How to Manage Your Online Health and Fitness Business

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New Fat Loss Pill – (photo credit Greg McMullin)

Another great message from Chris “The Kiwi” of Athletic Greens

Hey mate,

I hope this finds you better than ever.

There is a new fat loss pill available, and it will do everything for your fat loss and health that you want it to.

All you have to do …. is swallow it.

I won’t lie, for many people, it is going to be a very bitter pill.

**********

10.30 am, post morning gym rush, cafe in Bondi, Sydney, 2008.

“Mate, it is crazy, these credit card bills and car payments are hammering me, no matter what I try and do, I just can’t seem to get ahead. You know how much I want to start my own studio, but I just can’t save the money to make it happen,” Jake* a personal trainer at Fitness First in Bondi Junction, looked unhappy and upset. Completely ripped, glowing with health and energy, fully booked by happy personal training clients, idolized by the other trainers at his gym as a model of success, yet he was genuinely depressed by his financial situation, which he told me, never seemed to change. He was surviving paycheck to paycheck, and he was not a happy camper. “I really really want to step out on my own and start this studio, but I can’t seem to make it happen. Mate, can you help me?”

Jake, 32, who in his 20′s had gone from a fat diabetic who never exercised to a rippling lean living show of health and vitality – and one of the most sought after trainers in Sydney – looked at me hopefully. Despite having been the fat kid and unhealthy most of his life Jake had turned that all around and was a phenomenal physical specimen. There was nothing he didn’t eat that wasn’t good for him, he trained to perfection, and placed his health at the top of his priorities list.

It showed, it was HIS health, HE OWNED IT.

I glanced at his $300 Italian designer sunglasses (new the previous week), looked over at his shiny late model BMW parked beside the cafe we were sitting in, and considered what I knew of Jake’s earnings, then his lifestyle, spending habits, and all the cool STUFF he thought he owned – and continued to buy – but which really owned him.

I paused, looked at him, and said the most obvious thing that popped into my mind.

“Jake, do you take responsibility for your physical health?”

*************

12.15pm, lunch at a restaurant in Potts Point, Sydney, same day in 2008.

Rita looked up from her pasta, her eyes alive with energy as she finished describing the excitement of opening her latest store. Her FOURTEENTH. “I don’t get sick of it Chris, it is still exciting to me.”

Rita*, 44, mother of three, whose husband had done a runner when she was at the ripe old age of 21, with two kids in hand and a “bun in the oven”.

Rita, “solo mother”, who with no education beyond 10th grade in high school had gone to work at a beauty salon to earn enough to be able to ensure her kids had lunch every day.

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