What can I do as a fitness professional during COVID-19?

Episode Summary

Listen in as we explore three important things you can do as a fitness professional to improve their lives and businesses. We have all heard about all the things we have been told that we cannot do. In this episode, we’ll change the tune and talk about some productive things you can do during this time. 

Episode Notes

The first thing we talk about is working on yourself as a fitness professional. You achieve this by planning a routine and organizing your day just like you were going out to the office. Keeping your routine ensures you remain productive. Have some stuff scheduled throughout the day and even the week. This is the time to do those things you have always pushed aside due to lack of time.

The second thing you need to do is to look at your business model and why you set up your business. Are you in the right trajectory? Do you need to change anything? Are you solving the problems you set out to solve? These questions will help you bring the motivation back and remind you why you are in the fitness business. 

The third thing we talk about is working with your team to improve some of the processes in the business and special projects. Having team accountability by everyone knowing what each team member is working on while at home is critical. 

Key Takeaways
  • As a fitness professional having a daily routine is important even while working from home (4:31)
  • Why having some personal challenges helps you become more productive (5:44)
  • How to take a reflective look into your business model and why you do it (9:05)
  • Taking advantage of this time to work on new revenue streams for your business (15:21)
  • Connecting and interacting with people in your industry to learn new things (19:13)
  • Team accountability while working virtually (19:44)
  • Why now is an excellent time to upgrade your facility (23:06)

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Mentioned in this episode

Matt Helland

Rick Mayo 

Alloy Personal Training Franchise

 

Today we’re going to talk about three actionable steps that you can do right now. We were just laughing a minute ago about all the things we can’t do. Things that we are being protected from if you will, like the park entrance is closed, you can’t walk through the park.

There are some things you can do to help assuage your pain and this time of Corona. 

First one: As a fitness professional work on yourself. We’ll do this through the lens of business and personal. I know, for me, when this first kicked off as an entrepreneur, I had like real strange energy almost like there was a big problem to solve. It was complex, and most entrepreneurs relish the opportunity to solve big problems, right? I mean, you started a business because that business solved a problem for someone. Essentially in its essence, this is what an entrepreneur is.

A problem solver. In this case, it was legitimately solving a problem. Everybody was uncertain. I felt like, well, this is your chance to shine. 

Now where we’re probably looking at another 30 days of this and what I noticed is that while I started off hot, I’ve sort of powered down and it’s a scary spot to be in because powering down can mean at least in my case, realizing that I’ve been wearing the same sweatpants for three days and my wife is asking me if I brush my teeth and it’s three in the afternoon. If you’re not careful, you can go down these dark rabbit holes of working on the business. 

I would say first and foremost, you know, try to plan your day as if you have things going on, even if you don’t. Create a daily routine. Having a daily routine is going to give you more freedom and make you feel better and more put together on days that are more of a struggle.  

That’s where you start, just get up and get rolling as if you had a normal daily schedule. It isn’t always going to be easy. Everyone with kids has been homeschooling right now. My daughter’s home from college. She’s in nursing school, she sleeps till 11. Then she just watches the office marathon while doing homework. Establishing a routine is challenging but I’m really enjoying the personal challenge. My advice would be to step up to the plate to take on your own personal challenges. One thing it’s allowed me to do is to grieve my business a little bit if that makes sense. I miss what I actually complained about.

I get up every day and have 15 things to do. These weren’t unproductive busy work things, just things that needed to get done. We’re building a franchise so there are 1,000,001 things to do. We run a pretty efficient team who wears lots of hats, and I enjoy that. But day over day, it could just sort of wear you down. If you’re not careful, you can find that your daily workday becomes less enjoyable perceptually than it should be. At the end of the day, we can figure out ways to make money, but you have to enjoy what you’re doing every day. 

Second one: You have a lot more time on your hands. As a fitness professional this will give you an opportunity to look at your business overall. Look at the health and wellness of it. 

This has really exposed a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners. It’s expensive to build a franchise. If you are in a brick and mortar business, and you want to take your clientele from 200 to 300 people, that’s going to be expensive. What do I mean by that? It’s going to be marketing dollars, it’s going to mean resources to sell those leads and resources in the sense that you’re going to need more supplies. You’re going to need more manpower. It always costs money to grow. 

So I would say the number one special project would be to get your back house in order, I mean, get your finances in order. The next one would be again looking at your business model. Let’s say, other verticals for revenue would be a good example.

So here, I’m just going to say it openly, we don’t do well at selling supplements as well as we should. If you know anything about fitness, we would all agree that everyone needs probably more protein than they are intaking. It’s about a gram per pound of lean body weight. Most people aren’t getting that. So more than likely people need a protein supplement. Just like people not eating a lot of fish. So they may need an omega supplement. Then a multi because it just fills in the gaps. 

I’d say in this day and age, it’s really hard to get everything you need. Let’s just say those are the three non-negotiable. We know that, but we’ve traditionally not been great at relaying that message whether it’s a break in our belief system, “we do fitness, not nutrition”. The facts are, there’s a high percentage, about 85% that we got from our partners that don’t fit people that are a workout in your gym that are already taking the supplements.

So why would you not provide them a better option not only better for you financially, but better for the clients because you’ve vetted this company. It’s not some teenager working at General Nutrition Center, giving them advice on the product that he’s going to get or she’s going to get the biggest bonus on at the end of the week. 

I would say that one of ours is like right now Natalie, who’s one of our great coaches and also a registered dietitian is putting together during this downtime, a better playbook for how to sell supplements because we know clients need it. We know they’re already consuming it and we’d like for them to get a better option. Best case scenario, we would have more customers getting auto shipped supplements to their door right now.

For example, if it was 200 of our clients at our gym, right, and they were at $100 each a month, which is about what a protein official and a multi is going to put you up, that’s 20 grand. That’s $20,000 a month if I’m at 50% profit on that it would be $10,000 a month that I would be making. 

This is an opportunity, as always, every challenge is to build a better playbook. For example out virtual tools are building that better virtual playbook, that’s something that we could keep on the menu moving forward and give us another vertical for people who wanted to train remotely because of our brand recognition. 

Thirdly: What are we going to do after this is over as a fitness professional? Obviously we’ve talked about a couple different revenue streams. What are some other things that you need to do to prepare yourself? I would say now’s a great time to upgrade your facility. If you have a little cash cushion, which hopefully everyone does. Paint, clean the place, upgrade your equipment. I know equipment vendors certainly are moving a lot of online based equipment packages, but most of our vendors still are delivering equipment.

These are the three things you can do. So this is something that you’re doing, it’s going to make you feel better, and you’re sort of projecting yourself into the future when this thing breaks. More than likely some of our competitors aren’t going to make it. And so if that’s the case, how can I be best aligned right to be ready for this?

Also, you know, different marketing hooks. Now’s your chance to maybe dial in your marketing message, and what that’s going to look like. I would even say at this point, if you’d retooled your facility, I think it would be a great idea to redo a grand opening. A celebratory coronavirus is over. I plan on having a huge client appreciation party. Once we can get out, we’re gonna all get out. We’re gonna have DJ up here and just have a good old time. 

You’re controlling the things you can, you’re giving yourself freedom by having a schedule. You’re moving forward by investing in these special projects and again, thinking of the future because you’re prepping for what this thing is going to look like when we reopen. 

By the time this is over, we will both be bearded, and we’ll have mullets. It will just get weirder by the week. So stay tuned. Good talking to you guys. 

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