The Business of Fitness Podcast

In this episode Dan uncovers the pricing mistake leaving fitness professionals underpaid, and shares the four-step approach he used to help one trainer charge $25,000 per client.

Four things you'll learn in this episode:

• Why the traditional "build first, price later" approach keeps fitness professionals stuck in a scarcity mindset and earning less than they deserve
• The exact reverse-engineered pricing method Dan used to help one exercise professional collect $250,000 in pre-payments every January
• How to flip the pricing conversation so $25,000 a year feels like an obvious bargain to the right client
• Who you actually need to be selling to, and why trying to be for everyone is quietly costing you a fortune

Transcription:

There's a really big mistake people are making with how much to charge for the service they're offering. And this big mistake means they're leaving a lot of money on the table. Whether you're selling personal training, semi-private training classes, gym memberships, or anything else fitness related, you're earning less than you should.

Here's the problem. This is what people are currently doing:

1. People have an idea for a service they want to offer.
2. They build a business that will provide that service.
3. They look at the business they've built and try to work out how much people will be willing to pay for the service.
4. They release that business out into the world and hope that the right people will find them and pay them money.

The big problem with this is it really comes from a scarcity mindset. And it often seriously limits how much people are able to charge. The issue is that they are starting with the service they're going to be offering and then they work out how much it's going to cost their customer. They decide they want to sell personal training. They look at what people charge for personal training and they match their pricing to what everyone else is doing.

This is the same mentality as the people who spend their entire life to build their business and hope that at the end of the day there is some time and energy left to give to their life. The people who live to work instead of the people who work to live.

So how do we switch this thinking?

Let's talk about a more abundance-mindset approach to pricing your fitness service to ensure you're earning what you're worth.

It comes down to four simple steps.

• Step 1. Find a problem that needs solving.
• Step 2. Look at how much money you want to earn, or how much you want to charge people for solving that problem.
• Step 3. Find a way to give more value than the cost, or how much you're charging people to solve that problem.
• Step 4. Find people who can afford that cost.

Let's unpack this. Firstly step one: find a problem that needs solving.

Too many people start their business with an idea.

But an idea is not a good idea – unless it solves a real problem.

You need to start by identifying a problem. A real one.

Ultimately every single successful business solves a problem. If you can find a big enough problem that has a negative enough impact on people's lives, they will pay you handsomely to solve it.

So once you've identified a problem that needs solving, we get to the most important part of pricing your service.

Determining how much you want to earn.

And this is the big shift from a traditional approach to pricing a service. Normally what people do is they work out what that service involves and then how much they can justify charging for it.

But we're gonna flip that. First we're going to decide how much to charge for it and then we'll work out what that service needs to be to justify the price.

This is the exact process I used with an exercise professional that I mentored a couple of years ago. He came to me because he had been running his business for many years and had reached a ceiling where he just couldn't work any harder to earn more money. He determined that he wanted to earn a quarter of a million dollars a year in revenue, that he wanted to be a sole trader, and he only wanted to work with 10 clients. So some simple maths showed us that he needed to charge each client $25,000 a year to hit this target.

Now $25,000 seems like a lot of money for a fitness professional to charge for personal training. And it is but only if you start with personal training and work out how much to charge for that. Instead what we did was start with that dollar amount and worked out how good that personal training would need to be for $25,000 per year to be a good deal for the client.

Fast forward to today and this exercise professional receives ten payments of $25,000 (quarter of a million dollars) in his bank account on the first of January every year for his clients to pre-pay their annual fee.

Needless to say the service and experience that these clients are getting is pretty exemplary and it's so good that they all think 25,000 is a great deal.

And that's step three: finding a way to give more value than the cost. Once you know what you want to charge (and that should be high), work out what the client needs to receive so that the price seems perfectly reasonable.

And finally to step four, where we find people who can afford that price. It won't be everyone and that's fine. You shouldn't be for everyone. You need to find the people who have the problem that you have built your business to solve and who have the money to pay you to solve that problem.

And that's how you price your service.

Find a problem that needs solving. Work out how much you want to earn to solve that problem. Provide a service that makes that amount seem like a good deal. Then find the people who can afford to pay you.

