The Business of Fitness Podcast

In this episode Dan Williams explores how goal dilution contributes to the identity crisis in Exercise Physiology and shares how defining what EPs don't do can help the profession stand out.

5 things you'll learn in this episode:

• Why Exercise Physiologists struggle with public recognition and a clear professional identity.
• How goal dilution weakens the perception of Exercise Physiology for clients, referrers, and allied health partners.
• Why defining what you don't do creates stronger positioning and clearer boundaries in a crowded industry.
• How choosing a niche and sticking to it leads to greater credibility, referrals, and brand differentiation.
• How EPs can shift from the red ocean of competition to the blue ocean of being in a category of one.

Today we bring you an episode of the Kinetic Careers podcast with Jeremiah PEIFFER.

Dan Williams was lucky enough to be invited by Jeremiah for the very first episode of his podcast, which helps sport and exercise science students and graduates to develop their career.

Jeremiah and Dan had a wide ranging conversation where they covered:

• Dan's pathway through exercise and sports science
• How the EP profession and ESSA have evolved
• The way Dan has designed his businesses around being a present dad and building a lifestyle not just an income
• The role of failure, networking and lifelong learning in career growth
• Practical advice for students and new grads on positioning themselves, building business acumen and creating remarkable client experiences in an AI-shaped future.

If you are an online coach, or you program for your clients, this is for you.

In this episode, Dan Williams talks about the very real threat that AI is bringing to people who provide programs for their clients.

Dan explores how AI is transforming exercise programming, why online coaches face potentially career ending risks, and how fitness professionals can pivot to protect their careers in the AI-driven future.

5 things you'll learn in this episode:

• Why AI-powered exercise programming is advancing faster than most fitness professionals realise.
• How real-time data from wearables, sleep, mood, and recovery can reshape training sessions instantly.
• The limitations of empathy and human connection as a defence against automation.
• Why online programming is becoming a commodity and what that means for pricing.
• How to pivot your business towards unscalable, in-person experiences that AI cannot replicate.

If you are in the business of exercise programming, everything is about to change. You may think that empathy and human connection is going to save you, but in this episode Dan shares a story that shows how difficult it will be to compete with AI.

Your action steps:

• Reassess whether online programming is your long-term career plan, given AI's rapid advances.
• Explore ways to integrate AI tools into your business as a facilitator, not a competitor.
• Build in-person, non-scalable experiences that prioritise connection and value beyond what AI can deliver.
• Educate clients on the unique benefits of human-led training and the experiential side of fitness.
• Begin shifting your offers towards services that are harder to commoditise, such as bespoke coaching or community-driven experiences.

Summary: In this episode Dan explores why business owners should stop measuring success only by money and start valuing time as their true currency, helping you design a more profitable and balanced business life.

4 things you'll learn in this episode:

1. Why revenue and profit can be misleading measures of business success
2. How tracking hours worked reveals your true hourly rate and workload
3. What it means to switch from 'dollars as currency' to 'minutes as currency'
4. Practical ways to redesign your business to earn time, not just money

Need a website? I can help.

Transcription:

I think just about every single one of us is measuring the wrong thing in business.

I'd like to share something I'm struggling with a bit at the moment.

My very first business was selling shells I'd picked up off the beach. My business premises was the top bunk of my bed. My customers were Mum and Dad. I was six.

From this moment, the measure of success of my little business was how much money it earned. And from that moment forward, every business I had was measured by the same metric. Money.

And it makes sense. We live in a capitalist world. And I'm fine with that. I believe that people should get paid for solving other people's problems.

But living in that world makes it really hard to gauge the success of your business by anything other than the size of your bank account. That mindset has been drilled into us since before we could walk.

Money is our measure of business success, and for some of us, it's also a measure of life success.

Society tells us that dollars are the currency that matter – they're the scoreboard that tells us if we're winning the game.

And we know it shouldn't be like this, but it is.

So back to the thing I'm struggling with.

I'm struggling to break way from a lifetime of 'money as the measure of success'.

Within the last couple of years, I've made some major structural changes to the businesses I run. Let me take you back to what business looked like before these changes.

I was working around 45 hours a week on multiple businesses, I had a team of 12 staff, brick and mortar premises, and my wife and I owned a home and three investment properties. Revenue was high – I was earning more than I ever thought I would. But the nature of running businesses in that way meant expenditure was high too – but not so high that there wasn't a very tidy profit margin.

