If you spend every cent you have you can go train
someone and earn more mon.ey.
In this sense the amount of money we can have
access to is infinite.
Unfortunately, we all have a finite amount of
time on this earth. If we waste a minute, we
have lost it forever.
While this may seem intuitively obvious, amongst
the fitness professionals I meet, this one simple
principle is the most important yet underappreciated
principle of business.
Let me describe one conversation that I had with
someone inquiring about business coaching that
is representative of conversations I have had time
and time again with different fitness professionals.
We will call the fitness pro Jeff.
Pat: Tell me how your business is performing relative
to your goals.
Jeff: Well we are doing OK but I know we can do better.
Pat: If you know what to do, what is keeping you
from doing it?
Jeff: I always get interrupted and I can never
find the time to work on new projects or grow
my business.
Pat: Is your business profitable?
Jeff: Yes it is. But I know I could easily do better.
Pat: How much would you like to make in the next
twelve months?
Jeff: After all expenses $150,000.
Pat: Do you believe that this is a realistic objective?
Jeff: Absolutely.
Pat: How many hours a week would you like to work?
Jeff: 50 hours per week and I would like to take 5 weeks vacation (including holidays).
Pat: So Jeff, that means you would like your business
to earn about $64 for every hour that you work.
($150,000/(50 hours x 47 weeks)).
After an examination of Jeff's workweek, it was
obvious that he was involved in a number of
activities that were not worth $64 per hour.
If Jeff spends 35% of his time working on tasks
that could be handled by a $15/hour employee he
is either going to have to work a lot more hours
than he wants to, or he is going to have to get
his business earning more like $90 per hour for
the balance of the time he works.
Now, I am quick to advise fitness pros to be
careful with how they spend mon.ey. But Jeff's
penny pinching was not in his best interest.
Jeff was trying to save paying an assistant
(about $12,000 per year). But, by trying to save
mon.ey it was costing him considerably more.
He was not having fun and he could have been
implementing changes that would yield him more
like $50,000 in additional profit (4 times what
he thought he was saving).
As a fitness professional, the most important
decision you make is what you spend your
time doing.
Fitness pros that I meet who work too many hours
and do not make as much as they want, often treat
their time very causally. Typically, they do not
plan their day and tend to be reactive.
Often they do not even keep a schedule outside
of their sessions.
Rarely can they tell you how they actually spent their non-training time.
Conversely, successful people plan and track
their days and their week as carefully as they
spend their mon.ey.
Think about what will give you the best long
term ROI for your time. Do not be distracted by
saving a few short-term dol.lars if you have an
opportunity to create something that will generate
returns for you year after year.
Dedicated to your success,
Pat
P.S. - Have you friended me on Facebook yet?
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=643008384
Fitness Consulting Group
PO Box 1539
Elizabethtown, KY
42702-1539
US
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