I hope you’re doing great! Here’s are five rules for your boot camp from my good pal and author of TTBootCamps.com, Craig Ballantyne.
Take it away CB!
I’m a Maverick. Bedros is a Maverick. And today is your chance to apply some
Maverick Rules to your bootcamp business – so that you make more money, have
more fun, and are able to give more back.
As you might know, Bedros and I are members of Yanik Silver’s Maverick
Business Adventures, and we’ve both been on some crazy adventures as part of
that group.
But what’s even cooler is that Yanik put together “34 Rules of Maverick
Business Owners”, and I chose the top 5 to apply to your bootcamp today.
#1 – You’ve got to have a BIG idea
Bootcamps are so 2006. You need to be a lot MORE than just a bootcamp these
days…and whether its Fit Body Bootcamp or your own unique brand of group
exercise, there has to be something that sets you apart.
And that “thing” has to be big, unique, and easy to get. If you have to
explain your “uniqueness”, then go back to the drawing board and come up
with something simpler.
Don’t be a commodity…don’t be “just another bootcamp”. That’s not the
Maverick way!
#2 – Make your own rules for your business & create your business around
your life.
I’ve been designing my life since high school. I knew I wanted a job where I
could read all day, and where I didn’t have to work in the same place from 9
to 5, Monday to Friday. I never wanted that life and so I made my own rules
for my business and created a business around my life.
And you need to do that too. If you hate getting up at 5am to train folks,
then start looking for trainers to lead the camps for you. Or if you like
that time but hate missing your kid’s soccer practices after school, do
something about it.
Don’t get boxed in by conventional living – unless that’s what you want. Be
creative and find a solution to all of the obstacles in the way of you
living your dream life.
#3 – Force yourself to focus on “critical few” and not the minutia while
spending your time on your core strengths.
If you suck at marketing, then you need to get it done for you (i.e. FBBC,
or at the very least, just do everything Steve and Bedros tell you to do in
their blogs – don’t think, just do).
On the other hand, if you’re a great trainer but can’t manage to put 2 and 2
together, then hire a book-keeper so that you can take your mind off that
annoying task and spend it on better things, such as getting more campers to
your workouts.
#4 – Minimize start up risk and bootstrap your way to success.
If you’re starting from scratch (with no clients or bank account), don’t
even think about paid advertising. Instead, use Steve’s human billboard
strategies, and get new members in on trials to show them how amazing your
workouts are.
And once you start making money, don’t go spending it on every new media
sold to you. Instead, stick to this principle:
#5 – Leverage your marketing activities by using direct mail techniques
that you can measure – make sure you are tracking and testing.
If you send out 1000 postcards, you need to track how many phone calls came
in, how many clients signed up, and how long they stayed around. Only then
will you truly know the return on your investment in that postcard campaign
and only that will allow you to decide if it is worth it.
Once you know how to get $2 in profit from every $1 you spend on an ad
campaign, keep doing that all day, every day. But if you don’t know the
response on your advertising, or if there is no option to track an ad, then
don’t bother with it in the first place.
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Put those Maverick rules into place in your business and you’ll soon be making more money, having more fun, and being free from conventional restrictions on living life the way you want to.
Author, TTBootcamps.com
PS – Special thanks to Yanik Silver for creating his list of 34 Rules of
Maverick Business Owners.