How to Plan for Your Growth

Success doesn’t happen by accident! If you’re not actively taking time to plan for your growth, determine your priorities, set your goals and assess your business then you’re leaving your success to chance.

That’s probably why Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

In something as competitive as the fitness industry, you can’t let that happen. If you do, you’ll continue to struggle (or worse be out of business). That’s why all business owners should have an intense planning session every quarter.

All business owners should have an intense planning session every quarter of their business.

If you haven’t been doing it, take an hour or two this week to assess your progress and up your goals for the next quarter.

Successful business owners are always keeping their long-term goals and vision in mind but they focus on 90-day sprints to ensure their success. It’s much easier to create a plan to hit your 90-day goals and work your tail off to hit them than it is to work for a goal that seems far away.

What Goes into a Quarterly Business Review?

Step 1: Review Your Progress

Take a look at your yearly goals and see if they are still accurate or if anything has changed. Do you still need to accomplish the milestones and financial goals for you to consider yourself successful at the end of the year? Are you making progress?

To create a great plan you need to know where you stand, a lot like you would for a client before writing a program.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Challenges

Now that you know where you stand, it’s time to address your challenges.

• Do you have a good marketing strategy?
• Is your sales process working for you?
• Do you have systems in place?
• Do you need to hire an admin?
• Are there employees that aren’t a good fit for your business?
• Is your lease coming up soon?
• Are there life circumstances that are going to be changing?

Once you’ve listed out all your challenges and issues in the business, take 20-30 minutes to tackle the most important 2-3 that you MUST fix if you want to hit your yearly goals.

It’s important that you only focus on the most important, highest priority issues. If not, you’ll fail to make adequate progress and your frustration will increase!

Step 3: Create a Plan to Solve Those Issues

Once you’ve identified and worked through your top 2-3 issues, create a plan to solve each one.

Our team tackles this by starting with the outcome you want and then working on 3-5 milestones that you need to accomplish over the quarter for the project to be complete or issue to be solved.

For example, if you need to hire an admin:

Outcome: Have an admin in place and working 10-15 hours per week

Milestone 1: Create the job description, and outline what I’m looking for in an admin
Milestone 2: Create my posting online to accept applications
Milestone 3: Complete the interview/application process
Milestone 4: Hire and begin on-boarding of new hire

There are obviously many steps to each of those, but I’ll know if I’m on track to complete this project, or “Rock” (as we call it at FR) by the end of the quarter. You can even set deadlines for each to be completed in order for you to know if you’re behind or ahead of schedule.

Step 4: Set Your Quarterly Goals

Now that you’ve got a plan to tackle your issues, it’s time to set the big milestones you need to reach and the financial goals you need to hit for the quarter.

You need to set goals for:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Growth/Revenue
• Profit

Those are the bare minimum to get started. We actually track 8 total numbers for our coaching clients.

Step 5: If You Have a Team, Communicate the Plan to Them

This is only for those of you with a team or employees. If you have them, it’s important that you communicate the plan with them and set expectations early on regarding what it will take to accomplish your goals.

This will empower them to work with you to accomplish the goals.

Following this simple 5-step process each time you do a planning session for your business will ensure that you’re on track to hit your long-term goals. It will also provide you with the clarity and focus needed to grow your business faster than ever before.

It’s not unlike helping a client with their plan for success, but most business owners don’t take this approach with growing their business.

Multiply Your Growth (and Your Success)

We have worked with thousands of fitness professionals and business owners all around the world. We’ve seen trends and what the most successful fit pros have in common. (Hint: It’s NOT just about outworking your competition).

Download our FREE E-book 6 Success Multipliers to peek into the critical things that can start driving more growth for your fitness business today.