I used to think getting clients meant getting better at selling. Closing harder, pitching better, overcoming objections, all the stuff the gym taught me. It never worked. I'm an introvert and every sales conversation felt like I was performing and the other person could tell.
To be clear, sales can absolutely get you into this industry and build you book of business. If you genuinely like sales, more power to you, this post isn't aimed at you. But for most of us it doesn't scale, you can only have so many awkward conversations on the gym floor before something gives. It's what led me to go independent after 3 months at Crunch.
The shift happened when I realized selling and marketing are completely different things. Selling is convincing someone who isn't sure. Marketing is making sure the right person finds you already wanting what you offer. So I stopped trying to close people who didn't want what I have to offer and started building systems that attracted people who were already looking for what I do. Google Business Profile so I show up when someone searches, a website, a consultation process that lets the client sell themselves on whether it's a fit, a billing structure that filters out the people who'd ghost anyway.
Part of this was niching down hard. Once I figured out exactly who I help and stopped trying te be everything to everyone, the right people started finding me on their own. I don't make sales pitches anymore, don't overcome objections, don't follow up with people who ghosted. If someone finds me and the fit is right they sign up, if not we both move on, no hard feelings.
The other things nobody talks about is that when you're not performing in the sale you don't have to perform in the session either. My clients sign up to work with exactly who I am, not some hyped up version of me I'd have to keep up for years. I get to just be myself and they love me for it, which is odd because the gym trained me to think being myself was the problem.
Here's why this matters more than it sounds. I started at Crunch and out of the cohort I trained with I'm the only one still in the industry ten years later. Everyone else burned out. Most of them weren't bad trainers, they were good to decent trainers who got crushed by the sales floor and quit before they ever got to do the actual job. I work with as many clients as I want now and I love it, and if I had stayed on the sales treadmill I would have quit too and every client I've worked with for the last 9/10 years would have ended up with someone worse or no one at all. Burning out on selling isn't a personal failure, it's the system doing exactly what it does to most of us. 80% of trainers burnout in 2 years. Trainers who could have been found by clients that love them. Trainers not giving up on their dreams of coaching and helping people change their lives.
Anyway, that's the shift that worked for me. I've had a great career that was almost over in 3 months and claimed all of my cohort in 4/5. Marketing over selling, niching over generalizing, being yourself over performing. If this helps one trainer achieve their coaching dreams I'm happy.