Your action steps:

1. Identify a real problem you can solve Pinpoint a specific, painful problem in the market that your business is genuinely equipped to solve.
2. Decide how much you want to earn Start with your target income and client load, then do the maths to work out what each client needs to pay.
3. Design the service around the price Build out a premium offer so your target fee feels like a good deal for the person paying it.
4. Define who can realistically pay you Get clear on the exact profile of person who has the problem and the budget, and stop trying to appeal to everyone.
5. Put your offer in front of the right people Focus all your marketing time, energy, and messaging on reaching those specific buyers.

If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one:

• How to Raise Gym/PT Prices Without Losing Clients | Read | Listen
• 3 ways to make it easier to earn more in a fitness business | Read | Listen
• How to grow a fitness business WITHOUT more clients/members | Read | Listen

Summary: In this episode Dan explores agentic AI, how it differs from chat-based AI, and why delegating to it rather than using it can help you earn more and reclaim time.

5 things you'll learn in this episode

• The key difference between chat-based and agentic AI. Most people are directing AI step by step. Agentic AI works differently: you give it an outcome and it figures out the process, much like delegating to a trusted person rather than micromanaging every move.
• A practical filter for deciding what to hand over. Any recurring task, anything involving multiple tabs or tools, and anything that doesn't require knowledge only you possess are now prime candidates to delegate. This alone could reshape how you spend your days.
• What to keep for yourself, and why it matters. Writing your own articles, generating ideas, doing creative work. The benefit comes from the doing, not just the output. Knowing where to draw that line is just as important as knowing what to delegate.
• 13+ real examples of tasks being delegated right now. From content suites and podcast show notes to Canva assets, email campaigns, and data organisation. These are live examples from the past few weeks.
• Where the real opportunity lies. It's not just about saving time. It's about what you do with the time you get back. When the tasks that don't require you are removed, what remains is the work that genuinely moves things forward.

How most people are currently using AI

At the moment, most people are using AI in what I'd call a chat-based way.

You open up something like ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you type in a prompt, and it gives you a response. Then you type another prompt, and it gives you another response. And so on.

It's essentially a series of individual tasks. You are directing every step of the process. You are telling it what to do, one instruction at a time, and it is responding to each of those instructions.

There's nothing wrong with this. It's incredibly useful, and for a lot of people it's already a big step forward from how they were working previously.

But it does have a limitation.

You are still doing the thinking around how to get to the outcome. You are still breaking the task down into steps. You are still effectively managing the process.

The shift to agentic AI

Agentic AI works differently.

Instead of giving it a series of steps, you give it an outcome.

You don't say, 'do this, then do this, then do this'. You say, 'this is what I want done', and it works out the steps required to get there.

The way I've found it easiest to think about is to compare it to working with another person.

If you were delegating a task to someone and you had to micromanage every step, telling them exactly what to do at each stage, that would feel very similar to using chat-based AI.

But if you were working with someone you trusted, you would simply give them the job and the desired outcome, and allow them to figure out the process themselves.

That's much closer to what agentic AI is doing.

It's not just responding to prompts. It's completing tasks.

What this actually means in practice

Once you start thinking about it this way, the question becomes less about 'what can AI help me with?' and more about 'what should I no longer be doing myself?'.

For me, a useful filter has been this:

Any repetitive or recurring task, any task that involves moving between multiple tabs or pieces of software, any task that doesn't require knowledge that only exists in my brain, and generally anything that would take me somewhere between 30 minutes and a couple of hours, those are now candidates to be delegated.

What remains is the work that actually requires me. Thinking, decision-making, coming up with ideas, and doing the parts of the job that are inherently human.

A quick note on what I'm not outsourcing

This is important, because I think there's a temptation to go too far with this.

I still write my own articles.

I still come up with my own ideas.

I still do the creative work.

Not because AI couldn't do some of it, but because there's value in the process itself. It's a bit like journaling. You wouldn't ask someone else to do your journaling for you, because the benefit comes from actually doing it.

So I'm not trying to remove myself from the work entirely. I'm trying to remove myself from the parts of the work that don't require me.

