How To Build a Successful Fitness Business

To run a successful health and fitness business today requires being an expert in more than one area. Sure, you need to good at your craft, so if you're a trainer you should one hell of a good trainer. But if you really want to succeed in your business you're going to want to master, or at least be damn good at, bunch of different things.

These include:

• Marketing
  • Direct Response Marketing
    • Writing Sales copy
    • Tracking Results
  • Internet Marketing
    • Seo
    • PPC
    • IYP's
    • Classifieds
    • Social Networking
    • Conversions
• Persuasion
• Networking and relationship building
• Business
  • Business Philosophy
  • Creating and Fine Tuning Systems and Operating Procedures
  • Planning
  • Management (at least know enough about it to outsource it properly)
• Time Management
  • Delegating and Outsourcing
  • Energy Management

Now you might think that looks like a lot and that who in the world has time to do all of that ON TOP OF doing the training, coaching and closing deals.

I would suggest that by mastering (or at least becoming good at)  the above list of skills, that you'll be able to make a lot more money than you ever could coaching or training someone. As a matter of fact I would delegate out as much of the technicians work in your business ( be it the coaching, teaching, training, etc.) and really become good at these other things.

Now yes, you can outsource many of these things but let me be frank with you. A good copywriter, ppc manager or seo guy can be super expensive, and the majority of the people that you'll find to these things honestly suck at it. If you're paying someone $500 to write your copy, I doubt that copy's gonna be any good. If you're paying an SEO guy $500 a month, I doubt you'll have good results unless you're competing in an area with little competition.

It's much easier to find a good trainer to train your clients than it is to find a good marketer. Like I've said before, handing your marketing over to someone else is like handing a newborn baby over to an orphanage, that kid might turn out alright but his road's probably gonna be pretty damn rocky.

My suggestion would be to outsource the training and for you to be at least fairly competent in the above areas and hopefully an expert in many. Your pay off will be much bigger if you focus on creating the marketing and sales systems and then outsource all the training, coaching, admin, web building, management, customer service, sales, etc.

Now you CAN outsource the marketing but to properly do this you'll want to have a decent level of fitness marketing knowledge, then you can create the campaign and outsource the actual implementation of it. For example, you set up the ppc campaign, create a documented system of how to manage it and how to beat your controls. Then outsource the management of that campaign to a personal assistant.

I guarantee if you become good at the above list of business know-how goodies and outsource the technical aspects of your business, like the training or coaching, admin and the customer service stuff that you're business will explode with profits and steady growth. If you need to, ease into it slowly. So say you're a personal trainer and you train 35 hours per week. Start out by hiring a trainer to take half of your load, and get a part time personal assistant to handle the customer service and administrative stuff. Then over time decrease the amount of time you spend training until you don't do any of it (unless of course training is how you really spend your days, in that case have at it) and master marketing, strategizing and systems creation.

I used to wake up at 4:45 am to train people. Now I have other people doing that for me so I could wake up at 8:00 and come down and work on this blog in my home office. My 2 daughters will be up soon, I'll hang out with them for a few minutes and then I'm gonna work on some SEO stuff, write some copy, I have a 30 minute call with on of my business coaches and then I'm gonna work on improving conversions on one of my websites.

If I was training all day, that's exactly what I would be doing… training all day and I wouldn't have time for this other stuff. Gotta go, I think I hear my 17 month old daughter coming to say good morning!

Make More and Work Less,

Chris McCombs

Personal Training Referrals and Personal Training Sales Specialist