There’s the one where you use the fear of succumbing to illness or even death to motivate people to use your services. Or there’s the one where you use the carrot of helping people feel really, really good about themselves to motivate prospects to pay you for your services.

In my experience, making people feel worse about themselves is not a way to keep your clients happy nor a way to keep them coming back for more nor to get them recommending you to their friends & family.

Here are a few examples of how you can make your clients feel worse without meaning to:

• Forcing them to look in the mirror at themselves when they really don’t want to, even though you think they look great or better than they did (I made this mistake – but watch out for a fantastic tip on how to help clients who have body dismorphia problems).
• Flaunting your fabulous body in their face, mistakenly thinking that you’re inspiring them to be like you.
• Telling them about how healthy you are and how healthily you eat, sleep & breathe – again mistakenly thinking that if you walk your walk as well as talking your talk, they’ll be inspired (Note: I’m not saying don’t walk your walk, just don’t expect it to be inspiring to all your clients. Some will find it intimidating, some will find it annoying and some will think you just don’t have a life and don’t know how to enjoy yourself).
• Telling them just how well all your other clients are doing.
• Focusing on what they still need to work on and achieve without spending enough time celebrating their achievements & progress each time.
• Using the phrase “If you don’t do x, then you’ll never achieve y” as a motivator.

Number 2 People only really want it & buy it when they don’t have it. And if they won’t even admit they don’t have it….

Number 3 It’s hard work to achieve it no matter how much you sugar-coat it.

The title of this post was misleading. These aren’t problems – these are opportunities. If you understand just who buys health & why they buy it, you’ve solved your marketing problems.

Inspired by a post I read on one of J’s art sites by Charley Parker on how not to display your artwork on the web, here’s my handy tips for how NOT to attract more business and send potential prospects running to your nearest competitor…

(whether you’re a CHEK practitioner, personal trainer, Pilates instructor, Health coach etc. or any other small business selling your services).

Make it as hard as possible for anyone to find out anything about you online - in fact, given that the internet (and mostly google) is one of the first places most people go to find out any information nowadays, the best thing to do is to maintain a total non-presence on the internet. Don’t list yourself in any relevant online directories, don’t even bother with a website, yet alone a blog and absolutely avoid registering yourself on google local for as long as possible.

Make it impossible for customers to understand what you do – always use as much technical, complex & industry ‘lingo’ as you can to baffle your customers and make it sound like you really know your stuff and they ought to pay you just to decipher what you do.

And while you’re at it, give customers so much choice when it comes to your solutions that they really don’t know which one to go for and end up going to a competitor who offers the ideal solution to their problem or even better, go for nothing at all.

Waste money on advertising in random publications (which cost an
arm & a leg and commit you to several months at a time) without
ever considering whether your ideal prospects are likely to read that
publication and without asking about the response rate typically
generated by advertisers in that publication.

In all your marketing materials, talk about yourself. Don’t even mention your target market and what they might want to read/hear – you might just run the risk of catching their attention.

You could also try talking all about the “how” and the process of what you do, and forget the fact that people really buy results. They buy benefits & they buy emotionally. Avoid all of this if you really want to save yourself from customers. And whilst we’re on the subject of marketing materials, you could try telling everyone how unique, different & special your business is all the time, without actually making yourself unique, different & special and delivering pretty much the same experience as they’ll get with your competitors.

If you really don’t want to attract customers, you could run your business without ever marketing it, and rely instead on just word of mouth, going through troughs & peaks of having/not having a decent customer base and not quite ever feeling in control of your income & your success.

As Charly said, “See how easy it is?”.

Simply by following some or all of these tips, you too could make your business so invisible and so difficult to buy from that customers just don’t bother – or even better, don’t even know you’re there.

I truly believe that a holistic approach to healing & health is the ONLY way to go. I truly admire what Paul Chek & the CHEK Institute have done in this field – and I still recommend the HLC course to anyone, whether they’re already working in the industry or not.

But, and this is a big BUT…I’m not so sure the CHEK model is a successful model on which to base a business or can really be used successfully to build a profitable, real business.

Why I do think this? Aside from Paul Chek himself, there are very, very few other C.H.E.K practitioners out there who have ‘made it’…using just the CHEK approach alone.

The most successful ones are largely based in the US but in the UK there are only a handful of practitioners running a successful, profitable business. And those that are, are mostly Paul’s most trusted (ADD: who are right at the top of the tree as Level 4′s), receive client referrals from him and also are able to supplement their income with teaching CHEK courses & other educational courses for other trainers. I can’t really name one CHEK person in the UK who has a decent marketing strategy and who has cracked it from the perspective of building up a ‘proper’ business based on coaching the CHEK principles.

Please correct me if I’m wrong by leaving a comment on the blog – but before you do shout me down, I’m not including people who have built up successful personal training business, incorporating CHEK stuff, but real, purely CHEK coaching-based businesses (and my definition of a successful business is not just one that is based on financial performance alone).

So, back to the point of the post…why is this?

I think there are a number of reasons. Some can be resolved, others can’t – at least not easily.

Firstly, I think there’s an inherent flaw within the CHEK courses themselves. You learn all kinds of excellent material on a course. But as Paul himself says, knowledge isn’t powerful unless it’s applied. The big thing lacking on the courses is how to apply that knowledge to clients – the coaching aspect, not the assessments, not the ‘how to’ exercises – but how to help clients apply the knowledge that you teach them to their lives, how to help ‘coach’ them through behavioural change and how to help them overcome often the biggest stumbling block to their success…limiting beliefs.

