Great Blog - Dax Moy

[DKing]

I wanted to throw out a link to an absolutely fantastic blog, Dax Moy's Personal Trainer Success Academy blog: Personal Trainer Success Academy

Dax touches on tons of valuable info in the blog and does it all without most of the marketing strategies we have all come to expect from blog posts and newsletters. In fact his most current blog post really fits with a lot of the discussions we have had here recently about marketing and the fitness industry.

Personal Training Blasphemy?


Can I ask you a question?

When was the last time you walked into Amazon, Barnes and Noble or even your local bookstore to buy a book?

Was it recently?

When you were browsing around reading the book-sleeve, did an attendant run up to you and say "Quick! There's only 2 left! Buy it before they go!"?

What about the last time you bought a book?

Did you hand over the book and the money only to find out that they'd thrown 18 other books, a CD collection, a bunch of book tokens, the author's telephone number and a money-off voucher to Starbucks in your bag?

No?

I wonder why that is?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that it's because bookstores generally value the works of each individual author and rely upon the fact that people are buying, say, a Stephen King novel because they actually like his work, value his craftsmanship actually WANT his book.

Nothing more, nothing less than that.

It's funny then, that in the internet publishing world we tend to do the exact opposite.

We tell people that 'There's only 4 left!' or that 'The price will go up at midnight... I can't guarantee the price!' or that 'Due to such high demand we'll be discontinuing the book but when we bring it back it'll be twice as expensive".

Worse still, we sell the book itself and then bundle it with a stack of bonuses so large that it would take 2 solid months of 8 hour days to get through them.. even if they wanted to!

(I recently looked at a product that had 103 'bonus' items attached to it!)

Excuse me, but this is just nuts!

Read the rest here: Personal Trainer Success Academy: Personal Training Blasphemy?

I also want to mention that I recently picked up his product "Scientific Advertising for the Fitness Professional" and have been impressed with it. The best part was that I had an issue with my order and his automated software not sending me my download. When I e-mailed Dax about the issue he personally e-mailed me back in under 30 minutes with the link to the download and an apology. It was fantastic customer service.

I feel like a lot of us have been asking what the next step for fitness marketing is, and I really feel like Dax is probably it.

Danny

[OldGuy]

Don't be fooled Danny. If it sounds too good to be true it usually is.

[Isaac Wilkins]

OG, are you saying that Dax is talking out of both sides of his mouth?

I'll preface this by saying that I'm taking part in the 12 Days things, as my gift was on the first day.

What I believe he's saying in his blog post is that when one puts a product up for sale, it should be good enough to stand on its' own two feet. It shouldn't need 1500 free things that supposedly add up to $4000 of value for a $20 book.

I don't think that has anything to do with his free offers on the 12 Days thing. Of course it's a list building tool. He's plainly said it in his advertising emails, I've told my list that, and I bet a bunch of the other contributors have. We've all told our people that they're welcome to unsubscribe from any list that they join.

It does give a lot of people the opportunity to get a lot of cool information from one place.

I was a user of the 12 Days last year, and I got a ton of great information that basically turned my business around. I've noticed that there doesn't seem to be as much fitness business info this year, but the offer is young and I don't know what's coming up.

Dax is in this business to make money. So is Pat Rigsby (who posts here on occasion), the other starter of the program. So am I. That doesn't mean that we don't give away a lot of great information for free. Helping people and giving away info, which we enjoy doing, is also great for business. I don't see why the two can't coexist.

[OldGuy]

OG, are you saying that Dax is talking out of both sides of his mouth?

Yes.

Dax is in this business to make money.

Can you tell me what business that is?

[Deserve]

The only thing this blog post says is that you don't have to give away products to make a sale. I agree with that. He's right. The more you give away the more you are costing yourself. If you did the math you are probably loosing money.

He didn't condemn the long form or any of the other methodology that we are all so vehemently against.
In fact from looking at his site he uses the same methods everyone else uses. He is hardly unique. Taken by itself I have no arguments with the blog post. It is solid.

