Archive for “Ketchum” Tag

4 Levels of Youth Sports Training Business

Posted on: March 26th, 2012 by IYCA 5 Comments

Youth Sports Training Business Success

By Ryan Ketchum

Training youth athletes can be hard.
It might be one of the most enjoyable experiences in all of coaching, but it can be difficult to gain traction in your community if you have no previous relationships with coaches or sports organizations. The toughest part, much like any other aspect of business, is getting started. Once you have a little momentum behind you all it takes is consistency to grow your youth sports training business at an incredible rate.

For some reason it has taken me a few years to figure out just how easy and simple building your youth sports performance business can be if you follow the right steps.

Over the past several months I have implemented this system into our business with great success. It is almost scary how easy it is to follow and how quickly it can have an effect on your bottom line.

The greatest part of this system is that it doesn’t require you to be great at marketing or selling. I modified this system so that any coach can sell with the experience of their coaching and the results that come because of their great coaching. All you have to do to make this work is be consistent and dependable.

The first level of building an incredible youth sports training performance business is leveraging your network to build relationships with coaches, parents and leaders of youth sports organizations. You should focus on an area that you already have traction in and put all of your energy into it. If you aren’t sure where you might have traction I suggest you focus on middle school or younger athletes and female athletes. Stay away from football unless you are established or have some great connections. Building relationships is easier than most people think, but it requires you to step out of your comfort zone. For a little while you have to take a back seat to being the expert and ask for advice. Call up coaches, parents and organizational leaders and ask their advice on what they see a need for in their sports training. Take them to lunch, grab coffee and don’t step on their toes!

Once you have established a relationship and secretly found out what the biggest need in that sports community is (that is why you asked for advice earlier) you can offer a solution. The next step is offering a free clinic to help the coach or organization’s athletes better prepare for their sport. This clinic should be catered to meet the needs that were unveiled by those in your network.

To make this clinic extra successful you should have as much done for you material as possible. Write the emails for the coach, set up times that are convenient for the entire team, create the fliers and deliver the copies, etc. The easier you can make it on the coach or those in charge the more likely it is that you will get access to a lot of athletes.

When selling this free clinic idea to a coach you must explain how it will help them. How is this going to make their life easier and their athletes better? How can they use this in their practices and training?

Once you have established a date and set up the clinic your only job is to show up and be ready to wow the parents, coaches and athletes with your knowledge and coaching ability. Connect with the kids, make it fun and give them what they want. If you can show immediate results and improvement with the kids speed, agility or strength you will have won them over.

At the end of this free clinic it is time to move onto the third level. We must speak the language that coaches and parents are used to hearing, we have to do the unspeakable when talking about long term athletic development, we must offer a short term sport specific and skill specific academy!!!!

You might be wondering why we would offer a short term program if we have already won these athletes and their parents over?

The reason you offer a 6-8 week program to start is because that is what they are conditioned to believe will produce the best results. Create an offering that will help get them prepared for the season or improve a specific skill. The goal for the 6-8 week program is to educate them on the long term athletic development model and continue to build a relationship with the athletes and those in charge.

You can offer this program on site at the team’s location or at your own location. Many times it is easier to take the athletes off site to your location. We have got the athletes in our funnel now and we should do our best to move them into our long term training programs.

This 6-8 week program should be low cost, with a specific purpose. Our goal here is not to make a lot of money, but rather to gain the confidence of the athletes and the community. It is a great way to “slow cook” your leads and earn their trust. This works particularly well if you are new in the sports performance community.

Towards the end of the 6-8 week program you will now attempt to move these athletes on to level 4. This is your long term development program, your core offerings and strength and conditioning program. After 6-8 weeks of education and a phenomenal experience it should be an easy sell to get them into your programs so that they can continue their athletic development with you.

The key to transitioning these athletes from the short term to long term program is understanding their needs at the time of the conversion. If they are going in season it would be silly to recommend a three time per week training program, however you could offer a one-time per week program to ensure they maintain their results and continue to make progress so that come playoff time they are in the best condition. If they are going into an off season you will want to make the most appealing offer, which is a complete off season solution for them.

To recap here are the 4 levels of youth sports training business success:

Build and develop relationships

Set up FREE Clinics

Convert into low cost short term programs with specific training focus

Convert into long term development program

If you follow these simple steps you will have no problem becoming the go-to resource for athletic development and youth sports performance training in your community.

Youth Training: Give Your Programs a Boost

Posted on: February 21st, 2012 by IYCA No Comments

Youth Training Program Boosting Tips

By Ryan Ketchum

Every so often you need to give your Youth Training programs a little boost. The numbers might be slowly declining, it seems like you cannot generate interest from parents or athletes and you don’t know where to go. Today I am going to give you three ways to give your youth training programs a boost of new athletes for the coming spring seasons.

1. Attend sport registrations- I was sitting at the doctor’s office the other day and picked up the local paper to pass the time waiting for them to see me and I noticed a huge opportunity that we could have missed out on. In the Sports section we have an activities section in which local sports leagues post their registrations and other events, in that day’s listings were two youth baseball league registrations.

