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083: Scaling Up Your Online Fitness Business with Chris and Eric Martinez

October 27, 2020/
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Scaling up your online fitness business doesn’t have to be a struggle, our guests today will be sharing some of their own wins, losses and wisdom learned from buidling a six-figure online fitness empire.

Chris and Eric Martinez operate Dynamic Duo Training, a world class online fitness and lifestyle company. They are also international best-selling authors, speakers and coaches who have shown hundreds of fitness professionals how to build and scale their businesses.

Today on Awesome Health Podcast, Chris and Eric tell us some of the lessons they’ve learned including losing $250k from mistakes they made and how to create a meaningful client experience digitally.

Their journey began when their father died during their senior year of high school. They were left without a mentor, he had raised them to be disciplined, educated and have a good work ethic. Their grandma lost her battle with cancer not long after and they lost their own way for a while.

But they did graduate college and finally said enough was enough, they were determined to turn things around. And when they read an article by Dr. Lane Norton they found their calling. They reached out to him and he became a mentor to them for the next five years through his online coaching programs. They were voracious students learning, consuming and soaking up every bit of knowledge they could glean. They became personal trainers and enjoyed the work, but they could also see that the in-person business model was broken. That insight coupled with their astute observations of the burgeoning digital world led them to explore how to take their fitness business online.

Chris and Eric explain the bumps they encountered going down that road, including dealing with Impostor Syndrome. They also describe a few ways they provide connection with their digital clients such as doing video calls or having clients send videos of their form at the gym and other small but significant things that bring a human touch to an online interaction.

We also dive into how scaling up your online fitness business can be done through targeting a specific audience, something you can do much easier online than you can if you are an in-person trainer.

Chris and Eric give us the low-down on the pros and cons of paid advertising, how to map out a content creation plan and so much more. Be sure to join us and hear it all on episode 83 of Awesome Health Podcast!

Episode Resources:

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from the Awesome Health Podcast for BiOptimizers with another great episode. And in this one, we're going to switch gears a little bit, we're going to talk to a couple of online fitness professionals. Chris and Eric Martinez are also known as the Dynamic Duo, and they operate a world class online fitness and lifestyle company by the name of the Dynamic Duo Training. Chris and Eric are also business coaches that own the Dynamic Fit Pros, where they help fitness professionals build and grow their online coaching business while leading them to become Dynamic Fit Pros, along with being number one, international bestselling authors and speakers. Of course, they built a six figure online fitness coaching business and work with thousands of people online in person to help them look better, feel better, perform better, and live a dynamic lifestyle through training, nutrition, mindset, personal development, and lifestyle practices.

Wade Lightheart: They've also worked with hundreds of fitness coaches. So if you're a fitness coach and you want to know how to build an online business, and how to scale that online business, definitely want to listen to this podcast. And of course, after investing in a whole bunch of high level business mastermind groups, elite coaching and business marketing coaches, like the classic entrepreneur story, they lost about 250 K in mistakes, I always call those the tuition of learning experiences, and they have online businesses for the last eight years. Their mission is now to pass on their gifts and expertise to other fitness coaches. Bottom line is they practice what they preach on a daily basis, excuse me. And that's to live a dynamic lifestyle, which in their eyes, it means to keep evolving in life, in health, wealth, love happiness, and to never live a static complacent lifestyle. Be excited every morning and reach for the stars you deserve it. Gentlemen, welcome to the podcast.
Eric Martinez: Wade, thanks so much and wow, what an intro, but I love the enthusiasm and all that stuff. So yeah, thank you so much for having us. We're excited and yeah, we're actually local too. That's actually going to be fun too. The fact we're both here in Los Angeles, California.

Wade Lightheart: Yeah. It's going to be great though, for you to come down and check out the biohome as we continue to trick it out week by week, month by month, year by year. Looking over your guys' stuff and there's so much alignment in everything, but what I think is really phenomenal, a lot of people don't know this, but when Matt and I started, both Matt, my business partner and cofounder of BiOptimizers, we were personal trainers and we were running, there online fitness training didn't really exist, and Matt was five years my junior and he came out to the West Coast where I helped them get set up in some training. He did fairly well at that, as we both were doing quite well in the personal training business, and then I noticed he stopped showing up in the gym, like he was in the gym less and less and less, but his lifestyle kept going up.

Wade Lightheart: And I was curious about this. I was like, what's going on there? Finally, one day he came to me and said, after I went to the university, he's like: yeah, I think we could market and sell a course online. And I was like: what's he talking about, no one's making money online. This is in 2004. He goes: no, I'm actually been building online businesses and it's where the future is, it's where fitness is going, it's where business is going. You've got a unique store. I think we could sell it online. I'm like: dude, I don't even own a computer. And he looked at me and so I didn't believe he was making money online, he didn't believe I didn't own a computer. So we started an online business together and I might be one of the only people in the world that actually had a profitable online business without owning a computer.