How I'm currently using it

To make this a bit more concrete, here are a number of ways I've been using agentic AI over the last few weeks:

• Turning a single written article into a full content suite, including blog formatting, internal links, images, social media posts, email newsletters, and drafts across all platforms
• Preparing for mentoring calls by pulling previous Zoom transcripts and summarising key points before each session
• Drafting personalised outreach emails in bulk, each tailored slightly to the recipient but based on the same core message
• Running monthly checks across all websites by submitting test enquiries through every contact form and verifying they are received
• Researching and shortlisting options, such as reviewing hundreds of website templates and presenting a refined list based on a brief
• Renaming and reorganising large batches of files in Google Drive to follow consistent naming conventions
• Extracting key ideas or quotes from long documents and turning them into usable content
• Creating Canva assets, including carousels and visual posts, using pre-built templates
• Writing podcast titles, descriptions, and show notes based on existing content
• Drafting email campaigns in Campaign Monitor, including summaries and links to relevant content
• Scheduling and queuing content across platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Google Business, ready for approval
• Analysing and organising data into spreadsheets, pulling from multiple sources and structuring it for reporting
• Logging into different tools and platforms to complete multi-step tasks that would normally require switching between tabs manually

The real opportunity

I don't think the opportunity here is just about saving time.

It's about changing how you allocate your time.

If you remove the tasks that don't require you, you are left with the tasks that do. And those tend to be the ones that actually move things forward.

Thinking more clearly. Making better decisions. Spending more time on the parts of the business that create value.

That's where this becomes interesting.

A final thought

Most people are still using AI in a very step-by-step, prompt-and-response way.

And again, that's fine. It's useful. It's a good place to start.

But the big change happens when you stop thinking of AI as something you use, and start thinking of it as something you delegate to.

Once you make that shift, it opens up a very different way of working, it certainly has for me.

Your action steps:

1. Write a 'stop doing' list. Identify the tasks you do regularly that are repetitive, multi-step, or don't require knowledge that only you have. These are your best candidates to hand over.
2. Start with one task. Pick the most time-consuming item from your list and experiment with delegating it to an agentic AI tool. You don't need to overhaul everything at once.
3. Protect the work that requires you. Be deliberate about what you continue doing yourself, particularly the creative, strategic, and relationship-based work that has real value precisely because it comes from you.
4. Track what you get back. As you delegate more, note where the recovered time goes. If it flows into higher-value work, you're using this well. If it disappears, you have a different problem to solve.

If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one:

• I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here's what I learned. | Read | Listen
• How my business earns me 23 hours a week | Read | Listen
• We Asked 8 Experts: Is ChatGPT now better at programming than you are? | Read | Listen

Summary: Dan explains why most business owners glance at numbers without using them well, and shares a complete KPI system to track what matters, focus your effort, and build a better life.

This one works really well as a video, as Dan does a walk through of a KPI spreadsheet. You can watch that here, or read the article (including visuals) here.

5 things you'll learn in this episode

• Why glancing at revenue or checking the bank balance is not the same as having a proper KPI process, and what changes when you build one.
• How to design the life you want before you set a single target, because your numbers should serve your life, not just your business.
• The exact spreadsheet structure I use, including how to set medium and long-term targets and keep things clean across months and years.
• A complete list of KPIs across marketing, sales, customers, revenue, finance, time, and even life quality, with equations for every single one.
• How to use the traffic light system so your priorities are immediately obvious every time you open the sheet.

Your action steps:

1. Write down what you want your life to look like before you build or update any KPI spreadsheet.
2. Set up a simple spreadsheet with a column for KPIs, a medium-term target, and a long-term target.
3. Manually pull your numbers from Xero, your CRM, and other sources at the end of each month.
4. Review your KPI sheet every week and identify the one or two numbers that most need your attention.
5. Apply the traffic light system so your biggest constraint is always easy to spot.

Summary: In this episode Dan explores how MrBeast would market a fitness business, and what fitness professionals can learn from his approach to attention, storytelling, referrals, content, and growth.

