As I was renewing my annual Personal Training license the other day the thought occurred to me that I've been working in the health and fitness industry for over a decade now. During this time I've learned many lessons and have made many mistakes. I remember when I first got started I had no idea as to what I was doing. I mean, I knew how to train myself, but I had no clue as to how to train other people. To make matters even more difficult I chose to begin my career in fitness as an Independent Trainer which essentially meant I was responsible for building up my own clientele base without the help of a big corporate gym or private health club. At first, the thought of how I was going to establish myself and create a solid reputation within this industry was a bit overwhelming. And I would be lying if I said there weren't times that I considered giving up and going back to school to learn another profession. However like most entrepreneurs I was young and ambitious and was willing to do whatever it took to grow my business and succeed.

As a Personal Trainer that's been involved in the fitness industry for over 15 years I've heard pretty much every excuse as to why someone cannot workout or as to why a person cannot do a particular exercise. I've met people at social events who've told me that they can't train with weights because they suffer from chronic lower back pain. I've had consultations with potential clients who tell me they can't squat because they have bad knees. I've had clients cancel their own sessions last minute due to a mysterious illness that just so happens to occur an hour before their scheduled workout, even though they've been feeling fine all week. Now by no means am I saying that none of these are valid reasons as to why not to workout. Oh no wait, that's exactly what I'm saying and here's why.

The other day at the end of one of our ladies-only group classes I overheard two of my clients trying to figure out how long they had been training with me. With a little bit of my assistance and our combined math skills we calculated that they had in fact been working with me for a little over ten years now. Once we had determined the timeline both ladies were in somewhat of a disbelief that they had been clients of mine for so long. For myself I thought nothing of it as the majority of my clients have been working with me for almost an entire decade now. Ofcourse I am more then grateful for the continued and ongoing support that we continue to receive from all of our clients at Forever Fit however for some reason I always just assumed it was normal to retain clients for the long term. After all, if we constantly strive to make our customer service exceptional and our clients continue to achieve results then why wouldn't they want to come back? Well after speaking with a few other independent trainers I really had no idea that this in fact is rarely ever the case in the Personal Training industry. In fact, most trainers have an extremely difficult time retaining clients and unless they work for a big corporate chain gym it can become even more difficult to build up their clientele based on their name, a few referrals and a decent marketing gimmick alone.

So how have we been able to retain clients for so long and how do we continue to do it? As much I would like to give credit to my good looks and my charming personality the reality is that I'm really not that good looking and I've been told that I'm not as charming as I might think. Therefore to give myself a better answer I had to sit back and reexamine our business. I needed to look at what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong. It's amazing what you can learn about yourself and your business when you step back and try to look at it through another person's perspective. But that is exactly what I did. And this is what I learned....

When most people hear the word "Bodybuilder" they usually automatically think of an oiled up, muscle bellied meat head posing on stage in a thong while grunting and groaning to every pose that he or she hits for the judges and audience in attendance. Now technically this is a bodybuilder. But did you know that if you are someone who goes to the gym on a somewhat regular basis and lifts weights along with performing cardiovascular activities then you too are also defined as a bodybuilder? Wait - What?