Eric Martinez: Wow. That's pretty sweet.

Wade Lightheart: Well, it's kind of ironic, cause' maybe it just shows how stupid I was, but I don't know. Bottom line, tell us a little bit about your background your journey, kind of to where you are today? What's the backstory for you guys?

Eric Martinez: Yeah, absolutely and I'll go kind of even right around that time, 2003, 2004. So if I can take the listeners back around that time, Chris and I were seniors in high school and we grew up in a really picture perfect life with our family. Our father was a prison guard at San Quentin State Prison, so he always instilled discipline, work ethic education. A lot of good stuff that he passed over to us and unfortunately he passed away. You know, it was three days before Christmas and we got a knock on our door at three in the morning by a California highway patrol officer and a chaplain, so not a good combination at that hour. And I literally thought I was having a nightmare, but I woke up, I saw my mom screaming just bloody murder. They had said that he fell asleep behind the wheel.

Eric Martinez: Instantly right there, our whole life just like turn like a 360. After that my mom's mom passed away due to cancer, so my mom turned to alcohol, antidepressant pills. Chris and I were young kids just like left with no mentor. We were lost and we didn't know how to deal with all the grief and everything, swe just kind of went down a dark path and got into trouble, got into drink a lot of alcohol just, because we didn't know what we were doing, you know? After that, thank God, we were just going through the motions of life, going to school and just finishing like our BA at Sonoma State University and finally, we just were like: enough's enough of this, like we can't keep going down this dark path.

Eric Martinez: We actually came across a column in a muscular development magazine. It was by dr. Layne Norton if you know who that is. We reached out to him and we're very grateful that he was actually able to mentor us for five years. He was doing online coaching when this was very early on, almost like a decade ago. After that, Chris and I were just like sponges, you know, students and just learning and consuming and we saw like where the puck was going with online and how you can just create more income on there. You can go digital courses, do it yourself stuff and like, we started our business, Dynamic Duo Training and then working with thousands of clients for eight years and then we just kind of pivoted the last three years to BTB coaching, helping fitpros do this, because we had so much success with it. Yeah, that's kind of where we're at now.

Wade Lightheart: Wow. That's amazing. I got a couple of questions I think I'll ask you to. When you got started with, like what interested you in what he was doing and then kind of where, how did that blossom from say mentee to maybe entrepreneur?

Chris Martinez: Yeah, that's a great one. I think it was around 2009. We were being just, doing personal training, like at a Mom Pop's gym and it was great, but we saw that it was like a broken business model going forward to where it's like, you can only have a certain amount of clients, you're maxed out on your time. There was some downfalls of literally going into the gym and having to deal with cancellation and a split shift, like morning shift and afternoon shift. So a lot of downfalls, right? But it was such a rewarding thing and it was such an awesome being. We were fascinated to help people out and change their lives, to give them confidence, all those types of things. And we just saw that he was doing this model online.

Chris Martinez: We're like: what the heck? Like, how is he doing this? And like, how's he doing this at like a large scale? How is he supporting himself like through his school? And he has his house out in Florida and we're like: man, like we could do this, you know, we could do this, we just gotta be patient. We gotta just kind of learn some of the things that we don't know about business and we just got to start small and that's what we did. We were very patient, we asked him a lot of questions. We joined like a little Mastermind by Todd Durkin. They kind of guided us a little bit too, so that helped out a lot. So yeah, it was just a long, long road.
Wade Lightheart: Yeah, what were some of the challenges that you had making the transition from one on one clients to an online business? Cause' I remember my own self going through that journey and there were some bumping points.

Eric Martinez: Yeah, I think for me, it was just breaking down self limiting beliefs and false beliefs just like the imposter syndrome, like, am I qualified enough to do this? You know, do people actually trust me The fear of getting started, the fear of failing, all those crazy things that go in our heads as entrepreneurs and then I would even say to like the carry over to the client. Well, the client buy into the system, because it is all very new, they're not used to one-to-one, I mean, excuse me, the online methods. I think those are the biggest challenges. I mean, anything else?

Chris Martinez: That's really it and just kind of like the accountability aspect, where it's like one on one PT. They're showing up, you're there to motivate them, you're like right there telling them like: one more set, two more sets, like one more rep like that and it's like, can you do that online? Can they stay accountable like throughout the week with the game plan that you have for them? So that was like something they were just kind of like: okay, we'll see if it works or not.
Wade Lightheart: What were some of the key elements that you learned in that transaction, like for managing clients and handling that aspect? And what do you think the benefits were both, for you guys and for the clients?

