Do you want to open new revenue streams?
Nutrition coaching is the perfect complement to your training services (and a great way to improve your client’s odds of success).
Getting started with nutrition coaching can be excited but also feel overwhelming.
In this episode, we cover:
- How to set up a nutrition program that supports your clients and increases your revenue.
- What you’re actually “selling” when you sell nutrition coaching.
- How to build supplement sales into your programs.
And so much more!
Want to introduce nutrition coaching into your business model? We’ve helped several Naamly clients do the same thing using our state-of-the-art nutrition coaching features. Schedule a FREE trial to get started today!
Watch The Full Episode
So, um, well and listeners who are tuning in.
So welcome to just one thing. Another episode of just one thing where training gym owners get actionable insights to build a dream business and I’m with the legendary. And over the next 12 odd minutes or so we will unpack just one thing to help you grow your business.
Thomas Plummer: welcome back Tom. Long time. No, see it’s been like hours.
Sumit: Yeah. So tell me the last episode you were talking about the anchors of where one can up the upcharge and upsell to the customer. And one of the things that you spoke about was nutrition,
Thomas Plummer: and you’d given some snippets about, Hey,
Sumit: People don’t charge enough there, or people don’t have a really good program or a really good profit center in nutrition.
So tell, talk to me a little bit more about that. What does that perfect nutrition, profit center or service
And then they tried to give it away free, which has very little value to them. Um, or they, they just kinda, they, they really don’t have a system for it, but if I go to a gym, usually I’m trying to, out-train a bad diet. I go to the gym because I really don’t want to die at that lodge. But there is that, and it’s only, I would say statistically 10, maybe 20% of your clients that they, they want that extra help and we should sell it to them.
\So nutrition is one of those things that support. The guy. So they, that, so if the person is, you know, he’s 40 pounds overweight and he’s training. And so selling him a 12 week accountability program as a wraparound, that makes sense. Because it’s not part of the basic membership, but it is a lifestyle support system for a money guy.
And, but I don’t want again, cheap amount. So if I do that, I’m going to include everything for 90 days. Uh, I’m willing to include his supplements, his protein, I’m going to refuse meal replacement bars. I’m going to set them up on a 12 week program. He’s going to come in once a week. I’m going to spend time with them.
But that’s something where they make by choice, going back to the hotel analogy. That’s when I decide if I’m spending, you know, a couple thousand dollars a month hotel, I go down to the restaurant. I expect to pay for the food, but it’s going to be a really high end restaurant. And so I go to you because of your expertise as a coach.
And I need extra help. Well, we have an available, that’s the convenience factor and it’s $445 for a 12 week program. And then we’d include everything in it. So you don’t have to. Let’s get you started. So to me, it’s a wrap around. It’s an additional support for my lifestyle. I had an expectation of paying for it.
It’s not a freebie. So nutrition is one of those things that most trainers wrestle with. They try to throw stuff out during their sessions. They try to post stuff online instead of making a formal part of the business as a standalone. Which it should be. Okay. I love that
Thomas Plummer: Yeah. So the wrap up that the big, the big ones are one, as we said, nutrition is your centerpiece.
That’s where we start. Uh, once you get to a facility where you’re beyond a hundred members, You’re making the case then for a performance bar, um, you know, something, you know, you’re, you’re looking like performance foods, one of their high-end, um, you know, I love those products, very high end, very clean, but I’m looking for that type of, even if it’s a hundred feet, little statement up against the wall, I still want to.
Performance bar because I still have to support them if I can do it with a decent coffee with a high-end shake. Um, and then I move nutrition to me is also beyond that is supplementation. And that I separated from the nutritional guidance program. Supplementation is something where most guys fail because they put up a shelf and they’ve got like nine bottles on the shelf.
Well, they don’t even believe in it. If I’m going to get a nutrition, I need a little 60, 70 foot office, no desk while unit, but I sit side by side when the client and the whole wall is supplements because I want to give the visual, like, we believe so much into it. Look at the inventory, look at this office.
We have just to talk about nutrition and supplementation. This is, I mean, this is what we do, and this is part of the lifestyle. So you take the guy in, he can shop off the wall, put stuff in a bag, or you sit down and have a talk with them. Grab everything he needs, shove it into the bag. It’s really a nutritional consulting office.
I do my accountability programs in there, but also this is, this is where I sell my supplements. And then you have a huge display on the counter that also enhances that, you know, you want more supplement health apps because we have a whole room full of supplementation, just waiting for you.
