Read More »

By: Sonja Bella

For many business owners starting up, the getting set up and getting started phases can be quite daunting; new processes to implement, new skills to learn, juggling marketing, sales and general running of the business and so on. But if there is one piece of advice or wisdom I can share with you from my many years of experience is even if you have a small business, make sure you have a ‘big business mentality’.

What I mean by this is that you can still be local and think global and in the current economic climate it is more important than ever for you to ensure that you are getting business from multiple places and offering a range of products and services to suit your market needs and wants.

Years ago it was enough for a fitness business to offer the stock standard services such as personal training, group training, fitness assessments and maybe one or two other types of services to the local community. But in today’s market things are very different, both due to the economy and due to people’s ever increasing lifestyle demands wanting to find more efficient ways of combining multiple products and services so they have to deal with fewer service providers.

So what does this mean for your business? It means you need to explore the many different avenues that are available to you in order to:

1. Attract a wider market outside of your local community
2. Offer a wider variety of products and services that you can ‘bundle up’ or offer as add-ons to your core offering.

To attract a wider market do some research on what you can offer in an online context. Perhaps you could offer online nutrition, online training programs, write your own digital products such as eBooks, online eCourses or Videos/Webinars that you can sell across the globe. The great thing about the internet is that you can do business 24 hours a day 7 days a week and wake up to sales that arrive into your inbox while you are sleeping! To attract a wider market you need to expand your offering.

This is also where offering a wider variety of products and services comes in to play; the more online products you have the easier it is to attract a global market place, or even a national marketplace versus a local community.

For your face to face clients you can still offer these same products; more and more people are tuning in to regular webinars as a way of learning from the comfort of home. Offering online nutritional programs such as Nutrition Complete enable you to offer extra services that compliment your core offering and you could also look at selling things like home exercise equipment to encourage your clients to do more exercise in between visits, you could sell exercise DVD’s, motivational books or cd’s, branded clothing..there are many options but you first have to expand your thinking before you can expand your business.

Another great resource to check out is the world of private labeling or contract manufacturing. There are companies who manufacture products such as protein powders and supplements and will simply put your logo on the product and presto….instant product range!

The easiest way to get started is to have a brainstorming session. Remove any limiting beliefs, put on your ‘what if anything was possible’ hat and start scribbling down ideas and thoughts; then simply start putting all your ideas into a business plan and model that will work for your business.

As with all things in life, the first step is simply getting started.

12 Mistakes Business Make in Hiring Staff for your Fitness Business

By: Marisa from Fit Professionals

1.  Hiring for Desperation
2.  Hiring your Friend/s
3.  First meet hiring
4.  Skipping processes when hiring
5.  Ineffective Screening based on the Industry and position
6.  Not asking the right interview questions
7.  Being unprepared

Read More »

Ric Issac shares a message about the upcoming event fit For Profit Mega Training 2011, held in the Gold Coast on 19th – 20th November. Watch the video below for more information about the event.