Yesterday I had a meeting with Eric & Dick about our dilemma with needing to launch the next Auto-Closer™ class… pronto!

It’s going to be short and sweet, but I think we’ve come up with a good solution.

Watch the video below for all the details. Due to the big time constraint we’re under, this is the ONLY notice you’re going to get about this special opportunity.

And if you don’t have any idea what Auto-Closer™ system is, then visit http://www.AutoCloserSystem.com for full details how this sales training program can explode your fitness business (and your life) in a big way.

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Hope you had a great weekend.

I just got back from a few (much needed) days off.

Christina and I went to the Outer Banks here in NC for a great beach mini-vacation.

With all that we’ve had going on the past few months (multiple launches, new programs, events, etc.) it’s been a bit too long since I took some personal time for R & R.

And I’ve been overdue for time to recharge the batteries.

Let me tell you that if YOU haven’t taken some time off in a while, take out your calendar this morning and start blocking out some days.

Maybe it’s just a day here and there in the next couple months, or if you’re fortunate enough to block a good stretch of time, then great.

It doesn’t have to be a blow-out trip that breaks your bank account.

But it SHOULD be something that gets you out of your normal routine, and gives you the freedom to just relax.

After this weekend, I’ve made sure to block out holiday time on my calendar for the rest of 2008 and I can’t tell you how good it feels.

Ok, onto the reason I’m writing you today.

Last week we had a launch for our next DUPLICATOR™ class (which sold out VERY quickly as expected). And during the webinar I had the pleasure of interviewing 4 fitness business owners who are absolutely KILLING it with the DUPLICATOR™ program.

Their stories are truly amazing and inspiring. If you missed the live webinar, hopefully you’ll get to hear it at some point.

Anyway, it was very interesting to me that every one of the folks we had on the DUPLICATOR™ webinar all talked about the impact our AUTO-CLOSER™ fitness sales system had on their businesses to ‘get them going’ in the first place.

They each said AUTO-CLOSER™ jumped them into high-gear with sales and revenue, then DUPLICATOR™ helped them get organized with staffing, systems, and management.

Kinda like a 1-2 punch!

And it got me thinking more about just how life-changing AUTO-CLOSER™ really is for everyone we get the pleasure of taking through the program.

If you don’t have any idea about what the AUTO-CLOSER™ fitness sales system is, then you can download a special report about what it is (and how it works) here:

http://www.AutoCloserSystem.com

We’re overdue for launching our next class of AUTO-CLOSER™, and I’m going to speak with Eric and Dick today about fitting it into our schedule.

I hope to have more details on when we’ll have the next round of live classes available soon.

In the meantime, check out the report (and request a copy of the ERUPTION CD too if you don’t have it already) at:

http://www.AutoCloserSystem.com

Have a great week,
Sean

P.S. One of the fun things I got to do at the beach this past weekend was finally dig into a big stack of reading material I’ve been itching to get to. And I finished going through a program all about adding video to your blog, which I’m pretty excited about. If I get to it today, I just might be able to record a video to post up for you tomorrow. Stay tuned…

We’ve had a few awards go out this week and Eric and I want to publicly congratulate each of the winners.

First, we’ve got Tony Maslan, owner of Custom Fit Personal Training in Evansville, IN. If you were on the Duplicator™ webinar Tuesday you got to hear Tony speak about his story. Tony has just been killing it. In the past 6 months he’s gone from training 80 sessions a week to now only working a couple hours of week training. His time is now spent on sales, marketing, and management. He’s had bigger gross sales (thanks to Auto-Closer™) in the first quarter of this year than all of last. And on top of that he and his wife just had a new baby girl so he’s spending more time than ever at home with the family. Tony made an INCREDIBLE presentation at our Platinum mastermind meeting last weekend. He was the unanimous vote for “BEST PRESENTATION” by everyone in attendance. Congrats Tony!

Next award for the weekend went to David David, owner of Dubail Fitness Institute in Miami, FL. Dave has transformed his business and life over the past several months. Last summer he went through Auto-Closer™ and tripled his average ticket sale in the studio. Then in the fall he went through Duplicator™ and has transitioned from working IN the business to ON the business. Dave is no longer training 10 sessions a day. He’s got 2 admin assistants (one for morning, one for afternoons) and works primarily from home on his business. His presentation was just incredible. And he likes to give everyone a hard time on our weekly conference calls about how he just got done running on the beach!

