As our trainers begin to earn $10,000-$50,000 in revenue per month, a question we commonly get asked is "when is the appropriate time to start building a team and hiring people?" These trainers are starting to make real money and are looking to outsource their remaining admin tasks in order to grow faster. MacroActive trainers share the following in common: they spend as much time working on their business as possible instead of working in it. Instead of telling you what we think is best, we have interviewed one of our most successful trainers to get his take on how he did it. Josef Rakich has helped an overwhelming number of people and he would not have been able to do this without 1. A premium software platform to support tens of thousands of clients at once and 2. A team of people working behind the scenes. Josef’s first employee was an admin/customer service role. This was a jack-of-all-trades type role that could be on the front line dealing with clients but also behind the scenes helping to create content if necessary. When it came to customer service, this person needed to be across both the physical training questions as well as the nutritional questions. So ideally they needed to have that prior knowledge and passion themselves. This person would respond as themselves and didn’t act as “Josef Rakich” although some trainers have chosen to do this as well. This meant that when someone emailed ‘Josef Rakich Fitness' they would be replied to by a member of the “team”. MacroActive has created an entire division in the company to facilitate this first hire on your behalf. We have a call centre of personal trainers working for us to answer inbound questions on fitness, nutrition and mindset. We handle all the interviewing, hiring, firing, payroll, holiday pay, sick days etc on your behalf. In exchange for this service, you pay an additional 5% revenue share. This essentially works out at breakeven. In the last year MacroActive has made exactly the same amount from that 5% as it has cost us to deliver that service on your behalf. We see the time and energy to manage this division as an investment in you, our trainers. The numbers are really clear on this; the trainers who leverage this service earn more, impact more lives, avoid burnout and are ultimately able to focus more on high value tasks to grow their business. The next person Josef hired was his manager, so a leadership role came next as opposed to another admin/customer service role. He felt that this really transformed Josef Rakich Fitness from a personal brand to a business. A leader/manager would be someone who can add value to the development of your business, help you organise your accounting and give you direction. Josef also believes that having a manager helped him make that mental shift from running a side hustle to growing his business. The necessity of this leader/manager role boils down to how hands on you are as a manager. If you enjoy people reporting to you and are skilled at managing time then I might skip a manager until after your next 2 hires. From here it will become a lot clearer who those next hires should be to build a strong team that is aligned with the company goals. Once Josef had customer support and management under control he hired a video editor who could also create content and run social media advertising. So more specialised than what the admin person could help with but still very flexible in what they could do. If you are a hands on manager, this video editor/social media advertising person will be your first hire after outsourcing your customer support *essentially at cost to MacroActive*. When you bring on more people, you will notice the business growing. At this point, Josef needed to hire another customer support person to help the original employee with the volume of queries coming through (this is something you don't have to worry about if you outsource at scale with MacroActive). Josef now had the time to answer DM’s and interact with his clients to build trust and emotional connection. Those tasks still take a lot of time but often it will translate to longer customer lifetime value. Your clients will value your business so much more when the face of the brand actually takes the time to interact with their audience. We have found that replying to customers DM's with voice/video replies are an exceptional way to deepen the relationship and trust with your audience. This can only happen when the other more tedious and manual processes are removed from your priorities like replying to customer support emails or editing content. This will help your clients to stick to the meal plan and training programme meaning it is more likely they will see results. Who you hire must also be relevant to the stage of business you are in. For example, if you are gaining heaps of organic reach and can’t keep up with demand it probably wouldn’t make sense to hire a social media and marketing person to increase sales. You would want to get someone who can assist with all of the customer queries you are receiving. Again, this is something MacroActive does on your behalf if we manage this for you. Then once you are managing demand on this end, look to hire someone who can help grow your business. An easy way to work this out would be to write down your three most time intensive tasks that you do regularly. From this list, which ones could another person be taught to do? What tasks do you want to remove from your daily routine and how will this have a positive impact on your business? What did Josef do with the extra time he gained from passing on those tedious jobs? He was able to create a lot more content. Ironically, the quality of content was a bi-product of more volume of content. Obviously not all of the content landed perfectly but through producing a lot more, he began to discover hidden gems within the volume that we otherwise wouldn't have found if we were too focused on making everything perfect. For a long time Josef was also doing customer support and so once he could fully pass on this job to his employee, he could actually focus on the customer experience - the content and growing himself as a personal brand. Working ON his business as opposed to IN it allowed him to level up and change so many more lives around the world. So, who are you going to hire next?

