Mistakes You Make When Creating Systems For Your Fitness Business

by | Mar 20, 2018 | Articles, For Business Owners, Stage 3 | 0 comments

Create More Efficient Fitness Business Systems By Avoiding These Mistakes

Having fitness business systems in place can make your life a lot easier as a business owner. Efficiency, effectiveness, and delegation are all possible because of systems, but you can also create more frustration and headaches by making some critical mistakes.

Getting Too Detailed

At first glance this seems odd, right? You want to create a system that gives clear instruction for the individual trying to complete it, but you need to avoid having a 3 page checklist for a simple system that should only require a few steps.

When you hire the right people and train them on the implementing your fitness business systems the amount of detail required is minimal. Remember, you get 80% of your desired result from 20% of the activities. Instead of trying to figure out every single detail about how an administrative assistant should reply to a customer and scripting it out, train them on the outcome you want and key steps to get to that outcome and let them work their magic.

Fitness Business Systems = Checklists

A system is NOT a checklist, it’s a method for getting an outcome. Systems require training, management and guidelines to be effective in your business. Simply handing someone a checklist for adding a new client to your CRM can get the job done, but you need to train them on being efficient, connect why it’s important to get it done right, and have a process in place for holding them accountable for doing it.

Set It And Forget It

Systems require management. Many fitness business owners create a system, hand it off and forget to ever check back in on it. This is the easy path, but it also creates the biggest opportunity for frustration. At some point, if you don’t manage the person that is supposed to use the system you will find out that something is wrong. It may not be getting done at all or it could be getting done really poorly.

To avoid all that make sure that you have checkpoints in place through weekly huddles with the individual or scorecard numbers that tell you if the system is being done properly. Getting ahead of an issue is much easier than fixing it after a few months.

Too Quick To Automate

A hammer works well with nails but it’s pretty ineffective at cutting wood. Automation is a tool, and when used in the right way it can make your life incredibly easy. However, if you try to apply automation to everything it will backfire on you.

Fitness business systems shouldn’t all be automated. We are in a people based industry and should rely on people to handle some of our systems. The system should support the person that is running it so that they can do their job more effectively.

It’s really frustrating to call into a customer support line and go through all the automated selections and identifications only to end up talking to a real person 20 minutes later that doesn’t have any of that info and asks you to provide again. That’s ineffective automation, having a person answer the first time could have solved the problem quicker and resulted in a happier customer.

Trying To Create All Your Systems At Once

Here’s one that will leave you tied up for months, frustrated and doing more work than necessary! Many fitness business owners try to create their entire list of systems at one time, essentially building an operating manual for their business.

Trouble is they get so caught up trying to figure out every last detail of what they will need that none of it ever gets implemented. You end up with a 100 page manual that’s pretty worthless.

Instead try tackling one system at a time. Build it, train your team on it, optimize it and manage it. Then move on to the next system. This will act like compounding interest for you as the business owner. Each system you implement will give you back a little more time to build more systems or focus on revenue generating activities.

What Systems Do You Need Right Now?

Take this quick business assessment to find out the biggest gaps in your business and identify the HIGHEST PRIORITY right now. After completing this 5 minute assessment you will have clarity on where you can apply systems to optimize your business.

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.