And the final award for the week goes to NPE Gold Plus Member Mark Saunders. Mark is the owner of Dynamic Bodies Personal Training in Tucson, AZ. Mark had a great submission on our Gold Plus webinar Tuesday, showing a full lead generation package that is pulling in leads on auto-pilot through both online and offline marketing. We had several VERY good submissions for the call, but we’re all about results and Mark showed a bunch of leads to us time and date stamped to prove the results his package is actually getting! So Congrats Mark, a check for $500 has been sent out to you. We’ll post your photo when we receive it!

This past weekend the Platinum clients were in town for one of our ‘closed-door’ mastermind meetings. We have these meetings 3 times per year, and this was BY FAR the best one we’ve ever had yet. After a long day of work on Friday, we took the crew out for some dinner and fun. Ended up at the bowling alley which had ‘cosmic bowl’ from 10pm-1am, with great old-skool videos of funk music from the 70’s!

Here are a few random photos from the night:

Above: Chrissy, Rita, Shana, Holly, Camelia.

Above: Tim, John, Dave, Clint.

Above: Sean & Tony.

Above: the ‘last standing’ from the long night. Those who stayed until the end: Tim, Holly, Eric, Shana, Sean, John, Christina, Dave, Chrissy, and Tony.

We celebrated Eric’s b-day in the office on Tuesday, just before getting on the Gold Plus call-in day marathon (which was exhausting, but a blast - thank you to all who participated and to those who couldn’t get through- we’ll have another next quarter).

If you haven’t wished him a happy b-day yet, you can do so by sending a message through the contact form above. The ol’ man turned 42 years young!

You hear lots of dollar figures tossed about by various folks in the industry…

five figures, six figures, seven figures.

Dollars are a good measuring stick of ’success’ - but not THE measuring stick.

There is but one REAL litmus test of ’success’.

Here it is…

Are you making a measurable difference in your client’s lives…and your own?

Lots of fitness professionals are making a difference in their client’s lives - really helping clients get measurable results that dramatically improve the quality of their lives.

But very few fitness professionals - a tiny fraction - are improving their own lives at the same time.

Here’s what I mean…

If you got a phone call from a friend today inviting you and your spouse/significant other to go away on a special two-week vacation to Australia NEXT WEEK, could you:

1. Afford to go: do you have enough in the kitty right now to afford the trip of a lifetime at the drop of a hat?

2. Be able to go: would your fit-biz run smoothly and correctly in your absence - all details handled seamlessly - so when you return it was like you had never been gone?

You may think this is an unrealistic exercise and not even worth your consideration because you plan your
vacations well in advance…

…but is it really?

I’ve put a pretty face on this, but consider the ugly side.

What if, God forbid, something were to happen to your health right now?

1. Would you be able to afford the time away from work?

2. Would your biz run smoothly and seamlessly in your absence?

Yesterday I turned 42 years old.

Age has a way of clarifying things.

I don’t ever want to miss out on special opportunities to experience life, or be held hostage by circumstance because I wasn’t prepared.

Great opportunity could present itself today - and I want to be able to capitalize.

Or great tragedy could occur today - and I want to be able to not only cope, but weather it, survive it and bounce back.

I’m not trying to be a bummer - to rain on your parade.

All I’m trying to do is get you thinking about where you are right now - HONESTLY - and evaluate if you are where you want to be.

A ’successful’ biz is not just about profits and resources in the bank - it’s about a sustainable biz that can weather a storm.

It’s about a SYSTEMS-DRIVEN biz that can run smoothly and seamlessly even in your absence.

It’s about a biz that not only pays you well, but provides real security.

Because, I assure you, the only REAL security is that which you create.

I know this is a heavy topic, but it’s one you must consider sooner rather than later.

Most folks, fitness professionals included, are living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ - day to day.

And when you live like that - you live at significant risk.

The way to stop living that way is to focus your efforts and energies to working ON your biz, rather than IN your biz.

You’ve probably heard that hundreds of times. And you probably intellectually appreciate its importance.

But you don’t really know HOW to do THAT.