[Isaac Wilkins]

Originally Posted by OldGuy

Yes.



Can you tell me what business that is?

I didn't realize that it was hidden. Dax did train and own a studio. I have no idea if he still does.

Now he does a lot of business coaching and consulting for fitness professionals.

[Chris Correia]

Originally Posted by Isaac Wilkins

I didn't realize that it was hidden. Dax did train and own a studio. I have no idea if he still does.

Now he does a lot of business coaching and consulting for fitness professionals.

I'm going to post a very simplistic question (simplistic because I can make an argument to answer it, but it still needs asking). Please forgive me, too, for what is a rather undeveloped analysis, but I'm trying to get this post done and get off for the day.

Why does "moving up" to become a marketing/business consultant for fitness professionals elevate someone's status, in many people's eyes, over someone who chooses to continue to actively simply train or coach clients and become a better trainer/coach?

I think many fitness professionals harbor a secret desire to "graduate up" from actual training to simply being a business person who somehow makes money off fitness.

If someone just wants to make a lot of money off fitness, then graduating up is probably not the route. If you want to make lots of money, then become an entrepreneur who happens to have fitness products or services as what they sell, but the goal is to make money, period. The product or service is actually interchangeable.

Generally if someone is an entrepreneur, they are out to make money first, and the product or service is irrelevant, or at least takes the back seat.

I think that selling fitness professionals on some sort of progression from struggling trainer, to more successful trainer to whatever comes next is a bit of a false promise. It pretty much comes down to being either the trainer or the money makes. It's really hard to be both. Just because someone can do it does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that lots of people can do it, at least not while maintain strong quality and integrity of the product (fitness/training quality/value).

[Isaac Wilkins]

Originally Posted by Chris Correia

I'm going to post a very simplistic question (simplistic because I can make an argument to answer it, but it still needs asking). Please forgive me, too, for what is a rather undeveloped analysis, but I'm trying to get this post done and get off for the day.

Why does "moving up" to become a marketing/business consultant for fitness professionals elevate someone's status, in many people's eyes, over someone who chooses to continue to actively simply train or coach clients and become a better trainer/coach?

I think many fitness professionals harbor a secret desire to "graduate up" from actual training to simply being a business person who somehow makes money off fitness.

If someone just wants to make a lot of money off fitness, then graduating up is probably not the route. If you want to make lots of money, then become an entrepreneur who happens to have fitness products or services as what they sell, but the goal is to make money, period. The product or service is actually interchangeable.

Generally if someone is an entrepreneur, they are out to make money first, and the product or service is irrelevant, or at least takes the back seat.

I think that selling fitness professionals on some sort of progression from struggling trainer, to more successful trainer to whatever comes next is a bit of a false promise. It pretty much comes down to being either the trainer or the money makes. It's really hard to be both. Just because someone can do it does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that lots of people can do it, at least not while maintain strong quality and integrity of the product (fitness/training quality/value).

Chris, I understand what you're saying, but perhaps you misunderstood me.

I wasn't trying to imply that Dax had "moved up", although I'm sure his income has. I was trying to indicate that his business had changes and give an idea of what little I knew of his past history, since OG wanted to know what his business was.

I am a trainer, that's what I love to do, and that's what I'll keep doing at least in some capacity. I'm personally thrilled with the idea of running my own business, training-based, but I also got my undergrad in a business discipline and I've loved writing for as long as I can remember. Based on my life interests I can see myself training, running a business, and writing. I think there is a sense that trainers feel that in order to be successful they need to write a book (or whatever).

I'm not particularly interested in becoming a marketing consultant, as that's part of the business that I truly dislike. I could see myself developing training systems and operations systems for other businesses, but I'd rather just keep making my own successful.

I agree and disagree with you on the prospect of not being able to make money and be a good trainer at the same time. I think one can make a very, very good living training clients. The question is where does the priority lie and how much money are you talking about. If someone's looking to make $500k or more a year, then probably actually training clients isn't going to happen. You'd be too busy on book tours, seminars, opening facilities, etc doing whatever necessary to hit a mass market. There's a big jump between the $50k trainer and the $500k "trainer", though.

