Personal Trainer Business Tip: Time Management.

Look if you’re going to be an entrepreneur than you are going to mull over how to better manage your time, frequently. Everyone has different ideas and you will need to find what works for you. This week’s personal trainer business tip is all about successful time management.

First, focus on what matters and learn to delegate more of the things that don’t.

I don’t know about you but I’m a control freak, and I find just about every trainer fairly new to the industry is too. I don’t think you can help it, if you could you’d likely be a terrible trainer. I mean we need to set tasks, move people toward their goals and stand ridged toward the actions needed to reach that goal.

It can be daunting and lead to massive procrastination if you have a gigantic “to-do” list in front of you. The first thing you should do is circle the things that have a direct and immediate impact on creating more revenue for your business. These things include stuff like: writing classified ad copy, developing new high value trial programs, they might even include study and knowledge to make you a better trainer early in your career. What they don’t include is things like graphics for your website, maybe not even website content though this could be argued, things like billing, etc. Though all these things need to be done the sooner you can entrust them to someone else’s hands the sooner you will find your business growing. You don’t necessarily even have to be able to afford to pay someone it’s quite common to find one of your best clients and offer to do a trade for a few hours each week. Soon they can be booking appointments for you, handling some aspects of billing, scheduling and more.

It may take you a little time to get comfortable with this, it did me, but the purpose of this post is to expose you to the idea and get you thinking in that direction. The more you think about it the easier it will become and the sooner it will become a reality.

Next, get yourself a whiteboard. Divide your whiteboard into two sections; priority items and general items and ideas. Move 3-5 of the most pressing items to the priority column and always start there. Don’t overwhelm yourself with more than a few priority tasks at a time. Each time you sit down to work start with the priority task you are most interested in an effort to gain some momentum to lead you in to the other tasks. The moment any task is complete, cross it off your list. The feeling of achievement of completing each task delivers the same kind of satisfaction that reaching any other goal does. The resulting physiological response to your brain will only make it easier for you to begin on your next task.

Soon you’ll find yourself excited to see all the crossed off lines on your whiteboard and as your completing each task it will undoubtedly lead to the next series of items that must be completed to continue to drive your business forward.

Additionally whenever I’m travelling or away from my office I go a step further. I record my 3-5 priority items on a 3X5 piece of paper and keep it in my pocket so I can keep this process going.

Don’t waste time on electronic lists and gizmos, these are just distractions that will take time and concentration away from things that matter. Stick with fast and simple and stay on task.