And you’re not alone. The vast majority of fit-biz owners are in the same boat.

That’s why so many (thousands) are visiting http://www.DuplicationCode.com to discover how to stop being a slave to their fitness business and finally get the freedom they deserve.

I encourage you to do the same. Sean wrote a powerful Special Report (not a thinly veiled sales ‘pitch’) you can get right now that illustrates HOW to work on your business.

And you can listen to 7 fit-biz owners who have literally transformed their biz and their life by following the DUPLICATOR system.

On many levels ’success’ is very subjective. It can be different for different people.

But one thing’s for certain…we ALL want to be free of worry and sleepless nights, and we ALL want to be able to really live life to its fullest.

So get the report and audio CD, and if you want more information about DUPLICATOR, we’ll be doing a live Webinar next week.

http://www.DuplicationCode.com

Wishing you tremendous success,

Eric Ruth

Last night I had an interesting phone call with one of our new VIP clients.

This guy owns a couple studios, is doing VERY well with implementing the marketing, sales, and management systems we teach.

And he asked me one of the best questions I’ve been asked in some time.

(Which is instructive in itself to why this guy continues to grow at such a rapid pace.)

His question was:

“Sean, you’ve coached and worked with a lot of fitness professionals and studio owners that are at the point I am right now. What do you see separates those that plateau or go downhill from those that continue to grow to the really BIG time?”

As I thought about it, I came up with 2 things that I consistently see separate those who ‘kinda make it’ and those who ‘really make it.’

1. Your Head- I see a lot of folks that are crippled by their own ego. They think they’ve ‘arrived’ and they stop being the aggressive student they once used to be. They think they know it all now, and there isn’t a whole lot left they need to learn.

They kinda start ‘coasting’, which really means they allow all the momentum they’ve worked so hard to build to stall. And this gives their competitors time to close the gap.

This is a pretty sad scenario and one that is easily avoidable by surrounding yourself with the right support systems, people, and mastermind group that will continue to challenge you beyond what you ‘think’ you can do and what you ‘think’ is the end point in your destination.

When you surround yourself with a top group of winners, the competitive fire comes back. And new ideas, opportunities and directions for your business growth inevitably come out of the experience.

And you will discover there really is no ‘end point’. There are just continuing levels of growth and new and exciting challenges ahead… if you stay ‘open’ to them.

2. Infastructure- Being able to drive your ‘little’ business to become a ‘big’ business is one thing.

But what happens when you stop driving growth all by yourself?

Is your company structured so that it continues to grow whether you are present or not?

For most in this industry the answer is no.

They haven’t taken the time (nor learned how to have the patience) required to build a rock-solid team that works together seamlessly to consistently grow the business.

This is a combination of:

- The systems in your business- one thing to install them, quite another to refine them down so they work just the way they are supposed to. It takes consistent work and patience to go back to a job description for an employee, or a procedure outline for how a scenario is handled in your business, and consistently refine and update it over and over and over again. Most people don’t do this. They limp along with somewhat broken and ‘good enough’ systems. Only the best of the best have the discipline and patience to continually do the work required here.

- The people who work for you- Getting the right group of people working in your company isn’t easy. Often a new hire can fool you, and turn out to not be all that you hoped they would. So it’s generally a process of hiring staff, letting staff go, hiring staff, letting staff go, and so on… until you finally have a solid team of GREAT people working for you. And by ‘great’ I mean a team that has the right ‘people’ skills. You can’t train someone how to be a good person, how to have good values, how to have good ethics, how to care for people. You’ve got to hire those skills. Then everything else (the technical information and functions of the job) can all be trained.

Most people never push hard enough through the sifting and sorting process they must in order to get the right team of people in place.

Hiring new staff, firing the wrong staff… over and over again.. is not fun or easy. But it IS a very big key to success.

- The training you do in your company- practice makes perfect, and there is no substitute for time. Developing the right staff and growing them up just plain takes time. Time for you to train them, time for them to learn. And then time for it to all ‘gel’ together.

And the more you do, the more effective you staff will be able to perform when the sh*t hits the fan.

I’m talking about things like someone quits or you have to go out of town for a family emergency for a couple weeks. These are the types of events that would shut most little businesses down. But GREAT fitness businesses have the team so well trained, that they can quickly compensate for having a man (or woman) down and keep the train on the tracks.

