How would you start a successful fitness business if you were just starting over.
Not how I would start one today with all the resources now at my disposal, but to rewind the clock and with all the knowledge (from all the painful mistakes I’ve made) how would I start out today (currently 2017) with limited resources?
The good news is, it’s cheaper and easier than ever. You have so much direct control over things that we never used to have, you can control expenses better than ever before and new customers are just a few clicks away!
In this video I share with your some of my thoughts of exactly how I would do it, I hope this gives you some direction.
What do you think? Did this video give you some ideas?
One of the things I’ve found is; that it’s easy to keep gathering information, it can be a pretty scary thing to actually go out and do it.
Something that seemed so simple suddenly becomes scary, or a lot more complicated.
Our industry is built on the fact that as people, as human beings, we need each other; we need support, community, confidence and accountability.
I love helping people, I love helping fitness professionals help more people, maybe I can help you.
From time to time I take on a few private coaching clients, if after watching the video above, if you’re serious about taking big action in your business maybe I can help you. Quite often I help fitness pros add $5000, 10,000, $15,000 a month in additional revenue in 60-90 days. If you’d like to know more about private coaching send me a message here.
Competition is fierce these days, having a strong point of differentiation is continually growing to be more difficult. Our approach is simple, help our clients develop such strong relationships not only with us but with one another that they never want to leave!
This isn’t as difficult as you think, this video will explain some of the systematic practices that have helped us do this (and some just so happen to really enhance your online authority and make all of your digital marketing efforts work better!)
This weekend I got to explore my creative side in the Canadian Rockies. To me Banff National Park is one of the most beautiful places on earth.
Jon was an amazing still model for this sunrise long exposure in Banff National Park.
My wife was so kind to book me this four-day photo excursion with three amazing and well-known landscape and wildlife photographers. I knew I was going to experience the perfect stress relief before our new baby arrives in December (and after opening a new boot camp location just 3 weeks ago with the next set to open in 2 more weeks from today;) but what I didn’t expect was interesting validation to the entrepreneurial concepts that I teach so many of you.
In Saturday night’s fireside chat I was shocked to hear that so many of the 29 other participants had many questions about the business of photography and what these three individuals did that allowed them to attain a high level of success in their beloved field.
I think you will find the key takeaways both familiar and highly applicable to your fitness business so I wanted to share.
1) Services comprise the largest portion of their earnings.
This was and wasn’t a shock to me. In my own aspirations as a hobbyist fine art photographer I’ve been very focused on working through how to achieve greater distribution of my art through prints. In the fitness business I’ve seen so many people try to focus on selling products at the expense of energy that could be applied to ramping up the value of their service. The bottom line is; when you are good at something people want to buy YOU, they want to live vicariously through you; they want to learn from you. This is your greatest commodity, don’t undervalue it and be sure to embrace it.
2) Fear will hold you back in the beginning (and then in the middle, and then again later and throughout.)
This was such an amazing validation and affirmation of one of life’s greatest career lessons. When you start anything, the thing that will hold you back the most is your own fear. Don’t be afraid to just put it out to the world. It doesn’t matter if it’s art, boot camp or personal training services, the point is some people may not like it and that’s just ok because there will be enough that will; as long as you have the courage to keep sharing it.
3) Consistency
Decide on a schedule and commit to it! In this case they were discussing the importance of nurturing your audience both on and offline with consistent content. People fall into patterns, consistency creates expectation, and expectation creates reciprocity and opportunity. Their suggestion for photography was to decide on a schedule you can commit to, maybe that’s just once a week to release an image that you feel reflects the best of your current ability and then commit to that.
This advice is directly transferable to your fitness training business (or likely almost any business.) We are in a content driven world, people consume more content faster than ever, and more and more people are producing great content. In order to be heard amidst the noise you need to solidify your voice. Don’t worry if you don’t immediately have a large subscriber base just continue to be consistent. Make sure your voice and opinions are consistent (take the time to prepare your best work, without delaying for perfection,) continue to convey a similar message and give people an opportunity to connect and feel something which leads me to the next point.