And it's that profit that was my scoreboard. If I profited more in February than I did in January, I was becoming more successful. Sure, it was pretty stressful, and I was always worrying about something, but that's just a cost of doing business right?

But then, I made some very deliberate and intentional changes to how I worked.

Fast forward to today. Zero staff, no premises, no investment properties, lower revenue.

By most traditional measures, you'd say I'm now less successful than I was.

However, expenditures dropped by about 75% and profit (which is the only financial metric that only really matters to me) dropped by only about 10%.

And importantly, most importantly by far is something the accountant can't see. I'm achieving this off the back of an average of 22 hours per week of work – that's all types of work – billable work, admin, business development… everything.

You'll remember I was working 45 hours a week. And it's now about 22. That means I'm doing HALF the amount of work I was. 50% of the work for 90% of the profit. That's a massive increase in profit per hours worked, and probably a 90% drop in stress too.

But you know what, there's a tiny little niggling part of my brain that's still telling me I'm less successful than I used to be. Because of that small drop in profit.

Part of me is still a slave to the notion that dollars are the true and only measure of success.

I'm working really hard on this, and I think I'm slowly winning. I'm slowly honestly believing that the currency that measures the success of my business is not money, but time.

Time is the currency. Time is the resource I'm earning.

I'm flipping my thinking. I no longer engineer my work to optimise for financial earnings, but to optimise for temporal earnings – earnings of time. I base business decisions on the time they'll earn me, not the money.

The changes I've made are paying me 23 hours a week. That is the value of the business I've built. That's the salary my business pays me. Not money, but time.

A traditional approach would see people put that 23 hours back into their business. For my highest financial value tasks, I charge my consulting out at a rate of $300 an hour. That's just under an extra $7000 a week if I was to trade my free time in for money. But you know what, I'd rather have the extra 1,380 minutes per week than the extra $6,900.

Bear in mind that I started my business 19 years ago – and I'm not denying the need for hard work and long hours. But I am denying that that mindset needs to continue just out of habit. Just look at the number of depressed, divorced billionaires. I believe there is a better way.

How could your life be changed by switching from 'dollars-as-currency' and adopting more of a 'minutes-as-currency' mindset? It's a change that's worked for me, and something I explore in great depth with the business owners I mentor.

If you want to start making this change, I recommend you start by introducing some new KPIs to the metrics you track. Start tracking your hours of work across all work types, and then calculating your TRUE hourly rate. How about also implementing a self-administered 'quality of life' scale each month – just as a regular reminder of what's most important. What get's measured get managed, and you can't manage your time without first measuring it.

Episode 61 of the podcast is called 'I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here's what I learned.'. Listen here, or read the article here. I'd recommend you check that one out if you're interested in how I track my time. And all the way back in episode three, I spoke about 'Your REAL Hourly Rate: The True Cost of Running a Fitness Business' (podcast | article) Those two episodes are a great place to start if you want to switch to a minutes-as-currency mindset.

If you're interested in the philosophy of money, time, work, and life in general, I've got one more resource for you.

This is an article I wrote and released as a podcast, where I break down my general philosophy of how to live a full and good life. In it I attempt to answer questions around:

• The role of pain and suffering in life. How do I remove them? Should I remove them?
• How can I balance ambition with contentment? Striving with settling? Journey and destination?
• How can I balance work, productivity, time and money, to give me a 'good life'.
• When I strip back the work I do, who am I?
• Do I use busyness and work as a distraction from the question of what I actually want to do with my life?
• What are the elements of a 'good life', and how do I get more of them?

That episode was published in May of 2025, I hope you check it out (article | podcast).

And I hope you can consider a switch to a 'minutes-as-currency' mindset. My life has never been better than since I made that change.

Your action steps:

1. Start recording every hour you spend on all business tasks to calculate your true hourly rate.
2. Add new KPIs that track time, such as weekly hours worked and a monthly quality-of-life score.
3. Analyse which tasks or structures reduce your hours without harming profit and adjust your business model accordingly.
4. Resist reinvesting every freed hour into more work; protect and use reclaimed time for life and health.
5. Revisit your definition of success regularly to ensure it aligns with both profit and lifestyle goals.

In this episode Dan Williams explores the six essential sections every fitness business website needs and the psychological strategies you should include to convert more leads into paying clients.