5 things you'll learn in this episode

• How to make your fitness business website more clickable, clearer, and easier to act on
• Why storytelling and client journeys are powerful fitness marketing tools
• How MrBeast's approach to content marketing can improve your reach and engagement
• What fitness businesses can learn from Feastables and MrBeast Burger about referrals and shareability
• How to build a stronger fitness marketing system across email, paid ads, offline marketing, and promotions

How would the most viral content creator of our generation market a fitness business?

Success leaves clues, and I was interested in the clues that MrBeast's digital empire would leave for health and fitness business owners. I wanted to unpack his approach to business and see what we can borrow for our industry. I did a similar deep dive to how Elon Musk would disrupt the gym industry, which you can read here or listen to here.

If you've ever turned on the internet, you know MrBeast, or Jimmy Donaldson. He's one of the most successful creators on YouTube, building an audience of more than 100 million subscribers by creating videos that are impossible to ignore. His content usually involves huge challenges, massive giveaways, and large-scale acts of generosity.

But MrBeast is not just a YouTuber. He is also a very switched-on entrepreneur. He has built several businesses off the back of his audience, including MrBeast Burger, Feastables chocolate, and the viral mobile game 'Finger on the App'. He has also donated millions of dollars to causes such as food banks, environmental projects, and people in need.

What makes MrBeast interesting is not just the scale of what he does. It is the way he thinks about his businesses. Everything he does is designed to capture attention, hold attention, and be shared. He constantly experiments, studies what works, and reinvests almost everything he earns back into making even better content.

So what can he teach us?

I've studied his approach and broken it down into what I see as the eleven most important marketing strategies. I covered each of these in more detail in my article and podcast 'The One Page Fitness Marketing Checklist', which you can check out on episode 79 of the podcast. You can also download the one page marketing checklist here.

The eleven areas we'll be examining through the lens of MrBeast are:

• Website
• Documentation and Storytelling
• Content Marketing
• Micro-Influencer Marketing
• Referral Process
• Email Marketing
• Customer/Member Reactivation
• Paid Social Media Advertising
• Paid Search Engine Advertising
• Offline Marketing
• Promotions and Tactics

Website

Your business needs a simple, professional website that clearly explains who you help and how you help them, builds trust with social proof, and makes it extremely easy for the right people to take the next step.

So how would MrBeast create a website for a fitness business?

One of his biggest obsessions is making people feel like they have to click. He spends an enormous amount of time on the thumbnails for his YouTube videos because he knows that in an impatient, short-attention-span economy, first impressions really matter.

MrBeast talks a lot about the idea of a 'purple cow', which is borrowed from Seth Godin's book of the same name. The idea is that if you're driving past a field full of cows, the only one you'll notice is the purple cow. In the Diary of a CEO podcast MrBeast said the best ideas should make people say, 'What the fuck, I've never seen that'.

If he were building a website, he would be looking for a clear and unusual homepage that looks different from everyone else. If we look at the Feastables website, we can see that it's built around really low-friction next steps. It's very easy for people to purchase the product, find stores where they can buy it, or get support.

He would build a website for a fitness business that acts as a central hub with clear calls to action and very obvious next steps. Ultimately, the business needs a website that not only looks good, but actually converts, captures leads, retargets visitors, and feeds the rest of the marketing machine we're building.

Documentation and Storytelling

You need to consistently document the life of your business and share client journeys so potential clients can see people like them overcoming problems with your help.

Storytelling is at the heart of MrBeast's digital empire. It's worth looking at Beast Philanthropy to see how he uses real-world documentation to shape behaviour and tell powerful stories. The official positioning of Beast Philanthropy is to use social media to 'educate and inspire' an entire generation. Jimmy Donaldson has often talked about his desire to inspire a movement.

This is exactly the way he would approach documenting the inner workings of a fitness business. It's about showing the life of the business in a way that builds emotion, gives people a story to tell, and creates belief in the outcomes you promise.

One thing MrBeast does exceptionally well is show the before-and-after narrative. This is not just a visual transformation like weight loss. It's a deeper emotional storytelling arc.