Something I hear really frequently from my clients is that they just want to work with dedicated, committed clients who are willing to stick to all the things they recommend and who will apply themselves diligently to the nutrition recommendations, the corrective exercises and the extensive lifestyle changes often required.

Come on guys…seriously, aside from us lot, there are very few people who are in a position to or want to make those wholesale changes like we do. I didn’t say there are none, but there are very few. If you really want to use the CHEK approach in its purest form, then you need to get to these guys.

…which leads me on to my second point.

The other main reason I think CHEK practitioners fail is this. They don’t know how to market themselves & get the attention of the people they want to work with to promote their services…

And worst of all many don’t even realise that this is why they’re not successful.

The theory of contraints says that there’s usually just one thing standing in the way of success. For 70% of small businesses, it’s this…marketing.

But if you don’t even realise this is what it is and you make the mistake of spending thousands more on expanding your knowledge in your field instead of also learning how to maximise your potential & income from your existing knowledge, then in all honesty, you are highly unlikely to ever run a successful, profitable business using the CHEK approach.

I know a lot of people think marketing is simply advertising in a few places, sending out a few flyers & emails, speaking to a few more people or encouraging referrals from other clients.

Most people don’t realise that marketing is much, much, much more than this.

Marketing covers:

The Product – the services you provide, what do you offer people, what can they buy from you?

The Pricing – how do you currently decide on your pricing & fees and why do you charge what you charge?

The Promotion – this is the aspect of marketing which covers the “how” do you promote your service. What marketing channels do you use to promote your services?

The Place – where do you distribute your products/services? In a gym, your own studio, home training, online?

The above 4 are all key aspects of marketing.

A lot of people I talk to say things like, “Oh well, I think I need to get x,y and z qualification first then I should be able to offer people more and then business will pick up” or “Well, I just need to hand out some more leaflets & business cards to people who would benefit and then I should be able to get some more clients”.

NOOOOOOOOO. It’s way more complex than that. If that’s “just” what you need to do, then why (a) haven’t you done it yet? and (b) if you have, why hasn’t it worked?

And if it’s the first scenario, then when exactly do you think you’ll feel “confident enough” and “qualified enough” to start really helping clients properly. How are you going to get to these clients, you’re now able to help better?

Thirdly, and this ties in with my second point, CHEK practitioners fail in business because they fail to understand what running a true business is about. They fail to understand about strategic planning, profitability, performance metrics, exit strategies and the like – all of which ‘proper’ businesses have.

Put simply, if you’re a CHEK practitioner, have you thought about your future? How long you plan to do this? Will you keep doing this until you die because you need the income? What if you can no longer do what you do, would your business survive?

I know most of you are young and don’t think about retirement, financial planning and the future – I’m still under 30 (not for much longer though!) but it’s something I think about all the time. I’m making sure I set up my businesses in a way that covers all of this. I don’t want to have to be working at age 50 or 60 because I didn’t have a little bit of foresight beforehand and didn’t want to take some time to invest in my future a few years ago.

My argument is that CHEK practitioners fail because they focus on the wrong things when it comes to business. They are in constant pursuit of upgrading their qualifications (not objecting to that by the way) and neglect to work on improving their business skills too.

Now, you might think this post is just a marketing promotion for my Healthy Business Program, well of course it is ;-)…but actually it’s not just that.

My motives are more altruistic than that. And to prove it, the CHEK Institute have just promoted another marketing course – “Irresistible Marketing” by some other guy. Looks interesting but can’t recommend it as I’ve not heard of it or of the guy – but it’s out there as an alternative to my programs. Can’t find any other details about it, other than an email I received from the forum on it – no website or anything for more details, just a phone number.

What it does show is that the CI are also aware that this is a big part of the puzzle that’s missing for people and that they’re encouraging people to do something about it too.

So, do I think the CHEK model could be set up for business success? Yes, because in the end it delivers. It can help do what it says on the packet. But not for everyone. And certainly not if no-one knows about it.

ADDENDUM: Before commenting, please read a follow-up to this post which clarifies some of my definitions and you also might like to find out more about me, my experiences & where I’m coming from to give you context for this post.

EXTRA ADDENDUM: If you want to know my real intention for writing this post, and not what other perceive was my intention, read this post.

Now, if you’re a CHEK practitioner, there’s a good chance you do…

- Eat according to your MT
- Get to bed by 10pm every night
- Exercise regularly, according to your stress level
- Keep yourself well hydrated
- Eat organic food
- Practise meditation & PMA on a regular basis
- Know how to breathe diaphragmatically & regularly use breathing exercises to control stress levels

BUT…

Do you talk the talk and walk the walk when it comes to running your own business?

• Do you set yourself goals to achieve in business aka performance metrics?
• Do you continue to invest in the health of your business by improving your business knowledge?
• Do you make sure you know the best resources there are to help you achieve business success?
• Do you really feel in control of the business and where it’s headed?

Being a CHEK practitioner means you’re putting yourself up on a pedestal of sorts. You’re practising what you preach in terms of a holistic lifestyle. But a big part of that lifestyle is obviously related to your business. If it’s not running quite as smoothly as you’d like and it’s a cause of stress in your life (of whatever form), then perhaps it’s time to work ON your business rather than IN it.

Great book to read…The E-Myth Revisited.

Being a ‘good’ CHEK practitioner means having balance in your life and running a business along the same principles that you run the rest of your life. If it’s out of kilter, take some action and bring it into alignment with the rest of your lifestyle.

And, if you’re a life coach or other kind of coach, the same applies. I know of a fair few coaches who don’t have optimum health, who aren’t at their optimum weight (or even a healthy weight), who “sell” health & wellbeing or weight loss solutions.

As Paul Chek says…”You can’t give what you don’t have”.