Conclusion

So there you have it. Two big success factors that separate those who just break even every month from those that earn a great income and live a lifestyle they can be proud of.

If you haven’t download our new report or CD yet, then you can do so here: http://www.DuplicationCode.com

It filled with more information on the management side of taking your fitness business from good to great.

http://www.DuplicationCode.com

One of the biggest problems we constantly hear owners struggling with is getting enough quality prospects to hire.

And it’s a BIG problem.

Most owners have the attitude that ‘it’s hard to find good people’ and complain that the fitness industry is
full of brain-dead muscle heads, that don’t do what they’re told and leave a job every 6 months.

The fact is that EVERY industry has deadbeats in it, and the fitness industry is no different in that respect.

But there are a TON of good people out there, that ARE looking for a great company they can work with and contribute to.

What you need as a business owner is a system that automatically sifts, sorts, and screens those prospective hires and brings the ‘best of the best’ people to you - so you always have an abundance of
great people to choose from.

Not getting this fixed puts you in a very weak position because you may have people in your company that need to be fired, but you can’t fire them because…

…you have nobody to replace them!

You’re now at the mercy of your employees- held hostage by them and this is a terrible scenario.

When you fall into this ‘trap’, you lose the ability to drive and control your company.

That’s why you MUST get a rock-solid staff lead generation marketing system in place that keeps you out
of this hole.

Another problem NOT having this system in place causes is that not having enough ‘new hires’ on deck cripples your ability to drive hard on the marketing and sales side.

You are constantly having to speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down on your marketing campaigns to keep in time with your current staffing capacity.

This is a real killer because the WORST thing that you can do is stop the momentum that you’ve worked so hard to build up in marketing for new clients.

But it’s a common occurrence for most fitness business owners.

And all it takes is ‘one good marketing campaign’ to hit and then you have to stop and go find more people
to hire before you can start pushing growth again.

Are you ‘wide open’ to fall into this trap yourself right now?

What would happen if you ran a good marketing campaign, and signed up 20-30 new clients?

Would your business be able to handle it?

WITHOUT you personally having to jump back into training clients 60 hours/week?

If the answer is ‘NO’, then you’ve got to commit to get a staff lead generation marketing system in place.

It’s not just essential for risk management of your business, it’s essential for growth.

Find out more in the special report “How To Stop Being A Slave To Your Fitness Business And Finally Get The Freedom You Deserve”.

http://www.duplicationcode.com

To your success,
Sean

P.S. NOT addressing this problem in your biz leaves you wide open for some big problems that (as anybody will tell you who’s lived through them) you DON’T want to deal with. Get informed and get protected:

http://www.duplicationcode.com

There is a BIG difference between owning a business and owning a job.

Most people think they own a business because they are technically the ‘owner’.

But in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

They don’t really own a business at all.

Sure, they don’t have a boss to report to, but when they don’t go to work nothing really happens and the business would collapse without their constant work.

And the sad truth is that when this is the case, you don’t really own a ‘business’ at all, you…

…OWN A JOB!

Here’s the first test for you to take to see if you really have a business right now, or a job.

What would happen if you were to go on a good 2-week vacation right now?

Would your business thrive or would it fall apart?

Would you return to find it doing just as well (if not better) then when you left it (i.e. clients still being trained, customers be handled, prospects met with for consultations and sold)?

Or would you return to find it in complete chaos and disaster?

If you can honestly answer your business would be doing just as well (if not better) than when you left, then I encourage you to put it to the test.

Plan a trip out of town and go away.

See how things hold up (or don’t).

You’ll never really know how well it actually works until you let go of babysitting and try to ‘break the system’.

But if you’re like 99.9% of folks reading this right now, then you now know- without a shadow of a doubt-that you don’t really have a business- you’ve got a job.

Being self-employed in the beginning is very liberating. A great sense of freedom and personal satisfaction comes from working for yourself and learning how to ‘make it on your own’ in the fitness industry.

Building your own base of clients, sharing your passion for health and fitness with others, and helping clients improve their lives is incredibly rewarding.

It’s the reason we all ‘do what we do’.

