Tribefit.co - Interview With Online Trainer Jaron Blackie

Chris: Hey guys. Chris here from TribeFit and today, we've got a very special guest, Jaron Blackie. How are you doing, Jaron?

Jaron Blackie: Mate, going good. All that special guest stuff, that sounds nice.

Chris: Extra, extra special guest, mate, extra special. Mate, whereabouts in the world are you today? It looks phenomenal in the background. I can see a bicycle there set up ready to roll. Whereabouts in the world are you today?

Jaron Blackie: Mate, I'm in Seven Hills in Sydney. That's the kids' bikes ready to go. They were smashing around on them yesterday, but yeah, how good is it, hey? I'm up most mornings at 04:30 so I get to see the sunrise pretty much everyday. Yeah, enjoying. Yes, beautiful, isn't it? It's great.

Chris: Phenomenal, mate. First and foremost, buddy, for those people who are listening to the interview and are not aware of your story, your background and your online fitness business to date, could you give us a bit of an intro on yourself and on your online fitness business today?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, mate. I've been in personal training now for about 14 years, I suppose. Mainly outside, done a bit of gym work as well. Few clients online, not many though, just a couple. The ones that I do have online were pretty much based here in Sydney anyways. They might've been former clients that trained with me and then they move away, but they still wanna have that contact.

Chris: Yep.

Jaron Blackie: And I sort of watched the online PT businesses grow around me, if you like, and kept track of that and gone, "I can't potentially always be a personal trainer running around outside. With the lifestyle I want to live, I want to travel.I wanna go and do stuff overseas. I can't take my business with me, can I?"So I've gone, "Well, I can actually, if I do the right thing, I can get online and start to build a business that way."

And that's when I started ... I don't know, would've been ... Started this year, I decided to pursue the opportunity of setting up online, getting good at that, growing that and we were doing that anyway with my mum, that I've told you a few times that we were working that way. As well, we just said "Let's have a real, red hot go at it," and we are and it's working well. 20 clients at the start of this month we've got on board, which was our first target, was always get 20 clients. Get that ... At the start of the year, it was our plan to get 20 clients come spring, and we did it in the first month. Just got to repeat it next month now. It's going good, really happy.

Chris: Beautiful mate. Hats off and congratulations with all the results to date, and for anyone listening, probably thinking it sounds as though Jaron and myself have a slightly different accent. You're a Kiwi background, Jaron is that right?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, Kiwi, but I have been pretty much all over the world. I've done a lot of travelling when I was younger.

Chris: Beautiful mate, and what does the average day look for you at the moment? You have obviously got a family, you said you were up quite early in the morning. What's an average day look like for you at the moment?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, today I was up 04:30 doing a class, face to face class time. Come back, so I'm back here by quarter to seven, I suppose, in the morning and get some quick paper work out of the way, just follow up and my inquiries, leads. All the stuff that's the generating of leads, the money, that side of it. Take care of that, kids have been off school, it's nine o'clock so I have got six hours to myself.

Seriously have, most days are like that, but I am educating myself, right, I'm doing courses. I'm training, I'm looking for new leads and I'll do my own fitness, and I'll look after my community, that sort of stuff. There is a lot of work to be done still, but if I didn't want you today, I could just walk away and have six hours of going to the beach. So I've got a pretty good lifestyle but it could be better. It can always be better.

Chris: Yeah.

Jaron Blackie: That's pretty much every day for me right now, that's pretty much how it flies.

Chris: Yeah, personal development as we were kind of talking about just before we hit record on this, and you know, continuing to grow and evolve and all that stuff is pretty important. But I guess in terms of the here and the now, so you've got some face-to-face still, you've got obviously the online growing. What does an average monthly, I guess income, look like at the moment and what would be your split between the two?

Jaron Blackie: Between face-to-face and between online?

Chris: Online, yeah.

Jaron Blackie: What am I making now? Probably roughly about two grand a month from face-to-face, but I'm pretty blood happy with that because I'm only doing ... I worked it out yesterday, I'm only doing 12 to 13 hours of face time per week, right, and my admin is about an hour and a half a day if I stretched it out, so ... And we want to get up to 20 grand online, that's our target, because I know that then we're making really good money, my wife and I can do what we want to do.

