4 Steps To Add Value To Your Business And Create A Greater Impact

HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY AS A
FITNESS PROFESSIONAL SERIES
PART 2: THE VALUE LADDER
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
By Vito LaFata

Here I will discuss the Value Ladder and look at
how I can help you earn top dollar, help as many peo-
ple as you can, and still have time off to enjoy life and
family. If you remember, we talked a little bit about the
three stages of being a ﬁtnesspreneur. If you haven’t
have a chance to check that out, I recommend that
you go back and check it out.
I am assuming that you have and you have chosen
the stage that you want to be in as far as whether you
1
THE VALUE LADDER

want to be in the technician stage one or stage two or if you want to be mov-
ing on toward stage three as an entrepreneur.
The critical step for you to make more money as a personal trainer requires
you to get good at creating the simple value ladder here.
The value ladder increases your income while taking less time to de-
liver your results to your clients. That’s really the sweet spot for you learning
how to make more money as a ﬁtness professional, group instructor, studio
owner, and anything in ﬁtness and wellness space.
You have three factors here; one is that you’ve got price. Price is going to be
increasing as the value ladder builds; value up on the left axis is going to be
going up as you deliver more and move up the value ladder.
However, time actually declines as you come across the value
ladder because in the beginning, the program and the things that we do re-
quire a lot of our physical time. If you remember what we were talking about
in the technician stage, it required you to show up, you’d be the trainer, you
to do the work and that meant that it took up a lot of your time and your in-
come was only as much as you can command in that physical presence and
that’s why the value isn’t high priced and the time it takes is high.
FITNESSPRENEURTIP:
The value ladder
increases your
income while taking
less time to deliver
results to your
clients.
2
HOW TO MAKE MORE MONEY AS A FITNESS PROFESSIONAL: THE VALUE LADDER
The Value Ladder:
Step 1

Feeder program
gets clients charged
for private training,
semi-private or
group training.
Let’s break this down and look at some scenarios that might ﬁt inside of your
business. Here we are down at the ﬁrst step of the value ladder where it
says assessment intro session and feeder program. This is some of the tradi-
tional things that we've talked about in the industry. You’d do an as-
sessment to get somebody in, try a free personal training ses-
sion, try a free class, come on in and get that overhead assessment. All
those things have been traditional ways that we've gotten people in and they
take a lot of time because either you or a trainer has to do that and then try to
sell the person on continuing on up the ladder. Basically, that’s getting them
to a private training, semi-private or group training, and then moving them up
to the next level.
Often, we are not taught how to do those intro sessions and assessments
well, getting charged so that you make income on them, they are given away
for free and I am an advocate of that feeder program and that little initial offer
for somebody that has come on in. Show them that is going to work but the
3

FITNESSPRENEURTIP:
Your clients are
shopping for results.
Results make them
believe in you.
more you can actually make sure that someone is committed
to something on that level – maybe they are using a nominal fee of
$27 to show interest for that intro session and assessment you’re placing
value on that – you tend to see better conversions of people that have paid
that enrolling up into other programs. You are going to get less people in be-
cause that will be more of a barrier for some people. So it’s just a kind of
trade off that want to make this up. Do I want to charge that initial assess-
ment or intro session and know I’m going to get less people but
they are better qualified? That is the business decision. You want
to get more people on the front door and then rely on your marketing team or
yourself to follow up. Make sure the person wasn’t ready to buy that day;
was there a follow-up mechanism in place to have them come back in to still
deliver more value? Keep educating so that as the time does become right
for them, they are still in your business marketing follow up.
Third one; the feeder program. It tends to be my go-to program where we
create what I call a dating program; it might be a five, ten or seven
day challenge. It doesn’t make a difference, anything that is better than
a free week pass and an intro session because here is the problem: with a
free week pass and an intro session, they don’t deliver any results. All they
do is just let the person test out a service, but don’t understand how it helps
them get a result. People are not shopping for a free class; they are not shop-
ping for a personal trainer. They are shopping for a solution to some sort a
problem they have.
Let’s choose an example of a person shopping for weight loss. A class by it-
self isn’t a weight loss solution. A trainer by itself isn’t a weight loss solution.
A program that comes with nutrition, cardio, exercises, motivational coaching
that starts to become more of a plan, a program, or a system; that’s a
solution.
We know 10 pounds isn’t going to come off in that first 5 days but can you
make a great impression on them by showing them you aren’t like the other
facilities out there. We don’t have only training sessions. We are basically
your one stop shop. We’ve got a program together and here’s why and how
it is going to get you your results. Maybe you struggled in the past; you’ve
tried exercise, you’ve tried gyms, you've had memberships, you've tried dif-
ferent training. Why hasn’t all that worked?
4