MrBeast isn't using storytelling just for entertainment. He's using it to create behavioural change. That's exactly what a fitness business should do. The purpose of storytelling is to influence behaviour, encouraging people to start with your business and commit to long-term change.

Ultimately, people watch MrBeast's content because of the storytelling. It just happens that the moral of the story often has a philanthropic or legacy-building impact.

Content Marketing

You should regularly create useful educational content that solves the problems of your target avatar and positions you as the obvious expert in your niche.

One of the big lessons from MrBeast regarding content marketing is the importance of making something people actually want to watch. Too many fitness business owners focus on the process of creating content or the systems they use to produce it.

Instead, MrBeast judges content on three simple criteria: do people click it, do they keep watching it, and do they feel good about it afterwards?

I often reference the Steve Martin quote about being 'so good they can't ignore you'. I think MrBeast would strongly agree with this idea. He aims to create content that people simply cannot ignore.

He also talks a lot about the purple cow effect. If he were running your content marketing system, he would strongly discourage boring, interchangeable content that everyone else is posting. Instead, he would push you to create content with a stronger premise, clearer packaging, and higher curiosity. Ultimately, something different.

Micro-Influencer Marketing

Your business needs systems that encourage clients to share their experiences publicly so their stories create authentic social proof for people just like them.

MrBeast leveraged his viral presence to launch MrBeast Burger. Originally it was a pop-up burger joint that has since evolved into a delivery-based burger brand. The initial MrBeast Burger launch was essentially a marketing stunt designed to be shared.

This wasn't Kardashian-level influencer marketing. It was much smaller, but far more widespread micro-influencer marketing. On the MrBeast Burger website it describes the launch as a 'one-of-a-kind experience', featuring branded packaging, uniforms, signage, and a free meal. They even described it as the world's first free restaurant.

This was perfect fuel for micro-influencer marketing. The whole point wasn't simply to get people trying the burgers. It was to get people posting about them. A fitness business should think the same way about member experiences.

If we look at the Beast Philanthropy YouTube channel, we see the same strategy. Supporters are constantly encouraged to watch, like, and share the videos, with 100% of the revenue going to charity. In the fitness industry, the equivalent is creating shareable moments so your audience becomes the distributor of your message.

I talk a lot about the importance of remarkable experiences. If your business gives people ordinary moments, they won't post them. If you give them extraordinary experiences, they will share them for you.

Referral Process

You need a clear and consistent referral system that makes it easy and rewarding for clients to introduce their friends to your business.

Ultimately, the whole point of a referral process is bringing someone you care about to experience a business. One of the cleverest examples I've seen comes from MrBeast's Feastables products.

Out of curiosity when they first launched, I bought a Feastables chocolate bar. As soon as I opened the wrapper, I saw the marketing genius behind the product. The first square of chocolate had the word 'share' embossed into it.

MrBeast had literally built the referral process into the product. The idea is that the first square is designed to be shared with someone else.

The best way to test a product, whether it's a chocolate bar or a personal training session, is to experience it. By making every chocolate bar shareable, every purchase becomes a potential referral. If MrBeast were applying this logic to a fitness business, he would look for ways to make the experience itself shareable.

Email Marketing

Your business should regularly email your network with helpful, problem-solving content that builds trust and keeps you top of mind.

One of the big challenges MrBeast faces is that much of his empire is built on rented attention. YouTube owns his subscribers. Social media platforms own his followers.

If we look at Feastables, we can see how he pushes visitors towards channels he controls. As an ecommerce brand, it moves people towards owned customer relationships. The lesson for fitness businesses is simple. You shouldn't rely solely on social media. You should build your own database.

In terms of email content, we can again look at Beast Philanthropy for inspiration. Emails shouldn't just announce offers. They should tell stories, share wins, provide social proof, and teach useful things. Ultimately, the goal is to make readers feel like they are part of something bigger.

Customer / Member Reactivation

You need a system to identify past or disengaging clients and reconnect with them in a thoughtful way that reminds them they are valued.

One of the things MrBeast often talks about in interviews is the importance of mistakes and weak performance. In the Lex Fridman podcast he said, 'They don't lie, the surveys'.

