Overcoming The Fear That Goes With Growing a Successful Fitness Business

All growth, whether personally or in business, is going to happen just outside a level of where you are comfortable with. If you're not willing to get outside of your comfort zone then you're probably not ever going to grow your business to level where it could be. Not to sound harsh, but those are the facts.

The good news is that EVERYONE gets uncomfortable and experiences moments of fear and doubt, so you're not the only one. The people who succeed the most aren't the ones who have no fear, they're actually the ones who have acted in spite of their fear, they felt the fear and acted anyway.

I suggest you do something every day that makes you uncomfortable. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable… just accept that that's part of life and business and know that the razors edge that separates those who succeed in making their vision become a reality and those who don't is whether or not they are willing to experience fear and act in spite of it. Remember this phrase:

Action Alleviates Anxiety

When you're in action and moving towards your goals you're not allowing yourself to be paralyzed by the fear, you're taking action in spite of the fear and in doing so you alleviate the fear. The paralysis of inaction is a much more scarey and dark place to be then experiencing the fear while you take positive action in the direction you want to go.

When I started my personal training business, I had to walk through a lot of uncomfortable emotions to make it grow. I've always had nerves of some kind or other my entire life, it's something I've grown thorough a lot and continue to deal with on a regular basis, it's just part of being human.

My first successful attempt at marketing my personal fitness training business was to take on a bunch of pro-bono clients. Basically I talked to everyone I knew and tons of people I didn't know so I could build a large base of pro-bono clients who could refer me paying clients. When I did this I literally went and knocked on my neighbor's doors who I hardly know, to ask them if they would like some pro-bono training.

It's kind of crazy, but even though I was offering them free personal training it still made me nervous as hell. But I knew that it would get me closer to my goal of owning a successful fitness business. I knew that I would have to talk to about five people for every one pro-bono client I would get. In the end I ended talked to about 150 people to get 25 or 30 pro-bono clients… all within the period of about a month ( That's ONLY five people a day). And yeah, it made me nervous and uncomfortable to talk to so many people, and yeah I got a ton of "no's", however I KNEW that each "no" was just 20% of my next yes, and I all I had to do was get told no about 4 times and I would get a "yes" 

My next step was to get myself get in the habit of constantly asking my clients for referrals, which I was EXTREMELY uncomfortable with, it's almost like I felt somewhere inside I wasn't worth it… that I wasn't worth the referrals, even though I knew I was a great trainer, deep inside I had some inner conflict of self worth. But even though it made nervous just about every time I asked I kept doing it and I kept getting more referrals. Pretty soon it got easier and easier and I had a ton a referred business.

After that my next step was to continually raise my prices, and over time I've actually raised them to be about 50% - 200% higher than most other trainers who offer similar service in my area. Every time I raised my prices and signed people up at my new higher rate I was a little nervous and had to step outside of the zone of what I was comfortable with, but pretty soon it got easier and easier and in no time our higher rates helped position us as the best personal training service in our local area.

Sales is another thing that has always made me nervous, and still to this day, even though I consider myself to be a pretty damn good salesman, it's still makes me uncomfortable. Had I not been willing to walk through that uncomfortableness I wouldn't be experiencing the success I am today, where I actually have a team of trainers and salespeople doing all the selling for me. I saw early on that selling personal training was something I was going to need to do and get good at, whether I liked it or not. Today I still don't like it, and that's one of the reasons I delegate it to other people.

If you experience fear and anxiety in your business then congratulations… you're human. Your success will depend on what you do in the face of that fear. You can act on it and channel it into excitement or you can stay paralyzed and become even more fearful.

Here's some tips on overcoming fear:

Do something every day to stretch you a little bit more out of that comfort zone.

Turn fear into excitement

Read "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway," by Susan Jeffers.  

Act - Remember that we all experience anxiety and that those who truly succeed act in spite of their fears ( Action Alleviates Anxiety)

Give - When you come from a place of giving instead of one of taking you naturally feel much less fearful. Go help someone with no expectation of getting anything in return and see just how powerful this can be. A lot of drug addicts and alcoholics use this method in twelve step programs with great success.

Exercise, but I bet you knew this one.

Do the actions to the best of your abilities but don't get caught up in the results… you have NO CONTROL over the results, only the actions… and trying to control the results is a sure fire recipe for misery.

Make More and Work Less,
Chris McCombs
Health Club Marketing Specialist