Chris Martinez: So like managing my transactions… What do you mean by that, though?

Wade Lightheart: Well, when you're dealing with one-on-one, there's some, cause' I've done both of those and when you're dealing one on one that you're getting that visceral feedback, you're getting that connection, that emotional stuff, each and every time and you're in the gym doing exercise. So what did you notice when you switched to the online format where people are maybe checking in with you and you're doing strategy? What were the advantages and things that you learned in that transition?

Chris Martinez: Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things we tell our students is like: look, there's never gonna be a replacement for the in person dynamic that you have with the client, but when you go online, you cannot sit there and be that person where it's like you're hiding behind a keyboard and you're just sending emails all day, right? So what we call is like literally showering these clients with like client experiences. It's like, you have video these days, you have Zoom, you have FaceTime, you have audio, right? Give them access to you and give them an experience. So like every week they check up on you or you check in with them with accountability update, do a video update, like literally get on zoom with them. I don't know how the model is.

Chris Martinez: It's like 15 minute check-ins, 30 minute check-ins, but it's like give them an experience, just because it's online. If you need to do a form check in with them, have them send you a video, like in the gym doing a form check-in. That was probably one of the biggest things is just, you know, we saw some coaches that we worked with, where they weren't really giving you the client experience. They're very good coaches, they're very smart, but they didn't really know how to have that human transaction and that dynamic online. So we're like: look, we're good with people, we don't mind getting on phone calls, we don't mind getting on video calls. Like we're going to give these clients a really, really good client experience, so they rave about us and then they pay, stay and refer.

Wade Lightheart: Got it. Now what do you feel were some of the advantages for the clients, let's say, from an online format, some maybe seeing you in person?

Eric Martinez: Yeah, I would definitely say too. I mean, the way we teach online coaching is through just one-to-one customization, whether that's just for exercise or nutrition, cardio, supplementation, not going back into the broken model of like teaching classes through Zoom. To me, that's not real online coaching, because again, that's not a scalable model. You're going back into trading time for dollars. You're selling sessions. People aren't going to show up and it's just like, imagine that they're like: coach, well, you still owe me X amount of sessions through Zoom. And I'm like: there's no way I could do that. So that's something we don't teach. I think the advantage is customization, just tailored exercise, nutrition programs, specifically for that person to create a transformation in that person's life. It all depends on the coaching methods.

Eric Martinez: Like is the coach going above and beyond with coaching, like mindset, personal developmenthabits. And you know, you could do all that through online to where, it's like Chris said, you can do videos on that, you can do daily audios. I mean, you can do private Facebook groups with communities to deliver all that stuff. I see so many advantages with online and to where the client, they don't have to be there with you, they can actually do this on their own and just check in with you and send you videos.

Chris Martinez: Yeah, cause' like with in-person PT, they're sometimes limited by like their radius and the pool of like trainers that they have. Sometimes those trainers, they don't have those specializations, like with a nutrition degree or something else. And if you go online, you have a bigger pool of expertises and specializations for yourself now.

Wade Lightheart: What did you find, was there a difference in the type of clients that you were gettingmaybe as a personal trainer and then what you were getting online?

Chris Martinez: Yeah, absolutely. That's what I tell our fitpros, you're only limited to what your radius is when you're a personal trainer in person, so it's like, you can't sit there and be like: okay, I only want to work with dads, and want to correct the dad body. I only want to work with like busy entrepreneurial type of like females or males. It's hard to do that, because you're so limited with that pool and that radius of the gym. But that's the beauty about online is like you can go and create content and speak your messaging to the specific niche that you want. So if you want to work with somebody that's like a busy mom and she has kids or something like that, you could speak those pain points through content creation, through video, through a blog, through Instagram, whatever it is. And you can target these days too with like Facebook ads and all that stuff to reach those type of people. I found that online, you can really hone in on like a specific, like avatar niche that you want to work with as opposed to in person.

Wade Lightheart: Now, here's an interesting switch that you guys made, because not only were you teaching clients or building an online business through that methodology transiting from one on one training to now the online format, but somehow then you turned teaching other business people into it. So where did that idea come from and why did you choose that path?

Eric Martinez: Yeah, I mean, that came three years ago and again, it took us about three years to really build that business up and get social proof, like test it out. Just continue to be students and learn how do we teach more business methods and wisdom, and stuff to all these fitpros, but literally we got to that point where we got a little burnt out with the fitness coaching. I mean, doing it for eight years, it's a long time, and we had a large client load to where it got exhausting. And to me, I want to always be challenged and I didn't see that I was being challenged anymore just by helping people with health and fitness, which is great, it's gratifying, but again, I wanted to take it to the next level and I just saw a big need. I knew that me, myself getting started, I didn't know anything about business. I wasn't taught that. We're always taught about like kinesiology, body movement, physiology. It's like nothing about business and systems, so I saw that there is a big need and I know personal trainers would need something like this. That was really the big why behind it. It's just that I was frustrated in those shoes. I didn't know what to do. And I, obviously, did some things right to scale my business. So I was like: okay, let's come up with a program to teach fitpros.

