Tribefit Review | Interview: Jake - How To Quickly Grow Online Fitness Biz From Scratch

Chris Lynton: Hey guys, Chris Lynton here from TribeFit, and I've got an awesome successful online trainer, a bit further north from where I am, but we've got Jake with us today. How are you doing Jake?

Jake Divljak: Really well, Chris. Good to be here.

Chris Lynton: And, just so I don't get it wrong, how do you pronounce your last name?

Jake Divljak: It's pronounced Divljak. So if you just throw in letters in there.

Chris Lynton: I was going to say Divljak but I would've gotten massively wrong. Anyways, we've got Jake here today. He's up on holidays, I think for a week or so up North and a beautiful part of the world to be. And he's put aside some of the time to have a chat with us. Jake's a in-person trainer growing his online quite rapidly.

Been very successful, I think, in the last, or in the first two days of October or something [inaudible 00:00:47] $6K, in new clients he's pumping. And Jake, I guess, to yourself mate do you want to maybe give a little bit of a background about yourself, your journey prior to jumping online and I guess how everything's sort of or what... why you wanted to go online in the first place and then I guess your experience from there?

Jake Divljak: Sure. Yeah, so as you mentioned, I've been a face-to-face trainer for coming on to about six years now. And I guess probably in the last two years or so, I started to want to take that step and get online. I was getting a bit more interested in it, but didn't really know how to go about it. It's... and you hear mixed things like, "Oh, you can't. It's not as easy as people make out," which is definitely not easy.

But I think having a bit of guidance and a plan to follow... I'm just going to turn my phone on silent... is definitely helps. And that why I wanted to go online, well, probably a big one is because I love to travel myself and obviously if you've got the capacity to make money online, then you can become location independent, which is very appealing to me.

But also it allows you to service more clients and ideally increase your income as well so it's a win-win all around.

Chris Lynton: Beautiful, man. What did your... I guess, what did your day, your normal day sort of look like as an in-person when you were just doing solely the face-to-face side of things?

Jake Divljak: Long. I mean, when I was at full capacity running around 60 to 65 sessions per week, face-to-face and it'd be the alarm clock going off at 5:00 AM and you'd be in the gym by 6:00 or 5:30 or 6:00 and quite often I wouldn't leave until 7:30, 8:00 at night some nights as well.

Maybe it'd be a split shift or there'd be a bit of a break in the middle of the day where you'd either go to the gym yourself or sometimes have a nap depending. But it was definitely long, long days. And yeah, I do enjoy it, but if you do that Monday to Friday, by the time you get to the end of the week, you're definitely pretty exhausted at talking to people face-to-face and, and running sessions.

It's pretty physically and mentally draining so yeah, pretty tiring.

Chris Lynton: And it's obviously a formula that's not going to last till you're... you're not going to be able to do that when you're 85 years old kind of thing.

Jake Divljak: No, definitely not.

Chris Lynton: Cool, man. So now you've jumped on online. You've got online clients, you're pumping, you're charging the right prices. You're in high ticket land. You got some good clients you're getting great results from. So I guess from your point of view, what does an online trainer need? What's one or two things an online trainer needs in place to be successful from your experience?

Jake Divljak: That's a tough question, otherwise there's a lot of answers to that one. Probably top two that come to mind, I think having systems in place. You need to be educated on how to go about starting your online business because if you've never done it before, there are just so many question marks and you don't really know where to start.

That's how I felt. And so definitely being shown the right steps to taking in the right order just to get the ball rolling, that's really the biggest thing. And then just, I guess, having the guts to take that leap and do it as well and just see what happens because yeah, it's a bit daunting and it's new, anything that's new is kind of scary a little bit as well, but you've got to sort of dive right in and learn from your mistakes.

I'm still... I've really only launched my online business about probably four and a half months ago. So it's still very early in the [inaudible 00:05:17]. If I'm looking at this long term, which I am, it's still a very... my business is very young, but I feel it's far better now than it was even two months ago and I'm learning as I'm going. And that's just naturally what happens I think when starting a new business.

Chris Lynton: [inaudible 00:05:38]. And you kind of touched on this, so, and I know you mentioned earlier about how some people said online it's not as easy as it sounds or whatever it might be. So before you jumped online, what we’re kind of the things... however long it took you to take that leap of faith, what were the kinds of things that were hurdles to making you actually taking that leap? What was getting in your way? What were you thinking? What did you have to overcome?

Jake Divljak: Probably having the time. You're obviously... I was always busy as a face-to-face trainer. I still do face-to-face and I'm essentially running two businesses now, which also does my head in, but firstly getting the time to do it because with any new venture you've got to put a lot of effort into it and you're only going to get out what you put in.

And secondly, obviously, I did go and seek guidance from you guys at TribeFit and making an investment to upskill myself in a bit of training, initially holding off on wanting to and spend that money or whatever.

But at the end of the day, I'm five months down the track and here we are and it's well worth it, but sometimes you can be a bit reluctant to want to spend that money straight up, especially when there are so many uncertainties looking forward, but those are probably the two biggest hesitations I had.

Chris Lynton: Of course, man. And I think it's probably worthwhile noting that if I remember correctly, I think you jumped in kind of before COVID sort of kicked off or early stages of COVID, would that be correct?

Jake Divljak: It was like the start of April. So just before we even really knew how bad it was sort of thing.

Chris Lynton: Yeah. And so it's probably like you said, the business being so young, being an infant, four months in or whatever it might be in comparison to six years in-person and then able to get something off the ground and growing during those times were a lot of people are either sticking their head in the sand and doing nothing or going backward.

