You deserve to be paid what you’re worth. But that’s not happening.
How do you earn more? By increasing the value of the service to your client.
Bob Burg, author of “The Go-Giver,” says that “money is an echo of value.”
In this series, I’m going to tell you how to increase the value of your service and make more money.
I’ve been studying with Bob for the last several months. His books have been life changing for me: He’s affirmed that you can succeed at business while being a good, caring person.
We’re going to license some of his best material for Two-Brain clients. But I’m going to share some of his lessons with you now.
If you want to charge what you’re worth, you first have to make sure you’re really providing value to your clients. Simply “being open” isn’t enough.
Value has five parts. Here are the first two: excellence and consistency.
The Truth About Excellence in Fitness
Excellence: Your service must get people results.
Yes, you gym should be clean. Yes, your coaches should be experts. Yes, you should understand the method you’re teaching very well.
But if you’re a Level 7 Black Belt Bootcamp Instructor and your clients aren’t getting the results they’re paying to get, then you don’t have an excellent service.
This was a really hard pill for me to swallow. Years ago, I wanted to be (and maybe was!) regarded as the local “expert” who knew the most about fitness. I wrote posts about periodization. I drew graphs about energy metabolism on the floor of my gym. I gave lectures on nutrition. I had a bachelor’s degree and five certifications on my business card.
But my clients weren’t getting results. So they quit. And they were right to quit. Most of them found trainers who knew far less than I did but helped them get much better results.
My education and knowledge made me feel great. But it didn’t help them at all.
You will be rewarded for the value you create in the lives of your clients.
You will be rewarded for getting them the results they care about.
That is excellence.
Excellence Every Day
Now, if you want to deliver a high-value service, you have to deliver excellence consistently.
That means your excellence has to extend to every part of your business, not just your primary service. It also means that your primary service must be delivered to the same level by everyone. You can’t be the thing that makes your business special.
This was also a very, very hard lesson for me to learn. My ego loved it when clients said, “It’s not the same when you’re not here!” or “I don’t want to work with another trainer—I only wanna work with you!”
I was flattered. I felt important: “Nobody can train these people as well as I can!”
Of course, I also felt overworked, exhausted and underpaid.
Finally, I realized that if I was irreplaceable in the business, I’d always be overworked and underpaid. My first step to improving the value to my clients was actually making myself replaceable.
So I hired a fresh, energetic college student to take the 6-a.m. class. She didn’t know what I knew about fitness. But she was bright and happy at 6 a.m., and my clients loved her. They wanted her to be the first person they met every day, so they started to show up more often—and then they got better results.
Money is a reflection of value. Value is determined by our clients.
Excellence means getting results for clients. Consistency means doing things the same way every time for every person.
Those are the first steps we take in our RampUp program.
Other Media in This Series
“How to Be More Valuable: Empathy and Attention”
“How to Be More Valuable: Appreciation”