People always talk about designing a strong culture for your audience. This can be hard to execute when you don’t have a strategy. We wanted to give you a few tips on structuring this process for a successful brand. A strong message and culture will help promote an environment where your clients/customers become emotionally involved. They are your TEAM/TRIBE and will experience an IDENTITY SHIFT while there. This is connection . What is the message you are trying to promote within your online personal training business? Are you afraid to be polarising? Meaning that you remain neutral on controversial/relevant topics and opinions. This can be boring for your audience as they want to believe in YOU and what you believe in. To have an engaged audience you must find the people that resonate with your content the most, attracting these people promotes a culture you want to build. Remember that you are in control of your own brand culture and as the leader and inspiration, have the responsibility to set the standard of this culture before the client signs up. That way the client understands what they are getting themselves into, feels like they are joining a supportive team of like minded individuals & are more loyal to the brand. What is your team called? Who are they? What is your “I statement”? For example, you created a business called ‘Fitness Champions’ and you refer to clients as ‘FitChamps’. Therefore your audience will begin to use this phrase in the context of who they are. “I am a FitChamp” not only are they signing up to your customised online training and nutrition plan but they are having that identity shift, moving from their previous unmotivated self to their higher self as a FitChamp. To ingrain this even further into the clients mind you could give them something to repeat and believe in like a mantra, manifesto or mission that they can print and put on their fridge/wall. This is physical representation/proof that they are having this identity shift to their higher selves. It will also keep them accountable to family/friends around them while promoting your brand at the same time. When it comes to introducing the members/team/tribe into the exclusive facebook groups and communities you have set up. Make sure that the standard and expectations are clear and strict. You will notice that most exclusive Facebook groups now have a video or post that is compulsory at the top of the page to set the tone of what value the group provides to members and what the members must provide to the group. It can be easy for Facebook groups to become stagnant and boring, especially if you stop contributing. Conversely Facebook groups can become a breeding ground for drama if not controlled properly. A moderator can be a very effective way of monitoring the group tone/message. This will ensure the culture stays consistent. Make sure the value provided within the group or community is unique to what you are already providing online. It must be exclusive and you can expand from there. Using strong vocabulary unique to your brand is important when setting the group tone also. For example you may always use the phrase “champion mood” which describes when someone is doing something positive for themselves e.g going to the gym when they don’t want to. “Champion mood” is unique to the Fitness Champions brand and adds to the exclusivity of the group as only FitChamps use this saying and therefore feel special. This will also increase retention as leaving isn’t an option if the client feels emotionally tied to the community and what it promotes - if you were to leave you would feel like you have lost “your people”. The overall exclusivity and scarcity feeling is key and can be done in other ways like through merchandise for example. Having limited drops, stock and sizes means each time you do a drop only a certain amount of the community will have access to it. Give your community first access to this exclusive drop (if you are offering it to the general public). Once people are wearing the brand, the identity shift, this will also contribute to the emotional connection and increased retention. There is a herd mentality when selling within these groups. Your community is actually a group of buyers as well. When they see one person has gone and purchased the limited merch drop or exclusive offering, another person will want to do the same thing. This is because they are seeing it LIVE as opposed to being in a mail chain where it is all very isolated. Do you have an initiation for new members? How will they feel vulnerable but supported and lifted by other members, reinforcing that they have found their ‘team’? For example, all new members must post a ‘before photo’! It keeps them engaged because they are extremely nervous about posting something so vulnerable in the group. They will keep checking in to see the response and be overwhelmed with support from the group that has always had this set tone from the beginning. You want