This is potentially because you weren’t in a program. We are going to get
them in our program and right now you can help them within the next three
or ﬁve days to get three to four pounds off, until then, continue to talk to them
about how else we can continue that journey toward those ten pounds.
Now you’ve put them into a little feeder program that allows you to deliver on
your word. You can get results for them; you design the program
to be turnkey and now the person that comes in gets that result! You look
like the business owner or the trainer that is true to their word. That little dat-
ing process makes them believe in you and what you can deliver.
That is going to help you deliver more value and help them roll over into your
business more than just wanting to come in and try a session.
What changes?
5
“You design the
program to be
turnkey and now the
person comes in
and gets that
result!” MorehelpfuladviceTEXTTEXT

Nothing. There is just a small change in the value proposition of what you
are offering to them; that’s more in line with what they are actually shopping
for. They are shopping for the results.
Well, you doing just one training session and saying that it’s going to get rid
of your knee pain isn’t the same as letting them know what the
program is. You explain how it is a combination of myofascial release,
stretch and ﬂexibility, mobility, stability and it’s going to be a four-week pro-
gram. Each week is designed to cover one of those pillars, so come on in
and taste two sessions at this special rate; I can show you what this looks
like and then we will continue to scale you up. Hopefully that is making
sense at ways that you look at building that ﬁrst value ladder step and what
you can do a little bit more with those feeder programs. You want to keep
those intro sessions and assessments, by all means, they are highly recom-
mended but I would potentially think about making them a little
bundled offer.
As we move up that value ladder, the next thing you can do is going to allow
you to start commanding more dollars and delivering more value. Let’s obvi-
ously move them into our classical training model, whether it’s private, semi-
private or group training.
Private training has a limit to how much impact it can make and how much
income it can bring in. If you’re running 60 minute sessions, you’re capped
by 8, 9, 10 sessions a day. Whether it is you or the trainers, you are capped
by number of people each person can see before they can collapse at the
end of the day. It’s kind of reality. You can only do so much with 60 minutes
sessions.
If you want to create more value with less time with private training, I am a
big advocate for a 30-minute model. You can get bigger results by in-
creasing the intensity. We know that results are not correlated in duration;
results are correlated to intensity.
If you get your clients to cut chit chat down and get more focused, they can
get better results in less time. You can then get more sessions in,
which means more dollars coming in because of the rate change you can of-
ten charge. You might be charging $65 per hour session, you can charge
$40 for a half hour, you get two people on $40, you get $80 an hour instead
of making $65 an hour.
6

You’ve just increased your income and you’ve increased the number of peo-
ple you can see and you do so in less time. That is the model that I am a big
advocate of when it comes to private training.
From there, I often like to move people into semi-private training that is a
2 to 4 person model and I still keep it at the half hour because in
those half hours, we can work just as hard. We get good group energy and
the group commander and the whole thing going to with semi-private, we still
get good results and now we’re connected to more people. When you con-
nect more people in your facility, you are building in the culture and
the family feel of what’s happening inside. That is going to get them be-
cause they are going to come for the program and they are going to stay as a
community. The more you can build communities, the more your people are
going to be able to step.
7
The Value Ladder:
Step 2
FREEHANDOUT
FITNESSPRENEURTIP:
Semi-private
programs will attract
people because of
the program and
make them stay
because of the
community.

