The Business of Fitness
As you may have already heard, the price of Fitness Riches is going up to $49 Sunday at 8 p.m. (EST). If you haven't already picked up a copy, you can at http://www.fitness-riches.com.
Here is one of the chapters that I contributed to the book:
Early on in my fitness career I was yearning to own my own business, but I didn’t have any idea where to start. I was browsing around the local bookstore looking for something that might provide me a little direction when the by-line of a book caught my eye: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What To Do About It. Little did I know that I had stumbled across what would become the most influential business book I had ever read, The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber.
If you’ve not had the good fortune to read this book, I urge you to go pick it up immediately, but in the mean time let me share with you excerpts from that very important book, and I quote:
“The technical work of a business and the business that does the technical work are two totally different things. But the Technician who starts a business fails to see this and that is the root cause of most business failures.
The carpenter becomes a contractor. The barber opens a barbershop. The technical writer opens a technical writing business. The hairdresser starts a beauty salon. The engineer goes into the semiconductor business. The musician opens a music store. All of them believing that because they understand the technical side of the business they are qualified to run a business that does that kind of work.
Not true!
Forty percent of start-up businesses fail within the first year. Within five years 80 percent will have failed and of those that survive those first five years 80 percent will fail within ten years.
Most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants rather what the business needs. And so you work. Ten, twelve, fourteen hours day. Seven days a week. You’re consumed by it; totally invested in doing whatever is needed to keep it alive. But you’re not only doing the work you know how to do but also the work you don’t know how to do. You are not only making it; you’re also buying, selling, shipping it. You are a master juggler keeping all the balls in the air.
It’s easy to spot the Technician’s business. If you removed the owner from the business there would be no business left. The owner and the business are one and the same thing
You don’t own a business. You own a job.
IBM, McDonalds and Procter & Gamble did not end up as mature businesses. They started out that way. Tom Watson, the founder of IBM said, “I had a very clear picture in mind of what the business would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream - my vision – was in place.”
Wow, did this hit me right between the eyes. I thought about every trainer that I knew that “owned their own business.” They all worked from five in the morning ‘till eight in the evening. No sick days. No paid vacations. They simply traded their time for their clients’ money. They had simple bought themselves jobs.
I thought back to my father. He owns a very profitable automotive repair business. Same story. Sure, he has employees, but the business completely revolves around him. If he’s sick…the business is sick. If he’s on vacation, so is the business. He bought himself a job.
The trainers, my father, they were technicians that owned businesses. I wanted to be a Fitness Entrepreneur. I wanted to own a business, not be owned by one. So I had to begin by starting from a different perspective. The mindset of a technician and an entrepreneur are almost polar opposites of one another.
The Entrepreneurial perspective asks the question. How must the business work? The Technicians perspective asks, What work has to be done? The Technicians perspective starts with the present and looks forward to an uncertain future. The Entrepreneur envisions the future and builds the present to achieve that vision.
The Technician sees no connection between where his business is now and where it is going. Lacking the grander scale and visionary guidance manifest in the Entrepreneurial model the Technician constructs a model each step of the way based on past experience - the model of work – exactly the opposite of what is needed if the business is to free him from work.
The Entrepreneurial model has less to do with what’s done in the business and more to do with how it’s done. It looks at a business as if it were a product sitting on a shelf competing for the consumer’s attention against a whole shelf of competing businesses.
The Entrepreneurial model does not start with a picture of a business to be created but of the customer for who the business is to be created. Without a clear picture of the customer no business can succeed.
The Technical business however, is designed to satisfy the Technician not the customer. To the Entrepreneur the business is the product.
Think of your business as anything but a job! Go to work on your business rather than in it and ask yourself the following questions:
· How can I get my business to work without me?
· How can I get my people to work without my constant interference?
· How can I systemize my business in such a way that it could be replicated 500 times so that 500th runs as smoothly as the first?
· How can I own the business but still be free of it?
· How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do?
The problem isn’t your business. The problem is you and will always be until you change your perspective about a business and how it works.
In order to have a business that works without you, a business that can be duplicated, pretend there are standards you have to abide by. There are rules of the game. The rules are:
1. The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill.
2. The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order.
3. All work on the model will be documented in operations manuals.
4. The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the client.
It is not the product that requires innovation but the process. Where the business is the product, how the business interacts with the consumer is more important than what it sells or provides.
Innovation is the heart of every successful business. It asks the question. “What is standing in the way of my clients getting what they want from my business?” It always takes the clients’ point of view.
Your business is not your life. Your business is something apart from you, with its own needs, its own rules and its own purpose. An organism you might say that will live or die according to how well it performs its sole function – to find and keep clients. ”
I know…I’ve thrown a lot at you in just a few paragraphs. For many fitness professionals this is a complete shift in mindset. Most fitness professionals can’t imagine even delegating clients to other trainers assuming that “no one can do the job as well as I can.” So what I’m asking you to do is really consider the long range goals you have for your business. Start with the following questions:
If you’re 30 years old now, do you plan on training clients at age 60?
If not, what is your exit strategy? Do you have one?
What is your business worth without you?
Could you sell it if you wanted to?
Take some time and come up with your honest answers. Then, if you’re not satisfied with what you discovered, utilize some of the concepts and principles I’ve provided and look for ways to engineer your business around them. You’ll soon find yourself in a situation where your schedule is more flexible, you don’t feel guilty for catching the flu or going on vacation and you have peace of mind that your employees are providing consistent, quality service.
If you don’t have any employees, approach it in the same exact fashion so that when the day comes that you want to add one (or more), the transition is seamless. Document and organize your systems and your methods and before you know it you’ll have a business that you own instead of one that owns you.
Pick up your copy of Fitness Riches before 8 p.m. Sunday at http://www.fitness-riches.com.