Um, let me back up just a step. Okay. The guy comes to the gym, he drives past four gyms to get to you and he picks you up. We don’t think about that. We don’t, we, we, we kind of forget that we’re not doing him a favor, so he’s doing us a favor by giving us money.
And so when a guy comes to me and says, you’re my guy, you’re my gym.
You’re the woman I went to train with at that point, then what can I do to support them and to make sure that everything they need beyond training exist. So the foundation of nutrition has to be a step prior to that. Where six days a week I am on, I’m sending you a text, an email. I’ve got a constant contact newsletter template coming out once or twice a month.
Um, I may be even referring you to my YouTube channel where I might have a cooking demonstration, but there’s, I’m, I’m coming every six days a week. Um, I’m giving you nutrition advice to support your choice that I am the right guy, because I’ve got to go beyond training. I’ve got to now support everything.
This lays the foundation for nutrition, a restoration of movement. Here’s a simple flow. Somebody over 50 can do. So. You know, there’s slow clutter, all this pops up constantly through my feed. So when we start to do this before I can sell them nutrition, I have to build the bridge to get there.
So the bridge is six days a week of constant support, uh, where I’m trying to, I want to touch them all day. So if the guy says I haven’t been in the gym for a week, but I got this really cool workout tip, or I’ve got this, you know, shoe review, or I’ve got this, you know, four minute cooking demo that was goofy with music.
You know, probably the garden used to do those as well as anybody, probably better than anybody, but you’ve got stuff like that. Where you, every day you’re touching. Then once I get into the guy’s head that I’m here to support everything you need. Let’s talk about nutrition, which is the missing ingredient in your personal life.
So I will give you all the basic nutrition, but what you don’t have is accountability and we sell accountability. So we don’t sell nutrition. We sound accountability for a program. That if you follow it, I can get some, some results out of that for you. In other words, we could lose 10 pounds or work through, you know, first stages of type two, the X factors, and start to work through these things.
We have a plan. So nutrition is part of our overall scope of what we do to support you, but accountability at extra help beyond that is what we say. So there are those two types of things. If you separate that your head and the nutrition program makes a lot of sense at that point. And then if I look at this, this, if I’m, if I use the word accountability as the basis, then it’s easy to decide the program because what does the guy meet accountability?
So accountability means I just, I sit and talk with you, but I need to educate. Um, so I can put together a 12 sequence, right? Introduce why supplementation and things. So I’d give him a little bit of education with it, but it’s really, what did you eat this week?
What did you screw up? Let’s get back on track. This you did really well. This w I, you know, it’s a holiday. We knew it was going to go bad. Here’s what we do to reset. And I just have a nice patient person spends 30 minutes for 11 weeks with them in an hour the first time. And that would be roughly four 50, something like that.
Cause I want to include the supplementations that’s individual trainer will have the supplementations they think they should have.
So you find what you want to do. But make sure that basic that they’re there. If you’re a protein powder guy, make sure he gets the jug. If you’re a meal replacement bar person, make sure he gets a enough meal replacement bars for 90 days. All that is pushed across in a nice bag, canvas bag or something, not a stupid old plastic bag, but something nice in here.
Everything you need to be successful. So it’s right here for the next 12 weeks. And. Go from there. So there’s a start
Sumit: and an end 12 week program charging $450 on it, like you said, and you brought up, uh, another, well, this caught my attention. As you were saying that Tom is body composition. Am I charging for that body composition, because that could be another way to up my revenue per member, or you’re saying, no, I’m
Thomas Plummer: not going to charge for that.
That’s something I, that, that’s one of those things where I wouldn’t charge for it. It’s really, is it much more than a scale?
So for the, for the 12 weeks, I’m really trying to do some type of behavior modification at that time. So if I’m using a body comp machine, I want them that’s the reward. Hey, look, you went from body fat of, you know, from 28, you’re down to 23. Hey, great job.
You know, that’s only in three weeks. Well, when am I going to charge him for that? No. Well, it’s definitely part of that. My elite clients it’s always, but am I really going to charge people in my, that desperate for cash and charge people to. Step on the scale because that’s in essence, it’s the matter of what we call it.
It’s a body competence, it’s the damn scale, and I’m not going to charge people to use the scale. Um, so yeah,
Sumit: I have to interject there for a second because I get your viewpoint about not charging because it may seem as if I’m trying to do it for a profit perspective, but I’ve also heard gym owners telling me, and I’ve had the same conversation with them.