Chris Martinez: Yeah, I think it's also we just saw where the puck was going, the online training was going to get bigger and bigger. Like we got in very early, which was great, but we saw that people are going to catch on more and more, and they're going to need that. That gap needed to be fulfilled of like how to systematize things, how to do automation, how to do the onboarding process, how to give them that client experience, you know, like how to really coach them online, how to market, how to sell all, these different things that they're not taught in their NAZA courses or in the universities they go to. So that's one of the big reasons too.

Wade Lightheart: What are some the kind of, I would say, mistakes that trainers make when they move into trying to go to an online model? What are some of the things that you see over and over again? Let's start with that one first, then I've got a couple other questions.

Chris Martinez: Yeah, I got two of them. The very first one, is they think it's a direct transfer of doing one-to-one in person training and then doingZoom training, like online, right? And again, it goes back to, okay, there's convenience, because you can do it at your home and you don't have to drive back and forth and stuff like that to a gym. I get it. But at the same time, you're back into that broken model of trading time for dollars and it's not scalable. So that's the first one I see. The second one is they're trying to serve everybody. They're not really niching down and specializing, right? So they're trying to serve all these different people and they get frustrated, because they want to work with bodybuilders. They wanna work with athletes. They want to work with gen pop. All these different things and they can't really do all that type of stuff, right?

Chris Martinez: They have to hone in on one niche and speak that language, speak the pain points and solve that unique problem with a specialty or method that they have.

Eric Martinez: Yeah, and I would even say too, I see a lot of fitpros wanting to take shortcuts in building a business and for us, we're always about like stabilize, optimize, and then expand your business and offers. Start very slow, give some basic offers, like a high ticket coaching program, that's eight to 12 weeks. Down sell them into like a monthly continuity and just test those out, get a ton of social proof testimonials on that. Prove that this concept works. Then again, that's proving that the actually concepts optimize. Then expand the business, start building out, like do it yourself courses, maybe a subscription model, maybe a group training model. I mean, that's what I see, a lot of people just are always trying to skip steps.

Wade Lightheart: Great. And so once you've kind of established, you've gone to go through that, you talk a lot about, and I think this is an online world and in that scale, and everybody talks scale of how you scale up a business, but actually scaling up a business entails a lot of little things that you… How you got successful to get to that place is not how you get successful when you scale up. What were some of the things that you see people making mistakes with when they've get an online business and they want to scale it up and sometimes it instead of scaling up, they blow it up?

Chris Martinez: I would say they just don't test enough. You know, they don't test enough with like hiring. And they think they have to hire like a full on team, where they put them on salary or something like that and you don't. There's a lot of subcontractors out there looking for work, to just do projects, but that's one of the big things is delegation, is they focus on doing the low impact, low income activities, instead of the high income, high impact activities. So that's something we're huge and heavy on when they're at that point to grow. Delegation's a big thing. Another thing too is trying to kind of be the Jack of all trades. Again, not specializing in a niche and a specialty, in a method that they can sit there and have a reputation for and get more clients and actually charge at a higher premium. That's the thing we tell them, is like, do you want to be the normal ND doctor or do you want to be the surgeon in your niche?

Chris Martinez: And that's what we teach, because the surgeon is the one that's going to be helping out that fine little, like specialty, that unique problem and they're gonna be able to charge a higher premium for that.

Eric Martinez: Yeah. Just to add to that Wade, I would say a lot of people are very stubborn and they're not open minded to hiring mentors and getting those outside eyes from people that are successful that have scaled businesses, have taken it to the next level to where you want that type of accountability and knowledge from these people. So as soon as we actually sat there and spent tons of money on hiring mentors, that's when we saw our game go to the next level and it was even more our mentality, our mindset, went to the next level. We understood like this game that we got into and we're playing the long game, you know, we're playing the infinite game, not the finite game in this.
Eric Martinez: A lot of people don't understand that, the importance of hiring help and just getting mentors and masterminds, coaches to where it's going to take you to the next level.

Chris Martinez: I think that the last thing too, Wade, would be not investing in paid traffic. So like, what got them from say five figures to six figures, it's not going to get them to mid six figures or even seven figures. They have to do paid advertisement, right? To get new eyeballs and new audience, new buyers. They don't really understand that. They think they can just keep doing the same organic stuff to the same list that they have, the same followers that they have and these people already bought from them, so you need a fresh new audience. And one of the ways to do that fast is invest in paid advertisement

Wade Lightheart: With the paid channels and some of the opportunities and challenges, what are some of the, would you say the challenges of paid advertising and what are the benefits of paid advertising?