Now once again, you might be charging like $25 for a semi-private half hour
and if you get four people in there now you see $100 a half hour, $200 an
hour. So one trainer can go from making $65 per hour when they were on
60-minute session to $80 when they were in the half hour private session to
upwards to $200 when they are running a fully booked semi-private session
at half hours.
Right there you’re increasing your model. You are creating a little
bit more of a hybrid offer because you still have people that want that private
model. You use that in select scenarios. I use that more for newbies that
have never exercised before, people that might be injured that might need to
be in a private scenario, letting them know that once they advance past the
newbie and passed the injured phase, we move them to semi-private training
and group training.
Group training is just that ability to deliver that 5 to 15 people a session
depending upon space limitations and things like that. Start to create
group-training rates where you see it is popular with
Crossﬁt and all the little boutique style gyms that are out there. These gyms
also know that by running group training at the popular morning times –
5:30am, 6:30am for pre-work crowds, 9 am for the stay-at-home moms and
5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm at night for the post work crowd – they have cre-
ated a schedule that allows them to make an offer group training at an afford-
able rate for almost everyone.
So, the plan you should be thinking is this: “If you can get 15 people in per
hour with my group training and you are running 4 sessions a day, you know
that you can then sell at least 30 to 60 memberships to make up your group
training program. You can actually sell more than that because none of them
are going to come every day. If you’re charging $100 a month for your group
training and you know that you have a capacity of 60 sessions, you know that
you can be running $6,000 a month from your group training.
8
MorehelpfuladviceTEXTTEXT

If you have extra number of people in your semi-private session, for example,
let’s say you have 40 people in your semi-private training, well now you might
be like I am bringing $6,000 from semi-private, $6,000 from group training
and $4,000 from private training. I've created a scale hybrid model and
each step up from private to semi to group takes less
time. You get more skill from each trainer or yourself and you can make
more dollars for the matter of time that you’re out there and that is how we
move up that value ladder.
Now you can add specialty programs, nutrition and online
coaching; the beauty about these things is it is all added value. You’re
going to have people needing more coaching than just the physicality of
when they see you because there is 23 to 23 and a half hours that they don’t
see you and everyone wants some mobility and some ﬂexibility; there are
things that pop up every day and they cannot make it to the gym or they are
traveling but they need some solutions on the go.
9
The Value Ladder:
Step 3
FREEHANDOUT

When you have online coaching as a component of that, you are now able to
help them stay in touch with you, get programming, motivation, inspiration
and get answers via online coaching. That can be either by add on or using
one of our BeachBody coaching models. Our nutrition program is where we
plug in like Shakeology as an example. We plugged in a super-food meal
replacement because we know our clients were suffering nutrition wise. It
was the biggest element that I couldn’t control with clients. We could work
them out all day and the moment they get home, they ate terribly and there is
not much else we could do about it.
So we were like; we’ve got to do something about it so we started to do
meals that are a super food. Make it convenient and friendly for
them and assure them they’re going to get better results – and that proved
true to the tune of additional six figures in a year.
What we ended up finding out was that for every a client that was on Shakeol-
ogy, we were bringing in $30 because the client’s need nutrition month in and
month ou and that money was coming in just like a membership does, every
single month. And we started to build more value by getting them better re-
sults, as now we were the one stop shop helping them with nutrition, online
coaching and now we started to have additional revenue that was coming in
while we slept. It wasn’t something that we had to resell over and over.
It added a lot of value and once we did the work, it was bringing it
every month – that’s how we got massive amounts of freedom of time and we
just simply started to add specialty programs, fun things like tank-top arm
challenges, butt and thigh challenges, back solution challenges, our new
world programs, our knee programs, trainer programs, triathlon programs,
marathon programs, outdoor venture boot-camps.
We started to just scale outside of standard services that everybody provides
so that we can start to differentiate ourselves from everybody else out there.
All of the sudden, those brought in additional revenue streams. We were
now able to start having people who didn’t even live near us
be able to partake in our challenges because we had these online programs.
We were making money from people who didn’t take up space in the gym,
didn’t alter our overhead and didn’t acquire my trainer’s times. That meant
high profit margin, high value, and high-ticket items.
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FITNESSPRENEURTIP:
Money is not a
barrier for clients in
high-end coaching.
Achieving their
dream is the thing
that they want.

