Even if you are not in the fitness business, the following four tips will help you decide if you want to start your own business, or possibly help you get your current business back on the right track.

Starting a fitness business is not easy. You have an lots of things to deal with daily that are small alone but combined can mount up.

It’s easy to get overrun, so what I recommend you take a few hours away from everything to analyze your current situation.

One of the biggest fears business owner have is if  will happen to them – you can get sick or so buried you give in and lose control. That would be bad.

YOU are the most important part of your business, so always take time out for yourself and your family and enjoy life. But most importantly, make sure that your business does not shut down if you are not around for a few days. A vacation is always necessary!

 

A Healthy Body Is Not Enough In the Fitness Business - You’ll Need A Healthy Mind Too

Being able to have a clear thinking path is critical when you own a business. If you’re under too much pressure or if you have to delegate important decision-making to staff and you are stressed, that's where you will make bad decisions that can hurt your business.

Worrying and freaking out about an issue does not solve it!

Take time from your business an hour a day. Go for a walk, take on a hobby, spend quality time with your family - It’s amazing how the brain will solve problems when you are not actively thinking about them!

Say you’ve made a bad decision. Let’s say you signed up for something you later regretted. Make up you mind to never to say yes on the spot, especially if you feel pressured.

 

Confused? Make a list!

I believe on the "don't leave it for tomorrow what you can do today" approach to life.  You’ll end up with all those tasks nagging at you and becoming a major mental burden. This is where making lists is amazingly therapeutic.

Put the most challenging thing you have to do each day AT THE TOP of your list and do it first.  Get it over with and you’ll be surprised how good you feel for the rest of the day.

That task is no longer a burden; and everything else will be easy in comparison.  As with plans and goals, lists should always be realistic but also push you beyond your comfort zone.

If you can make 100 bucks OR MORE per hour doing personal training, why would you wast your time doing something someone else can do for you at a lower cost?

Think about it, if you spend 10 hours per week running small errands, posting articled, cleaning your location, buying supplies etc... You could have made an extra nine hundred dollars by paying an assistant ten dollars per hour to do those ten hours of tasks for you.

Effective time management is vital. You need to know where you will be and what you will be doing throughout your workday.

Get organized and stop wasting your valuable time!

Use Bedros Keuilian 5% rule. The rule is simple. As a business owner, you should concentrate all your efforts on the 5% of the task that move the business forward.

The other 95% should be delegated. Focus on your 5% and oversee the remainder.

 

Marketing

It baffles me why marketing isn’t a subject in schools.  There is more to just marketing products, services, etc... Nowadays marketing yourself is one of the things that if understood can take you a long way without much effort. So it's understandable why marketing a fitness boot camp can be so daunting for most.

If you still don't have the amount of clients you think you should or your client retention is not good, change things up. Tweak it little by little and measure things so you know what works. The smallest little change can reap great rewards. Make the call to your clients and ask why they haven’t been in lately. In fact, I recommend you call you text your clients that had scheduled for class but didn't show up on the same day!

You’ll get a lot of pathetic excuses but for those who are honest with you, don’t be offended if they point out something they didn’t like.  Learn from criticism and know that you’re not always right.

Keep an open mind and improve all the time.

It’s also a good practice to, once every other month, have your assistance call every single one of your clients and conduct a quick 2 questions survey.

First questions should be something like “What do you like the most about the program?” and the second should be something like “Is there anything we can do to make your experience better?”

The call should be ended with a offer to gift 3 of the clients friends with a two week trial program worth a certain amount of dollars on their behalf.

It’s a win, win as the answers will give you are great insight on what is going right and wrong and the calls will also generate a tone of referrals.

How many times have you been disappointed with a product or service?

The best ways to market yourself is to be honest, reliable and deliver what people want – and beyond!  Reward your clients they achieve goals. Pump them up with encouraging words through Facebook, Email, Text Messages, and always be available to offer good advice.

If you are not update technology-wise... It's about time! Being "connected" and able to reply to an email, blog comment or text message promptly will put you front of mind for your clients.

Invest in tools that will save you time or help you be more efficient.

 

Above the standard

If you have been in business for a little bit you probably know by now how your ideal demographic looks like. At Fit Body Boot Camp we help our franchise owners to recognize all this.

Go after these clients all the time. If all of your great clients are females from 35 to 45. You know who you should go after...

These clients circle of influence are very likely filled with people just like them.

Make the relationship a two-way street. Deliver a great experience and ask for referrals.

I’m not saying ignore your clients that happen to not fit exactly into your ideal demographic – far from it. Focus on building great relationships with about 5% of your top clients - and not just because they pay you the most.

Encourage the most appreciative and positive ones, and reward them well for referrals.

 

Learn more about Fit Body Boot Camp and see if a franchise opportunity is right for you.

This entry was posted on July 31, 2012 at 1:37 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted in Boot Camp Business, Boot Camp Marketing, Boot Camp Strategies, Fitness Marketing, How To Start a Fitness Boot Camp Business, Personal Training Business by Steve Hochman | No Comments Yet