And we're growing that up. We're probably bringing in one or two new clients a week, so we're up around that five, sort of consistently, sort of between five and eight, but it's that's too big a gap. We want to get that consistently above 15, hitting 20. So it's growing, it's getting there, but we can see those ... Every month we can see it improving a little bit, and that's what our target is. We're not trying to make those big jumps. We're just trying to, every month, see it step up, step up, step up and keep in control of it, if you like? Yeah. I mean, we're in control. I mean, servicing the clients the right way, looking after them.

Chris: Yeah, doing it in a stable way that you can kind of, you know, just do that and then kind of drop down because you've built it not in a stable way.

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, and we've done that. Yeah, we've done the big jump and then lost it. Didn't have enough stability or foundation [inaudible 00:05:11], right. And that's what this year has been about, building infrastructure correctly so we can launch properly and look after everybody properly. And obviously, you know, nice to be rewarded for it as well.

Chris: Yeah, mate. It's important, and that's what I always say to everyone. If you can help people and have your customers, your client's results in mind, while at the same time having a business you're enjoying and making money at the same time, it's like a perfect circle because the more you help your clients, the better results they get, the more testimonies you get, the more referrals and clients you get on board as well.

And then at the same time, you've got that control of your lead gen in addition to it, so you've kind of got the two fire hoses into the business, and then that's what allows you to do that stability and consistent growth, mate. So hats off with that. In terms of, I guess, your results to date in online, where have you seen ... If we could narrow it down to one or two things just for simplicity, because you could probably say a thousand things, but what would you say have been the biggest movers, the biggest, as I call them, dial movers, the biggest changes that have allowed you to get those results consistently from where you were before?

Jaron Blackie: That's easy. Knowing where my clients are and being able to get in contact with them, right. But as a personal trainer starting 14 years ago, you had to do mail drops and you went around at childcare centres and handed out flyers, and you stood at school gates and you did all that crazy stuff, right? And it worked back then when there was no one else doing what you were doing. Probably the biggest thing now is knowing where my clients are online, and knowing that there's ... They're everywhere. They are everywhere, you've just got to get to them. There's enough clients for the world. There's people everywhere. Yeah, finding those clients and then being able to target them in the right way with the information they're after. That probably sums it up for me, yes.

Chris: Yeah mate. And also, just going on what you were saying there, and saying there's enough clients out there for everybody. It's also, I find, the realisation of ... The transition between going in a period where ... I speak to some trainers that feel that there's not enough clients out there, and having the fear of what's gonna happen next month or next week, or where's the next client gonna come from, versus the evolution of knowing and having that abundance mindset, that now you're confident, now you know that there is literally thousands and millions of people out there that you can tap in at any given time.

And it's kind of ... It's a completely different mindset, mind frame to your business. And I always like to say, you know, from a stress perspective, being in this bucket and not knowing what's gonna happen in the next day or week versus being confident, knowing that you can kind of put the foot on the gas any time you want to get more clients, it's a completely different space to be. Would you agree?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, definitely. I love the way you said, "Putting your foot on the gas." You can do that. Like, I had two clients leave my face to face classes this morning because they're moving away. Husband and wife moving away, and years ago that would've meant "Oh, this is crap. Now I've got to find two more clients." Now I've got clients lined up. There's new leads there this morning. It's like ... And if I want to, I can try harder. I can get online and get into more groups and send more messages out and I can bring more clients in, you know? So yeah, you're right. You don't go to bed stressful and irritated anymore, because you know that you can get up the next day and just find more.

We will want to go on holiday next year, right? I'm already finding more clients to pay for my holiday, because you can do it. You can just go and do it, so that's good, knowing you can find ... And there's an abundance. There's a huge abundance of people out there looking for what we have.

Chris: Yeah, and it's a realisation that comes about of doing ... I guess It's very hard to understand that when you haven't tapped into that, you don't understand. But I guess in terms of yourself, we were talking about just before obviously this interview, so you set yourself a goal earlier in the year to get online, get to where you are sort of now, and then I know we had a bit of a chat around ... You know, you went from where you were to your goal, and now it's about sort of resetting your goals and refocusing your motivation. So in terms of keeping focused and keeping motivated and continuing to grow, do you have any sort of tips for anyone that might be feeling a bit stagnant where they are, or aren't clear about where they want to go?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, you were right. I sort of hit it, I reached my goal, got to where I wanted to get to, and I'm very comfortable and that's probably the worst thing for me. [inaudible 00:09:41] I have got a really good life, right, and that makes you comfortable and trying to stretch again, it was ... Luckily, I reached out to a few people that I knew that would talk to me in the right way, and got some good feedback from them. But I listened to the right audios as well, read some good books, but then obviously I've got online, and went, you know "What are things you might want out of your life?"

