18 Jul 10 Steps to Become A Great Online Fitness Coach

Want to become an online fitness coach? There’s some things you need to know before you start

The benefits of providing online training are obvious.

• Help more people
• Make more money
• Have more freedom

And say goodbye to 4:30 am alarm clocks, packed lunches and the-toilet-overflow incidents. Yeah, we’ve all been there.

If you’re a trainer, you have a training business. Moving some of that business online is the next big thing.

Here’s 10 lessons I’ve learned from my transition from in-person coach to great online fitness coach.

1. Serve Your Audience, Not Your Hero

One mistake fitness professionals make is that they create content to seek the approval of their fitness idols.

If your goal is to help Frank the Accountant lose fat, you need to stop debating people on the Internet about AC joint functionality or maximizing insulin secretion.

Because Frank doesn’t care. Frank just wants abs.

When you structure a blog post solely to impress your fitness idol, you aren’t helping anyone. Instead, the subject, format and voice of everything you write should be catered the people you want to help.

It’s not about you, it’s about your customer. Never forget that.

People don’t care about you, they only care about what you can do for them.

They want to know your legit and you know what you’re talking about.

2. Seek Mentorship / Guidance

“A single conversation across a table with a wise man is better than 10 years of mere study with books.” -Longfellow

Find someone who is where you want to be. Then, do everything you can to help that person be more successful.

Don’t keep score or ask ‘what’s in it for me?’

Simply do everything you can to help that person, expecting nothing in return. Your energy will be focused on giving, but you will be shocked at how much value you receive.

Find somebody who has achieved what you want to achieve and willing to honestly share and do whatever you need to do to learn form him or her.

3. Walk The Walk

You will be judged based on your body.

It sucks, I know.

You can be a qualified coach and not quite look the part. You can also be a complete moron while being shredded out of your mind.

The truth is that potential clients expect you to embody your philosophies. This doesn’t mean that you need to be shredded, but you do need to appear like your ideal client’s idealized image.

Most general population clients want you to be lean and have some muscle because they want to be lean and have some muscle. If your target client is somebody who is quite overweight and you’ve been through a large weight-loss transformation yourself then you need to be healthy but being shredded might turn them off as could be viewed as unattainable.

Don’t complain and try to change what you can’t control. Rather, put in the work and get yourself in shape.

4. Work Your Butt Off

This is most relevant early in your transition from the gym to the internet.

Writing, shooting videos, and posting on social media all take time. And when you’re trying to build an online presence while still maintaining a relatively full client load in the gym, you must adopt a hustler’s mindset. Other parts of your life might fall by the wayside for a bit. This is all part of the process.

Because if you aren’t prepared to work extremely hard early on, you’ll never make it.

5. Bet On Your Strengths

If you write well, write.

If you’re attractive or charismatic on video, get yourself on Youtube, Instagram and Snapchat.

People always ask me, “Mike, should I blog or Youtube? Or should I start a podcast? What about form videos on Vimeo???”

Do whichever will allow you to add the most value for people.

6. Coach “Influencers”

An influencer is anyone with a following.

Coaching them allows you reach a larger audience, but more importantly, it gives you validity.

Let’s think about this from the potential client’s point of view: When they see an advertisement for your coaching on the sidebar of a random fitness website, they’ll probably think “big deal, another ad, who the heck is this guy.”

But when that potential client sees someone they know and respect that says you’re training them and have helped them achieve fantastic results, they are immediately more interested.

But TJ, how do I find a celebrity to train??

Obviously we can’t all Train the next Brad Pitt but think who has a following on a much smaller scale.

An influencer doesn’t have to be world-renowned.

Train the local councilor, train some local girl who has 8,000 followers on Instagam.

These people all carry influence in their own right.

7. Get Your Clients Amazing Results

Steps one thru seven don’t mean anything if you can’t execute.

You need to help your clients get leaner or stronger or build more muscle or become pain-free.

Whatever it is that they hire you to do, help them do it. There’s no substitute for results.

8. Be Insanely Honest

Don’t tell clients you’re giving text message and full Skype support if you are really sending the client to a 1000 person Facebook group to have their questions be answered by your third best assistant coach.

Not only does this make you fairly scummy, it also hurts your reputation and long-term brand equity.

Anyone can cash grab for two years in the fitness industry with lies and aggressive sales pages, but if you want to make it in the long run you need to be honest.

9. Really, Really Care (have tremendous empathy)

You will never change a life with an optimal 5x/week muscle gain program that had perfect rest times and optimal tempos and OMG the way that periodization undulated was so epic!

But you can change a life by really caring about your client.

Just because you may not be communicating in the flesh doesn’t mean you can’t go deep. In fact, the privacy of communicating online can actually allow you to explore deeper issues.

A bad break up or lost job that is at the core that binge eating issue isn’t easy to air out from a crowded gym floor at six in the morning. But from the comfort of your client’s home, they will be more likely to go deep.

Pay attention and care. You just might change a life.

10. Focus!!

This is probably one of the most important areas and where I see so many people go wrong.

Focus on one type of client and be the very best at getting that type of result. if its weight loss for women, just do that. If it’s bulking for athletes. Just do that. If it’s body building prep, just do that.

Having a clear idea of who your exact ideal client is will make your marketing 10x as effective and make you stand out a mile ahead of all of your competitors.

When you can speak to your exact clients set of issues, problems and emotions, you become the default solution for them.

Sure you can probably get results for everybody but that’s not what it’s about.

Don’t be the jack on all trades, be the master of one!

When you are first getting started, it will be tempting to take anyone who applies, but you need to remain true to your skills.

For both yourself and your client.