Here is one of the chapters that I contributed to the book:
Early on in my fitness career I was yearning to own my own business, but I didn’t have any idea where to start. I was browsing around the local bookstore looking for something that might provide me a little direction when the by-line of a book caught my eye: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work And What To Do About It. Little did I know that I had stumbled across what would become the most influential business book I had ever read, The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber.
If you’ve not had the good fortune to read this book, I urge you to go pick it up immediately, but in the mean time let me share with you excerpts from that very important book, and I quote:
“The technical work of a business and the business that does the technical work are two totally different things. But the Technician who starts a business fails to see this and that is the root cause of most business failures.
The carpenter becomes a contractor. The barber opens a barbershop. The technical writer opens a technical writing business. The hairdresser starts a beauty salon. The engineer goes into the semiconductor business. The musician opens a music store. All of them believing that because they understand the technical side of the business they are qualified to run a business that does that kind of work.
Not true!
Forty percent of start-up businesses fail within the first year. Within five years 80 percent will have failed and of those that survive those first five years 80 percent will fail within ten years.
Most businesses are operated according to what the owner wants rather what the business needs. And so you work. Ten, twelve, fourteen hours day. Seven days a week. You’re consumed by it; totally invested in doing whatever is needed to keep it alive. But you’re not only doing the work you know how to do but also the work you don’t know how to do. You are not only making it; you’re also buying, selling, shipping it. You are a master juggler keeping all the balls in the air.
It’s easy to spot the Technician’s business. If you removed the owner from the business there would be no business left. The owner and the business are one and the same thing
You don’t own a business. You own a job.
IBM, McDonalds and Procter & Gamble did not end up as mature businesses. They started out that way. Tom Watson, the founder of IBM said, “I had a very clear picture in mind of what the business would look like when it was finally done. You might say I had a model in my mind of what it would look like when the dream - my vision – was in place.”
Wow, did this hit me right between the eyes. I thought about every trainer that I knew that “owned their own business.” They all worked from five in the morning ‘till eight in the evening. No sick days. No paid vacations. They simply traded their time for their clients’ money. They had simple bought themselves jobs.
I thought back to my father. He owns a very profitable automotive repair business. Same story. Sure, he has employees, but the business completely revolves around him. If he’s sick…the business is sick. If he’s on vacation, so is the business. He bought himself a job.
The trainers, my father, they were technicians that owned businesses. I wanted to be a Fitness Entrepreneur. I wanted to own a business, not be owned by one. So I had to begin by starting from a different perspective. The mindset of a technician and an entrepreneur are almost polar opposites of one another.
The Entrepreneurial perspective asks the question. How must the business work? The Technicians perspective asks, What work has to be done? The Technicians perspective starts with the present and looks forward to an uncertain future. The Entrepreneur envisions the future and builds the present to achieve that vision.
The Technician sees no connection between where his business is now and where it is going. Lacking the grander scale and visionary guidance manifest in the Entrepreneurial model the Technician constructs a model each step of the way based on past experience - the model of work – exactly the opposite of what is needed if the business is to free him from work.
The Entrepreneurial model has less to do with what’s done in the business and more to do with how it’s done. It looks at a business as if it were a product sitting on a shelf competing for the consumer’s attention against a whole shelf of competing businesses.
The Entrepreneurial model does not start with a picture of a business to be created but of the customer for who the business is to be created. Without a clear picture of the customer no business can succeed.
The Technical business however, is designed to satisfy the Technician not the customer. To the Entrepreneur the business is the product.
Think of your business as anything but a job! Go to work on your business rather than in it and ask yourself the following questions:
· How can I get my business to work without me?
· How can I get my people to work without my constant interference?
· How can I systemize my business in such a way that it could be replicated 500 times so that 500th runs as smoothly as the first?
· How can I own the business but still be free of it?
· How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do?
The problem isn’t your business. The problem is you and will always be until you change your perspective about a business and how it works.
In order to have a business that works without you, a business that can be duplicated, pretend there are standards you have to abide by. There are rules of the game. The rules are:
1. The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill.
2. The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order.
3. All work on the model will be documented in operations manuals.
4. The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the client.
It is not the product that requires innovation but the process. Where the business is the product, how the business interacts with the consumer is more important than what it sells or provides.
Innovation is the heart of every successful business. It asks the question. “What is standing in the way of my clients getting what they want from my business?” It always takes the clients’ point of view.
Your business is not your life. Your business is something apart from you, with its own needs, its own rules and its own purpose. An organism you might say that will live or die according to how well it performs its sole function – to find and keep clients. ”
I know…I’ve thrown a lot at you in just a few paragraphs. For many fitness professionals this is a complete shift in mindset. Most fitness professionals can’t imagine even delegating clients to other trainers assuming that “no one can do the job as well as I can.” So what I’m asking you to do is really consider the long range goals you have for your business. Start with the following questions:
If you’re 30 years old now, do you plan on training clients at age 60?
If not, what is your exit strategy? Do you have one?
What is your business worth without you?
Could you sell it if you wanted to?
Take some time and come up with your honest answers. Then, if you’re not satisfied with what you discovered, utilize some of the concepts and principles I’ve provided and look for ways to engineer your business around them. You’ll soon find yourself in a situation where your schedule is more flexible, you don’t feel guilty for catching the flu or going on vacation and you have peace of mind that your employees are providing consistent, quality service.
If you don’t have any employees, approach it in the same exact fashion so that when the day comes that you want to add one (or more), the transition is seamless. Document and organize your systems and your methods and before you know it you’ll have a business that you own instead of one that owns you.
Pick up your copy of Fitness Riches before 8 p.m. Sunday at http://www.fitness-riches.com.
posted by Pat Rigsby at 5:39 AM
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