Chris Martinez: Yeah, I would say the challenges are, obviously, you have to have some money to spend, but that's the thing we teach our fitpros is like: look like if you're looking for like a media buyer out there to run like your Facebook ads and Instagram ads, and YouTube ads, it's like, you don't always have to pay them like their flat fee or the retainer fee. You can negotiate like a performance based type of thing or a partnership, or a profit share, right? Because why would you pay them 2000, $5,000 and not even getting results?Let them prove to you and they even make more money if you do a profit share or something like that. So I think, that the person, that the FitPro that goes into the paid traffic doesn't even know anything about that.

Chris Martinez: They think they just have to fork out this money and that they're going to lose it, and they look at it as an expense over an investment into their brand. I think that's like one of the biggest things, like the downfalls with it, but obviously on the bright side of it, man, it's like pouring gasoline on a fire to have paid advertisement, because these days where you can do on YouTube, and Facebook, and Instagram with the targeting and just like how cheap it is to like boost a video to get your face out there and get people to know, like, and trust you. I mean, the return is huge to be able to build a brand and a reputation.

Wade Lightheart: You mentioned boosting. What are some of the methodologies that you like to use for scaling up businesses from an advertising perspective or any others that you can think of?

Chris Martinez: I mean, we kind of just go with the three big monsters of like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. And for fitpros, most of their audience are going to be on those platforms. We tell our fitpros if you're just getting started with the pay traffic, start boosting things on Facebook and Instagram, because it's a very easy way to do it. And you can spend 5, 10, $20 to get a thousand, 2000 views on a video again. But if you want to like scale it up and go to the next level, I mean, you're going to have to either learn ads by doing everything for like the business manager or through like Google and stuff like that for YouTube, or you have to look for a media buyer. So where you can hand that off to them, you guys can have a partnership or something like that. But that's what I like to teach, because it's very easy for them to just psychologically see the results they get when boosting a video or a picture, or whatever it is. And they're like: okay, I see why this is like the game I need to play. I spent 10 bucks and I got a thousand views. Out of those thousand views I could potentially get a new lead into my email list or into my funnel.

Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. Now you guys are known as the Dynamic Duo, and you have a coaching and you have the dynamic inner circle. Can you talk about, a little bit about what it is that you do for fitness professionals, particularly, obviously, you're teaching people who probably have a background in maybe fitness and want to kind of take the same pathway or journey that you did without making all the mistakes? Can you kind of outline how that whole program works?

Eric Martinez: Yeah, definitely. The whole thing that we like to do what we specialize in is a hybrid model. So we're big on, again, the in person one-to-one coaching personal training. We don't think that that's ever going to be replaced. A little bit tricky right now with COVID and all that, but that's the main bread and butter with our program is creating an online component with your existing in-person business. So you have two dual incomes, you can serve more people, you can work remotely, acquire more time and freedom and eventually if you really get to being very good online, you like that model more, then you can just be like: okay, I'm done with the in person stuff and I'm just taking on nothing, but online coaching. That's literally what we teach our fitpros and what we specialize in.

Eric Martinez: And again, just goes back to so many different layers that we teach now, whether it's like understanding your niche, your target audience, your messaging, what's your specialty, what are your offers, pricing, packaging, you know, just tons of lead generation tactics, so these fitpros become great dynamic marketers along with being good fitness coaches. There's just so much stuff that we teach in this program to where it's just like a monster, but again, it takes time like anything else.

Chris Martinez: I think what also, Wade, puts us at an advantage, it's like we actually did like the work. We built a business, do an online training. I see a lot of people out there doing business consulting and I'm not knocking them, I'm sure they're good, but a lot of these people never built an online coaching business and that's what I love about our program is we have all the templates, all of everything that our students need, we hand it over to them. We're like we just want you guys to be successful. It's like, whatever you guys need that we use, that we found successful, you guys take it, you know? So I think that's like a big advantage that we have.

Wade Lightheart: It's a massive value and I look back on my own career and, you know, had Matt not introduced me to the concept of online scaling, BiOptimizers wouldn't exist today. I mean, that's how we got our pathway and so he became my online mentor and that was a very unique and transformational experience. And of course you bring up something, I think, that's really important for the trainings. I was running a five figure a month personal training business in Vancouver, and I would cap myself between 25 and 30 hours. I just felt that I just couldn't give the same level of intensity, when I got past 25 or 30 hours, cause' it was an exchange. But then outside of that, I was working full time in my online business with Matt.