Check out the demo websites Dan has built to accompany this episode.

Let Dan help you build a beautiful, one-page website that generates leads for your business: Learn more.

• Why your website should be the centre of your fitness business marketing

• The six must-have sections that guide visitors towards taking action

• How to write customer-focused website copy that speaks directly to your audience

• Psychological principles like scarcity and loss aversion that boost conversions

• Practical examples of how to apply these strategies to your own fitness website

1. Redesign your website around the six core sections to guide visitors from interest to action.

2. Use customer-centric language that speaks directly to your target audience's pain points and goals.

3. Add short, clear testimonials and client stories to build trust and social proof.

4. Apply psychological principles like scarcity, loss aversion, and the endowment effect in your calls to action.

In this 'quick thought' Dan asks us to rethink identity, not as what we do for money, but as how we actually live and spend our time.

Like a lot of poeple, Ben Luckens from Life's Peachy FIT has a great conversion rate when his leads come in for a trial.

But the issue is actually getting them in the door.

In this episode, Ben asks Dan about his strategies for less ghosting and more conversions.

You'll learn:

• Why adding friction can actually improve lead quality and boost show-up rates.

• The surprising response time that multiplies your conversions by nearly four times.

• How to deliver remarkable client experiences before someone even sets foot in your gym.

• Five psychological triggers that ethically nudge leads from enquiry to committed member.

Dan explains a simple client reactivation system for fitness businesses, show how to track resurrection rate, and share easy steps to win back ex-members.

• How to build a list of ex-clients and calculate a monthly resurrection rate for your fitness business.
• How to improve offboarding with quick exit interviews that record clear reasons for leaving.
• How to trigger win-back messages the moment a client's original blocker is removed.
• How to use Fresh Start timing and milestone contacts to lift replies and bookings.
• How to reach past clients with Meta Custom Audience ads and a direct booking link.

Transcription:

If you're looking for a new way to grow your business, generate a list of all your previous clients and members. I've never seen anyone do this and not be shocked by how long that list is.

There's a huge number of people who, at some point, used your service, but are no longer paying customers. People who once needed you, but who, for some reason, got to the point where they didn't need you any more.

And this list provides an opportunity for reactivation – converting ex-clients back into current clients.

And that's what I want to discuss, a strategy guide to client reactivation.

Generally, we spend most of our time on two things, client retention, and lead generation. We build systems and pipelines for lead generation, and we design client journeys to provide valuable experiences to keep people around. But once they leave our business, too many businesses cut them lose, going back to focus on retention and new leads. And sure, these things are important (particularly retention), but reactivation often seems to be forgotten. I want to fix that.

But first, there are five things you need to do before even beginning to think about client reactivation. I've spoken a lot about these before (and I'll give you some recommended content if you want to dig deeper), but I'm not going to go into detail, but let me summarise what you need to do BEFORE you start the process of reactivating past clients.

1: Provide a remarkable experience so people don't leave in the first place. Check out my article 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of 'Being Different' or listen to episode 69 of the podcast.

2: Build a system to alert you of your three clients who are at highest risk of departure each week and add value to them that week. Read my article 'Increase retention to 98% using this 10 minute strategy' or listen to episode 26 of the podcast.

3: Conduct an exit interview with all departing clients, and identify the reason they're leaving. Keep a table of all the reasons for departure in seperate columns, with the list of all the people who left for that reason under the heading.

4: Identify how long into their client journey each customer is when they leave. Identify the most common time to leave (for example, it might be between four and 6 months, and increase the experience people are receiving for the eight weeks leading up to that point. This will plug your biggest leak. Read: 'The Only Thing Fitness Business Owners Need to Do For Retention'.

5: Make sure memberships on hold (dormant customers) receive weekly contacts of some kind.

Ok, so assuming you're doing those five things, we can move onto some ideas to help you reactivate your past clients. If you're not doing those five things, the strategies we're about to discuss won't work as well.

It's really common for business owners to bump into ex customers who say to them 'oh, I've been meaning to get back in touch with you guys'. It's definitely something I've experienced. This tells me people are open to working with you again, they just need a bit of a nudge to take that first step.

Firstly, what gets measured gets managed. So start measuring what's called your 'resurrection rate'. This is the percentage of past clients who you come back to you each month. We calculate this by dividing the number of returning clients in a month by the number of past clients at the start of the month. For example, if you start March with a list of 200 ex members, and during the month of March three of them restart, that's 3 / 200, or 1.5%. So your resurrection rate is 1.5%. This number will allow you to gauge the success of the reactivation strategies.