However, being a great fitness professional can also lead to some big challenges. One day you can be just loving working with your clients and growing the business, then you look up and…

…Find Yourself In A Trap!

It’s inevitable that you will reach a ceiling on your growth when you are here.

There are only so many clients you can service, only so many customers you can work with, and so much time you have in the day.

Plus the bigger your base of clients and customers grows, the more additional tasks and responsibilities required to run your business.

When you’ve got 25+ clients, you also now have a significant amount of billing and accounting tasks that must be taken care of, phone calls that must be responded to, and e-mails that require your attention.

Consultations must be performed with new prospects, as well as scheduling, program design, and a whole laundry list of other things that need to be done in your business BESIDES doing the work for which you’re getting paid for- actually ‘training’ a client!

And this is where the stress and problems all begin to develop.

Right here.

Because unless you’ve ever taken business management classes or have someone to ‘point you in the right direction’ and teach you about how to run and manage your BUSINESS (not just fulfilling the labor on the time you’ve sold)- then you’re going to be a mess.

It’s no fun.

The stress begins to grow, the workload continues to grow, and all the ‘little things’ start to pile on one- by-one faster than you can keep up.

Then one of two things will happen:

1. You start making mistakes, screwing things up, and your business begins to shrink.

OR…

2. You dig in, commit to ‘get things done’, and now end up working not just 30 or 40 hours per week, but…

…50, 60, Even 80 hours Per Week Just To Keep Up!

Then the downward spiral continues.

You stop working out because you’re completely exhausted (and you should be, heck you’re working 80 hours a week!).

Your personal life begins to suffer, and that’s no surprise because- you’re working 80 hours a week!

And then your health begins to suffer, and THAT’s no surprise either- because you’re working 80 hours a week, getting no sleep, and your little self-employed job…

…Has Now Taken Over Your Life!

What most people do next is a complete mess.

They try to hire some people to help training their clients- but they don’t really know how to do it.

They have no idea where to find good people, how to train them, and they certainly have no clue of how to manage them.

They convince themselves they ‘really like training’ even though they are hating their life and in complete denial because to admit at this point that ‘this is no fun and I want to go home’ would require too much honesty (and a loss or pride) to handle at the moment.

They tell themselves they’re just going to ‘train a few clients’ a ‘few hours a week’ because they are passionate about working with people and don’t want to let anyone down.

They don’t want to disappoint those clients they’ve formed a strong bond with over the years. And they think ‘nobody else can train my clients as good as I can.’

And they honestly DO like training their clients on some level- when they get into it and force themselves to forget about everything else by staying just ‘focused in the moment.’

But when that alarm clock goes off at 5am day after day after day… and they’ve just gotten home at 9pm the night before… it gets harder and harder to peel yourself out of bed each morning and tell yourself ‘this is fun and what I really want to do with my life’.

When you get to THAT place, watch out because…

…Burnout Is Approaching FAST!

When you’re finally too exhausted to actually deliver the quality of service you used to… and the ‘passion’ for working with clients starts to go away because you’re so overworked and overstressed… then you’ll soon end up letting EVERYONE down (including yourself)
because you’ve refused to admit to yourself what’s really going on.

- You let your clients (that you care so much for) down because you can no longer deliver the quality of service you used to give them.

- You let your friends and family down because you no longer have anything to give to your relationships because the business has ‘sucked the life out of you’.

- And you let yourself down because you’re not ‘taking care of you’, you feel guilty about letting everyone else down, and you no longer have any sense of balance between your personal life and business.

The reason why things get this bad is because you haven’t had the systems, tools and coaching you need to make the leap from being just ’self-employed’ to being a true ‘business owner’.

And I’m here to tell you that you really CAN have a great business, one that serves you and your customers well, gives you balance in your life, and (in moderation) provides healthy challenges that will make business (and life) fun, interesting, and rewarding.

But it takes hard work, dedication to making the leap, and patience to make it happen.

And only YOU can make the personal decision required to make your dreams become a reality.

Find about more about how you can “Make The Leap” forward by downloading our FREE “From Chaos To Control” Report and requesting the bonus audio cd with actual case studies and interviews of 7 fitness professionals and studio owners now at:

http://www.DuplicationCode.com

There is no doubt that success leaves clues.