Wade Lightheart: So for a period of about goodness, I guess it was probably a year and a half, I was doing both full tilt. And so, like everyday I would finish my clients either 12 or one o'clock in the afternoon. I do all my morning clients, at that time I had a really great clientele and I very seldom did anybody in the later afternoons, I would eat my lunch of whole foods and then I'd walk over to Matt's place, and we'd get fired up around two, and we would go till maybe six or seven o'clock, and then of course we would do Saturday mornings and I would take Sundays off. And that's what I did for a year and a half, like nonstop. And sometimes I'd have to come back in the gym for the evenings and things like that.

Wade Lightheart: The point where I left my personal training business was, when we were making it was a two and a half times I was making online what I was making personally. That was the point where I said: you know what, maybe I can let go of this and buy back some of my time. We also left the country at that time and started living around the world. What is the advice that you give for people as they go through, I call it the slave phase, where you are a slave to your business. There's an endless things to learn. There's endless things to do. There's all these things. What's your advice for professionals who want to go through this, but may not have, they may be under some illusions about the work involved?

Chris Martinez: I mean, man, I wish I had like this like blueprint or recipe, that would work out for them, but it's kind of like what you said and I appreciate what you said, you know, it's just, you're putting in the reps and sets and the best analogy I can give is like, we're all in the fitness industry, per say, and it's just like, if that's what you want to do is build your body you're not going to sit there and get to the dream body that you want overnight. You just not. You got to put the reps and sets the volume game. So it's the same thing in business. And if you want to get started, get started, but it's never going to grow overnight like that without you putting in the reps and sets. I'm a big proponent of enjoying the process, not the end product, because that's exactly what we're doing this for, is enjoying the process.

Chris Martinez: Remembering those days where it's like, man, I had a full time job and when I came home, I put in three, four hours, I still had to go to the gym and I repeated it for a full year. That's the process right there. I mean, the thing is what I would say, Wade, is just like, they got to build up their Iq and they just got to come to reality and understand and just be okay with it that it's not going to be built overnight. It's going to take a lot of work. They're going to want to throw the talent, but man, if they have that Iq and they have that drive behind them, it's going to fire them up all the time to kind of just pick back up.

Eric Martinez: I won't even add to that. Just what would work really well for them is, have you read the book, "The Compound Effect" by Darren Hardy?

Wade Lightheart: No, I haven't.

Eric Martinez: Great book. Even for the listeners. His whole philosophy is like the whole thing with compound, right? Just compounding over the days, weeks, months, and years. So imagine, if you are a fitness professional, starting a business. The compound effect, if you every single day putting in a couple hours to get a little bit wiser, build some component to your business, just adding those layers. I mean, it goes a long ways and then you'll look back at like after a year or two years and you'll be like: wow, like, look at all this stuff I built, look at all the stuff I've learned.

Eric Martinez: Like now my confidence is up. Now let me go do this, that, let's take it to the next level. And that's what I tell my students all the time. Like literally it took us two like years to really get our whole thing going. We worked full time jobs. I commuted an hour there and back, like I had no time, because I spent the, the nights and just the mornings working on the business. It was tough, but it's like I said, the compound added up and it took off.

Wade Lightheart: Talk to me about… Thank you for sharing all that, that's really good info. Talk about your Dynamic Deal. What you guys are doing today? What's the vision? Where you're going with this whole model that you are wildly successful with?

Eric Martinez: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we just released our new book "Rise of The Fit Pros". So that's been very exciting. Like the last two months, just getting a $10 book into fitness professionals hands, and there's so much in there, like just practical application to where I always say one concept, one framework in what we teach could really take off and help you out with your business. We want to keep pushing that out. Obviously, our podcast as well, keep delivering great value, getting good people on. Keep expanding this business, the Dynamic Fitpros, you know, just serving hundreds and hundreds of fit pros to create more income, impact, influence, and independence in their businesses and just understand and see the possibility of what they can do online. Other than that, I would say if COVID wasn't here, I mean, we love speaking on stage. We've done that before. I don't know. Maybe a Mastermind going forward, like I'd love to do a mastermind and just make it more intimate, but again, certain challenges with what's going on right now in the world.

Wade Lightheart: Got it. Now, what are some of the courses that you feel are very hot in the market today for fitness professionals or there's a big need that needs to be filled?

Eric Martinez: I'll go straight into that. I think it's content creation. I really do, because again, it's the name of the game, you know? I like to use analogy that when you start creating content and good content, you're making deposits every single day into people's bank accounts to where again, it's gonna add up and compound and they're going to get to know, like, and trust you, right? How do you turn a stranger to a friend, to a buyer, right? By delivering valuable, intentional, relatable and shareable content on a day to day basis. Like again, just give, give, give, and then just again, always make an offer, have a CTA, call to action, like email list, funnel, a book, podcasts, like where can they learn more about your work, where can they just get into your ecosystem and your funnel and stuff. I think content creation and so many people are again, so scared to get started with that. Like the comparison syndrome of it, just imposter syndrome of it. It's insane, you know?