Ok, so once you've started measuring your resurrection rate, we can start the process of increasing it.

And we begin with the client departure. How can you make this a great experience? People expect a great experience to START their journey with you, but it'll really blow their mind if the END of their journey is equally remarkable. How you do this is up to you, but the litmus test is whether your departing client tells a friend about how good the departure experience was. That's the definition of 'remarkable' – able to be remarked about. As part of this departure, you need to have some sort of exit interview or survey which will tell you why they left.

And this brings us to the next strategy. Contact your ex clients when their reason for departure has been removed. Remember I spoke about keeping a table of all client departures, with each client listed under their reason for departure? This where you can use that. For example, if you launch online programming, contact all ex clients who left because they were moving away from your gym. If you're introducing a new, cheaper option, contact all clients who left for financial reasons. If you've built a new system to help clients exercise around an injury, let all your clients know who left due to injury.

Similar to this, you can contact past clients with any announcements about new products or services you're offering, introducing new staff, announcing changes to the facility, or anything else that indicates a change in how you're doing business or the experience people can expect from you.

If you're about to launch a service that is limited to a certain number of people, use this scarcity as a tactic to encourage re engagement – maybe you can offer this limited service to ex clients first, giving them 24 hours to register their interest before you open up the opportunity to everyone else.

With a bit of knowledge of marketing psychology, we can take advantage of what's called the 'fresh start theory'.

This well research phenomenon tells us that people like to start something new or undergo a big behaviour change on a Monday, the first day of the month or the first day of the year etc. So, make sure you're timing your communications with them to be just prior to a new week, month or year. For example, you might contact your database of ex clients at the start of the new year saying something like, 'We know a lot of people are wanted to take back control of their health this year – just wanted to let you know we're here to help and ready when you are.'

You should also be contacting people during milestone moments in their life.

Again, we're not trying to make a hard sell here – or even a soft sell for that matter. You'll remember I was talking about the number of people who express interest in returning to your business after bumping into you in person. Contacting people during milestone moments in their life just provides a 'virtual bump'.

They should receive a handwritten birthday card in the mail for every birthday. You should make a particular effort when people are approaching a major milestone birthday. People who've just turned 29, 39, 49, 59, 69 etc. are more likely to be wanting to get back into exercise. The most common age for people to run their first marathon is 40, with peaks of participation at the start of every new decade of life. Take advantage of this to help them along their milestone journey.

You can also contact them on their anniversary of starting with you. Maybe they initially started in the lead up to summer, or when the weather meant they couldn't get outside to run. Whatever their reason for contacting you at a certain time of year – that reason may reemerge on their anniversary of starting every year.

Staying front of mind is key, and this is where content marketing becomes important. The purpose of content marketing as a general marketing strategy is to position you as an expert to your target client. This becomes doubly important as a reactivation strategy, as a way to remind your previous clients that you're still there, and available to help solve their problems. As part of your regular content marketing, you should be email everyone in your email network fortnightly with your latest articles, videos, podcast episodes, carousels, infographics, or whatever other medium you choose to use. Past clients should definitely remain a part of this email network.

Make sure that a percentage of your content is about topics that are specifically relevant to people who you're hoping to attract back to your business. Maybe tips about how to restart exercise after a break, how to rebuild a broken exercise habit, or the psychology of loss aversion and the ease with which a person can maintain a baseline level of strength and fitness.

While paid advertising is commonly used for new cold-lead generation, it's not often used for internal marketing (for example upselling your current clients), or to attract old clients back in. For example, within Meta, you can create a 'Custom Audience from a Customer List'. This is where you can have an advert running that is visible only to past clients. You don't need to re-sell them on your service, or educate them about what you do, because they already know that. Instead, you should have a very strong call to action to make it as clear and simple as possible for them to restart. Because this custom audience list size will be very small, you can achieve a lot of success here from a tiny budget (the minimum Meta will allow).

Regularly engaging with your ex clients on social media by commenting on their posts is another great way to stay front-of-mind. Again, this should be 0% sales, and 100% general interest and encouragement.

Ok, some final thoughts that run through all these ideas.

