Why You Must Niche To Succeed As An Online Trainer

Hey guys, Chris Lynton here. And in today's video we're going to be talking about why niching or niching is the most important foundation to a successful online trainer, online fitness coach, or an online coach in any aspect. Now, niching or niching, I'm going to talk ... I'm going to refer it to a niching depending on what country or part of the world is, it comes down to your pronunciation. But niching is a critical aspect. The reason being is there a 7.6 billion people in the world. If you go out there and you're trying to be a generalist trainer, you're trying to go out there and say, "Hey, who wants an online coach?" You will not stand out. You will not stand out through the crowd. You will not cut through the noise and as a result you will not get noticed and you will not get anyone coming towards you.

Secondly, if you do not niche and you are a generalist trainer versus a specialist trainer, clients will see you as a dime a dozen. And if you were to go out there in the world and say, "Hey guys, I'm an online trainer. Who wants to be trained by me?" There's already 100 of people doing the exact same thing. And so as a result, the client is going to price shop. So the client will pm you or email you and say, "Hey, I'm looking for an online trainer. What are your prices?" But they're also going to shoot that email to 50 or 100 other people. And really stickily all they're going to do is just try and make you all fight over that one person reducing your prices again and again and again and again until they just pick the cheapest person or they end up just going with no one because they decided something they're not looking to do and they weren't that interested in the first place.

And this is the most frustrating things I find most business owners fall into this trap, is being price shopped. Now, if you are unique, if you niche down, if you're a specialist, you have less competition, you will not be price shopped. Because rather than someone who's going, "I'm just going to go to a generalist trainer anyone who can tell me how to lift some weights," or whatever it might be. If you have someone who's like, "Well, I'm a mother, I've just had three kids and I'm looking to get back in shape. I know I went to a gym down the road and I got trained by an 18 year old kid, a guy, and he didn't really know what to do and he just had me doing burpees all day long. And to tell you the truth, my legs just got chunkier and I didn't lose any weight," or whatever it might be. "And I gave up after a couple of weeks."

The problem there is they found a generalist trainer and they have a bad memory. They have a bad experience of that generalist trainer. Now, what are they going to do if they still want to get results are going to leave that person. But then they're going to try and find someone who truly understands them, their needs, and how to get the result they want. So what are they going to do? They're going to ask some of their friends that are probably similar to them, they're going to go online and start researching to find people who are similar, they might go into a group, they might go into a forum of people similar to them and ask, "Hey, I've got this problem. Has anyone had a great trainer, online trainer that has helped specifically with this problem?"

And as we roll, if that was your niche, if you are one of 10 trainers in the world who you know, or 100 trainers in the world that were in that niche, all of a sudden you're going to get someone researching you, they're going to start chasing you, they're going to reach out to you because they see you as a specialist and they're going to see the previous trainers as a generalist who failed them. They're going to see you as an expert who can actually succeed and help them, and as a result, they're going to be happy to pay whatever prices. They've had that pain and failure. They want to resolve badly. They've done that. They're now doing their research. They're going to do it right. Of course, they're going to pay whatever price is required. And the analogy I like to give, the easy analogy I like to give that everyone understands is doctors. Now you've got generalist practitioners, GPs. General practitioners are what a general family doctor is and the type of person you go to when you've got a cold, or you've got the sniffles, when you need a flu injection, when you've got a headache, when you've got a sore foot, when you've got an earache, whatever it might be, because they are generalists. They know a little about a lot but, unfortunately, the way it is these days is those people don't earn much money. They're a dime a dozen.

They're the doctors you see crammed into those medical clinics that have 20, 30 people just lining up waiting. You go in for 5 minutes, go in for 10 minutes, ask a question, out the door, and they get in the next person. And these people, unfortunately, these general practitioners are not highly paid. They work extremely long hours and it is just a churn and burn churn and burn. On the flip side, you've got specialist doctors, generalist practitioners, and you've got specialists and they're people like heart surgeons, brain specialists. I had foot surgery. And who did I go and see because it was a sports related injury? I sought out the best foot specialists, best sports foot specialists possible and I went far and wide. I travelled to a completely different hospital very far away from my home to get this specialist to work on my foot. I waited in the waiting list for three months even though I could have gotten in the next week with someone else. The reason why, they were specialists in the specific injury I had. I sought them out. I researched them. I sat in the waiting line for months and I went and paid their high prices. It's just an awesome example of what people do for specialists versus generalists.

Now, niching, coming back to that, by niching you're becoming a specialist. How do you niche, you might be asking, well, what you want to do is you want to think about what skill sets you have, what passions you have, and who you've been able to help in the past. These three things will generally be a ... Circle around kind of your quadrant of circling around where your ideal niche would be. And you might be thinking, "Well, cool. You know, that is quite general, Chris. How can I break that down into a level?" So what you want to do guys, ideally, is ask yourself, who could you get two or three testimonials off today? Who have you already got two or three testimonials off at the moment or more? Look at those testimonials. Look at the people that you could get a testimonial from and ask yourself, "Okay, is there general categories that these people are falling into? Like are they generally females? Are they generally males? Are they generally this age? Are they generally looking to get this type of result?

From there, that'll give you some insight into where you are a specialist, where you have specialist knowledge, slightly more than the average trainer and because you've been able to help these people get a result and time and time again, you generally finding you get your best results with this type of person. Now some of you might have a range, a broad spectrum of that. The next level to go down is go through what is your passion or also think about where do you fit? Could you be your niche? Have you walked a path? Have you, for example, are you a skinny guy who's packed on lean muscle even though you have a small frame and it took you years and you tried and tested and you've been able to do it? Well, lo and behold, you're going to attract those type of people towards you. You're going to attract who you used to be versus and who wants to be where you are now. There's no better testimonial then your own personal journey, so think about that as well. So your skill sets, your area of passion and who you've helped before, all of these things leave clues.

Now think about them, spend five or so minutes, think about them, and as a result you're going to get a good understanding of what your ideal niche is. Generally, from doing that exercise, you know there is much more detail exercises we take our students and clients through. But top level, generally from doing this, you should have about two ideas, two paths that you could go down and ideally if you're at that stage, what I'd recommend is shoot us through an email [email protected], [email protected]. Shoot us through an email, ask us the question, get our thoughts on ideally ... A little bit of background on yourself and ideally which niche that we are finding out of the two. A would suit your best but B is performing the best in the market right now. So if that makes sense, and if you'd like that help, make sure you do that. Feel free to do that more than happy to help and give that clarity and then literally from there, once you have that strong foundation, you go to the next level. That's it for me. Bye for now.