Like, I'd love to go to the Rugby World Cup next year, you know? And I've just always thought about it, but never got into it. So I started to research that, and that started to get me fired up again about going and doing things and getting excited about things. And I want to get a new car. I hadn't thought about that until I saw a new car go down the street, and I thought "That's nice." So I've got ... I quickly looked at photos of that car, and that pumped me up. So I do little things like that. That got me excited again, going "Hey, come on mate, you can do more than this. You're better than what you're doing. You can achieve more."

And you know, just little things like that. Probably the key thing was talking to people that are doing ... Not necessarily doing better than me, but are always chasing a new goal, and got excited and they've got energy. I steal their energy, and that gets me pumped again, is getting your goals up. We're already set, I know what's happening in 2019. I've already created my goals for 2019, because of what happened to me a few weeks ago when I was static and I didn't know what I was gonna do. So I've re-planned, I'm excited, I'm refocused again and yeah, pretty simple stuff really.

Chris: Yeah, mate that's actually fantastic, and I haven't ... It's something that I strongly believe in, and I probably haven't verbalised it to anyone, I would say, in the last week or two from a goal setting ... Like, traditional goal setting, go away and get a pen and a pad, write down what you want, have a look around. But probably the least-traditional format is getting around people that energise you, and want you to go to the next level, and mate, just hearing you say that is something that ...

You know, it's not about competing or having envy or anything like that, but if you're at this level, and you're having around with people and your goal is to go to there, well, when you get there, if you're still taking the energy and the exposure of businesses or people that are at a level that you were, but you're not there anymore, then you've got to kind of find other input. Other energies, other vibes to kind of re-energize yourself and go "Okay, well now where do I want to be next, and what's going to allow me to open up my eyes that it's out there, and people are doing it, and kind of get revved up?"

So your circle of influence, I guess, is pretty important, and as you talked about ... So, books, audios, getting online, what would you say if anyone was like, "Okay, well I don't have anyone in my direct circle that's doing better than me that I can get that energy." It's kind of like going to the gym. You want to train with the biggest, strongest guy, because he's always gonna make you lift that little bit heavier or whatever, and you're always gonna grow faster than the vice versa. So what would you suggest to someone that doesn't have that in their circle, and they want to kind of get that higher energy out there? Where would they go?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, there's probably two things I'd suggest. One is there's heaps of communities out there that you can get involved in. Free communities that you can go and get involved in, that are there to actually help you, encourage you, move you forward. You can put your ideas into those groups, and I'm involved in a few of those groups as well, and that's big. The second thing for me probably is I read 10 to 15 minutes every day. I can say that now, because I wasn't a few weeks back. I literally dropped that out of my daily agenda and it was the wrong thing to do, so I'm back doing that now, and if I read and follow characters that help you grow internally strength-wise, so you've got that resolve ...

I don't think you can do what I've done for 14 years if I'm not determined to keep doing it, but business is hard. You know, being a father is hard. Being a person is hard some bloody times. Life drags you down, so read things that are gonna make you stronger as a person, and to strengthen your character and then you'll find ... Just keep putting it out there, looking for new opportunities to grow yourself and grow your business, and you'll find a path though. You'll find someone you'll connect to, or someone to follow, and it may not be that person that you hang onto forever to follow, but it could be that person that leads you to the right resources that'll make your business go to the next level, so just keep looking, looking, looking all the time, and you'll find something that's gonna help you. Don't stop. Never sit still, just keep looking, yeah.

Chris: Beautiful mate, no, that's fantastic. And I guess from a reading perspective, reading is super powerful and I totally agree. Will you have any ... One or two books that you'd recommend that you've read recently or read previously that have had a really powerful sort of influence on yourself?

