How Dirk Hansen Raised His Rates and Brought in $400,000 in Fitness Sales
By Sean Greeley
NPE Client Dirk Hansen was making a classic mistake of charging too little AND allowing overly generous payment terms.Â
Dirk came to NPE and turned things around.Â
In this video, you’ll see how Dirk:
- Launched our Raising The Rates Campaign
- Tightened his payment terms
- Brought in over $400,000 in sales,Â
- And much, much more.
Check out this video to learn more about changing what and how you get paid can make a difference in your cash flow.Â
Sean Greeley
Podcast Transcript
Dirk Hansen
I couldn’t fit this industry by accident. When I was around 19 and 20 years of age, I was playing representative football. And I was studying accountancy. And I’ve had an injury and I went to see my sports doctor who’d been my sports for since I was a teenager. When I told him I was doing accountancy, he was dumbfounded and thought I’d also always be someone who followed some sort of sporting career or something in fitness. So he hopped on the phone rang up the Australian College of physical education, there and then and the next day I was off for interviews and enrolled in the in physics course. And from that I studied in college for many years before going on to travel and then play then start up a fitness career. I started off as a personal trainer down upon my beach training people individually and in groups and, and literally, when I first started it was as as an afterthought, someone asked me to train them one day, and before I knew it, I was training five or six groups a week and before I knew it, I was training half a dozen, one on one clients. And next thing you know, I had a facility and and so I stumbled across her unfortunately, stumbled is probably the word for as many years I continued to inverted commas run a business, but probably not very effectively. Unfortunately, everything. As I said, quite funny for me is being by changing that I stumbled into the industry by someone telling me I should do it. One day, one of my clients who was training literally rang up and said, there’s a place on the corner Murray riders for rent, I think you should put a studio in there, I wouldn’t have a look at it. All my conscious saying, Yeah, let’s do it. So I put a studio in there. So you nothing was actually planned as my tree has grown. And I’ve sort of had to go with it.
The studio that I built, although successful on all levels of training,
Unknown Speaker
was becoming a noose around my neck
Dirk Hansen
and was consuming my life. And I realized that for me to make some sort of change, it wasn’t going to be my strength was we came obvious my strength was with training. And I had a business as I say that the grind, I never chose to be a businessman, I never said I was a businessman, I just went from someone running on Bondi Beach. And next thing, you know, I’ve got five or six staff and I’ve got a facility. So it became obvious to me that to make some sort of change was gonna have to come from from some advice or some help from from outside sources. And obviously, I found what I thought was going to be that source.
Unknown Speaker
The the rise and rise campaign
Dirk Hansen
was a wonderful thing for us in that we went from chasing people’s accounts all the time to be able to secure over $200,000 worth of business for the people signing up to pay up. So it made a big difference for us. The main thing for me is the system. So it’s brought a lot more stability to what we do in the business, a lot more clarity to my staff in the past, everything still fell upon my head because we didn’t have systems and if I didn’t do it, I mean, it didn’t get done. And as much as I wanted the staff to do without direction, the staff didn’t know what to do. So the difference is now that staff take a lot more responsibility, and as a result of that, it’s given me a lot more time. So in the past, spinning, you know, coming home and having breakfast and helping out a breakfast time with a family was non existent. And was for probably four or five or many years since my kids have been born. Whereas now I have the opportunity at times to be able to get home and and have breakfast and and help out for school which is a which is important. The main thing is that is time and quality of time. Beforehand, you know, religiously, I’d leave home at four or five o’clock every morning and get home at 730 at night. I called Dwight when he was sick, I finished off with the 637 30 class and virtually four nights we can get on record Dwight. If I was lucky, I try and get home for an hour half an hour in between that To try and see the kids before they get to bed but very often I wouldn’t even see them before they went to bed. I never saw them before they went to school. Luckily my gym is near my house and often in most mornings my kids who just wave as you’re hopping in the car and that’d be my Hello. So yeah, it’s made a big difference being able to to lace behind a couple of mornings a week and behind I don’t do any night times anymore. So I’m home every night. So that’s my big big difference to be able to spend some quality time with with everyone.
