I Kissed a Girl and I …….

I bet I got your attention with this title. If you’re familiar with the Katy Perry song you probably even found yourself humming the tune while reading the headline. And you’re probably wondering if I actually kissed a girl and liked it. Well to find out you’ll just have to keep reading further.

Take a look at the picture below. What do you see? Probably a bunch of people but there’s nothing overly amazing about the picture, no one really stands out. What if I told you that this was a picture of a group of personal trainers and asked you to pick one of them to train with, which one would you choose?  How would you decide?

My bet is you would choose based on appearance. Why? because you don’t have any other information to support your decision so you have to make a decision based on something. You would probably look at their age or gender or decide based on looks if there’s someone you would want to train with.

So how do you as a personal trainer stand out amongst the thousands of other trainers in an industry that’s quickly become saturated? How do you set yourself apart from the crowd and get noticed? If you have a website, flyer, brochure what’s going to give a potential client the impulse to want to email you or pick up the phone to call you?

Not sure? Well that’s part of the problem isn’t it. And the answer isn’t because you’re a nice person who designs safe and effective programs that gets results. Sorry I just yawned while writing this very boring, bland and benign sentence. But sadly this is what I read on a lot of personal training websites.

Do you remember Macaulay Culkin from the movie home alone? What emotion is he demonstrating right now? Do you recognize this as shock or surprise? Then you would be right. Take a moment right now to think back to an experience you’ve had where you were surprised or shocked. Do you remember it? Can you see the event clearly in your mind? Is it something you will never forget? Does it bring up any other emotions? Do you remember a certain smell? More importantly did you share the experience with others?

Surprise and shock are very strong emotions that form strong engrams in your brain. You remember the experience forever because of the impression it makes. You also share this experience with other people allowing you to relive the surprise over and over again. With each telling of the experiences your body releases the same chemicals as when you first experienced the event.

One method you can use as a trainer to stand out in the sea of trainers is to use the element of surprise or shock. Remember you are still waiting to find out if I kissed a girl and liked it. You may have been surprised by the title and even a little shocked that I would write it. But I bet your were curious and still are and waiting to discover the truth. You’ll just have to wait a little longer to find out. Keep reading.

So what can you do to shock people to get their attention and have them start talking about you? You’ll probably have to think of something unexpected like handing out your business cards with a gift certificate to McDonalds or running a 10KM race in a sumo suit with your company logo on the back. These ideas might sound a little crazy but trust me at least you will get noticed.

Just recently I changed my signature line from

To;

Which one do you find more fun and memorable? Plus you get to learn a bit of personal information about me which I think makes it more interesting. I hope by now you are getting my point which is if you want to stand out you need to be different in a way that’s memorable. Think about how you can use surprise, shock or any other strong emotion to create an experience people won’t soon forget.

Now as for me kissing a girl and liking it, sorry I never kiss and tell.