This is a fitness business strategy I call the Anderson Lesson.

What to do if another trainer is trying to steal your clients? What do you do if another personal trainer tries to build their own fitness business at the expense of yours?

One day I had a loyal client come to me and tell me that another trainer who I knew was a shark. These were her exact words "Anderson is a shark"

She said that he had approached her at a party and asked her to come train with him at another gym. Now, keep in mind, this is a fitness trainer I knew and worked at the same gym I did, but I guess he also worked at another gym.

What he did was approach her and another client of mine about training them, and he said that he would train them for free until my contract was up with them.

Now, I do believe in a fair marketplace and all that stuff, but when it's a fellow fitness trainer you know, who you work with daily, it's just not right.

At firstI got upset for 10 or 15 minutes. And after talking this over with a good friend of mine, I came to the most enlightening conclusion. I believe this is true fitness business zen...

You see any second that I spent with anger focused at Anderson was just another second focused away from my goals. And the two or three percent that this Anderson character could hurt my business by trying to steal my clients, was taking my focus off my goals and putting in someting negative and fear based.

Now this focusing of my thoughts on Anderson and thinking resentful and angry thoughs was way far than two or three percent negative towards my fitness business goals and would have way bigger negative effect than what he anything he could do to me. Actually, my focus on him was more negative to my business than him trying to take my clients.

So I quickly took my focus off of him and also came to realize that any clients who go to him were not loyal to me anyway, and he was just getting them out of the way for me to fill those spaces with more loyal, better clients. So actually he was doing me a service by cleaning out what was at the bottom of the tank, so I can really get prime clients.

I figured the best way was just to look at him with forgiveness and compassion and let him do his thing. And in all honesty, I don't think he had more than a two percent effect on my business. Yet, had I walked around angry at him, I would have taken a lot of time spent focused away from my goals in a state of anger which would have attracted more angry situations, more resentful situations, and more situations that are similar.

If I'm walking around worried about people stealing my clients, then I'm likely to attract that. So I quickly, within 10 or 15 minutes, realized that that wasn't the path to take. And it wasn't the most natural thing. And thank God I had a good sounding board there. I had my good friend Steve to set me straight at the time.