His point is that businesses shouldn't guess why people disengage. They should go directly to the source and ask. Every departure is an opportunity to learn.

MrBeast also talks about quality at the product level. In the Diary of a CEO podcast he explained that he didn't want customers to receive a broken Feastables chocolate bar because that would be the worst customer experience possible. The lesson is simple. Retention is not just about follow-up messaging. It's about fixing the experience that caused people to disengage in the first place.

Paid Social Media Advertising

Your business should run well-targeted social media ads that guide cold, warm, and lookalike audiences through the journey from awareness to action.

MrBeast would take a very straightforward approach to paid social advertising. Creative beats everything. He says the key metrics are click-through rate, watch time, and satisfaction.

Your ads shouldn't be judged by how clever they sound or how polished they look. They should be judged by whether they make the right people stop and take action. MrBeast often summarises the whole game like this: get people to click, get them to watch, and make sure they're happy.

If he were running ads for a fitness business, they would need to hook fast, hold attention, and leave the viewer better off. He also emphasises constant experimentation. Compare outcomes, take notes, and remove emotion from the process. This is exactly the approach he uses with his videos.

Paid Search Engine Advertising

You should run Google search ads that capture people actively looking for your service and direct them to a clear next step.

MrBeast would use the purple cow concept to make search ads stand out. But standing out alone isn't enough. The message also needs to make immediate sense.

Search advertising works differently from social media. Instead of pushing a message to someone, you are responding to something they are already searching for. If MrBeast were running search ads for a fitness business, he would likely be ruthlessly focused on conversions. If the ad isn't generating conversions, it isn't working, and it should be changed.

Offline Marketing

Your business needs to be visibly active in the local community so people regularly see you, know you, and talk about you.

For someone with such a massive digital presence, MrBeast also understands the power of real-world experiences. MrBeast Burger is a great example. Thousands of fans attended the launch because it was marketed as the world's first free restaurant. This real-world event created huge online buzz.

Once again, we come back to the purple cow principle. People remember unusual things. If you want to become locally famous, it's not enough to simply be visible. You need to create moments that people actually talk about. That goes far beyond flyers and posters.

Promotions and Tactics

You should use occasional promotions to create bursts of new clients, but only as a supplement to a strong long-term marketing system.

MrBeast cleverly combines promotions with content. He sometimes posts YouTube Shorts where he offers people money if they're subscribed to his channel. These short-term tactics aren't as powerful as his main videos, but they generate attention and tell stories.

Again, MrBeast Burger is a great example. The launch wasn't just a promotion. It was a spectacle. The key lesson is that promotions should tell stories and create emotion. When done well, they become content and a referral engine at the same time.

However, there is also an important lesson here. Over time, MrBeast Burger faced quality issues that damaged brand perception. This brings us back to an important truth. No matter how good your promotions are, they must sit on top of a remarkable customer experience. Promotions cannot replace quality.

Final Thoughts

Jimmy Donaldson has shown himself to be an incredibly smart businessperson. Although asking how he would run a health or fitness business is a bit of fun, it also allows us to apply an outsider's perspective to our industry.

By benchmarking outside our own field, we can draw inspiration from other entrepreneurs and industries. That is often where the most interesting ideas come from. And sometimes those ideas help us create our own purple cow.

Your action steps:

• Make your website easier to act on. Review your fitness business website and make sure it clearly explains who you help, how you help, and what the next step is.
• Share more real client stories. Use your marketing to document real client journeys so potential clients can see proof, progress, and people like them succeeding.
• Create content people actually want to watch. Judge your fitness content marketing by whether people click, keep watching, and feel helped afterwards.
• Build shareability into the experience. Look for ways to make your service easier to share through referrals, guest passes, memorable moments, and client-driven word of mouth.
• Strengthen the full marketing system. Treat email marketing, paid advertising, offline marketing, and promotions as connected parts of one fitness business growth strategy.

If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of my most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one:

• If sales and offers make you feel dirty, there's a better way to grow: read | listen.
• How to bring back ex-members to increase revenue: read | listen.
• 9 unique ways to make your business stand out (to get more clients): read | listen.