Jaron Blackie: I'd have to send you the authors' names, but there's one called "I Have No More Excuses" I've been reading, because I was procrastinating too much, so I've been reading that. And I found that I was trying to multi-task, which you can't do. It's impossible. No one can actually do it. So I'm actually reading a book now about just single tasks, staying on track, and that's got me back to something I do. Every day, I break my day down into hours and I focus on a task for one hour, whether I finish it or not, and I move to the next task, and the next task. Yeah, it's got me back on track, so books like that. But there's so many different ones. Look I couldn't my hand on one right now to be honest with you, but there's probably like a thousand of them sitting in my office.

Chris: I put you on the spot there, mate.

Jaron Blackie: [inaudible 00:15:13].

Chris: Beautiful-

Jaron Blackie: No, this one I've got at the moment, no more excuses, yeah, that's an absolute, it's been a pearler for me lately, yeah. Basically, the author's just telling you to get off your arse and get going, basically. And it's good, yeah. Really good. I needed that.

Chris: Fair enough mate, and chunking things down, it sounds as though ... Rather than trying to do everything at once and getting overwhelmed and sort of freezing?

Jaron Blackie: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and that's what I was doing, right? I was looking at too much. I was thinking ... Yeah, looking at the big picture, whereas I'm better at just focusing on the smaller tasks, every day to day task. Achieving each hour, move to the next hour, and that works well for me.

Chris: No, I definitely agree. And mate, these days, people aren't short of information. You can get information everywhere, but in essence ... People used to be short of information and now it's gone to a path where there's information overload, and you've got to be selective about what you put your focus and your energy into, otherwise you're in a thousand different directions and actually doing nothing. So mate, I'm a huge believer in that and I totally agree.

So, I guess Jaron, to wrap up, would you have any words of wisdom? Or if there's someone that's in the online space that ... Or if you were speaking to yourself say 6, 12 months ago, what advice would you have for a younger Jaron?

Jaron Blackie: A younger Jaron? How long have you got?

Chris: A couple months younger, mate.

Jaron Blackie: Mate, seek help. Seek help quicker. Like, if you're struggling where you are business-wise, don't try and solve it yourself, right? Because there's smarter people out there that have already done it, so why try and do it yourself? Find those people, connect to those people. It's gonna cost money, but do it, right? And it is, like I've spent so much training on courses over the years, so much money. You've got to keep looking for them, right? And I believe, mate, in you, and Andy, I've found the people that are helping me go in the right direction.

So spend some money, find the right people, connect with them, and just ... Especially if they've got a system, just find a system that works and follow their system, you know? That's probably the first thing I'd tell myself to do right now, because I did spin my wheels in the mud for a while, trying to figure it out myself when I really should have just went, "No, hang on. Someone's got a system that's working. Just purchase theirs, copy it, get on with it."

Chris: No, mate-

Jaron Blackie: Try not to everything yourself.

Chris: Yeah, it's important, I agree. And it's ... We're not re-inventing the wheel. We're not trying to create something that's ... Anything you're looking to do in business, anything you're looking to do in your personal life, in training, in family relationships, the majority of things have been done before. So I agree with you, rather than trying to, you know, get the knife and kind of hack your way through the jungle, just find the path that's already been paved and go that format.

So mate, I appreciate your time. We'll let you get into your day, you've probably got your plans, your hourly goals, you're focused, but really appreciate your time, Jaron. Anything else, I guess? I know I've already picked your brain, we've got the one-liner, we've got the books, goal setting we've gone through. Anything else before we finish up today, buddy?

Jaron Blackie: Mate, no I don't think there's too much more I could say, to be honest with you. Just don't give up. People out there that are doing it like this, you're gonna find the way. I think there's too many personal trainers have got too much power inside them that the world needs to see to help ... To cure this obesity issue that's happening right now, right? It's huge, so too many trainers give up because they don't find the right help to give them the energy to go and help other people, so just keep looking. Keep working, don't give up, keep fighting. You'll get there. If you keep fighting, you'll get there.

Chris: Beautiful mate, appreciate your time. Jaron, congratulations once again on your results. Hats off to you mate, you really deserve it. You've been putting in the work, you put in the time, you know, time into yourself, time into your business, which is all-important and it's like, investing in yourself, guys, is like the best investment you can ever do. It's better than investing in the share market, better than investing into business or whatever it is, so I hear you loud and clear in everything you've said there, Jaron. But once again mate, appreciate your time, thanks for your time again, and no doubt we'll be speaking soon, buddy.

Jaron Blackie: No worries, thank you. Cheers mate, thank you.