This is probably the sweet spot that I think most business owners and per-
sonal trainers are missing. That specialty program; nutrition, online coaching,
that’s the window that has opened for everybody to jump in right now, as you
can instantly add that to your business now, with turnkey solutions. If you
want see how we've done it, go to www.vitolafata.com and enter your name
and email into the Income Freedom Plan and I’ll show you how you will plug
ﬁve additional revenue streams. It’s just what’s happening right
now with the online and Facebook group; you’re missing an opportunity of
adding more value and increasing your income.
Last value ladder step is where you really step into that high-end coach-
ing info product and master lines, and this is where you might
start taking some of the things like the specialty programs and create them
into high-rank coaching. It might be that you are doing triathlon programs but
there is a subset of people inside there that really want to get after and they
11
The Value Ladder:
Step 4
FREEHANDOUT

Stabilize your
business and create
monthly
memberships out of
everything you do.
want super specialized coaching. They want it monthly and they are going
after championships or record-breaking times. When you get into ambition or
aspiration coaching, you can command high-end dollars to the tune of $500
to an additional $1,000 a month, if not more, because for those peo-
ple, money is not the barrier anymore, achieving their dream is the
thing that they want.
High-end coaching is something that can open up possibilities for you de-
pending on what your specialty is or what you might be focused on. Maybe
that's not the way you’ll operate now, but you at least want to know how you
eventually add items. I remember one of my mentors Todd Durkin, he cre-
ated a mastermind for clients because he had a lot of CEOs and executives
and he knew that those guys were very high performers. They were looking
for more coaching beyond just the ﬁtness, the exercise
and the nutrition. They wanted to know how to build their best sales
12

as CEOs, be better leaders and entrepreneurs, so he connected them to how
nutrition, exercise and mindset all made them better at all those things that
they wanted and he created a mastermind program for them. That became
additional revenue. He was able to coach many people at once but was com-
manding top dollar because it was about ambition not just about losing
weight or dropping inches to fit in their clothes better.
Almost in anything that you guys have out there, with your experience, knowl-
edge and programs, you can start learning how to package that
stuff to what is called info products. You can package and put
it into an online course, PDFs and they become products that you can sell
and market online. That can start to bring you an income
while you’re sleeping. You’ve got all the elements of master-
minds which is just again like a version of high-end coaching but all of those
start to bump you up that value ladder. They all are always delivering better
results along the way and you’re able to increase that income and move it
across.
For your business, I want you to think about a first step that I always coach
people on; start selling packages because one of the downfalls of a trainer is
the “feast or famine income.” Stabilize your business and create monthly
memberships out of everything you do. Classes become monthly member-
ships, training sessions become monthly programs and look for opportunities.
I started to do things; I noticed most people either come once, twice or three
times a week for training, so I created a full time a week personal training
package or group training package. We scaled it to private, semi-
private and group training and it was 4, 8,12, unlimited and I just
took the average price of $50 an hour and my four time a month semi-private
training package is $200 a month. You are then able to offer to your clients
packages, design programs and our programs are either depending
upon what is going to take to get you to your result. The person maybe is ag-
gressive about their result and you are like; Yes then we are going to train
three times a week and you’re like, awesome, its 12 sessions and that’s go-
ing to be $800 a month and instead of them having to put down $2,500 -
$3,000 per package, you’re able to say find the answer with us at $800 a
month, your sessions are due each month we don't bail, if you cancel, we re-
schedule, we get our sessions every month they don’t roll over borrowing
emergency or something like that, we get them in the month so that you’re
13