Where they’re like we charge because it’s not about the money, but it’s because I want some skin in the game. So they believe that there is a value associated with it because if you just give it away, the no one’s using it so funny. There is no usage. If I say it’s included, but the moment I carve it out and I say, Hey, it’s 25 bucks, but you will see the change.
They’re paying for it. And he’s like, it’s, it’s
Thomas Plummer: insane. So I think that’s absolutely total crap because I’ve never seen that. You’re telling me that you’ve got something it’s cool. It was like an InBody sitting there on the floor, but because it’s free, no one steps. That’s what that’s what you just said or said to you?
Yeah. Think about that. Logically that’s that’s oh my God. I did. For it. I’m not going to step on it and see what my body comp is. While most guys won’t play with you, they, because you don’t pay, they won’t do the print outs. They won’t go over the data with you because it’s, you’re not paying them. So they, that most clients don’t know how to use it.
That’s a justification by a lot of coaches that, you know, it just, you, you’re trying to justify a guy for that, but there’s a bigger picture there. And I want the coach to see the bigger picture is. Yeah. How many clients did they had that they lose 20 pounds over six months, but they don’t remember it’s you, you know?
Yeah. It just started moving a little more, but I’ve walked in at home too. And you know, so yeah, I got my old waits out from under the bed. I’d be on the high school bench, press in the garage now. And so they’re, they’re there with you, but they don’t giving you. So I put formalize an InBody. I would formalize a functional movement screen and I would schedule people for it because it validates what I’ve done for them.
So if I put the guy in an InBody and once a month I had look, Hey, Sumit. I know you’re here for a one-on-one tonight. Come on. It’s time. Let’s get you on the InBody and I’d take you over there and do this. Well, I want all the clients on that because it validates that they did. They did it here in my gym.
So that’s why I wanted the functional movement screen to go back once a month and have the clients come in, you know, Hey, Saturday morning, we’re tested. Everybody stopped by. Let’s test it. Let’s go over your numbers and do a comparison. Uh, anytime you want to get on the InBody, if I’ve got something free to do that, we’re going to do it.
But people have already paid to be in these gyms. So they’re looking for support. Like this nutrition guidance are looking for support like body composition, because it’s part of the overall experience of the gym. But I, you know, I’ll charge them for supplements because I have a cost. I bought the InBody once and it’s sitting on the floor.
I want them on it because it makes me look better as a coach. And if they get results, they stay longer and pay longer. And that’s retention. That’s the stuff like that. So, no, I, when a young trainer say that I look at them and go that’s no, no. So
Sumit: coming back to the point about where you mentioned, you’re hitting them up with all the nutrition.
Actually, I have two angles there, as you were talking about the nutrition angle and he said you really modify and behavior, then why not package it as. A new habit forming program, as opposed to just nutrition, because new habit forming could have major, could have more impact in someone’s lives because everyone knows it’s all about embracing new habits.
So why not? Why not have that as a service offering, as opposed to just having nutrition or have both
Thomas Plummer: basically.
Yeah. I mean, that’s what basic you’re doing, but what’s the power word. What, what word would scare you the most now you’ve got, how old are your kids? Sumit. 10 and 12 to 12. Perfect. Perfect. 12 year old. Uh, I’m going to say I’m holding you accountable. So I’m going to go away Saturday. I’m going to leave you at home.
But I’m holding you accountable that this house better be in good shape. Uh, yes, you can bring one friend over, but this is a day of accountability. This is your day to grow up and that word, accountability just terrorizes children. Well, it terrorists. 50 year old business people.
And that’s that’s so the accountability program to me, that’s a scary word. Is it behavior modification? Of course it is. That’s what you’re trying to do is to get the guy right. But it’s, it takes a special skill set to be able to do that. You do need the, like that precision nutrition degree or certification where you’re, you know, you’re learning those habits.
You know, ACE has a brilliant program on that as well. There’s a lot of options to get stuff where you learn how to hold people accountable, but selling them, the concept is not the same as meeting you each week and holding you to the point. And that’s so it is, yeah, I like the term, but I think accountable is such a brutal term, brutal term for most people because they very few people that are accountable for much in their life.
If you think about it. It’s always somebody else’s fault, but what if it’s your fault? And that’s what you’re saying. What if your weight is your personal responsibility?
What if I hold you accountable for how you look, how you feel, what you eat and how your body will change, I’m watching you, you know, so that’s, I like the word accountable for that. Perfect. Okay.
Sumit: On that note, I think this is great. So we, we understand nutrition. It is, and that’s the centerpiece and how to go about structuring.
So cool, Tom, let us call it the day.