Unknown Speaker
My boys dearly and I’m a typical, you know
Dirk Hansen
I’m an ex, I suppose retired athletic person. And I love doing stuff with my son so you know I can think of nothing better and probably much to my watch list. Is it my idea of a fantastic holiday is my wife staying behind me I analyze with my, my two boys. And I don’t mean with that with any negativity to my wife, but I love you know, my idea of going and spending going on wonderful holidays to get up at 530 with my boys go for a run, go for serve windsurf, you know, whatever it is just to be playing with my boys. So obviously, as much as I never admitted that it idolized me the fact that I didn’t have that opportunity to spend that much time, as much time as I would love with my boys, although I still spend every spare moment I have with them. I now too. So now as opposed to fitting my boys in around my lifestyle, or my work stall, and I choose, you know, when I take my kids down every Thursday afternoon, my kids have swimming lessons, I pick my kids up from school, probably three or four days a week. Now I take them swimming lessons, every Thursday afternoon, we go and have sushi every Thursday night afterwards, something that wouldn’t have dreamed on before. So yeah, it’s bought, it’s put a lot of good times
Unknown Speaker
being involved with Superfund MP, it’s been incredible.
Dirk Hansen
As I said, I literally, you know, and unfortunately, so hang my hat on the fact that I’d walk into work at five o’clock in the morning, and walk out work at seven or 8pm in the evening. And that was it, I live, this premises North online, my premises is one half kilometers from one beach, I can run there with my surfboard, and for five minutes, I can drive there and I’m in the car. And you’d probably i’d serve you know, for last six or seven years, I’d serve once a year, the only time I ever served was when I left on, I left my place to go on holidays and I get to surf out of here. And one of the problems was not just the time, you know, I probably had time, the fact that my systems by didn’t have systems was that I felt bad leaving all the time because everything revolved around me and me being away from the businessman Did something happen, it probably wasn’t going to happen properly. So there was a double edged sword of of not having time and then not being able to or not having the time prepared. So I now have the freedom, I now have the choice I’ve chosen over the last six or seven months to spend a little bit more that time on developing more corporate business, which has proven to be very successful for me. So that use of time once again is like an investment for me, I’m investing my time into something that’s gonna have far greater return. But I’ve now gone from someone who didn’t serve to I now have two days a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays for me at a minimum two days, we’re gonna have a serve. And in the service, no good, I take my, my computer with me, I’m gonna sit in the grass on the beach, I do some work from from the beach. So that’s for two or three hours each week, now my boat has become my office. That’s a massive difference from where I was 18 months ago, and probably a lot of husbands get it. I used to get a okay show the show. Because my wife had heard it all before every year was going to be different year, every year was going to be different, everything was going to change that year. And of course, without systems, nothing changed, even though you know, probably for the last four or five years. For the first one ever, I realized things had to change. And I start the saying I’m going to change. And fortunately it was that every year, you know, and and say I can get a higher administration person, but I didn’t know what to get that person to do. I didn’t know what I should do so. So it’s now changed from year two. All right. So now you know, my wife’s, you know, obviously very appreciative of the fact that our lifestyle is changing. And we’ve we haven’t changed our lifestyle a lot in that we’re now investing in that time now I bought a holiday house up on at NASA. And we grew up with a family there and spent a holidays observing. And this was lovely to have, you know, your own place with your own kids bedroom with a surfboard in the garage and, and the wind servers and all that sort of stuff around little play land. So that’s been fantastic. So you probably the same with my finances, the same with my time is or what I’ve done in the last, you know, year or two is invested. So we’re not, you know, there’s not big differences in our lifestyle in the short term. But definitely we’re investing in stuff that’s going to make big differences in the long term. If I’d known 15 years ago, what I’ve learned the last four months, the sky’s the limit, I certainly would have been scammed this conversation a long time ago. Definitely for any person coming into the business in the industry, and setting up a business I’d be looking to contact you for profit and and get some sort of advice and as I say to people all the time, whether I’m training a whether I’m training somebody trying to lose weight or or where I used to be training elite athlete, everyone has strengths and weaknesses and and the good people, the ones who realize their strengths and work on their weaknesses. And for the average person who starts up a business, if they got a speciality in that business has a very good chance of their speciality is not in in a business sense. So I strongly recommend most people who go into business to get some sort of business advice to to give them that direction.
Take Hanson from North Pando in Sydney, Australia.