If you look closely at truly extraordinary companies you’ll see that they have many, many things in common.

One of those commonalities, those clues - perhaps the biggest, most glaring one - is this:

** EXCELLENCE = ATTENTION TO DETAIL **

Stay with me here for a moment and I’ll explain.

Here’s why the vast majority of fit-biz owners struggle:

They incorrectly believe they have a MARKETING problem, when in fact they have a MANAGEMENT problem.

When you look at your P&L sheets (or, for many, at your checkbook), you see not enough money at the end of the month.

And you think you need more clients.

So you try to figure out how to get more.

You think marketing.

You think about chasing more business, rather than OPTIMIZING and LEVERAGING what you’ve already got.

See, here’s the deal (and the BIG secret) when it comes to creating and running a REALLY SERIOUS fit-biz that generates REALLY SERIOUS profits.

** CLIENT COMPLIANCE **

When you achieve superior client compliance, you get superior client…

- RESULTS
- RENEWALS
- REFERRALS

And when those three things are cranking, not only does your average lifetime client value skyrocket (more money from fewer clients), but you are doing THE single most important and smartest thing any business owner can ever do…

…generating new clients FROM WITHIN!

What is the most potent marketing force in business?

Do you know?

Here’s a hint: W.O.M.

You should write that down on sticky notes and post them everywhere.

For those of you who are in NPE, you hear Sean and me talking about Coach Berry all the time. And you hear him talking, too. He’s on every single call we do (which is instructive in itself) and we’ve also
interviewed him for an Audio Success CD of the Month.

Coach Berry has knows how to leverage W.O.M.

He’s created a VIRAL marketing machine fueled by Word Of Mouth (W.O.M.).

And that’s because he’s created an environment of EXCELLENCE in his studio.

His clients get (amazing) RESULTS.

So they RENEW.

And they REFER.

Coach grows his fit-biz almost exclusively… from within!

Sure, he does some external stuff. And he does it well.

But his ATTENTION TO DETAIL and ENVIRONMENT OF EXCELLENCE is so powerful, his clients do most of the marketing work for him.

It’s truly a beautiful thing.

Excellence makes the difference. All the difference.

And that attitude, that mindset of excellence, begins with YOU. It’s got to come from the top down.

And it’s got to be managed, systematically, so everyone in your biz is on the same page.

Which means that before you can have client compliance, you must have…

** STAFF COMPLIANCE **

There must be systems in place to measure, track and hold accountable your staff.

And your staff must be provided with systems for measuring, tracking and holding accountable your clients.

Yes, I’m talking about MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS.

Because, as you’ve seen, when your fit-biz is managed properly - with EXCELLENCE as the goal - then…

- Your staff ‘buys in’ to the system
- Client results are a certainty
- Lifetime client value skyrockets
- Great testimonials flood in
- Attrition goes away
- Renewals are automatic
- Trainer and client ‘churn’ is abolished
- Referrals occur regularly and consistently

But without the right management systems, your fit-biz is ‘catch as catch can.’

It’s chaos. It’s a nightmare, a daily scramble, a stressful, painful experience with constant worry about what next month holds.

The secret to excellence is CONTROL. Control comes from attention to and accountability to the details.

Attention/accountability to the details comes from management systems.

You may ‘think’ you need more and better marketing - but what you need most of all is better management.

Until and unless you patch the management holes in your ship, all the greatest marketing in the world won’t get you where you want to go.

Because as fast as the clients come in the front…

…you lose them out the back.

You are adrift - just ‘baling’ water to keep from sinking - without management systems that produce an excellent business.

You achieve EXCELLENCE in your fit-biz by running a TIGHT ship, a well-managed ship.

Not a ship of fools.

Sincerely, your friend,

Eric Ruth

P.S. This topic has hit a nerve with many. Which is good to see. It obviously makes sense to the sharp,
career-minded professionals out there, because so many have already downloaded the DUPLICATOR™ Special Report and requested the audio CD profiling 7 fitness business owners who’ve taken their businesses from Chaos to Control.

This is information you absolutely MUST have if you want to move from a month-to-month owner to a secure, serious income earner with a real business ASSET. Get the report and Chaos to Control CD here:

http://www.duplicationcode.com