4) It doesn’t work without passion and drive.
I’m sorry but if you don’t care more about “what” or “why” you are doing something then “how much” you’ll make from it you’ll never experience what it’s like to be the most successful at anything.
You have to be in touch with your why; everything you do relating to your business (or your hobbies for the matter) should be intentional. It should create deep emotional connection and leave you with a greater sense of fulfillment. We all need money to be able to buy freedom to do more of what we want, but why not do what you want to make the money you need?
If you question your passion from time to time that’s normal (see #2) and it’s in those moments that you are often about take your greatest steps; my advice to you is when that happens sit down for 15 minutes and write out your “why” in a notebook and then attack the problem that has made you afraid. (For me this is actually a daily activity, the first 10 minutes of every day.)
What an amazing night celebrating 11 years and last anniversary as a family of two!
5) Commitment and success out of necessity.
If you truly love something, if you truly want to be successful there’s no greater truth than: a part time commitment will generate part time results.
I think the best example of this is network marketing. The 99% become enamoured with the 1% that make 99% of the money. They buy in to the idea that they can “do it one the side.” The never acknowledge that doing it on the side means they just fit it in when they feel like and as such never really overcome their fears. Never doing anything with consistent effort and activity, and as such become more fearful and frustrated as to why their results are not as good as others.
At some point, if this is your passion, you have to “burn the ships” and make success a necessity. When your only option is to succeed you will always rise to the occasion and find a way, and this is truly the lesson that earns you a masters degree in entrepreneurship. Don’t take haphazard chances, do your due diligence but then commit fully and make success your only option.
Over more than 22 years in fitness these lessons have become guiding principles for me.
Sure there are all kinds of technical things to learn but without the above I can tell you they just don’t matter.
It was truly heart warming to see these rules apply in the business of photography as well; in fact I bet they are somewhat universal truths.
If I might add just one more before I wrap up.
Do what you love but make time to love new things.
I love being an entrepreneur, I care more about helping people than making money, but not all days are rosy. Many have required more work, frustration and suffering than I would ever have liked, and the balance comes in being able to step away from it for a time.
Moving locations on a snowy hillside near Peyto Lake
Photography has become one of those outlets for me, my guiding principles are still they same, but the medium is different. I can apply my same focus to helping people by creating something of beauty, allowing them to see the world in a way they’d otherwise miss, giving them an opportunity to feel something and tell a story, and the best part is my entrepreneurship has given me the freedom to explore and separate myself from the fears, frustrations and challenges that I know we all feel. Enrich your life, pour your heart into your business but when you can, save a little bit for something else, you won’t be disappointed.
Oh and if you ever want to take an amazing photo workshop be sure to check these guys out:
November 2014 I was honoured with the opportunity to speak at the local TEDx event. I was super excited to share this short equation which has been a big part of my life for more than 20 years (though I didn’t realize that until just a couple years ago.)
You see I kind of always had this philosophy with my training clients who always said they, “struggled to stay motivated.”
Imagine that, difficulty staying motivated dieting and working out?
I learned early in my career that my training success with clients was only partially (and the smaller part) due to my training and nutrition knowledge, my ability to “motivate” them was the true difference maker.
Years later as I grew as a trainer and ultimately became a fitness entrepreneur my reputation for some consistent success in the industry lead me to new clients, eager fitness professionals struggling to figure out how to connect with their clients.
So my equation was born, though it was just simply “EAS.”
This short acronym has since helped many fitness professionals use natural conversation strategies to create deeper connections with their clients, ultimately allowing them to help many more people.
As I explained it to many more people I began to realize that I had used this same strategy in my own life for many many years, and in fact I had begun to apply this principle to many relationships.