So it really is a massive pat on the back to yourself for doing what you've done and having some powerful stuff in place and taking massive action and backing yourself. And that's really the ability to back yourself and as you said, just go along and learn and as you make failures and make mistakes, we're all human, we're going to do it by getting better and better each time is probably what I see as one of the key skills of whether it's online, in person, whatever it might be and just as a business owner.

So I guess more recently with the paid ads sort of thing. So I know you will sort of in the... Oh, actually before we jump to that, what's your vision over the next four months, six months, 12 months? I know you're doing some in-person right now, your online is growing. What's the goal? What's the vision?

Jake Divljak: I'd say I definitely want to just continue to rapidly grow my online business and I also... I know that being tied up with face-to-face is sort of counterproductive to that because there's only so many hours in a day or whatever. And so, the vision is to start to wind back the face-to-face, which is going to give me more time to invest in my online business.

And again, that's another leap of faith that you've got to take it to some point, but not getting too caught up in numbers, but if I was consistently making $10K a month online, I've learned pretty quickly that that's realistic quite a low level in the online world if you get everything right, and you get your systems in place.

So that seems like a high target, but it seems quite achievable considering I did 6K in three days last week. I'm on track to hit that target or hopefully exceed that target this month. But it's about probably wanting to hit that consistently and then just raise the bar even higher again, whether it's $15 to $20K a month.

I just brought on a virtual assistant who's starting today because I just don't have enough time to do the things that need to be done. So that's kind of exciting. It's officially my first employee, I guess we can call it. But I just really... the sky's the limit and I just want to continue to grow [crosstalk 00:10:37] online.

Chris Lynton: For sure. And you probably what you touched on there and what you touched on earlier than requiring good systems. So generally what I find with in-person because it's very time for money, you can get clients and then you just hit a ceiling and it just kind of goes up and down, up and down.

But as you just touched on then, once you get online and you have those systems in place, the scalability of it is so much different. You can go, like you said, $6K three days, you can go $10K in a month, once you get there, go 20, go 30, go 40, go 50, go 100, whatever it might be and it really is the sky's the limit.

And that's probably... for a lot of people listening to this, it's probably scary or for those of you who haven't done North of $20,000 a month, so I can see how it sounds unbelievable, but I guess hitting those key benchmarks, but then having the capacity to continue to go further because of these systems is really important.

And without that, whether it's in-person or online, you are going to be hitting a ceiling. So definitely what Jake mentioned before systems very critical from a side of bringing on clients consistently and bringing them into your business for the right price and also delivering a phenomenal service. So you're not kind of bogged down in that.

And so I guess, in terms of your time man, where do you now spend most of your time in your online business? If you were to split it up, is it client generation, client servicing 50/50, 60/40? Where is it kind of sitting?

Jake Divljak: At the moment it's probably 50/50, I guess, because bringing on new clients at the moment is still a massive priority of mine but I mean, in a successful business, that probably is always going to be a priority I would imagine.

That should never stop. But also then you can celebrate and be really happy when you've signed on six clients in two days, but then it's, okay, now I've got six new clients that I actually have to work with over the next 90 days or whatever it is and I need to make sure that I'm delivering what I [inaudible 00:12:56].

So it's probably 50/50. This is why I've brought on a virtual assistant now which is also recommended in the TribeFit course. And I've known for a little while that I've been at that stage where I needed that and I... and so now ideally they can start to do more of that client acquisition stuff to continue to grow.

Chris Lynton: leverage yes put on then. Cool. All right, then that's probably most of the questions I've got here. The last one I always like to ask just to kind of wrap things up for anyone listening out there, if you could go back six months, 12 months and speak to yourself with the knowledge that you have now, what would be kind of the number one bit of advice or tip you'd give yourself or someone in a similar situation to yourself six, 12 months ago?

Jake Divljak: Probably... well, I wish I would have acted sooner. My advice would be if you're thinking about... Do you mean specifically related to going online or just in general?

Chris Lynton: Honestly, in general, because I definitely find that it all kind of links if you know what I mean, definitely so just-

Jake Divljak: I think... It's a good question. I think I would say that if you've got a vision and you want to step outside your comfort zone and grow your business personally, professionally, and you want to do it but you're not quite sure how to go about it, seek the assistance and the training from people who do know and learn from people that have been there and done that.

You'd be quite surprised at what you once thought was probably too good to be true or unattainable, or you can definitely make it a reality, but I think it's going out and seeking the appropriate training to make it happen because otherwise you just sit down and sit around and wonder how to go about it yourself and it's never going to happen.

Chris Lynton: Beautiful. Cool man. Well, I appreciate your time. You've got many plans, obviously the beach, a lot of summertime up North and the weather's fine. So, mate, I appreciate your time and I appreciate you taking your time out of your day, your holiday, while you're up there to chat with us and give some of the tips you've gone through.

If someone wants to find out about your business and they want to, I don't know, get training from you or whatever it might be, how can they find you? How can they find out more about you?

Jake Divljak: Yeah, for sure. So, well, I specialize in working with police and military and individuals that are aspiring to join the paramilitary. In the military, my business name is Recruit Ready Fitness. So it's pretty easy to remember. You can check me out on Facebook and Instagram, you'll definitely able to find me there. And obviously, you should throw a message if you're wanting to find out more.

Chris Lynton: Beautiful. I appreciate your time Jake. Anyone listening, loads of gold nuggets there to take, and we'll let you get back to your holiday buddy. And once again, I appreciate your time, we'll speak soon.

Jake Divljak: All good. Thanks, Chris.