Focus On The Main Thing To Succeed In Business

In this episode, Rick Mayo speaks with Amanda Hanquist of FIT CFO about staying focused on your business and not to be distracted by other business ideas. You need to keep the main thing the main thing, to be successful in the fitness business.

Alloy Personal Training CEO Rick Mayo recently spoke at the FitPro Growth Summit in Nashville. While there, he met Amanda Hanquist of FIT CFO.She is a Financial Expert who helps health and fitness entrepreneurs with the financial side of running their businesses.

FIT CFO- Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing”

Stephen Covey

It is important to keep your focus on the most important goals that you want to accomplish for your business and concentrate your efforts on what will help achieve those goals.

Entrepreneurs are amazing people because they are wildly curious, ambitious, and go-getters. Sometimes, being an ambitious entrepreneur can be a detriment because of the distraction factor. They can get so focused on other things that aren’t a part of their key business strategy that it causes them to be less effective and less profitable. If you get too much on your menu, you can not be as successful as if focused. Rick stated, “Serve less on the menu and make a better hamburger and a better brand name for your business.”

There are commonalities amongst the most successful entrepreneurs. As long as you are nailing the vertical niche you are in, you can introduce new support products or services or look at other vertical niches. You can’t introduce a new one at the expense of the primary mission. Crush the main business first and do it really well. Then you can add those additional services or products to support the wheelhouse. You can use up a lot of resources, time, money, and attention working on new ventures that don’t complement your primary business.

Stay 100% focus focused and always keep the main thing the main thing. It is very difficult to do, but you can typically move mountains by keeping it simple. It is really hard to keep things simple, because there is the curiosity and excitement of looking for something new to add to the mix. The risks of adding something new to the mix are great.

For example, let’s say that your membership sales aren’t great. You ask yourself: “What if we did nutrition? Could we can make a lot more money.?” In reality, focus on setting up the right systems for membership sales. If you don’t nail that before you move to the next vertical in the business, the same things are going to manifest themselves in the next business.

Kantor’s Law describes how it things are just harder in the middle. When you are an entrepreneur in a relatively new venture, everything’s fun and exciting in the beginning. Then in the middle of the business lifecycle, that’s when it gets tough and everyone wants to quit. It’s tough, but you have to keep pushing on the main thing and don’t get distracted on side businesses or different verticals. The middle stuff is tough where the progress is two steps forward, one step back.

Andrew Huberman discusses the way our brains are wired. He talks about the science of how brains work and what the true source of happiness is. It turns out that it’s hard work. When you set a challenge and overcome that challenge, it literally changes your brain chemistry. Then you immediately need to move the goalposts out further and do it again. This happens over and over again, from now until the day you die. You think you will reach happiness by reaching that goal, but you keep resetting. If I could just reach this goal and make this much money, I’d be happy. You get there; you have all the money you ever wanted, but it is anti-climactic because the goalposts keep moving. So what you’ll need to learn is to appreciate what is in the middle. It’s really hard to get your head around that.

Learn about Amanda and Shawn’s journey of owning an Anytime Fitness. They took over an existing Anytime Fitness that had good recurring revenue, but they didn’t have any of the financial knowledge or the entrepreneurship experience that they have now. They sold it and get out before any issues, but she felt like they did everything wrong. It really taught them to be better entrepreneurs. They both had financial industry experience and realized nobody knows a thing about the financial side of their business. That is where the idea for FIT CFO came from. They help businesses understand the financial side of their business.

So keep a focus on your bigger mission and your bigger purpose. Ask question like is this a distraction with your money? Or is this going to help your bigger mission? Is this going to go towards your cause and your why for business? Stay focused on your mission.

In this packed episode, Rick and Amanda explore a wide range of topics in the fitness entrepreneurship space.

In over 30 years of running a fitness business, Rick has gathered a wealth of knowledge that you’ll surely find valuable.

Key Takeaways