Guest Post – 5 Success Secrets To Smash It With Your Fitness Business
Posted by Steve Hochman on Mon. Nov. 8th, 2010
Hey Steve here with a short but sweet guest post from one of my coaching clients in the U.K.
His name is George Anderson and he is absolutely smashing it with his body weight boot camps and fitness info products for runners.
But not only is George super successful, he's also the kindest and most humble trainer I've ever coached.
Plus, George is a MASSIVE action taker too!
So without further ado.... Here's George Anderson.
Since hiring Steve as my coach May this year, my business has changed drastically.
Actually, for the first time in 8 years of working as a personal trainer I can say that I even have a "business"
When my daughter was born just over 3 years ago, I took a week off working for myself as a personal trainer.
In that week I earned precisely ZERO income.
When you work for yourself as a personal trainer, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid.
After all, you’re exchanging time for money and if you decide you want to do something different with your time (such as clean up poo and work out how you’re going to survive the 6am starts when you return to work) then clearly nobody’s going to pay you for that.
When my son was born just a couple of weeks ago, I still only took a week off work, but this time I still had money pouring into my bank account.
Since working with Steve I now have a business that I run, rather than a job that I show up to every morning.
So here are 5 of the most important lessons I’ve learned since joining Steve's coaching program.
1) It doesn’t matter how much you think you “know” about fitness marketing, you don’t really know it until you’re actually doing it.
I’ve long known that getting out into the trenches and talking to members of the public would raise my profile and get me new Bootcamp members.
But instead of doing it, I did everything else, all the “important” stuff that meant I didn’t have to actually go out there and get out of my comfort zone!
It’s amazing what you’re capable of when you agree to do it, and are held accountable for the results.
In just 3 weeks of body fat testing I GENERATED 150 NAMES NUMBERS and NUMBERS AND GAINED 8 NEW BOOTCAMP MEMBERS and 2 NEW PERSONAL TRAINING CLIENTS.
2) When you focus on the big stuff and get rid of the small stuff things start to happen.
I like variety so my business includes fat loss Bootcamps, personal training, running coaching workshops, online coaching programs and presenting.
Being busy and in demand with different things made me feel successful, but when I looked at my bank balance I saw a different story.
Since Steve had me focus on the elements of my business that are scalable and profitable, I’ve managed to scale back on the things that take a shit load of time up but, don’t bring in the readies, and now do more of the stuff that actually makes me some money.
3) Get help!
Between reading the E-Myth and getting coaching from Steve, I realised that there was no way I could achieve what I wanted if I was on my own.
But surely nobody could take my Bootcamp sessions or run my business as well as I could?
Well actually it turns out that I was wrong here too.
Letting go of complete control kind of freaked me out to begin with, but the more I handed over the confidence it gave me, the easier it became and guess what?
The more money I made!
Once I realised that I needed to do just 2 additional hours of personal training each week to cover the cost of 13 hours of a personal assistant doing all the stuff I hated doing, I was soon sending her all kinds of stuff to do whilst I got on with developing the actual business.
As for getting other instructors to take my precious Bootcamp workouts, this was a huge leap forwards and I’m pretty sure that without having someone coaching me through the process I would still be doing it all myself.
I now have 3 instructors working for me over 2 locations and when I need to take a week out of the business, Bootcamp continues!
4) Get referrals
Just as I knew that standing around the town centre telling people they were fat and that I could help make them better (okay it wasn’t quite like this but sometimes it felt like it!) would generate clients, I also knew that getting existing members to bring in their friends would help build my business.
But did I actually do it? Occasionally. Sporadically. Unsuccessfully.
I learned that getting referrals was as simple a systemising the process by which you ask for them. I’ve learned the best times to ask for referrals, how to ask for them and the tools to use to make getting them even easier.
Referrals now count for about 40% of my monthly new member intake and this system alone earns me an additional £400 (£600) additional income every month.
5) There are no limits
When I look at what I’m doing now compared with what I’ve been doing for the last 8 years there is a stark contrast.
My Bootcamp business is not only fast becoming my major source of income, but there is no cap on how far I can take it.
It’s not that I’ve not been searching for a scalable business these past 8 years, because I have.
It’s just everything I’ve done has only ever partially worked, or worked enough for me to rate it as a success but not been able to scale it up to allow me to lead the kind of life that I wanted.
Interestingly, I’ve contemplated getting the help of a mentor for the last couple of years.
I’m not a big fan of regrets, but I do wish I’d taken that leap of faith and joined Steve's coaching program when I first realised I couldn’t do it on my own.
The GREAT George Anderson is an expert Personal Trainer in Thame and the owner of the Bodyweight Bootcamp in Oxfordshire
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