Are you seeking advice on how to run your fitness business?

Have you noticed how many people say they are an expert in helping you set up your fitness business?

Are you wondering how to find the right coach, mentor or advisor to assist you in your fitness business set up?

With so many people offering their opinions and promising huge returns on your investment in their services, it leaves many fitness professionals wondering who to trust and where to begin.

Below are some quick question and some things to keep in mind when seeking fitness business advice.  

Guide for seeking fitness business advice:

1.  Ask the person if they currently own and operate a fitness business. If they are not currently fitness business owners were they ever? If they sold out ask why and for how much. You want a fitness business owner not a former manager or operations person. Owners have a vested interest and a different take on the way to grow a fitness business.
2. Avoid fitness business advice that requires you to buy a membership or purchase additional services. Some advisors offer monthly membership with access to a website. The down side is that you will not be speaking with a person about your unique problems. If the advisor is just pushing products then they are in it for sales not mentoring. I love my software but any advice I give is transferable to other software that you may use.
3. If you are small fitness business , use caution when accepting fitness business advice from a larger company or franchise owner. This group of people often do not understand the meaning of shoe string budgets and small business growth concepts are lost on them. Ask them if they have ever helped a fitness business that has no money or only a few hundred to spend on advertising.
4. Avoid any fitness business advice that claims you will make six or seven figures in a month. It is a lie. I am not saying that a fitness business cannot make that much it is just that you will not achieve it in a month of being in business. Growth in a fitness business is not achieved over night. It is not a build-it-and -they-will-come type of business. Successful fitness businesses are built on trust, reputation and quality and this takes more than a month to achieve.
5. Avoid people who use terms like: “simple” “easy” “work 5 minutes a day” or who claim to  have a “guaranteed” one size fits all method for a successful fitness business. Again, not true or even possible given that they are making these promises without knowing anything about you or your fitness business.

Running a fitness business is hard work and takes time especially if you have little or no money. The only people who get rich quick with little or no investment are lottery winners.
 
By the way, I'm not claiming to know everything there is to know, there's always something new to learn, but I have been running a successful personal training business for the past 11 years and I've been helping other fitness professionals set up their fitness businesses through our Volo software company for the last 5 years. This provides me with a unique insight into the fitness business community.

Want to learn more about the tools we use to run our personal training studio?

If you have any questions or tips for others please feel free to post them. The more information on starting a fitness business the better for everyone.