Make as many of your communications as possible, as one-on-one and individualised as possible. A personal email is much more likely to be read than an email to a mailing list. And finally, the general feeling of all communications is 'we're ready when you are'. You just want to make sure you're remaining front of mind, so when they're ready to restart, you're the first business they think of.

A strong reactivation strategy deserves a place right next to retention and lead generation on the podium of business growth strategies. If you're not prioritising reactivation, it's time to start.

• Export every past client into one spreadsheet, add a 'reason for leaving' tag, and start tracking your monthly resurrection rate.
• Set calendar reminders to contact people when their blocker is solved, for example new pricing, online options, or injury support.
• Schedule Fresh Start messages before Mondays, new months, and the new year, and send birthday and join-anniversary notes.
• Keep ex-clients on your fortnightly email with 'restart' tips, simple plans, and a one-click booking link.
• Upload the past-client email list to Meta Custom Audiences and run a small-budget ad that sends straight to booking.

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:

• 'The one page fitness marketing checklist. Just do these things' or listen to episode 79 of the podcast.
• 'Delivering an Experience: The Strategy of 'Being Different' or listen to episode 69 of the podcast.
• 'Increase retention to 98% using this 10 minute strategy' or listen to episode 26 of the podcast.
• 'The Only Thing Fitness Business Owners Need to Do For Retention'.

In this episode Dan shares the one-page marketing plan he recommends to every fitness business he mentors, focusing on 11 proven marketing areas that consistently drive long-term growth without chasing fads.

Download a PDF version of the one page marketing checklist here.

Four things you'll learn in this episode:

• How to simplify your marketing by focusing on 11 essential categories that actually work.
• How to build systems for storytelling, referrals, and reactivating past members to drive growth.
• The most effective way to run paid social media ads without wasting money.
• Why consistent, low-glamour marketing actions outperform chasing trends and short-term tactics.

Transcription:

I've spent 19 years in business searching for the magic bullet of marketing – first for my own businesses, and then for the hundreds of business owners I've mentored. And believe me when I tell you I've tried everything.

Spoiler alert, there is no magic bullet. And the more people search for it, the more they're distracted from the tried and tested basics of marketing… the things that actually work.

There's an exercise I've found myself setting for a lot of the business owners I mentor. I tell them to create a list of non negotiable marketing tasks. A one page marketing manifesto. A list of actions they need to regularly take to ensure they're covering all bases of marketing. Then, as long as they're ticking these boxes, I don't have a problem with them running off chasing the shiny objects and short term trends that they hope will be the next big thing that promises to bring them 30 clients in 30 days. Almost always, this thing will be a waste of time and money, but if they're incessantly doing the basics, at least they'll experience the consistent, persistent, regular, steady growth that comes from doing the basics well.

So I thought I'd formalise this one page marketing plan, and share it with you guys so that in a world of distractions and broken promises, you've got something simple, tried and tested to come back to.

Here's how I'm going to structure this.

First, I'll give you a list of the 11 areas of marketing you need to focus on.

Second, I'll give you a broad description of each, so you know how and why that marketing strategy works, along with a rough overview of what you need to be doing.

Third, for each of the 11 areas I'll give you a very short and succinct, and HIGHLY actionable task list for that area of marketing. I'll tell you what to do, and how often to do it, with no bullshit.

And finally, I'll summarise each of the 11 areas into a weekly task lists to give you your one page marketing plan.

Two big caveats before we kick this off though.

Caveat number one:

The single best marketing strategy is to be so good they can't ignore you. Without this, your churn rate will be high, and retention will be low. You can build a solid business with no marketing strategy other than providing a remarkable experience to your clients. By the same token, even if your marketing plan is absolutely world class, you simply won't be successful if the product and experience you provide isn't up to scratch. You should combine this with a system to identify clients who are at high risk of departure, and a system to minimise the risk of this departure.

Caveat number two:

If you don't know who you're for, don't waste your time starting the process of marketing. A marketing strategy needs to begin with an intimate awareness of your avatar – your target customer. You need to create highly detailed documentation of the avatars your business serves. This should include demographics, relationships, dwelling, occupation, education, values, personality, spending habits, content consumption, future goals, and roles in purchasing decisions. For each avatar, you should understand their level of awareness and summarise their pain points clearly. These avatars should guide your decisions about your products, services, and customer experience. Your marketing needs to be purposefully designed to speak directly to them.

