Meet Tom.
Tom is starting his very own personal trainer bootcamp center in the heart of his home town.
Tom’s saved a decent amount of money over the years working as a personal trainer, but he’s now ready to pull the trigger on starting his own fitness business…
With equity, Tom is destined for a strong launch, right? He could hire the most experienced trainers to join his gym, negotiate the best deals on supplements for resale—heck, he could even purchase the most ideal location in the city…
Turns out, though, Tom has fallen in love with the IDEA of owning a fitness business, not the JOURNEY to becoming a successful entrepreneur.
That’s what will doom him.
Because he’s only interested in the end-goal, he speeds past the whole planning phase, jumping right to the “door opening” phase.
Here’s the problem: his business has no direction.
His marketing campaigns are all too general, so they don’t interest anyone enough to come try out his workouts. Since he hasn’t narrowed down the purpose of his workouts—or his business, for that matter—he’s stuck with a fridge full of bodybuilding supplements he’s not sure he’s even going to be able to sell.
To add to that, he’s never laid out any goals to his hired-on expert trainer other than that he wants “to help people lose a lot of weight”. The trainer gets frustrated and starts running the workouts his own way: Crossfit style. The clients love it, but Tom hates it because it’s nothing like the bootcamp he pictured opening.
A week later, the trainer tells Tom that he’s leaving to start his own fitness center a few blocks away—and he’s taking all of Tom’s clients with him.
What a rough start.
Now, Here’s the Mastery in Specifying Your Goals…
Let’s see what Tom—and you—can do to thrive in the the fitness world, regardless of whether you choose to open a bootcamp, Crossfit gym, or a one-on-one training business.
See, any sort of progress in life starts with a vision— a CLEAR vision of where you want to go.
Earth to Tom: you’re in the fitness business, man. Of course you want to help people lose weight! But WHO are you going to help lose weight? WHY do they want to lose weight, and WHY do they need you specifically to help them do it?
Who do you want to help? Where does that person come from? What is their normal income? What kind of lifestyle do they typically live? What specifically do they want out of a workout? 
Those simple questions are going to help you find the perfect shops around town where you can market to your target demographic. Those answers will help you negotiate the RIGHT merchandise to resell, the merchandise you know your clients will be interested in purchasing. Man, those answers will help you design workouts that straight up DELIVER the results your clients want!
And by the way…part of why you want to decide your vision first is that you actually don’t need to get everything right to succeed if you have a clear vision.
There are plenty of small businesses out there that generate a passionate base of early adopter clients even though they have an ugly sign, their sales copy sucks, and they have zero marketing budget…
…but that only happens when that small business owner has a vision for who they want to serve and what their unique offering is. That clarity is what allows them to cut through the noise and even overcome their own shortcomings.
Before you open the doors to your fitness business, do some research. Know your target demographic better than they know themselves. It will put your fitness business on the map and in the money…
Gauging Your Progress
There’s one massive oversight many businesses have when it comes to achieving anything—be that earning dollars, bringing in more leads, optimizing their social media platforms, etc.
They don’t keep track of the stats.
Without the stats, you don’t know where you stand in terms of progress. Are you killing it, or is your business tanking?
Without that info, any business is destined to fail.
Oh you might think you’re a rockstar because you’re closing more clients than ever before…but that’s just revenue. If your overhead is too high or you haven’t set up EFT to bring your payments in automatically, all that money can disappear fast and leave you with zero or even negative profits.
There will always come a time when something in your business needs to change. If, say, Tom doesn’t record anything about the way his business is trending, how is he supposed to fix it when it goes downhill? Where does he even start?!?
I’m never satisfied with just knowing that my business is doing well. I want to know WHAT is working well and WHAT is making the biggest difference.
If I just got a spike in leads, I want to know why. Was it my Facebook ads? A podcast appearance? Referrals? Whatever it is, I want to know the cause so I pour even more money and energy into what’s working so I can get even more bang for my buck.
Get in the habit of tracking everything that happens in your business.
In fact, I recently made it a daily practice to have a new sales report sent to each of my team members at the end of each workday. I want them all to know how healthy our business is or when we need to turn it up a notch.
When I deal with potential sponsors and business partners for my Fit Body Boot Camp franchise, I try to com
e to the table up to speed with the latest stats for our business.
That’s not always possible, though. Business moves quick. Decisions need to be made even quicker.
Even when I’m short on info, I act. I take action like my business depends on it, because it just might.
The point is that the best decisions are the ones you make, not the ones you wait for. I’d rather act, fail, and learn what I did wrong than slow my business down by over analyzing everything that could possibly happen.
Yes, the stats are important, but they only will show you HOW MUCH you’ve grown; they won’t MAKE you grow. When you’re not afraid to fail, when you stay committed to a path of action, you’re guaranteed to grow—even if you fail.
I didn’t earn my success by leaving my business to chance. I grinded, I took action, and I learned by doing. That’s how I stacked the odds in my favor—and that’s how you can, too.
Committed to your success,
Bedros