The Trackster

The Trackster is online software that helps Personal Trainers communicate with and motivate their clients.

In any business communication with your clients is crucial.  For Personal Trainers who’s business is improving the lives of their clients, communication is critical.  Personal Trainers are motivators, they are helping people to get into the best physical (and mental) shape they can be.

In an article on stevehochman.com, Craig Ballantyne has written a guest post about 5 Marketing activities a trainer should do each month.  It’s a great article with some great tips for Personal Trainers (or anyone in business really) that’s well worth your time.

I want to concentrate on tip 2 – Increase and improve consistency of client contact.  This one is close to my heart, because it’s the very reason why we built The Trackster – to help Personal Trainers communicate with their clients.

Excuse me for 10 seconds while I give you the sales spiel – By using The Trackster in your Personal Training business, you can send email messages to one or all your clients, send sms text messages to one or all your clients, send email marketing newsletters to all your clients plus prospective and past clients, along with tracking your clients training programs and goals, plus much more.  End of sales spiel

Another great tip is using Facebook and setting up fan pages.  There is plenty of great information out there about using Facebook for your business.  Mashable.com has one of the most comprehensive guides to using Facebook for your business, from the basics right through to using Facebook apps to promote your business.

With all the free information available to anyone on the internet, and through local libraries and through tv shows etc, anyone can find information about getting fit, keeping fit, eating properly and being healthy.  Personal Trainers are a great source of this information, but let’s face it, you can get it anywhere.  What a person can’t get anywhere is motivation and support.  That’s where the Personal Trainer comes into their own.  Motivation and support.  And communication is a crucial part of that.

Communication is where Personal Trainers can differentiate themselves in this business.

Do you know of any other ways trainers can communicate better with their clients?

I noticed this website pop up a couple of weeks ago, but saw a video demo of how it works yesterday.

It’s called Square and this is their website.  Basically they are building a tool and app for your iphone to allow you to take credit card payments online.  The video demo below probably explains it as well as I could.

It’s still in it’s early stages, but imagine the possibilities.

I know it’s better to have your clients pay you before hand, and using direct debit so you don’t have to worry about collecting from your clients.  But what about having casual visitors to your bootcamp?  Maybe a three session pass to have a try and see what Personal Training is all about.

It looks like a very cool way of quickly and easily taking small credit card payments, using just your iphone.  What do you think?  Would you use this in your business?

I have a secret – I love motivational quotes.  I can sit and read through a whole list of quotes and get excited.

Whenever I’m struggling to do something and just can’t be bothered, I go to a list of my favourite quotes that I’ve collected over the years, and more often than not I get pumped and ready to do some work.  What can I say, I’m a simple man….

This is one of my favourite quotes from President Theodore Roosevelt -

“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month!!”

Just read this interesting article by Rick Watson on the PT Business in a Box website about what Personal Trainers really make.  It’s an informative read with plenty of tips for new trainers and what to look for and experienced trainers and some of the things they can do to increase business.

Looks like Rick has some good posts and information on his site for all Personal Trainers.