Personally I'm looking to train move towards about 20 hours of personal clients per week, have a small facility with 1-3 trainers under me, and keep writing. I think it's important for a trainer to maintain clients to force you to keep getting better. Once you become a paper pusher you lose that element a bit.


This was a bit disjointed, but hopefully I got my point across.

[Chris Correia]

Issac, thanks for the reply. I wasn't really addressing your post, per se, but the situation overall.

The "moving up" comments, I suppose, can be summarized as my impression that being successful/making lots of money is actually more valued that providing good training. There is nothing at all wrong with respecting and valuing a high quality art/skill/ability, in this case, being a really good trainer.

I think of the definition of pornography, knowing it when you see it. There is some invisible, moving line that one crosses at some point where the income drive/concern supercedes the concern for training/quality.

My suspicion is that someone, at some point, maybe a Ryan Lee, maybe a Dax Moy, maybe not, becomes a money maker over being a good trainer. And, I use the term trainer loosely. It might be someone selling fitness products or services that staff or other clients deliver, or it might be selling a fitness business system.

Generally, I think the best stuff work -- best training, best food, best art, whatever -- comes from the technician in the trenches. Yes, with some business savvy, a decent living can be made doing that. But to move past some yet-undefined income level, the quality/skill/art takes a back seat, and it become about the money. People can fool themselves as to what is their motivation and what sacrifices of quality they are making or fostering, and people working to "train the trainers" might also be playing a pied piper song to trainers looking to better their stead.

Just an observation/caution, not to you, but perhaps just to hear myself talk and feel important about my analysis.

I've stolen this thread; this should properly be it's own topic. To be fair, I've tabbed Dax's blog and I'll check him out a few times to see what's he's about.

[DKing]

Chris,

I think you asked a fantastic question. To me it isn't so much "moved up" as it is provide a service or education in an area I am unfamiliar.

I know nothing about marketing or business. I do know that I need to know about marketing and business to be sucessful in this industry so I had to seek out and learn about that side of things. I started by using standard marketing or sales texts but the problem was that applying them to fitness ideas wasn't always easy. So to me its much easier and more time efficient to seek out trainers who are not only great trainers* but who are very sucessful on the business side of things and read how they did it. I would rather spend twice as much money on a book by Dax with proven methods of fitness advertising that I can read and apply as soon as I read it then get a lower cost general advertising product and have to experiment and adapt it to fitness marketing.

So for me it isn't so much that they have "moved up" in the fitness world simply that they have achieved success in an area that I want to achieve success so I want to know what they can teach me. If I could train for the rest of my life and make enough money to provide for a family that would be awesome. I have zero desire to move into the business side of things but I really appreciate the people like Dax and Ryan Lee who do and can help me make more money.

*Dax is also a pretty fantastic trainer. If you find some of his training articles you will find its very similar to a lot of the stuff we all talk about. He really is a guy who walks the walk on both the fitness side and the business side.

Danny

[DKing]

Originally Posted by OldGuy

Don't be fooled Danny. If it sounds too good to be true it usually is.

I don't see anything wrong with the 12 days of Fitness promo. It isn't shady marketing or offering millions of bonuses on his products its a collection of trainers getting together trying to get there name out to new audiences. Everyone wins with a situation like this. People can choose if they want to get free info from trainers and if they choose yes then the trainer gets a chance to market to a new person. If the product sucks than chances are the trainer won't make any money.

Danny

[Isaac Wilkins]

Originally Posted by DKing

I don't see anything wrong with the 12 days of Fitness promo. It isn't shady marketing or offering millions of bonuses on his products its a collection of trainers getting together trying to get there name out to new audiences. Everyone wins with a situation like this. People can choose if they want to get free info from trainers and if they choose yes then the trainer gets a chance to market to a new person. If the product sucks than chances are the trainer won't make any money.

Danny

Exactly.

