How to Master Your Fitness Business: 5 Tips For Eliminating Chaos

by | Jan 23, 2018 | Articles, For Business Owners, Stage 3 | 0 comments

You probably took some shortcuts when you first started your fitness studio, bootcamp or gym.  Money was tight and you did whatever it took to get that next client and increase your revenues to pay the bills.  As your fitness business grows and you mature into a business owner, not just a self-employed trainer, its critical that you begin to address some of these shortcuts.

Replicating yourself and the results you get for your business will be key for continued growth.  There are only so many hours in a day that you can spend working on or in your business.  As you become more successful it will be tougher for you to do everything in your business.

Mistakes can be very costly when you get to this stage in the game.  Bad hires can cost you thousands and inefficiencies can hold you back from ever reaching your full potential.  

The easy thing to do would be to tell you to “implement systems in your business”.

But, what in the heck does that mean?  Most fitness business owners who want systems come to me asking for done for you scripts or templates to implement in their business.   

Instead of asking for an instruction manual on running your business you’ll be better served to develop skills and implement a few concepts that will make things a lot easier for you as you continue to grow.

If you’re feeling a bit of chaos in your business, constantly scrambling to get things done but never really making any progress this list is exactly what you need.

Fitness Business Owner Tip #1: Create Your Organizational Chart

The very first step in adding to your team and growing your business is developing an organizational chart complete with positions in your business and responsibilities for each position.

At first this may seem pretty silly. It’s just you and one other trainer, maybe a part time admin. Why would you need a complete org chart?

That’s like saying someone is just getting back into exercising and doesn’t need a workout program. Sure, you could just go in and workout but things will progress a lot faster with a well designed training program.

Creating your Organizational Chart when you have a small team, or no team at all, is the best time to do it. You haven’t made the mistakes that many business owners make at this point and you give yourself a template for growth.

Learn how to create an Organizational Chart inside Fitness Business Mastery.

Here’s a look at an Organizational Chart template

How to Master Your Fitness Business: 5 Tips For Eliminating Chaos

Fitness Business Owner Tip #2: Clear Responsibilities

Hiring new team members, from a part time admin to a director of sales to a general manager, requires that you clearly layout responsibilities and expectations.  Not doing this from the start sets you up for a lot of headaches down the road.

The easiest way to create clear expectations with your team members and employees is through position descriptions.

The typical way a fitness business owner hires their first employee is:

  • Get overwhelmed and burnt out
  • Decide they need to offload some tasks
  • Hire someone to take on those tasks (plus whatever else they can throw at them)

This leads to no expectations for the owner or the new team member and a lot of frustration.  You’ll end up pushing whatever you don’t want to do at this person and hoping they get it done without considering what you actually need or what they are best suited to do. A better approach would be to use your Organizational Chart to create a positions description to fill a seat on the chart that can help take on some of the tasks and responsibilities in the business.

Discover a template for job descriptions inside Fitness Business Mastery.  

Fitness Business Owner Tip #3: Define Your Priorities

A lack of focus can burn you out quickly.  Without knowing what your priorities are its easy to get caught up in the routine of putting out fires and dealing with urgent, but not important issues that keep you from your most meaningful, productive work.   

Setting goals and using your position description Core Responsibilities as a guide will help you discover your true priorities.  And yes, even the business owner should have a position description for your role or roles in the business. 

As the business owner its critical that you know what the #1 focus of your time and energy should be at all times!  Your team will be looking to you for guidance and leadership.  If they see you scrambling all the time don’t expect anything different from them.

If you are using a system for planning your day and week, and it’s working, keep on using it. If you want access to our resources jump into Fitness Business Mastery.

It’s possible to create your own, but why do all that work when we’ve done it for you.

To help manage your day to day activities and keep the most important things at the center of your attention at all times we coach our clients to use a Priority Tracker.

The Priority Tracker is broken up in sections:

  • Weekly Highlights and Headlines
  • Rock Status
  • Metrics
  • Marketing Priorities
  • Daily Action Items
  • Misc Notes

Each section has its own purpose, but having all this information at your disposal keeps it top of mind and allows you to plan your day and week according to your biggest, most important priorities.

Fitness Business Owner Tip #4: Outsource Tasks & Services

We live in a time where it’s easier than ever to find someone who is great at a task and loves doing it to take on the work for you.  Using sites like Upwork to find skilled designers, editors, and virtual assistants can save you a lot of time and energy.

Services can also be outsourced to experts to save you time and energy.  The big plus to using outsourced services is that they can usually deliver a better result than you would get on your own.

If your business is ready, outsourcing services such as cleaning, bookkeeping and paid marketing, like Facebook ad management, can be a great investment.   

Tasks like blog updates, video editing, etc can be outsourced to individuals all over the world and save you a lot of time.  

Also consider using apps like Task Rabbit to find workers to do some upkeep in your gym or run basic errands for you.  

At some point the investment to get someone else to do it will be worth the time you get back to invest on your business.

Learn how to delegate and create simple processes to make this easy in Fitness Business Mastery.

Fitness Business Owner Tip #5: Hold Routine Meetings

As you grow and your team grows communication will become a challenge.  Having a routine meeting cycle for you and your team will help alleviate some of those challenges.

At a minimum you should be holding one team meeting each week.  Yep, every week you meet with your team and go through some specific numbers as well as talk about any issues going on in the business.

The keys to making this work are:

  • Meet at the same day and time each week
  • Have an agenda
  • Be prepared

Honestly, if you do those three things you’ll be off to a great start.

This seems tedious and unnecessary at first, but once you get into the groove you’ll wonder how you survived without it!  

Your meetings are designed to keep your business moving forward and ensure everyone is on the same page.  With the right set up and frequency it will eliminate a lot of confusion and chaos in the business.

Get a template meeting agenda and overview of all the meetings you should be holding in Fitness Business Mastery.

Business Mastery Doesn’t Come Easy

It took you years to develop into the coach and trainer that you are today.  The same effort, time and discipline need to go into becoming a High Performing Business Owner.  

However, you don’t have to figure it out on your own.  There’s a formula for running a great business.  You go to experts and get certifications to enhance your career as a trainer and coach, why wouldn’t you do the same for your business?

Our team at Fitness Revolution put together Fitness Business Mastery to give you a guide, a roadmap, for develop a great business.  If you’re ready to take the next step make sure to check out this awesome curriculum!  

How to Master Your Fitness Business: 5 Tips For Eliminating Chaos

Author: Nick Berry

Nick Berry is an accomplished entrepreneur, CEO, mentor, and author, with a track record which includes founding and leading numerous companies to success since his first venture in 2002. Nick Berry is the Founder and CEO of Fitness Revolution.