When you first qualified as a personal trainer, you may have been surprised by how much there was to learn about business. Most personal trainers feel overwhelmed by the marketing and sales elements of owning a fitness business.
While your business is still very new, you may have to do every role inside the business yourself, but as you grow and become more established, automation and delegation of certain tasks can make you a more efficient business owner. And you are freed up to work on the elements of your business that you really love.
Auditing All The Tasks Inside Your Personal Trainer Business
If your fitness business is like most personal trainers’ there will be a lot of tasks that you complete inside your business that take time and energy, but that you’ve been doing for so long, you don’t necessarily think about them. The first step in automation and delegation is to be aware of what tasks are going on inside the business.
Start by listing them all. It can help to have these organised into categories, although this is not an exhaustive list.
Start by listing them all. It can help to have these organised into categories, although this is not an exhaustive list.
- Marketing tasks for social media including daily posting and responding in groups.
- Sales, and onboarding new clients.
- Service delivery, including face to face time in the gym or online programming and check ins.
- Responsibilities to your gym, including running classes or time spent on the gym floor.
- Lead nurturing, such as regularly emailing your list or running competitions.
- Website design, maintenance and publishing regular high-quality content to your blog.
Different fitness businesses will have different tasks, but almost all personal trainers have systems in place which are “patched together” in such a way that it feels hard to delegate or automate anything. Working inside your business is important, and as your business grows, it will need to have systems in place to accommodate those changes.
Once you’ve written out a list of all the tasks, rank yourself on how good you are at performing them, and how much you enjoy doing them. There will be some tasks that you’re good at, but don’t enjoy - write a clear step by step process for performing these tasks in a manual, and consider delegating these. There will be some that you’re good at, but take up too much of your time - automate or batch these tasks ahead of time.
Finally, rate how much you enjoy them. The long term goal of having a fitness business is that you’re spending the majority of your time working on tasks that you love and you’re excellent at. It’s in this area that your unique genius lies. Anything which doesn’t fit both these criteria should be handed off as soon as you can afford to do so. What it will cost you financially you will soon make back by being free to work on those higher-value tasks in your business that you are able to do better and quicker than anyone else
Once you’ve written out a list of all the tasks, rank yourself on how good you are at performing them, and how much you enjoy doing them. There will be some tasks that you’re good at, but don’t enjoy - write a clear step by step process for performing these tasks in a manual, and consider delegating these. There will be some that you’re good at, but take up too much of your time - automate or batch these tasks ahead of time.
Finally, rate how much you enjoy them. The long term goal of having a fitness business is that you’re spending the majority of your time working on tasks that you love and you’re excellent at. It’s in this area that your unique genius lies. Anything which doesn’t fit both these criteria should be handed off as soon as you can afford to do so. What it will cost you financially you will soon make back by being free to work on those higher-value tasks in your business that you are able to do better and quicker than anyone else
The Difference Between Automation And Delegation
Tasks which can be automated are often those which use technology to do. This might include scheduled posting to social media using Facebook’s business suite (which can manage your Facebook business page and your Instagram account), sending regular broadcast emails to your list (which can be batched up ahead of time and drip-fed using software like Mailerlite or MailChimp), or making and confirming face to face personal training appointments on the gym floor (which could be done with booking software like Calendly).
Tasks which you can delegate mean that you don’t do them yourself at all. You have given that task to someone who works inside your business, or someone that you’re employing on a freelance basis. This might include writing content for social media or your blog, building your personal trainer website, or a graphic designer to create images for your marketing.
Tasks which you can delegate mean that you don’t do them yourself at all. You have given that task to someone who works inside your business, or someone that you’re employing on a freelance basis. This might include writing content for social media or your blog, building your personal trainer website, or a graphic designer to create images for your marketing.
Who Can Help Me?
Working with other people that can help you to be more efficient is a great idea, but sometimes it can seem like finding the right person that you can trust for that task is harder than simply doing the task yourself. That’s a short term solution.
In the longer term, working alongside a trustworthy and highly competent professional team of people that each excel at their own individual tasks is a sure way to fast track yourself to enormous success within your fitness business, and will allow you to have a greater impact on helping more clients to achieve their goals.
If, at the moment, you’re just starting out and don’t have the budget to pay for help, you may have family members that are able to get involved. For example, recording videos and editing them together to be used in your marketing. You may have long term superstar clients who are willing to help out with your groups on social media to help newer clients to find things they need.
If you’re able to pay a professional, it’s highly recommended that you do so as this will produce a higher quality result more quickly.
For website design or copywriting services for blogs and social media, in particular, it’s advisable to get someone that understands how to build these assets properly.
Consider working alongside a local photographer for some professional photographs, or looking on Fiverr for people with specialist design skills to create some digital assets.
In the longer term, working alongside a trustworthy and highly competent professional team of people that each excel at their own individual tasks is a sure way to fast track yourself to enormous success within your fitness business, and will allow you to have a greater impact on helping more clients to achieve their goals.
If, at the moment, you’re just starting out and don’t have the budget to pay for help, you may have family members that are able to get involved. For example, recording videos and editing them together to be used in your marketing. You may have long term superstar clients who are willing to help out with your groups on social media to help newer clients to find things they need.
If you’re able to pay a professional, it’s highly recommended that you do so as this will produce a higher quality result more quickly.
For website design or copywriting services for blogs and social media, in particular, it’s advisable to get someone that understands how to build these assets properly.
Consider working alongside a local photographer for some professional photographs, or looking on Fiverr for people with specialist design skills to create some digital assets.
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Free Guide
Check out our Ultimate Guide to Business Systems if you'd like to see more ideas on tasks like accounting, payments and many more!
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Conclusion
Understanding that you don’t have to master every aspect of your fitness business yourself can be a huge relief for people. There is a lot to learn and to become an expert in all of it may distract you from the elements of your fitness business that you love and are uniquely positioned to deliver to your clients.
Focusing your attention and energy on the elements of your service that you love and that you’re excellent at will propel your fitness business forward at a much quicker rate than trying to do it all yourself and getting bogged down in the details.
Focusing your attention and energy on the elements of your service that you love and that you’re excellent at will propel your fitness business forward at a much quicker rate than trying to do it all yourself and getting bogged down in the details.