One thing I'll mention "behind the scenes" for those of us who contributed. We were cautioned very hard by Dax and Pat not to add marketing to our products. We were allowed a bio page and links to our website (duh), but they went out of the way to tell us not to sell anything. They also checked out most, if not all, of the products beforehand. I've not heard if they turned any down, but I've also not asked.

I'm sure you're thinking "sure, lure them in with free stuff and THEN sell them". Well, again, duh. If your business is based on online sales, then that's how it works. However, if your free stuff is crap, then there's no way in hell you're going to convince someone to pay money for your other stuff.

***Interesting note on bonuses: I recently heard a local diamond seller's ad on the radio pushing engagement rings for the Christmas season. They gave the usual blah blah about the rings and sale, but their final offer was: Buy before December 26th and receive a genuine leather photo album!

Seriously? The promise of a photo album (even a nice one) is going to convince me to come to your store for an ENGAGEMENT ring over another store?

Someone explain that one to me.

[OldGuy]

One thing I'll mention "behind the scenes" for those of us who contributed. We were cautioned very hard by Dax and Pat not to add marketing to our products. We were allowed a bio page and links to our website (duh), but they went out of the way to tell us not to sell anything. They also checked out most, if not all, of the products beforehand. I've not heard if they turned any down, but I've also not asked.

OK, so I went to the first guy, Vince DelMonte. Signed up for his newsletter and the "free gifts". Once I clicked on submit it went to this page.

More of the same shit.

[Chris Correia]

I came across some of Dax's stuff on Youtube. It was OK. Seemed basically solid.

I read some of Dax's blog. Also generally OK. I did laugh/cringe at him replying to a commnent about something he posted on a/his site a while back which he referred to as "the style of writing in vogue back then." It was essentailly the style of fitnessness/marketing writing used a bit ago, and still used by many today, that gets blasted by some here. In vogue for what trainers were told to do by Ryan or someone. Not necessarily in vogue by people reading it.

Danny, I hear what you're saying about learning about business and marketing. The funny thing is that I bought a couple of Ryan's DVD's a while back. In one of them, essentially a video of a seminar presentation he gave (six figure trainer), he takes simple marketing stuff I've come across in other training materials (I call it the marketing for dummies stuff, since it is now pretty common knowledge to anyone who pays attention to such stuff) and focuses it/slants it to fitness professionals. Seems easy enough, but he was the first to really do it. Bang. Instant success. I'm not sure if I'm more jealous, more astounded, or more perplexed.

I'm not sure what my point is, exactly (Friday night, and I've already gone out with the missus, eaten some stuff, and had a few beers ). So, I'll defer to something my martial arts grandmaster said a couple of years ago at a meeting of black belt instructors: (paraphrased): "You hear a lot these days about good marketing, all over the place, over and over; you don't hear much, if anything, about good martial arts." That's, perhaps, my main caution in all of us. When it comes down to it, business is business and training (quality) is a separate matter. Don't get the two confused, for oneself, of course, but also in the people we consult with, or even admire, for what they've achieved.

I don't begrudge anyone for making a decent living at what they do. Just grist for the mill.

[exactly720]

As a student of Dax's current Mentor program, I will quite obviously defend his position, and put to rest some things that are not clarified on this thread...

1. Dax does train clients on a day to day basis, along with his extensive team of trainers at his studio in London.
2. He is in my eyes the most influential trainer in the UK if not the world for his techniques of assessment and training mechanisms to make incredible changes to every one of his clients.
3. The 12 days of fitness promotion IS the real deal. The program allows many trainers like me break into the world of online marketing, yet at the same time provide the public some awesome free information. The feedback I have had from my own list members has been amazing, with many shocked with what information they are being GIVEN!
4. If you want to learn more about yourself, your business and your life then there is no better person to have as a mentor. Having met with and spoken to dax at length on many occasions, he is a genuine, kind and very generous individual looking to help as many people get more out of this profession as possible.

Yes it is a business and good luck to anyone who doesn't fear making just a fraction of the billions of dollars being spent by the consumers on health and fitness every year!

Hope that clears a few things up...

Tim