something for your community members to strive for while in the community. It is great to have the pull of others striving for their goals to motivate you but after a while you need something extra to show that you have been working the hardest. For example, shouting out people in the group or providing rewards to those who stand out in some way like with an insane transformation. But what will really make the person feel special is that public acknowledgement by a person of influence (you). If you want to be even more strategic you could ask clients to share their stories and what part your training/nutrition plan has played in their development. These can all be used as free testimonials which will contribute to your social proof outside of the group and make other people want to join in. Throughout doing all of this, you need to make sure you are establishing your character into the culture of the group and community. This will validate the buyers decision as they can see you are aligned with the group and genuinely care about the members as well. Be present within the group to a capacity that is appropriate for you. Make mention of your community on other platforms e.g when you go LIVE on instagram or facebook do a shoutout to your community. You want to make these people feel heard. This way others who aren’t already FitChamps will think “what is that?” “I want to be a FitChamp!”. They will then seek out how they can be a part of this group. Those were just a few ideas of how you can strengthen the brand you have worked so hard to build! Refer to our other resources for further information and tips. Check out our podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

If you have heard “email is dead” - you are WRONG! Having an engaged mailing list is not only an effective technique to increase sales and grow your audience but it can also help you to build a trusting and loyal fanbase meaning they are more likely to remain consistent in buying from you. But before getting too excited about having a massive mailing list, you must also be aware of how to maintain this audience and ensure that they are actually clicking into the emails. In a MacroActive Radio podcast episode , we brought on Michael Trillsteen who is “the guy behind the guy” meaning he is the guy behind influencers successful email marketing. Within the episode we discussed various techniques a person can use to improve their click-through rate which is the amount of people engaging with each email. You want your emails to have authentic purpose and value at the core of them. The best way to achieve this is to write authentically. Don’t try to make it too “fancy” - it will actually make the process more difficult for you. Grammar can be dealt with later, the main thing is that you are sending out content that sounds as if it is coming directly from you. Try to address them directly e.g “you are going to achieve your goals” “Join my exclusive facebook group for more information”. This is a conversation between you and them individually. Sales emails can leave consumers with a bad impression if not used effectively. For example no one likes heaps of spam emails that only ever ask the recipient for a sale and never provide any value. This value can be anything from workout inspiration to educating the recipient on mindset. When your click-through rate increases it improves your chances of appearing in the main inbox more often instead of being pushed to promotions or spam. Another tip here is to avoid using certain words like free/sale/offer/last chance as google will recognise this as spam/junk. Here are a few ideas you can implement to give your emails the click factor and remove the icky feeling that comes from spam. Could you add a relevant headline? What’s happening in the news right now and how can this relate to the content you are sending out? These headlines in emails will be attention grabbing as it is directly relevant to the recipient at that time, increasing the likelihood that they will open the email. Is there an opportunity to create clickbait here - clickbait being a dramatised title to pull people in but that has little relevance to the actual purpose of the email. How can you create clickbait with relevant titles? Is the value you are providing creative? Don’t be afraid to be a little bit “out there” to grab attention. A blog, poem, video or something a bit out of the ordinary might help! Every creator and influencer will have a different type of content they prefer to share. Find your niche; is it humour, education, inspiration or something else? Find creativity within what you enjoy! The potential customer wants to see the most authentic you. Make sure you have enough variety in your content as well, don’t make it predictable! You want your audience to look forward to receiving these and recognise that they are about to get something from it. Keen to learn more about email marketing? Check out the podcast episode here .

