New Year’s Resolutions: Coaches Edition

Setting You Up for Success in the Upcoming Year

In this article, we’re going to explore how fitness professionals like you can set your own professional New Year’s resolutions so you can adjust your fitness practice to both grow your impact and your income in the upcoming year.

And, to make it practical, I’ll share the practices we’ve implemented with success at my gym.

So, as clients swarm in with optimistic New Year’s resolutions who are imagining it to be the perfect opportunity to improve their health, lose weight, and start new habits, where should we as fitness professionals focus our professional New Year resolutions?

And how can we fully support these hopeful new members while also advancing our own careers?

Let’s be intentional about utilizing this demanding period for sustainable good – helping more people, perfecting our craft, and yes, boosting income. You can create New Year’s resolution ideas that can grow your personal impact and prosperity.

What You’re About to Discover

I have drawn from my nearly two decades of experience operating a thriving gym to outline practical steps you can take over the next year to become an even more effective personal trainer or fitness coach. Whether you work at a large gym, own your own studio, or train clients virtually, you will find advice to help you:

• Enhance your skill set through continuing education

• Update your offerings to meet changing client needs

• Upgrade your facilities and equipment to attract new members

• Leverage technology to reach more clients

• Develop customized nutrition and wellness plans

• Increase client satisfaction and retention

I invite you to use this article as a handbook to set yourself up for greater profitability and success in the coming year. I aim to see your fitness business continue to flourish and change lives in your community. I want you to make more money than the previous year and help more clients. Use this as your guide to make the next year your most rewarding year yet!

Why You Should Listen to My Advice

As a fitness professional with nearly 20 years of experience in the industry, I have a deep understanding of what it takes to operate a successful gym. In addition to being a founding member of the Healthy Behavior Institute, I have owned my gym for 14 years now. Despite economic fluctuations and even a global pandemic, my fitness center has thrived, averaging over $1 million in annual revenue for the past 8 years.

Located in a mid-sized Midwestern town of just 110,000 residents, the continued growth and profitability of my small business is a testament to my business acumen and knowledge of the fitness industry. I have learned how to adapt to challenges, identify growth opportunities, control costs, retain members – all critical skills for gym owners and managers alike.

With decades of hands-on expertise running every aspect of a thriving local gym, I understand firsthand what it takes to create an exercise space where people want to work out.

My insight comes not just from business books but from real-world experience managing staff, serving members, and constantly improving my own gym. I hope you find my advice helpful as you look to upgrade your own professional craft and fitness facility in the upcoming year.

And since you’re still reading, you have some faith in my skills and you’re ready for my recommendations for your professional New Year’s resolutions. Let’s get to it.

So what New Year’s resolutions can a fitness professional make to increase their impact and their income? This article will explore several opportunities for fitness professionals to grow their client base, their revenue, and the results they deliver to their clients. Whether your clients are pursuing better physical health, mental health, stress relief, weight loss, a diet program, or a “fresh start”, you’ll find practical information here to grow your fitness practice and its impact.

Standing Out with More Than Just Fitness

With a wave of eager new clients coming in with New Year’s resolutions, simply providing an intense workout is no longer enough to stand out.

Nearly every gym and fitness professional claims to offer the “best” training. Yes, understanding exercise science and consistently delivering quality training is an absolute must. However, to truly differentiate yourself, succeed in a competitive market, maximize the new year rush, and retain those clients beyond the start of the year enthusiasm, you must go beyond just physical fitness guidance.

So if challenging workouts are now standard, what else can fitness professionals do to stand out from the competition and get better outcomes for their clients?

Two Major Opportunities

For the first step, let’s identify the two major opportunities to set your clients and your business up for success in the upcoming year:

1. Elevating Current Offerings

Explore ways to enhance the current services you provide to add greater value. For example, you could offer more customized nutrition planning, recovery protocols, check-ins, and goal tracking. Identify gaps in your existing programs and fill them to better meet client needs.

