The 5 Worst Fitness Business Mistakes You’ve Already Made

I know it sounds crazy but whenever I start consulting new clients I usually spend the first few meetings doing the same thing: correcting the exact mistakes I’ve encountered with pretty much every fitness business I’ve ever helped. I’ve come to find that owning a business in the fitness industry comes with certain pitfalls that, try as you might, you’ll most likely fall into.

gym-fail-0012There are certain assumptions we all make or certain perceptions we all share that force us to make the same mistakes over and over again.

Lucky for you, I’ve already worked through most of these issues dozens of times, I know exactly how to solve them, and I’m just about to tell you precisely what to do.

If you’ve committed any of these mistakes, don’t get down on yourself for it— I made the same mistakes once upon a time too…

But now that you’ve found this article you don’t have any more excuses to continue doing things wrong. Check out what I have to say about these issues, find out if any of them apply to you, and make the changes your business needs.

Mistake #1: Refusing to sell weight loss.

Here’s a touchy one. Now, as you’ll know from many other posts on this site, it’s imperative, for the success of your marketing and your business, to highlight your specialization. And I realize that many of your businesses do not specialize in weight loss. And that’s great— nothing wrong with that.

But the truth is, many people looking for a personal trainer or a boot camp membership (or better yet, people who aren’t even shopping for training) don’t care about their overall health. Unless they are specifically there on doctor’s orders, odds are, they aren’t very concerned about living a healthy lifestyle; they just want to lose weight. So even if you specialize in holistic nutrition, women’s fitness, body building or whatever, there will always be prospects who just want to know you’re going to help them drop some pounds.

That isn’t to say your specialization doesn’t matter, because it’s very important for your marketing and differentiation, but that doesn’t mean you should avoid reminding prospects that you can help them look better naked.

It’s what a lot of people need to hear before they’ll purchase.

Mistake #2: Selling Without a Sales Process

If you’re just trying to ‘wing it’ every time you have a sale, you’ll never see consistent success. And that is a terrible way to handle your income! If you can’t reliably predict how much money you’re going to make each month or each year how do you expect to run a profitable business?

ProcessYou need to have a strict and repeatable sales process that works so that you can rely on your ability to make consistent sales.

If you aren’t sure what I mean by a sales process, you’re probably thinking about sales the wrong way.

Instead of considering sales to be a natural ability or magical power, you’ve got to start seeing it as a set of building blocks that always go the same way, in the same order, and produce consistent results.

So establish a sales process or find one that’s already working and start memorizing it. You need reliable, predictable income that won’t wildly fluctuate each month.

Mistake #3: Waiting for Referrals

Ah, referrals, the Holy Grail of fitness marketing. Get everything just right, do all your training and marketing perfectly, set up your studio or gym according to all the rules, and if it all works out you’ll start getting the mystical referral.

Nope. Wrong again.

It isn’t a mystery, it isn’t impossible, and you CAN get them.

Again, it’s like sales: getting referrals is a formula— a process. And the absolute most crucial step of that process is directly asking for your referrals!

It’s not about planting special seeds and waiting for referrals to grow on your willpower alone. Yes, clients will naturally talk about you and your training without encouragement, but you can’t rely on that kind of conversation to get significant numbers into your program.

Your clients like, know and trust you, right? I’m sure they would love to see you get additional clients and succeed. So go ahead and ask if they wouldn’t mind mentioning you to their friends. Or better yet, have them start bringing their friends and family in for a free training session!

Imagine how powerful asking for referrals would be if you offered some incentive? Now do you see why you can’t just wait for them to magically appear? It goes back to the principle of reliability. You need consistent, reliable referral numbers, otherwise you won’t be running a reliable business.

Mistake #4: Marketing that Doesn’t Work

Marketing FaiIThis is by far one of the most common mistakes I encounter (I am a marketing consultant, after all). It’s appalling how much money I’ve seen people sink into marketing strategies that just don’t work.

Please people, be proactive about this. Get on my websites and get informed, get on other reliable guru websites, pick up some of my products, and start using marketing that works. A small investment in your knowledge now will save you untold amounts of dollars in failed marketing campaigns.

Why pay for mistakes so many others have already made? You don’t need to learn the hard way just learn from our screw-ups!

Expensive copywriting, online gimmicks, scams, tricks, schemes— there’s so much of this crap out there.

Just the free content on this blog alone is enough to get you started. Once you master the information available here, head over to my products and pick up something like System 9 or even The Art of Selling Fitness if you’re really up to the challenge.

It’s the safest way to make sure you don’t flush thousands of dollars on junk that always fails.

Mistake #5: Investing in a Model that Doesn’t Work

One-on-One training is not the best business choice for everyone.

There, I said it.

I know we’d all love to train Chris Hemsworth and Eva Longoria every day, but in reality most of us don’t live in areas with enough affluent clients who can afford to pay us what we’re really worth.

So if you stick to one-on-one, odds are, you’ll end up dropping your prices, begging for clients, and hardly making enough money to feed your kids.

Group training and boot camp is a great way to lower prices while making even more money. If you’re struggling to get by with one-on-one, if your marketing is failing and the little clients you have aren’t willing to pay you what you deserve, then it’s time to consider trying a new model.

FBBC-Location-U

If you’re interested, check out MyFitBodyBootCamp.com and find out what it takes to become an FBBC owner. This isn’t just a proven model that works, it’s packed full of all the resources you’ll need to make sure you never make any of these, or other fit biz mistakes, ever again.

Committed to your success,

Bedros