These are the 14 things I include on every website I build to turn the site into a lead generating machine.

Here are five things you'll learn from this episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast:

1. Why a good-looking website is not enough to get more gym leads
2. How simple psychology can help turn website visitors into enquiries
3. Why speaking to one clear type of client improves conversions
4. How small wording changes can increase trust and action
5. How to structure your fitness website so people feel understood and ready to join

Need a website? I can do that for you.

Dan chats with Jade Webb. Jade was already a successful business owner prior to purchasing a gym. She shares the process of buying a business, from initial negotiations, through to a complete business overhaul.

5 things you'll learn:

• How Jade went from mechanical business owner to gym owner.
• Why she bought a gym, not built one from scratch.
• What due diligence she did and what she missed.
• How she completely rebuilt culture and customer experience after a chaotic first 30 days.
• The KPI changes and why experience has driven her growth and retention.

In this episode, Dan Williams explores why traditional sales and discount-driven marketing make fitness business owners feel uncomfortable, and how shifting to an experience-focused approach can create trust, authenticity, and lasting client relationships.

5 things you'll learn:

• Why the 'sales and offers' model feels inauthentic and unsustainable for fitness professionals.
• How the most trusted brands win by creating experiences, not chasing sales.
• What an 'experience-focused approach' looks like in a fitness business, from first enquiry to ongoing service.
• How to design remarkable client touch points that make people feel valued, not sold to.
• Why genuine connection, care, and hospitality outperform every script or discount.

If you enjoyed this, you'll also enjoy the following, they're some of Dan's most popular articles and podcasts on topics similar to this one:

• Episode 79: 'The one page fitness marketing checklist. Just do these things.' Podcast | Article. You can also download a PDF of the checklist here.
• Episode 69: 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of Being Different'. Podcast | Article.
• Episode 74: 9 unique ways to make your business stand out (to get more clients)'. Podcast | Article.

In this episode Dan Williams sought out nine of the most successful fitness and health business owners of 2025.

He asked each of them to share their one biggest lesson that will carry them to more success in 2026.

You'll hear from Emily McPhillips, Jason Lim, Sam Cassells, Jake Morgan, Emily Moore, Jade Webb, Grant Hancock, Scott Hook, and Ben Luckens, as they share the lessons and decisions that shaped their year in business.

In this episode, Dan is a guest on Ben Lucken's podcast, where he sits down for a really wide ranging conversation about business mindset.

Benny asks Dan about how he thinks about building a life that aligns with your own definition of success.

They also discuss some of the frameworks Dan uses to think about the world, including:

• Why mindsets are trainable skills.
• The magic of 3-hour deep work blocks.
• The 7 words that define business success.
• The 4 Archetypes of happiness.
• How to balance journey vs destination.
• Why experience always beats technology.

They dive into Benny's journey with Life's Peachy FIT:

• The meaning behind the name.
• His rebrand away from F45.
• What's next as he launches franchise opportunities built around leadership, member experience, and genuine human connection in an AI treatment future.

Summary: In this episode I explore how a professional photoshoot can transform your fitness business marketing, with practical steps to plan, capture, and use high-quality photos that attract the right clients.

5 things you'll learn:

• Why professional photos are one of the most effective marketing tools for fitness businesses.
• How to choose photo subjects that reflect your target clients and build connection.
• The types of scenes and interactions that create powerful, versatile images.
• Why staged photos deliver better marketing results than spontaneous action shots.
• How to plan and run a photoshoot that maximises time, efficiency, and usable photos.

Done well, a photoshoot can be one of the most powerful marketing tools for your gym. The right type of photos can give potential clients a glimpse into your business, and can transform both your website and your social media presence.

Great photos are an important part of all the websites I build for fitness businesses.

This guide will cover some of the considerations for a photoshoot, including examples of the sort of photos you're looking to acquire from a photo shoot I ran for my business (you can find these at the bottom of the page).

Firstly - it's highly recommended that you use the services of a professional photographer with professional equipment. The difference in quality is noticeable, and brings a new layer of professionalism to your business. If you're using a professional photographer, this guide might help to give them some direction on what you're looking for.