Wade Lightheart: What do you mean by the word poster syndrome? That's a good one.

Chris Martinez: Yeah. Like imposter syndrome. They'll sit there and think they're like an imposter.

Wade Lightheart: Oh, an imposter. Okay.

Eric Martinez: Like the authority are going to read their blogs or their art, or their videos, or something like that and they're like: Oh, these guys don't know what they're talking about. These guys are another fraud out there. You know what I mean? So that type of like imposter syndrome.

Wade Lightheart: Got it. When it comes to content creation, what do you think is the major obstacles or challenges? Is it technical? Is it just that attitude? Or is it a combination of both? And then to follow up on that, when you talk about being consistent, what do you qualify as being consistent online? Cause' I think that's a big variable that people don't understand.

Chris Martinez: Yeah. I'll let Eric do like the latter part of that, but I think it starts off with breaking down those self limiting beliefs. It really, really does. You know, if you would have asked me this, like maybe five years ago, I probably would have been like, that's BS, there's tactical stuff that you really need to do with content creation, but as I've seen this over the years with like myself and my students, and being these masterminds, like it is a mind game. It's a mind game, that plays with you of getting that content out, because you just start getting by analysis and you end up just freezing like in quicksand, you don't do anything. But I think that the second type of like tactical thing that people really need to understand is like, there's three things, right?

Chris Martinez: It's either video, audio or it's writing. It's like, what is your skill? What is your strength in one of those three areas? You gotta be good at one of those things. You know what I mean? And if you're good at one of those things double down on that thing and just get really good and focus on that and then just pick like a platform, whether it's like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, iTunes for these podcasts, and just really go all in on that just for like full year and test it out for full year. And if it doesn't work out, then pivot, try something different. And it goes back to this whole theme of just like experimenting and testing. People don't experiment test enough. They just don't.

Eric Martinez: Yeah. I'll give you a couple of good ones, Wade, I love this whole topic on like patients. So the first one is a lot of people are just making the mistake of speaking to the masses. Their messaging is so off, when it comes to who they're speaking to. You gotta really narrow that down and understand the psychology behind social media, that you're not sitting there trying to build this massive following and get hundreds of thousand people to buy what you're selling. It's just, you want that hundred true fans, thousand true fans, that you're speaking the language to. So I would say maybe 9% of your buyers are on Instagram. Let's say even like you had a hundred thousand followers. Again, be more intentional who you're speaking to. And I think the people fail to plan ahead.

Eric Martinez: This goes back to, if you don't plan out your content, like on a calendar and you know, be just more intentional, the quality of it, you're going to sit there and put out crappy content and you're going to get anxiety, you're going to overthink everything, what you post. So for me, every single week on a Saturday, I have all my content laid out from Monday to Sunday. What am I going to post? You know, is a Instagram post, a video? Is it a story? Is it Facebook, YouTube? So then I take off all that pressure and have the intention every single day on what I'm going to post. And I'll give another little tip. What people can do is literally they can set up their whole content for 30 days. And one day just do filming for four to five hours. Literally bring a pair of clothes. Have different looks, have different backgrounds that are catchy and you can sit there and do like 5 to 10 videos and you can always repurpose those. And again, that takes off so much anxiety and pressure to always recreate a bunch of content.

Chris Martinez: Yeah, we did a lot of that in LA, different sceneries, driving for one day. So it was cool.
Wade Lightheart: How frequently should you be posting on social media to be, what you would say, quote unquote consistent?

Eric Martinez: I mean, I don't think there's a really black and white answer to this. For me, I'm going to say once a day at the very most again, because you want to sit there and be consistent, whether it's like a video, whether it's an Instagram story, a picture, go live, you know, same thing on Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever I think that you should be doing at least once per day. Because again, you're always wanting to put the intention and remind your following that: Hey, I'm showing up today. It might not be the greatest thing and I might not have all this great messaging stuff, but at least I'm showing up and giving you some sort of value.

Chris Martinez: Yeah. And it's just like you're fighting for attention. Like people's attention spams these days… They forget what you posted yesterday, what your story was on. So it's like, you constantly have to show up every single day, like in their feed to remind them who you are, like, how you can solve their problem and how you can get them out of pain.

Wade Lightheart: It's beautiful. And you speak to that. What are some of the things that you need to communicate inside that video other than speaking to your market?

