| What is your time worth? This is a very serious question and one you need to answer for yourself. What's more I'd suggest you re-evaluate it about every six months; that is if you want to grow your fitness business as fast as possible. Let me explain. No matter whether you're just starting out or have been operating for years chances are your business began as one man (or woman) show. In the early days, and maybe still, you were doing everything. You were the head trainer, chief salesman, sanitation engineer, accounts receivable clerk, lead marketing consultant, web developer, and well you get the picture. Do you ever notice how difficult it is to switch between two very different tasks? You wouldn't be weird if you have. Not only that you likely notice there are tasks that are on your "to-do" list that somehow never seem to gravitate to the top of the list, in fact it's like gravity keep sucking them down to the bottom. We all have tasks that we detest so much that we just consciously or subconsciously avoid them. You probably have other fears like I had. Thoughts like, "why pay someone to paint the studio when I can do it this weekend?" It seems logical, and seems to make good financial sense, but does it really? Let me ask you if you decided to play handyman in your business this coming weekend and spent 8-10 hours on both Saturday and Sunday at your business do you think you might be less enthusiastic for your first clients come early Monday morning? What if instead you had a fun weekend with your family, would that leave you more refreshed and excited to see your clients come Monday morning? Sometimes by doing a variety of tasks saves us money in the short-term. But long-term these tasks can catch up to us in a variety of ways: 1. Straying from our primary tasks serves as a distraction making it hard to stay focused and become increasingly proficient at our main task. (ie: client results through continual research or business growth with a full-time focus to marketing and growth.) 2. It takes time to mentally and emotionally "shift gears" to different tasks, this leads to longer days, procrastination and burnout. 3. Cutting corners on "me time" or family time leads to resentment toward "work" which will quickly stunt your business growth. 4. Narrowing your task list allows you to become a "pro" quickly and accelerate your business growth. It only stands to reason if you spend 8 hours a day on 1-2 tasks as opposed to 5-10 you're going to quickly get better at doing those 1-2 things. Draw your line in the sand, what is your time worth? Now in this context this is a practical question, it might help to also think of it as "what can I afford to have others do?" For instance if you have tasks like cleaning, filing, calling to confirm appointments, posting updates on your facebook fanpage, tweeting, or creating a new blog post on your website, these are all things you can hire someone else to do for likely minimum wage. Here in Alberta that's about $10/hour, so I might start by saying my "line in the sand is $10/hour" any task I can hire someone else to do for $10/hour I should and will in an effort to keep me more focused on a narrower set of tasks. You have to trust me on this, relief from these tasks will instantly pay for itself and as a result your more narrowly focused efforts will actually yield instant growth causing you to ask yourself again, "what is my line in the sand now?" Cabel McElderry, now known as the Profitable Personal Trainer, struggled as a solo personal trainer for nearly eight years before learning the strategies he needed to transform his barely six-figure business to a seven-figure (and growing) training studio in just a couple years. His studio (One-to-1 Fitness), now 5 years old, has won multiple awards for business excellence. Cabel has been recognized as one of the top 100 fitness entrepreneurs in North America and is currently one of 50 nominees for Optimum Nutrition's Canadian Trainer of the Year. Cabel still trains a handful of clients as his passion to help others will never fade but has also evolved. Cabel now also mentors fitness professionals in an effort to help them achieve similar or better results than his own. www.ProfitablePersonalTrainer.com |
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July 23 2013
