As a gym owner, you have a lot on your plate – leading your team, generating new leads, ensuring that your clients are happy, and putting out the day-to-day fires. It’s easy to get caught up in being busy all the time. But being busy doesn’t always mean that you’re being productive with the things that matter most in your business. And as a gym owner, you should be focusing your attention on revenue-producing activities and delegating the day-to-day tasks to your staff.
You’ll learn in this post how to stay focused on what matters most and how to keep your energy up throughout the life of your fitness business.
Prioritize & Set Goals
What is the one thing that is keeping you from reaching your goals?
The priorities in your business will change as your business grows and evolves. The most important factor for your continued growth is understanding what those priorities are and how to stay focused on them.
As a best practice, you want to identify priorities each quarter that will help you accomplish your annual goals. These projects, milestones, or goals will help you focus your energy and time on the activities and projects that will set you up for success.
Setting your annual and quarterly goals is a critical part of the planning process for a studio owner. Once you have your goals, then identify what projects or activities you need to accomplish in order to make them a reality.
Create a Plan
Once you’ve determined your priorities and set your goals then you can begin creating a plan. The plan will dictate what you are going to do on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis to meet your goals.
If you don’t set a plan in place to hit milestones throughout the quarter to ensure the priorities stay the priorities you’re at risk for not hitting your goals. You don’t want to put yourself in a position where you’ve created goals without a plan and are scrambling to hit certain goals at the very end of the quarter. This is going to be confusing and frustrating for you and your staff.
So, create a plan with milestones to determine if you are “on track” or “off track” with your priorities and goals throughout the quarter. Each week, build in time to assess where you are and your progress on each project.
During this time you can then plan your next steps or adjust the plan to get yourself back on track if you’re behind. This ensures that priorities stay front and center for you throughout the quarter and encourages you to begin working on it right away.
Finally, you’ll want to build in and schedule time in your calendar to work on the priorities for your business. If you think that you’ll be able to ‘find the time’ throughout the week you are mistaken. The fires, issues, and problems you have to deal with each day will take over and you’ll find yourself behind schedule and off track. Block off time to work on your business each week and protect that scheduled time!
Remove Distractions
Now that you’ve set goals, realized priorities, and created an awesome plan to execute, you have one more thing to do – remove distractions. There are many things that can easily distract you on a day-to-day basis. Every time a distraction arises, not only does it take time to address but it derails your focus. And it’s going to take a few minutes to get your brain refocused and create momentum on a project.
The first type of distraction has to do with people and technology. When you have a few hours set aside for work that you as an owner need to get done, be strict with yourself, your friends, and your staff. You need that uninterrupted time to get those tasks done so you can move your business forward. You can start by setting a clear boundary with staff during those hours. Basically – “Do not interrupt me unless it’s an absolute emergency.”
Technology can sabotage your ability to do deep work and stay focused on the task at hand. Social media, calls, texts, and emails. If you’re working at your computer then you must turn off any social media pages. You will get distracted. And if you are working on your social media marketing for your business then get an app like this: News Feed Eradicator. You will thank yourself as your news feed will disappear and you will no longer waste time scrolling. Beyond social, make sure that you keep your phone on silent so you don’t get taken away by a funny meme a friend sends you or a midday phone call. I hear of some people even turning their phone off, crazy I know, but find what works for you because these distractions will kill your productivity.
Another type of distraction is a little less obvious. This is when you get distracted by a project that you’d rather be doing. You can easily get bored with what you’re working on and get dragged into something that seems like a better idea at the moment. But if it’s not in your carefully crafted plan then it’s not going to move your business forward. While you’re working, you’re going to have ideas come to you but it doesn’t mean you should stop what you’re doing. Create a document or keep a notebook to write these ideas down throughout the day. Just because an idea feels great in the moment doesn’t mean it’s what you need to be doing to grow your business. Write it down, let it simmer, and then in a day or so, see if it fits into your goals and the plan you created.
Fitness Business Productivity: How Gym Owners can Grow their Gyms Faster
Increasing productivity is very important to growing your gym faster. But you also need to create a business strategy that will guide you in all of your business decisions. There are a lot of free resources and tools that you can find all over the internet. But the truth is… if you want to grow your gym faster and increase your revenue, the easiest way to do this is through expert coaching and using proven business systems. If you want to learn more about how our programs can help you then click the link below.
Learn more about Fitness Business Coaching here.