Eric Martinez: Yeah. I think just being vulnerable and just showing empathy as well too. Again, you know, we're buying people. We're in that age where people are buying people, they're craving that, they want to relate and connect with you. Again, it goes back to the know, like, trust factor. I think that you have to, you have to sit there and be vulnerable, tell people what's going on in your life. Don't always post your highlights, because people see through that. People want to see the real stuff, like did you mess up today? Like talk about something that happened in the past that you learned from that now you use it into like a blessing. So I think those are very key components just being vulnerable and then showing empathy, what's going on in the world, what's your take on it? Is there some way that you could just help out? I think those are two things that are really powerful too.

Wade Lightheart: So where's the Dynamic Duo going to be found over the next five years? Where are you guys going? What do you see happening for you guys? And where do these two superheroes of fitness, where are they going?

Chris Martinez: Yeah. We were talking about this earlier. I mean, we're headed to Texas at the end of the month, so we're going to test that out, you know? We'll see, how long will be there. Maybe one, two years, all depending how it goes and how we like it. I mean, we're Cali boys at heart, so it's very, very, very hard leaving California, because it's so beautiful there, the weather, the opportunities, all that stuff, you know? So we'll see. Another destination I really like is a Florida, like Miami area and all that stuff too. Been there a couple of times I could see myself having a vacation rental there and going out there a couple months out of the year. We'll see, time will tell, but I love the unknown. That's one of my personal growth mentor set, is don't fear the unknown. Stop trying to always have this crystal clear vision. If you're going to be here in the next year, two years, three years, four years, embrace the unknown. Those are going to be some of the best growing times of your life.

Wade Lightheart: Beautiful. Last question for you. There's fitness professionals listening to you right now. They're training clients. Maybe they're struggling in the business, maybe they're doing okay. They're thinking: I'd like to make an online business go. What would you tell them based on all your experience right now?

Eric Martinez: I would just say, take action, stop overthinking, identify the self limiting beliefs that are really holding you back. Like, what is it that's really holding you back and how do you sit there and just break past that? You know, hire mentors, hire help. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself. If you have a true why, if you have a true gift and a product to help and serve people, then you have a moral obligation to put that out. I truly believe that. I would just say get started, take action, because life's so short, tomorrow's not promised, it truly isn't, to where it's like, go do something and build something that you're going to look back at and more importantly have a life worth telling a story about. So that's what I would say.

Chris Martinez: Nice, big brother.

Eric Martinez: Do you want to try to one up that?

Wade Lightheart: Do you want to try to one up that? Come on, give your shot.

Chris Martinez: I was going to say something along the lines of getting started. So I was going to say like FitPro, be impatiently patient as opposed to patiently impatient. And what I mean by that, is you want to be impatient and get started right now just to get the ball rolling. And then you can become patient and build it slowly, stabilize, optimize, expand, because too many people have the mindset of being too patient. Like I'm going to wait, wait, wait until the perfect timing and then that perfect timing never comes. And then when they get started, they're super impatient, because they want this thing to build overnight and they start making all these mistakes, losing all this money, they get frustrated, they throw the talent.
Wade Lightheart: Gentlemen, where can people reach you, connect with you, find out more about you, get involved with your coaching and your business development programs and all that sort of fun stuff that you're doing? Can you guys share that with our listeners?

Eric Martinez: Yeah, definitely. If you guys want to pick up the book "Rise Of The Fit Pros", that's at riseofthefitpros.com or it's on Amazon, like I said, $10 book that will really, really help you out as a FitPro. Instagram @chrisandericmartinez, even on Facebook our podcast Live a Dynamic Lifestyle. Andif you're interested in learning more of what we do go to dynamicfitpros.com, we have a free demo video for you how to take your business from in-person to online.

Wade Lightheart: Gentlemen, you are a wealth of knowledge and both vibrant, full of life people. It's very obvious, I can see it radiating through. And of course, for those listeners who are considering moving into that part of their career, or even if you're just someone who is thinking about hiring an online coach, it is a very positive component. We're big believers in it, Matt and I both built both personal training systems and online systems and business systems. So I can really connect with these guys and Chris and Eric are doing a great job as the Dynamic Duo. Please check out all their information is in the show notes, grab that, go check out that video, grab their book. I think it can transform your life forever. I just want to thank you for joining us on the podcast today guys.

Eric Martinez: Wade, thanks so much for having us. It was honestly a pleasure and we love doing this, so thank you. Hopefully we are able to inspire some of the listeners and give them some good nuggets.

Chris Martinez: Yeah. Thanks so much Wade.

Wade Lightheart: There you have it folks. Another episode of the 
Awesome Health Podcast with our gentlemens from the Dynamic Duo, 
Chris and Eric Martinez, make sure you check out all their information and thank you for joining us. We'll see you again on the next episode of the Awesome Health show. I'm Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers. See you soon.

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