Ok, with those two disclaimers out of the way, and remembering that a red hot customer experience and an understanding of your avatar need to come first, let's jump in, we're going to cover the following categories:

• 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

Your business needs to have a professional, functional website with a strong user experience. It should act as the central hub for both current and potential clients, serving as both a marketing destination and an educational resource. The site needs to be optimised for organic search traffic and include dedicated landing pages with clear, low-friction calls to action for each service. The messaging should focus on who you help and how you help them, not just what you do. It needs to compel visitors to take meaningful action.

Actions to take:

• Build a one page website that has just five sections. A description of who the business is for and how you solve their problems. A brief description of the services offered by your business. Social proof through testimonials and success stories. A call to action. And then, at the top of the page, a maximum 25 word summary of the entire website, so people can learn everything they need to know without scrolling.

You need to consistently document the life of your business on social media through tools like Instagram and Facebook Stories. These should offer potential clients a window into your business and help build a strong, authentic culture. You should regularly share client success stories using a structured narrative (e.g. a five-act story) to highlight their journey.

Your business also needs to share real-time, day-to-day content and repurpose short-term content into longer-form storytelling. These posts should feature clients who match your target avatar and clearly show how your business helps them solve their problems.

Actions to take:

• Every week, post one client story to all social media platforms (post to feed, not stories). Use the five act narrative: The Dream, The Obstacle, The Mentor, The Path, The Arrival. Ideally, this will be a video story, but a series of five carousel images with text is also great.
• Every day, post to 'social media stories' (Instagram and Facebook) at least five times. Feature videos and photos of clients who match your target avatar, having a good time, using your business to overcome their problems. With the text on the video/image, either tell a story (using the five act narrative), or teach people something. Tag every client who appears to encourage reposting.

You need to regularly create and distribute high-quality, valuable content across multiple formats — written, video, image, and audio. This content should be repurposed across several platforms including social media, YouTube, Medium, and LinkedIn. It needs to position you as the go-to expert in your niche and directly solve the problems of your target avatar.

Actions to take:

• Every week, solve the problems of your avatar by posting educational material. Choose one topic each week, and leverage this content into as many different media (article, carousels, video, podcast) and platforms (Your website, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Podcast Player etc) as possible.

You need to have systems in place that encourage your clients to share their experiences with your business. This content should then be featured through your social media channels, helping build social proof and trust with others who match your avatar.

Actions to take:

• Build a program that rewards clients for sharing their experiences at your business – every post gives an entry into the draw to win a prize worth $200-$300 every two months.
• Every week, distribute something about this micro-influencer marketing program either through online private members groups, in-house signage/announcements, or face-to-face (e.g. before a group class).
• Complete everything in the 'documentation and storytelling' section.

Your business needs a structured and consistent referral process. You should make it easy for clients to refer their friends and provide both incentivised and non-incentivised options. Every client should understand how the referral process works, how to use it, and what their friend's experience will be. You also need to run ongoing messaging that keeps referrals top of mind.

Actions to take:

• Build a referral reward program where you make a donation to a charity on behalf of your referring client for every referral.
• Every week, distribute something about this referral reward program either through online private members groups, in-house signage/announcements, or face-to-face (e.g. before a group class).

Your business needs to maintain a well-organised email database of current, past, and potential clients. You should be sending regular newsletters that focus on solving client problems, not just promoting your services. While some sales messages are fine, most of your communication should add value. You also need to use your email list to create targeted social media audiences for social media retargeting.

Actions to take:

• Send an email every fortnight to all clients, and anyone in your wider network. Include any content marketing you've done in the previous fortnight, any client stories, and one mention of both your referral reward program and your micro-influencer incentivisation program.

Your business needs a system to track and reconnect with past clients. You should know why they left and be able to reach out with personal, timely, and relevant messages. These reactivation efforts need to be warm, low-pressure, and connected to seasonal or life-stage triggers. Clients should return because they feel remembered and understood.

Actions to take:

• Build a system to alert you of your three clients who are at highest risk of departure each week.
• Every week, do something to improve the value of the experience you provide to these three high risk clients.

You should complete the latest courses from Meta to learn the up-to-date best practices. Your business needs to run social media ads that match the customer journey. Cold leads should see helpful content, and warm leads should see testimonials or direct calls to action.

Use batching. Run short, high-spend campaigns, then pause to review and reset. Ads should blend into the feed, with strong visuals and clear messaging.