Imagine years of building up a global fitness brand, restless nights, hard work and a lot of time spent with clients for it all to be ruined in a couple sentences. This is the power of a bad google review. Some of our trainers have been here before and it can cause a lot of stress! So in today’s blog, let’s have a chat about why it is so important to monitor your google reviews and then how we do it. It is easy to forget about google reviews as often the majority of sales come through our social media feeds and what we call “social proof” is pushing them. An example of social proof is a comment where someone has explained how much progress they have seen from your plan. A negative google review is also a form of social proof and therefore a representation of the customer experience. Having negative google reviews as a result of not monitoring them can decrease your rating and give potential clients a bad impression before even entering your site. You should also be genuinely interested in feedback regardless so that you can improve a customer’s experience with the product and avoid having a negative representation of it online. In contrast to the above, having NO google reviews can do just as much damage. This is because when you receive reviews it can increase your search engine optimisation and visibility. Google will track the activity of your ratings and reviews and then boost the businesses with high engagement. Visibility is really important because it means if someone is to search general terms like “fitness trainer UK” or “female body transformations au” - if that is something you focus on or promote then you are more likely to appear in search results. When you are receiving a higher number of reviews and then replying/engaging with these reviews, it shows potential customers that you are “showing up”. If you are showing up it means you care about your customers both past and present as well as demonstrating a keen interest in the development of your business whether good or bad. This will provide a positive impression to both existing and potential customers. Overall, 70% of online searches go through google! Woah! So the chances of someone stumbling on your google reviews is high! You don’t want one negative review to drown out the hundreds of happy clients who are silent on google. First step is to google yourself! Check in on your reviews, what is the current state of them and do you need to do some improving? Even if all you see are positive reviews, make sure you are replying and engaging with them to demonstrate that you are “showing up” as discussed earlier. Now that you are fully aware of why we need google reviews, let’s understand the how. Here are 10 examples of how we can increase our google reviews: Do a round of emails to trusted clients. Do a swipe-up link to your google review page (find this link by googling “your business - reviews” then select “write a review” copy that link and put it in your swipe-up. Include the link to your google reviews on your website. Send out a bulk email to your mailing list. Use an online tool - for example; “sweepwidget” is a tool where you can run giveaways by providing entrants with an easy CTA like following an instagram page or leaving a google review. This increases the likelihood of more people entering as they can do it all from one page. Running your own independent giveaway. Run a promotion in exchange for a google review (e.g 20% off). Testimonials in exchange for product (free access to online app for 3 months). Promote it across all social media platforms. Create a Linktree for your bio and include the google review link as one of them (this is a software where you can have multiple link portals inside one link so your customers can access many different parts of your offering e.g your website and google review page). Now that we understand why we need google reviews and how to increase the amount of them - our businesses can be at its best! As a last resort to get you even more interested in the importance of a google review, here are a few stats. According to a blog written by www.oberlo.com - 56% of consumers read at least 4 reviews before buying a product and product pages with reviews experience 3.5 times more conversions than those without! It’s the small changes that will have the biggest impact. Find more awesome education in our other blogs or check out our podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

WHAT WE USE FoodWorks is a trusted nutrition analysis which is comprised of the most up to date, accurate and latest food data. FoodWorks includes regularly updated quality-controlled food data. It comprises of both official and specialized data. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN? Accuracy. The nutritional data used for the production of your meal plans, is accurate, brand specific, up to date, specialized and professionally checked. SO... WHY IS IT DIFFERENT FROM THESE OTHER POPULAR APPS? It's professionally checked. Common applications do not rely on nutrition professionals to input data.Instead, they allow anyone to enter data, even you! This is not professionally checked and therefore is much less accurate than FoodWorks. It is important to also note, that nutritional data may differ significantly between brands, countries even for the same product. Common applications will not take this into account, while FoodWorks will. TAKEAWAY MESSAGE Our In-House Dietitian uses a software called FoodWorks to ensure the most up to date and accurate nutritional information is used. Common applications may not be as accurate and therefore there may be discrepancies between information. Rest assured the nutritional information in your meal plan, is accurate.

Ken Brickley and John Fernandes (MacroActive's CFO) go through the process of setting up a US bank account remotely. The payment gateway Stripe is not available in all countries. If you live in a country where Stripe does not operate yet, this is how to setup a business and a bank account in the US so that you can process credit cards using Stripe.