goal setting

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.

I hope this has been helpful.

Cabel