Running your own fitness business is a big project there are so many things that need to get done every day whether you own a Personal Training studio, Yoga studio, a Bootcamp or a Crossfit space. The Studio owner’s hat is the second instalment to this evaluation of the hats a fitness professional may need to wear to run a successful fitness business.
The five hats that I wear in my fitness business are:

1. Personal trainer - read the article here
2. Studio owner
3. Studio manager
4. Sales representative
5. Personal training director

When do I wear them and can studio management software help me?

Studio management software and the studio owner hat:

The fitness industry is filled with people that are owner operators. This creates a unique challenge for the business owner as they are sometimes emotional committed to some ideas or systems that may not be the best business decision for their fitness business. Here is where good studio management software can help. Software does not ever tell you what you want to hear like your spouse or staff may but instead it will provide you with reports on how your business is doing and what is really working.

An example of this is from our training studio, we decided 18 months ago to run boot camps out of the gym, up until then we had always been only personal training. We invested time and money into growing this new part of our business and we truly thought we were seeing good traction, especially after our transformation contest. We cancelled the program September 1st because we were able to pull the reports from our studio management software and see the cost of service, the attendance and the profit from this program after 18 months of offering it. Our hearts wanted to keep going and the people that came loved it and we loved helping them but the numbers just did not add up so on goes an owner’s hat and no more classes.

Owners need to make the tough decisions and these decisions will sometime effect the people you service or those that work for you. As a result of dropping classes some of our trainer’s lost regular income this hurts them as well but as an owner we need the business to stay profitable.

The best time to be sure to have the owner’s hat on:

• Any business meeting with; lawyers, accountants or bankers
• Networking events
• Equipment purchases
• Finalising advertisements
• Pulling reports from your Volo studio management software

What are your biggest challenges that you have faced trying to wear all the different hats in your fitness business?