. It's the exact same thing. So I guess final, one for yourselves, cause I know, is anyone on the fence about moving forward. They've heard about TribeFit, they've made it fresh, they've got no online clients so they've got a couple long clients and their hitting it to the end of the cup, right. And they've got bigger visions. What would you say if they're sitting on the fence thinking about it.
- I think at the end of the day if you want to move forward in your business than you've got to basically be congruent with what you preach, and if you're a coach or a trainer, you're asking people to invest in you to help you show them the way to move forward. If you're lacking clarity, if you're lacking strategies, if you're lacking knowledge, if you're lacking certainty, and you're lacking having that person by your side telling you what to do and how you can do it. And you know, once again that reoccurring business, you just kind of told me a few things to do and I just thought okay, I'll just implement that. I just did that without thinking about it too much and look at the results, boom. So, you know, and that's growing as an asset. I think by the end of the year, I could probably be at ease a near 60K a year in reoccurring revenue on top of the other things I do. Once I get 100 people into it. So, you know, it's already at 20-25 now, so it's grown since you spoke last. So, yeah, be congruent with that. At the end of the day it's an investment in yourself. You know I just can't value that enough because I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't invest in myself as a person because you know what you know. And it's so easy to just procrastinate and just kind of sit around. Nothing really changes. But when you are investing that money and you got that strategy, it's just gonna move you forward in your business and your life, that's it.
- Beautiful, mate I appreciate that, I appreciate the kind words. One of my favourite sayings that just popped in my head based on what you're saying is if nothing changes, nothing changes. So if you don't do something different, unfortunately you're gonna get the exact same results of what you've gotten in the last month, last year, last five years, last ten years. So, you need to do something different to get different results.
- And also guys to be honest as well, the opportunities out there are disappearing at the end of the day. In fact, in my niche now, when I launched it in the UK, I think there was only one other person that was doing what I was doing. There is now like six or seven. And, you know, you need to kind of get in now while there is an opportunity to actually differentiate yourself, and leash down and become a leader in your space. The longer you wait, the more people are gonna jump in, the more saturation it's gonna get. And it's gonna be the same as personal training on the online space because everyone is gonna be doing it and you'll just slowly become a commodity, prices will go down, but people like myself will be on the next thing, whereas everyone else will be doing what I've been doing. People are doing, are copying my lead generation strategies. But I've been running these for so long now, they're doing stuff I've done a year ago. It's like the huge opportunity advert that was out you know, when it first came out, wow, washa. You always have to pay...
- And I've seen them these days, it's uh, I've made it, it makes me roll my eyes.
- Yeah, it's just like, who still does that? You know, and I actually hired an advertising company recently who works with fitness people, not recently, a while ago, I'm not gonna say names, cause I don't want to be unprofessional. And, basically I went in and I got my money back, I just freaked out. It was the worst month I ever had, financially. And then I realised that I had been seeing this huge opportunity ads on Facebook constantly and I saw, when he showed me back into his account I saw that he was the one doing it for this, these people, I thought, really? It was like, your still using that? So, you know, it's important that you take action as well. If you invest in yourself and you do a course, you need to do, you need to implement the content that is there now, don't put yourself out there and buy loads of courses like I used to and sit at them and look at them a year later when the time is right because that strategy is already dead. You need to be... and do what is working now and keep moving forward. And what I'll be doing next year is gonna be different to what I'm doing now. Who knows, I might not even be on your MySpace anymore I might just be doing in person events, I don't know. Who knows how things will change, you know? Take action now don't mess around.
- Very valuable, exactly, what's working now might not be working in six months time so A, you need to take action, B, you need to keep plugged into the source, finger on the pulse so you know what's working right then and there and your not implementing stuff or copying people and copying things what people are doing a year ago, or six months ago cause a, you'd be frustrated with the results. Because no doubt the market has moved on.
- And you gotta be careful who you copy because who seems to be very successful, you know, like uh, might not be making any money. And when I launched this business I had no likes, I had no testimonials, I had nothing. But I had a lot of, you know what helped me, it wasn't the sales finals, it wasn't the email marketing, it wasn't the adverts or all that rubbish, it was literally that I knew my audience and I had a certainty in myself, and when I was communicating with them I had a lot of passion and certainty. But I think, yes, I have got a strong background and people did look me up, and I'm not just a nobody that's popped out of nowhere, I've been doing this for 16 years, so there's credibility there for myself. I still think that's the most important thing. Because you can have all the qualifications in the world and I've done this and I've done that, no one really cares to be honest.
- Yeah.
- I've got a better track record than most but people don't care, they care about themselves really, they care about how you can help them. So, that's it they've just gotta believe in you.
- Beautiful mate. Well I think I've probably drained everything I can and drained, oh we've probably gone for hours, no doubt. But uh, made so many gold nuggets in there. This has been super powerful, it's been an awesome interview. I appreciate your time mate, I know your a busy guy and to give up your time, you know, you've got a growing business, and an exciting business to get helping people all around the world impacting lives. And to put aside a little bit of time to do this interview to help others out who may not be, who have the vision, but may not be in the situation where you are right now, today. Mate it is a very selfless thing to do and I really do appreciate it. So mate, I guess for now, we've probably gone through it. Anything, is there any one line as just to round up one line of power motivation, pure Stefano, gold, that you could drop on us to finish up mate? - Yeah manage your states because you know, when I'm in a good state of mind, anything is possible and I can think big and I can do anything, and I step up when I've become this, this kind of just can do anything and is really passionate and powerful. And when I'm in a bad state I talk myself out of opportunities, I drag myself down, I see all the negatives, I don't take as much action. So, I think the most powerful thing is managing your state of mind and, you know, having certainty in yourself because at the end of the day, I speak to people all the time who have had long jobs and you know stable companies they get made redundant and they lose everything. So the only question you can really back in life is yourself because I know whatever happens I'll do whatever it takes to be successful and overcome that situation. And I have, I even find myself in a position during this business where I had a really quiet month and I had to really go for it to get things going again. And I had a quiet December and it was my own fault. I just looked and I just thought, what do I need to do right now to get things back on track? And I just took those actions and boom. I had the best January ever. So it all comes down to you at the end of the day. Nothing is gonna work if your don't take action and really have certainty in yourself and really believe in yourself. And just remember you know why you're here, why is it important to you at the end of the day? Because I think the differences between people that are successful and people that aren't successful is these guys have a better reason to get out there in the morning than you.
- And they're not allowed excuses to be bigger than their dreams and their visions.
- Beautiful mate. State management, um there's about three things in there that you said that I could probably go on for another half an hour about. Mate we should have our own podcast I think we could talk for hours about that.
- Yeah.
- About all of these sort of things. But mate once again, I appreciate your time. I know your a busy man, I will let you get to I think it is night time now in the UK, is that correct? - Yeah, 9:45 pm, I've been up kicking butt since 7:00 am.
- Beautiful, beautiful mate. Well I'll let you get back to your family, I appreciate your time and we'll no doubt be speaking soon. Congratulations again mate, and hats off on all the success you've had. That's it from us, bye for now.
