Time is Your Most Valuable Asset
If you spend every cent you have you can go train someone and earn more money. In this sense the amount of money we can have access-to is infinite. Unfortunately, we all have a finite amount of time on this earth. If we waste a minute, we have lost it forever.
While this may seem intuitively obvious, amongst the fitness professionals I meet, this one simple principle is the most important yet underappreciated principle of business. Let me describe one conversation that I had with someone inquiring about business coaching that is representative of conversations I have had time and time again with different fitness professionals. We will call the fitness pro Jeff.
Pat: Tell me how your business is performing relative to your goals.
Jeff: Well we are doing OK but I know we can do better.
Pat: If you know what to do, what is keeping you from doing it?
Jeff: I always get interrupted and I can never find the time to work on new projects or grow my business.
Pat: Is your business profitable?
Jeff: Yes it is. But I know I could easily do better.
Pat: How much would you like to make in the next twelve months?
Jeff: After all expenses $150,000.
Pat: Do you believe that this is a realistic objective?
Jeff: Absolutely.
Pat: How many hours a week would you like to work?
Jeff: 50 hours per week and I would like to take 5 weeks vacation (including holidays).
Pat: So Jeff, that means you would like your business to earn about $64 for every hour that you work. ($150,000/(50 hours x 47 weeks)).
After an examination of Jeff’s workweek, it was obvious that he was involved in a number of activities that were not worth $64 per hour. If Jeff spends 35% of his time working on tasks that could be handled by a $15/hour employee he is either going to have to work a lot more hours than he wants to, or he is going to have to get his business earning more like $90 per hour for the balance of the time he works.
Now, I am quick to advise fitness pros to be careful with how they spend money. But Jeff’s penny pinching was not in his best interest. Jeff was trying to save paying an assistant (about $12,000 per year). But, by trying to save money it was costing him considerably more. He was not having fun and he could have been implementing changes that would yield him more like $50,000 in additional profit (4 times what he thought he was saving).
As a fitness professional, the most important decision you make is what you spend your time doing. Fitness pros that I meet who work too many hours and do not make as much as they want, often treat their time very causally. Typically, they do not plan their day and tend to be reactive. Often they do not even keep a schedule outside of their sessions.
Rarely can they tell you how they actually spent their non-training time.
Conversely, successful fitness pros plan and track their days and their week as carefully as they spend their money.
I recommend that you emulate the successful fitness pros. Think about what will give you the best long term ROI [Return On Investment] for your time. Do not be distracted by saving a few short-term dollars if you have an opportunity to create something that will generate returns for you year after year.
If you want to really maximize the value of your time, check out:
http://www.fitnessbusinessrevolution.com
While this may seem intuitively obvious, amongst the fitness professionals I meet, this one simple principle is the most important yet underappreciated principle of business. Let me describe one conversation that I had with someone inquiring about business coaching that is representative of conversations I have had time and time again with different fitness professionals. We will call the fitness pro Jeff.
Pat: Tell me how your business is performing relative to your goals.
Jeff: Well we are doing OK but I know we can do better.
Pat: If you know what to do, what is keeping you from doing it?
Jeff: I always get interrupted and I can never find the time to work on new projects or grow my business.
Pat: Is your business profitable?
Jeff: Yes it is. But I know I could easily do better.
Pat: How much would you like to make in the next twelve months?
Jeff: After all expenses $150,000.
Pat: Do you believe that this is a realistic objective?
Jeff: Absolutely.
Pat: How many hours a week would you like to work?
Jeff: 50 hours per week and I would like to take 5 weeks vacation (including holidays).
Pat: So Jeff, that means you would like your business to earn about $64 for every hour that you work. ($150,000/(50 hours x 47 weeks)).
After an examination of Jeff’s workweek, it was obvious that he was involved in a number of activities that were not worth $64 per hour. If Jeff spends 35% of his time working on tasks that could be handled by a $15/hour employee he is either going to have to work a lot more hours than he wants to, or he is going to have to get his business earning more like $90 per hour for the balance of the time he works.
Now, I am quick to advise fitness pros to be careful with how they spend money. But Jeff’s penny pinching was not in his best interest. Jeff was trying to save paying an assistant (about $12,000 per year). But, by trying to save money it was costing him considerably more. He was not having fun and he could have been implementing changes that would yield him more like $50,000 in additional profit (4 times what he thought he was saving).
As a fitness professional, the most important decision you make is what you spend your time doing. Fitness pros that I meet who work too many hours and do not make as much as they want, often treat their time very causally. Typically, they do not plan their day and tend to be reactive. Often they do not even keep a schedule outside of their sessions.
Rarely can they tell you how they actually spent their non-training time.
Conversely, successful fitness pros plan and track their days and their week as carefully as they spend their money.
I recommend that you emulate the successful fitness pros. Think about what will give you the best long term ROI [Return On Investment] for your time. Do not be distracted by saving a few short-term dollars if you have an opportunity to create something that will generate returns for you year after year.
If you want to really maximize the value of your time, check out:
http://www.fitnessbusinessrevolution.com
posted by Pat Rigsby at 6:24 AM
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