Photo Subjects:

The subjects of your photos should match the types of people you're looking to attract to your business. We're not looking for perfect, airbrushed models here - we want real people. We want your target customers to look at the photos and think 'those people look like me'.

Well in advance of the photoshoot, you want to contact some of your current clients to ask them to appear in the shoot. We're looking for at least 12 people.

Make sure you've got a broad representation across different ages, nationalities, skin colours, shapes, sizes, genders, sexualities etc.

You want to get any staff you have to be available for the shoot.

If the shoot is for a website, it's also important to get photos of the people who you'll be featuring in testimonials and client feature stories.

Photo Subject Matter:

As mentioned, the photos themselves should be of people who match your avatar (target customer).

They should be working with your staff (ideally in a one-on-one capacity, like hands on technique corrections etc). They should be smiling, laughing and having a good time - while still working hard. The more interaction the better (between staff and client, and between client and client (if you have multiple clients in each photo). Fist bumps, high fives etc are great.

We want photos of all the services you provide. If you offer one-on-one coaching, get photos of that. If you offer small group training, include multiple people in you photos, but there should be one person who is featured in the image - the others are just there for context. If you offer any sit-down consults, make sure you get photos of them.

Photo Composition:

As tempting as it it to have a photographer roam around during a class, or following a PT around during their session, these 'action shots' never come out as well as staged photos. With this in mind, the best approach is to stage the photos, and take multiple shots of each 'scene' - each being slightly different. This will give plenty of options to choose the best shot.

We want these photos to have as many uses as possible. To help with this, the subjects shouldn't be shot from too close. We don't want them filling the frame. This will allow use to 'cut in' the photo to get both portrait (vertical) and landscape (horizontal) images - based on what we need to use them for.

Lighting is really important - we want the photos to be light and bright, with natural lighting being ideal.

Be aware of what else is in the scene. We don't want busy, untidy backgrounds. Keep things clean, simple, minimalist.

Planning the shoot:

To ensure as many uses as possible, plan to have around 12 subjects, with three to four scenes each. For example, one scene might be pushing a prowler, one might be doing a deadlift, one might be doing a dip. Getting 10-20 photos of each scene should result in a choice of 2-3 good shots to choose one great shot from. You'll end up with 36-48 great photos from your entire shoot.

Here are some examples of potential scenes that a strength and conditioning facility might use:

• Air squat
• Deadlift set-up
• Deadlift lock out.
• Barbell front rack position.
• Bottom of a front squat.
• Air bike.
• Rower.
• Bottom of overhead squat.
• Ring row
• Russian KB swing
• Prowler push.
• A group of 3 people people training together.
• Dumbbell bench press.
• Coach and client fist bumping.
• A bunch of your members chatting and talking (maybe while sitting around / mobilising etc).

Where possible, costume changes between scenes will ensure the photos don't end up looking like they were all taken on the same day (even though they were!).

You need to be super organised, with all exercise equipment pre- set up before the photographer arrives. Five minutes for each scene, three scenes, equals 15 minutes per 'model'. 12 models means a total of three hours. You'll probably need to pay the photographer for four hours to allow set-up, pack down time. Your models don't need to be there for the entire shoot, as long as they're there for their allotted time.

You should create a run sheet / shot schedule which will look something like:

• 9am: John with PT prowler push.
• 9.05am: John with PT deadlift.
• 9.10am: John with PT dip.
• 9.15am: Sarah and John rowing.
• 9.20am: Sarah and PT front squat.
• 9.25am: Sarah and PT KB swing.
• etc.

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A well-planned photoshoot can elevate the way people see your business, creating a professional and approachable first impression. With the right preparation, you'll have a library of images that showcase what you do best and attract the clients you want.

Your action steps:

• Hire a professional photographer to ensure your fitness business photos look polished and trustworthy.
• Select a diverse mix of clients and staff who represent your ideal customers.
• Plan multiple staged scenes that showcase your services, interactions, and client enjoyment.
• Prepare equipment and create a detailed shot schedule to keep the session efficient.
• Use the resulting images across your website, social media, and marketing campaigns to strengthen brand presence.