Target three groups: people likely to be interested, people already familiar with you, and people similar to your best clients. Test, refine, and make decisions based on performance. Ads should support your broader marketing system and move leads to act.

Actions to take:

• Spend five hours doing Meta's 'Facebook Blueprint' courses.
• Find a way to justify a $500 monthly paid social media advertising budget. Run a social media ad for two weeks with a $500 budget, then run no ad for two weeks. Repeat.

You should complete the latest courses from Google to learn the up-to-date best practices.

Your business needs to run search ads that appear when people are actively looking for your service. These leads are warm and highly motivated.

You need clear messaging that matches what people are searching for and reflects your unique value. Ads should target your local area and link to relevant pages on your site.

Your business should test different ads, track conversions, and improve over time. Google Ads should support your wider marketing system by capturing intent-driven leads ready to act.

Actions to take:

• Spend five hours doing Google's 'Skillshop' ads courses.
• Run Google search ads year-round.

Your business needs to be a visible and valued part of the local community. You should show up at events, cafés, sports clubs, and community hubs, proudly representing your brand. You need to form real relationships with local businesses and professionals and support them publicly. When people say, 'I see you everywhere', that needs to be true — because consistent community presence builds trust and word-of-mouth.

Actions to take:

• Do three offline things every week to make you and your business famous in the local community.

Your business needs to avoid relying on short-term promotions or reactive marketing tactics. Instead, you should have a proactive, long-term strategy that builds brand value over time. Occasional short-term promotions can be used strategically but must never replace a strong foundation of consistent marketing.

Actions to take:

• Every quarter, promote and run some sort of promotion to get a bulk influx of new clients.

One-time tasks:

• Be so good they can't ignore you.
• Define your avatar.
• Build a really good website.
• Build a program that rewards clients for sharing their experiences at your business.
• Build a referral reward program.
• Build a system to alert you of your three clients who are at highest risk of departure each week.
• Spend five hours doing Meta's 'Facebook Blueprint' courses.
• Spend five hours doing Google's 'Skillshop' ads courses.

Every day:

• Post to social media 'stories' five times.

Every week:

• Post one five-act client story to all social media platforms.
• Create problem-solving content and post it in as many forms as possible to as many platforms as possible.
• Distribute one piece of information about your micro-influencer marketing program.
• Distribute one piece of information about your referral reward program.
• Every week, do something to improve the value of the experience you provide to your three highest risk (of departure) clients.
• Do three offline things every week to make you and your business famous in the local community.

Every fortnight:

• Send an email to all clients and your wider network with all the content marketing and storytelling from the previous fortnight, as well as one mention of both your referral reward program and your micro-influencer incentivisation program.

Every month:

• Run a paid Meta Ads campaign for two weeks and at least $500.

Every quarter:

• Promote and run some sort of promotion to get a bulk influx of new clients.

Every year:

• Run an ongoing Google ads campaign.

Do these things, and it will be almost impossible for you not to achieve persistent growth.

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:

• Your missing marketing strategy. The power of storytelling.
• 20 Strategies to become locally famous.
• Struggling to get clients? Try these 19 strategies.
• A gym advertising guide for every budget.

Dan spoke with three leading fitness business owners to discuss their top five books for fitness business owners.

Jake Morgan, Ben Major and Scott Hook give us their most impactful and business-changing book recommendations.

The boys also discuss their reading habits, and why reading (or listening) to books has been instrumental in every level of their success.

Add these to your wishlist!

Jake Morgan, Habitual Strength and Conditioning. 1. Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara 2. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath 3. 10x is Easier than 2x by Dan Sullivan & Dr. Benjamin Hardy 4. Atomic Habits by James Clear 5. Happier by Tal Ben Shahar

Ben Major, PrimeFit: 1. Man Up by Bedros Keuilian 2. The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle 3. Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne 4. The Power of Moments by Chip Heath & Dan Heath 5. Endless Customers by Marcus Sheridan

Scott Hook: VSC 1. Barefoot Investor by Scott Pape 2. Get Different by Mike Michalowicz 3. Cult Status by Tim Duggan 4. Built to Serve by Evan Carmichael 5. Beyond Entreneurship by Jim Collins

Dan Williams 1. 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Burkeman 2. Company of One by Paul Jarvis 3. Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara 4. Deep Work by Cal Newport 5. Influence by Robert Cialdini