I could have breezed through this without much thought, but immediately the thought came back to one of our Athletic Revolution marketing strategies. One of the easiest ways to get more athletes is to be present at events they attend. The registration is an event that will promise to have every parent and athlete that wants to play in each league in attendance.
These families obviously spend a little money on their kids’ sports and they want them to be the best athletes possible, no matter their age. Our business can be in front of hundreds of parents with an incredible offer to get them ready for the season.

2. Reactivate all of your previous winter sport athletes- With the winter sports season coming to a close in late February and early March now is the time to start compiling your list of inactive athletes who participate in winter sports. Create your list and make notes of when their season may end.

Within the notes for each athlete you will want to note if they make the playoffs, the season ends as scheduled or if you know they are injured. You can send a handwritten note to those that make the playoffs congratulating them and letting them know you can’t wait to see them in the offseason.

Dear Athlete,
I am very proud of all you have accomplished this season! Congratulations on helping your team make the playoffs and best of luck in all of your upcoming games. I will be routing for you the entire way to the championship. I can’t wait to see you as soon as the season ends to start your training for next year!

Signature

If the athlete is injured or missed the playoffs a simple phone call will work wonders.

These simple follow ups and contacts with your previous athletes are a step above and beyond what any of your competition is doing and will show them how much you care. It is up to you to reach out and invite them back in to your programs.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming your previous athletes will return automatically. Be proactive and set up some calls!

3. Hold a preseason academy- In Athletic Revolution we call one of our short term programs academies. One of the best ways to get new athletes in is to start them in a program that involves a short time commitment, helps them get ready for their upcoming season (the one thing that is on their mind at this moment), and can be sport, age, gender and skill specific.

With spring right around the corner now is the time to set up your 4-6 week training programs for baseball, softball, tennis, golf or any other spring sports that you would like to work with. The great thing about these programs is that you can upsell your current athletes into them for more specific training and you can get new athletes in door for your programs.

To market these programs you should look at your networking list first. Find any coaches or parents that you have a relationship with and ask for their help in putting you in contact with the coaches, athletes and their parents. Starting off with a free 1 hour clinic for them is a great way to get them to buy into your new program.

You can also use your leads from the event registrations (hint, hint) to fill these academies.

Once you have the athletes in the academy you will be able to continue to develop a relationship with them and their parents so that you can be their trusted athletic development resource.

The key to making any of these ideas successful is having a great youth training program that gets the results you promise, creating a system for developing your leads, and having the discipline to follow up consistently to develop relationships.

Make sure that anytime your program needs a boost you look for places that have a captive audience, seek out athletes in which you have already formed a relationship, and cater to the current needs of the athletes.

Sell ’em what they want, give them what they need!

Posted on: November 6th, 2011 by IYCA No Comments

[wpfblike]

by Ryan Ketchum

The more and more business coaching that I do for IYCA members, mastermind members, and franchisees the more I realize that our training philosophies and mindset sometimes get in the way of us running a great business. I am prepared to be tarred and feathered, put in the stockades and any other form of medieval punishment that the loyal IYCA readers are going to put me through for delivering the message that I am about to write.

Before you jump to conclusions and go into a tizzy about long term athletic development and building a training foundation I want you to read the entire message. That is my challenge to you…

Before I really get into the idea of selling the customer what they want I have to start by saying that I am on your side.

Youth fitness and athletic development should be implemented with the long term development of the athlete in mind. I am not claiming that you should run your programs any differently than this nor am I urging you to lie, cheat and steal from parents.

Take a deep breath and open up your mind for a bit because I am going to feel you in on a little secret that might change your youth fitness business forever!

(more…)

Impact Training: The key to youth fitness and performance success

Posted on: September 15th, 2011 by IYCA 4 Comments

[wpfblike]

by Ryan Ketchum

The title of this blog might be a little misleading. I am not going to talk about ground contacts, high impact training exercises, or anything related to movements or programming. I want to discuss the impact that we have on the youth that we work with and the effect it has on your business and, more importantly, their lives.

I always tell our staff that we have a profound impact on the perception of this entire field every time that we work with a client or athlete. This is something that I have used to make sure I give the best in every session for the past 6 years, and built a thriving business because of it!

Think about dentists, doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, and any other service profession, if you know someone that has had a single bad experience they automatically have the perception that all others in the field must be the same. Do you ever want to be the cause for someone thinking that youth fitness and sports performance coaches are anything but exceptional people that have a high level of knowledge and skill?

I shudder at the thought of giving someone the perception that all coaches were terrible at their profession, didn’t care about the clients/athletes, and got people hurt.

(more…)

Athletic Revolution

Posted on: December 5th, 2010 by IYCA No Comments

[wpfblike]

Athletic Revolution is absolutely exploding nationwide.

A 100% done-for-you Youth Fitness & Sport Training facility or program that is just waiting for you…

… Waiting for you to join the AR Family and share in the joy of owning a business of your own that has proven effective, successful and fulfilling.

Every week, I adore the time I spend chatting with new and soon-to-be-new franchisees – their excitement, passion and care is positively contagious!

As a means of making the decision to become an AR Family Member and business owner even easier for you, Pat Rigsby and I have decided to put together an incredibly special offer (that expires December 31 of this year… That’s only 25 days or so from right now).

(more…)