Therapist Wants to Get Her Business in Shape

Personal trainer Randi Rotwein used to get frustrated when clients confided their life woes during workout sessions. Compassionate by nature, she wanted to help, but ethically, she had to steer the conversations back to lunges and dumbbell reps.

Eventually, though, the 43-year-old Manhattan Beach resident became convinced she’d be more valuable to her clients if she could build their bodies and their minds. So she returned to school and, in 1993, became a licensed psychotherapist. She decided to call her new business E-Motion (short for “Energy-in-Motion”), for it would combine fitness workouts and psychological healing.

Rotwein assumed that a steady stream of clients would beat a path to her gym station. But things didn’t go as planned. Merging fitness with psychotherapy wasn’t an easy task, Rotwein discovered. Some clients wanted to shed their beer bellies and flabby thighs, but keep their angst to themselves. Others wanted to exorcise their emotional demons, but refused to exercise their bodies.

Last year Rotwein was forced to admit that her dual role of psychotherapist and trainer wasn’t panning out. Her income was flat, maddeningly so, as was her client base. To meet expenses, Rotwein finally took a position as a technical recruiter with a Culver City firm. But she was miserable. The sedentary job required hours on the phone and offered little face-to-face contact.

“I’ve been feeling brain-dead and bored,” Rotwein said.

Rotwein finally consulted master coach Cheryl Richardson, who leads Oprah Winfrey’s Lifestyle Make-Over team. She told Richardson her troubles.

Richardson pointed out that Rotwein’s most pressing problem was that she lacked a unified focus. Rotwein hadn’t yet defined E-Motion clearly enough to attract clientele, nor had she established herself as a specialist in the mind-body healing field. Additionally, she hadn’t targeted a specific population to market her services. Rotwein was dispersing her energies in too many directions, Richardson said.

Over a two-month period, Richardson provided Rotwein with suggestions to help her regain control of her career. Richardson also asked Rotwein to regularly reflect upon her past successes and surround herself with supportive associates to stay motivated.

Here are some additional tips from Richardson and other experts:

* Streamline the personal-training business. Rotwein would greatly benefit from preparing written business and marketing plans, said Beth Rothenberg, a fitness business coach who teaches “Creating and Operating Your Personal Fitness Training Business” at UCLA Extension.

Once she’s done this, Rotwein should put together an impressive presentation package that includes a resume, brief bio, tasteful brochure, client testimonials, training philosophy statement, great photo and a list of her services, Rothenberg said.

She can deliver these materials to medical professionals to help generate client referrals.

“Physicians are dying for people to refer to,” said fitness consultant Sheila King, who’s also a continuing-education specialist at UCLA Extension. “Their perception is that there aren’t enough good personal trainers out there.”

Registered dietitians and physical therapists also are good referral sources for Rotwein, King said. But she will have to show those specialists that her fitness and nutrition philosophies coincide with theirs.

To prove her credibility, Rotwein might offer free or discounted training sessions to these referral sources, suggested Melyssa St. Michael, co-owner of UltraFit Human Performance in Baltimore. This way, they can see her in action and personally benefit from her sessions.

Because Rotwein has decided to focus on securing female clients between 35 and 55 years old, she also can post fliers at private schools, as many in this age group have school-age children, said Jess Kletz, a New York-based personal trainer.

Rotwein also can send her newly assembled marketing material to local businesses, if they employ individuals in her target market, said George DeJohn, author of “Three Minutes to a Strong Mind and a Fit Body” (DeJohn Products, 1999). If she can get in the door, she can explain how she may be able to motivate and energize their staffs.

Health-oriented establishments--such as vitamin stores, juice bars, massage therapy centers, weight-loss clinics and spas--as well as sports-related sites such as golf and tennis clubs would be good locations for her fliers. With merchants’ permission, Rotwein might offer free 10-minute on-site mini-sessions to their patrons. Several trainers interviewed agreed that free sessions often generate long-term clients.

Rotwein should set aside time each week to practice these marketing steps, Rothenberg said.

* Build the psychotherapy practice. Increased competition and managed-care restrictions are forcing many therapists out of business, said Laurie Kolt, author of “How to Build a Thriving Fee-for-Service Practice” (Academic Press, 1999).

“The need for marketing, business skills and public relations has never been greater for our profession,” Kolt said.

Rotwein has been billing herself as a specialist in eight areas, including lifestyle changes, eating disorders and weight management. Once Rotwein has streamlined her focus and created an exclusive niche, she should study current clinical literature to make sure she is up-to-date in her knowledge of the subject, Kolt said.

Next, Rotwein should assemble what Kolt calls a “Practice-Builder Binder.” In the binder, Rotwein should list her practice goals (such as number of new patients, targeted average fee per hour and income-generating projects). She should set up sections in the binder devoted to business identity development (business cards, letterhead design, brochures), clinical specialty education (articles, literature, resources) and works-in-progress (workshops, seminars and presentations she might give).

Rotwein also will need to devote far more energy to advertising her services. Kolt lists many opportunities. She can join a multidisciplinary health-screening team, offer workshops, sell audiotapes, hold open houses, teach continuing-education courses, give free talks and sponsor retreats. She also can advertise by direct mail and in the Yellow Pages and appear on radio talk shows, Kolt noted.

Additionally, she can network with other therapists to apprise them of her specialty, so that they may make appropriate referrals, said Margaret Paul, a West Los Angeles therapist, and Susan Baker, professional development administrator for Pepperdine’s psychology doctorate program.

Since Rotwein completed her sessions with Richardson, she has made several sweeping changes in her life. First, she quit her recruiting job. Then, to begin building her reputation as a mind-body expert, she took a part-time position helping adolescents with eating disorders, accepted an assignment to write about the psychological aspects of group exercise for a fitness magazine and became a health and fitness advisor for the Web site https://www.tlcmaternity.com. She admits she’s still working on perfecting E-Motion and fine-tuning her marketing strategies. But she believes she’s back on track.

“This has been a fantastic opportunity,” said Rotwein of her work with Richardson. “My life has improved tenfold.”

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Time for a Change

* Name: Randi Rotwein

* Occupation: Personal trainer and psychotherapist

* Desired occupation: Mind-body specialist

* Quote: “I love helping people, motivating them to move their bodies and improve their lives. But my business isn’t taking off nearly as quickly as I hoped.”

Meet the Coach

Cheryl Richardson is a Newburyport, Mass.-based master certified coach and the leader of Oprah Winfrey’s Lifestyle Make-Over team. She’s also the author of “Take Time for Your Life: A Personal Coach’s Seven-Step Program for Creating the Life You Want” (Broadway Books, 1999), a recent Amazon.com No. 1 bestseller.