2. Exploring New Services

Brainstorm and integrate new offerings such as mobility courses, recovery modalities, or wellness coaching credentials to serve emerging needs. This will put you on the cutting edge of the industry. Adding entirely new streams of revenue also provides financial upside.

With this advanced organizer in mind, the specific advice and strategies later in this article will be easier to categorize and implement. Now let’s dive into the details!

Elevating Current Offerings

Your current offerings are a great place to spend some time exploring opportunities.

Whether they are long-time clients or New Year’s resolutions newbies, bringing more value to your current service offerings improves sales, retention, and referrals.

And that begs the question: how do you improve value for your clients?

The most impactful and simultaneously least expensive option is a shift in mindset.

Elevating Your Approach

When looking to improve service and value for existing members, it doesn’t necessarily mean spending mass amounts of money on the newest equipment or trendiest location. The process starts from within.

Even with limited resources over a decade ago – an underfurnished gym with a less than ideal location – my business still found success.

How? By focusing first on mindset.

This is an actual picture of my first facility 👇, and even with these humble beginnings, I found success.

I recently heard a fellow fitness pro encapsulate the core mindset shift in a catchy saying:

“No JAS, No JAM.”

Initially cryptic, his explanation brought an “aha” moment – a reminder that transformative coaching begins with presence, care and customization for each individual, not facilities alone.

This mantra helps avoid complacency while elevating each interaction to maximize positive impact. Now let’s explore how to apply this reframed perspective…”No JAS, No JAM”

Embracing “No JAS, No JAM”

This motivational motto – shared by successful coach and gym owner Andy McCloy – initially puzzled me. No jas no jam? But his explanation brought revelation and concise wording to guiding principle of mine – a reminder to sustain presence and personalization.

With endless sessions, it’s tempting to slip into transactional mode – push clients through workouts for checks. It’s more transactional than transformational.

No JAS

JAS stands for “Just Another Session.” No JAS calls us to resist that urge by fully engaging each and every time we serve our clients.

When mental fatigue creeps in, this mantra refocuses our energy into the now.

We best serve others through nurturing connections in the moment, not phoning it in. Each meeting nourishes bodies, minds and spirits when handled with care.

No JAM

Similarly, JAM stand for “Just Another Member.” No JAM calls us to deliver to each individual with the dignity and respect they are due.

No JAM guards against viewing the wave of excited newcomers or even current members as nameless visitors who should be taken for granted.

Not Just Another Member. Make each person feel uniquely valued by understanding their specific vision and constraints to craft suitable support. Patiently nurture initial inspiration into sustained self-improvement.

Their initial enthusiasm requires custom fuel tailored to their hopes, needs and lifestyles to spark lasting change rather than short-lived fads.

Elevating Our Roles

By embracing and embodying these principles even amidst exhaustion, we elevate roles from trainers to transformational coaches.

Each January session and every session throughout the year become not just appointments to power through but opportunities to positively impact lives for years.

No JAS, No JAM is a powerful and concise reminder for us to deliver at the level that true professonals should.

If there’s one powerful and absolutely financially free New Year resolution for you to take on as a fitness professional, its “No JAS, No JAM.”

Practical Applications

Going from aspirational saying to real word application, I want to share a few quick and inexpensive opportunities for you to integrate this ideal into your practice beyond just bringing your full presence to your sessions.

So let’s now dive deeper into tactics and best practices for better serving current clients to drive better adherence and loyalty and results, applying the No JAS, No JAM to your actual fitness practice.

Schedule Check-Ins

At my gym, all the staff has paid time to reach a quota of people contacted each month. We use a texting platform called Naamly to do this. The link is below.

Although contacting clients is important all year long, with the new year resolution rush, it’s imperative to make sure that the relatively large influx of new people get the appropriate amount of attention, especially at the beginning of their fitness journey with you.