Do you want to add
more
value to your
clients?
Do you want to
add more value to
your clients?
consistent, you are accountable to your program, that’s how
you get results. That’s all we’re about here.
Now you start to create a stable income where you knew the money
was coming in on the first of every month and being online helps you bill any
day a person comes in so you have money coming in all month long, what-
ever you want to do, you can sell a specific date, and that allows you to get
out of the “feast or famine,” create some cash flow and continuity, stabilize
the business and now you’ve got something running. You are no longer
stressed about what’s going to come in each month and off you go.
A strategy will simply be from here, I want you to go and implement it in the
next week or two. No longer offer packages, offer just programs. Your cur-
rent clients that are on packages, start with the ones that you are closest to
and let them know about the value of this; more consistency, more results,
more accountability, the ability to train more, we don't skip session, we just
reschedule them so they see the value of why you are doing this and your
best client will totally get in! You let them know this is what you are doing,
this is going forward as a business, most clients are totally understandable
about it when they get there, and there are the ones there that are laggards
14
COMMENT

about it, the time that the other people start shifting to it, eventually they start
to come around and start to shift to the monthly billing cycle and off you go.
Worst case, if you have a few that don't want to change, they’re grandfa-
thered in there no big deal, but at least going forward, start to make that shift
that will stabilize the business. Ask yourself if you want to add more
value for clients and what way can you do it? Go back and look at that
value ladder and ask yourself along the way, what I can do as far as setting
up a feeder program into your business.
If you don't have any feeder programs, check out the
http://grouptrainingmoneymachine.com
and get yourself some turnkey group training systems so you can start plug-
ging feeder systems into the front end of your business. Look at how you
can create a hybrid model scaling private training and moving it to half hour.
What can you do about adding in semi-private, group training, do you need to
bring other people in to cover some of those things? What can you do about
nutrition or online coaching if that is something you don’t have, then go book
a strategy call with me at www.vitolafata.com , or go to my Team Rockstar Fit
page and go to my income freedom plan training series. I'll show you how to
add this kind of stuff so we are on a strategy session, I will teach you that and
then eventually, depending on the way you are in your business, the higher
end coaching and info products and masterminds could be a part of that.
At least start designing and architecting what you want
from your business. I want you guys to be like one of my BeachBody
coaches here, Spase who was a trainer and spin instructor up in L.A., and
ran out of hours even in his days to help more people and to make more
money and we met at a mastermind event. He was into personal develop-
ment, we tried to be like how do I grow as ﬁtnesspreneur I’m talking about
and we went right to value ladder, third spot; right to nutrition and online chal-
lenges and ending those feeder systems. You went to plug in nutrition and
the time he did that, six months later he had an additional $3,000 a month in
income just by starting that program. That was a progression in his business
and now he is starting to be like that each month because he is selling more
of the residue, he has given up all of his spinning classes and he has now be-
come more of a virtual health club owner.
15

He has a lot of his business online and he is able to create mobility
and flexibility in his lifestyle and he feels that now progress is
opening up, he is outside of that technician and instead of being that studio
owner, he is the virtual studio owner and he is moving toward that fitnesspre-
neur and that is the promise of where we can all be going.
You guys are all learning step by step how to continue to learn how to make
more money as a personal trainer, as a fitness professional, studio owner,
wherever you find yourself in this industry. We can go out there and keep
making this big difference while still creating that income and lifestyle that we
deserve as health care today. Stay tuned for next week's video where we
start to step into to build your dream income blueprint, until then, keep going
out there making a big difference today.
For more information visit www.vitolafata.com.
Share this with your friends if you find my advice helpful.
16
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4 Steps To Add Value To Your Business And Create A Greater Impact