Thriving Student: Timothy Cavender

Tim is the Director of personal training for the community of Cleveland Heights. He’s also a personal trainer and now, an online trainer.

Sounds normal enough. But Tim’s mission is a little different than some.

From day one, Tim has known that his ultimate goal is not to help elite athletes or affluent people. And it’s not to bring home mega-bucks.

It’s to help the people who need it the most. Specifically, lower income people who need help with their health and nutrition.

“My goal was never to train rich people. I would rather be training middle class to lower income people. Especially lower income, because statistically, those are the people that need it more. They have less education in regards to health and nutrition, and they have less access [to services]. Those are the people that need the most help improving their health.”

A noble goal, but how do you actually do that, and make a sustainable business out of it?

After working in the fitness industry a while, Tim started to notice a pattern. “As a coach, you get more experience and credentials and your price goes up. The better you get, the more expensive you get.”

Tim wanted to keep getting better. But he didn’t want to become more expensive, pricing out the very people he aimed to help.

So, while continuing to work for the city and enjoy in-person training, he started to explore the idea of online training.

“I spent a lot of time reflecting on what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to help people that couldn’t necessarily afford personal training. I wanted to offer high quality services at a much lower price point. And I realized, I would be able to do that much more readily with an online training model.”

There was just one major roadblock. Technology.

“I had heard about online training but I had assumed it was not for me because I’m not a tech person,” says Tim. “I’m not good with technology. I’m not good with the Internet. So I believed early on that it was not for me.”

But after some inspiration from the Strong Summit, a yearly conference hosted by the PTDC in Toronto, Tim did some research. He learned about affordable web design services and apps like Trainerize. And he realized that the Online Trainer Academy (OTA) could be his guide through the process.

“Then I was sold. I knew I could do this.”

Tim joined the Academy and got to work. Following a method in the Academy, Tim quickly signed 15 people up on a pre-registration list. Out of the 15, he converted 12 of them to paying clients, with a simple phone call following the OTA scripts.

As per Tim’s goal, most of the people signed up for his basic package at $60/month. (A couple went for his higher priced package around $200/month.)

Right out of the gate, Tim started earning his $1k extra a month.

He was making money — and doing it by serving the people he really wanted to help.

These days, Tim says he’s still in the beginning stages of building his business, but he’s excited about where it’s taking him. “Right now, I use the hybrid approach and still do some training in person. I really like that I’m able to offer my clients a wide variety of options,” he says.

Gradually, he hopes to move to a 100% online business model. Why? So he can help more people, of course.

“My wife is a full-time social worker. Our goal is to be able to foster children. If I can work from home, with a flexible schedule, we’ll be able to help more children,” he explains.

“We really like helping people.” Tim adds. “This style of working will allow me to do exactly that.”