Schedule “check-in” reminders, make sure to interact with clients between sessions, and send text messages inquiring about and celebrating topics such as their experience, their progress, and their evolving goals.

This dedicated contact time conveys care for the individual behind the membership.

Show Appreciation

Demonstrate gratitude in subtle but meaningful ways, like writing small thank-you notes.

In a world where we are all inundated with emails, there is something unique about sending a handwritten thank you note. This is another practice that we’ve integrated at my gym as well.

Celebrate Milestones and Inflection Points

Note training anniversaries, goal progress, major health improvements, or major life events, both celebratory and challenging.

Consider monthly/quarterly recognition, and complimentary services like sauna or Normatec boots, which are included with the membership at my gym.

More on these services later in this article.

Ongoing Check-Ins

Beyond the brief check-ins like the texting mentioned earlier, schedule monthly or quarterly meetings to reassess goals, progress, and satisfaction.

With meetings like these, you can adjust programs accordingly while reinforcing value and commitment. This process is built into the 360 Wellness Coaching system which I’ll cover later.

New Services, New Opportunities

Now that we’ve addressed the biggest opportunity with your current service offerings and some low-cost ways to bring more value, let’s move on to possible opportunities associated with expanding your services.

As fitness professionals, some of our New Year’s resolutions should center around our careers.

While better year-round client dedication comes through deeper service, we can also introduce additional offerings to drive results and retention.

Recovery Services

Tools like saunas and Normatec compression technology, promote healing and combat overtraining so clients can progress faster. They also attract new demographics seeking self-care.

A recent survey from MindBody listed “Wellness” as a priority to a majority of fitness clients and both of these options definitely fall into that category.

I’ve added both of these services to my gym and I’ve provided links at the end of this article for you to see these tools for yourself.

Admittedly, investments like infrared saunas may not apply to everyone reading this article, but smaller tech like the Normatec boots can still enhance recovery protocols for accelerated results at a very affordable initial expense.

Either one of these examples can be used to offer more value to your clients’ current memberships or offered as stand-alone services to increase revenue.

In-Person Services

Whereas the sauna and the Normatec boots can pretty much stand on their own, you can also expand your services into areas that you personally interact with. Programs like stretching courses and mobility training not only equip you with expanded skillsets but also provide premium services clients will readily invest in.

I now have several fitness professionals on my team that offer Stretch to Win. They have added serval clients to their schedule from this service alone and they enjoy the variety from training clients.

Another option to both improve your clients’ results and add to your revenue stream is 360 Wellness Coaching. With these credentials, you’ll be able to create a holistic approach beyond just physical fitness to improve diet, sleep, stress management and more. This “business in a box” model is a proven way to add new revenue streams.

I have been using 360 Wellness Coaching in my gym for years now and it is a differentiating pillar that sets my team apart from the surrounding competition. Link at the end of this article.

Specialized Services

When you’re speaking to everyone, you’re speaking to no one. Identifying new target markets and addressing them can be the key to new growth.

Explore offering services directed at specific groups like high school athletes or mature populations.

For years now at my gym, I’ve offered our Fit Over 50 small group classes. These have been great for my community and great for my gym.

Explore different opportunities in your community to serve different groups.

Leveraging the January Rush

The January fitness boom produces invaluable chances to positively change lives. By fully capturing the wave of enthusiasm and demand, we can transform both bodies and minds for the long haul.

We owe it to ourselves and those we serve to set aspirational goals that align with our purpose as professionals during this unique period of excitement and opportunity.

The Takeaway

The influx of January gym-goers seeking self-improvement provides invaluable opportunities for coaches, trainers and fitness professionals.

Rather than seeing this as just a seasonal spike in business, steer your professional New Year’s resolutions toward viewing it as a chance to form lasting connections through both deeper service and expanded offerings.

By fully capturing New Year momentum, we transform our impact as facilitators of positive life change in our communities. More fulfilled members ultimately translate into greater professional prosperity as well.

Here’s to a healthy and rewarding New Year!