With this realization I became more aware, and that awareness has only made it more effective.
We’re human we can’t help they way we think, and our behaviours are in many ways pre-programmed, to understand the methodology of your own behaviour is empowering.
I just want you and all the people you care about to live the best life they can, whether that’s because the finally conquered the battle of the bulge or because the achieved all of their dreams.
If you are openminded to consider I know i=EAS can help you!
Please I’d love to hear your comments or experiences as a result of applying i=EAS.
Trying to figure out what i need to do each day to be able to reach my goal is harder than I thought…could I be overthinking it?
One of my readers wrote, “This is one that I just can’t grasp –how do I decide how much money I want to earn? It just feels like a guessing game – like I should pluck a number out of the air and stick with it? Writing down what I want is easy but putting that altogether to make a number just seems like a complete and utter guess! Especially when I wiggle that down to what I want to be earning THIS month.”
You have to reverse engineer it, so yes at first you pick the number out of thin air, what is the amount of monthly income you would be satisfied with earning?
$5000/mth? 10? 20? 100? It can be any; the next step is to determine the time frame in which to reach this that you will also be satisfied with. It goes without saying that the larger the number and the shorter the time frame combined the more daunting the daily tasks will be, and that’s ok; because once you understand what’s required daily it’s as simple as a yes or no answer to, “am I willing to or can I do what it takes to complete this daily?”
If the answer is no you must revisit the goal as it’s not realistic, so would you (at least for now) be comfortable with less money or it taking a longer period of time? This is exactly the same process you should be using with your fitness clients in regard to keeping them committed to their goals. If someone wants to lose 100lbs in 3 months, we can agree that’s not going to happen in a healthy manner to which they will be able to sustain it, but is there a chance that if the lose 30lbs ever 3 months for a year they may be willing to accept that? Can you?
We now work backwards to determine what are the 1-2 things you would need to do today and every day to reach this goal, but a little more info is needed along the way.
If I want to make an additional $10,000 per month I must…
1) Know the approximate margin of my services, meaning what’s left over after I pay trainers, cover rent etc. If I sell a $500/month program the margin might only be $250. If I want to make an additional $10,000 I will need an extra 40 clients than I have today by this standard.
2) Know my “close ratio” how many prospects I must see in order to generate clients, a common average would be a 60% close ratio or 6 out of every 10 people you meet with become clients. In this case to get 40 new clients you will need to meet with 70 new prospects.
3) Know my “set ratio” unfortunately you and I both know not all prospects are created equal, so how many new leads will you need to set 70 appointments? Well commonly I see a set ratio at about 50%, so to get those 40 additional clients, or to meet with 70 qualified prospects you will need 140 new leads.
Ok we’re ready, so if I wanted to achieve my goal of an additional $10,000/month in 2 months I need to create 140 more leads than I have now, which if we break that down to about 40 business days in 2 months I need about 3-4 new leads a day, leading to 1-2 sales appointments and to close one new client a day.
So now we can begin to evaluate our lead generation and marketing tactics, how many hours a day do you need to contribute to these efforts? Can you hire someone to help you, and so on.
Do you see how all of this works?
I know what you might be thinking, “seems complicated, I still don’t totally get it.”
At least that’s how I was for a long time, and well truth is that is where coaching comes in. It’s the same as it is with your fitness clients, it’s often as difficult for us as trainers to grasp these business concepts as it is for our clients to grasp the things we teach them about fitness and nutrition, but at the core of it it’s just understanding what your daily activities need to be and staying consistent with them and that’s what coaches help with.
Please check out www.7figuremastermind.com if you’d like to know more about what we do and how we help fitness pros like you.
http://www.profitablepersonaltrainer.com Are you a frustrated personal trainer or fitness professional? I struggled so much financially I tried to leave the industry 3 times, ever feel like giving up?
I find it heart breaking that as much as 75% of trainers don’t even renew their personal training (more…)
