Chapter 1:
Roadmap
Where are you now? Where do you want to go?
Growing your business is simple when you have the right plan.
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Where are you now? Where do you want to go? Growing your business is simple when you have the right plan.
he facts are ugly. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average personal trainer earns $46,480 per year, or $22.35 per hour. That’s not enough to pay your bills and put a roof over your head.
So what do most people do to get ahead in their careers? Go back to school. Get more education. But the average personal trainer, with an advanced degree, earns $27 per hour. That’s not enough to buy a house and put braces on kids.
So what do most people do? They start their own business. Unfortunately, most people fail in business. The U.S. Small Business Administration says 49% of small businesses fail within five years.
Why?
Because they fail to understand the journey they are on. And they don’t have the right support around them to ensure they succeed. Let me explain…
In 2019, I met two young fitness entrepreneurs, Raphael Freedman and Lachlan Houston.
These guys were young and hungry. They had built three CrossFit gyms and loved fitness. They even had a podcast, The Mind Muscle Project. It was the top fitness podcast in Australia for several years.
Yet their gyms weren’t making any money. They were generating around $30,000 per month in revenue (across three locations). Some months were unprofitable. Despite their passion and effort, they had little to show for it in financial success.
So they signed up to work with my team and me to learn, grow, and improve their gyms. And over the next couple of years, they did that. They became smarter entrepreneurs. Their business grew in revenue and profitability. But at the end of the day, the gyms were doing okay (not great). They realized their business had limits on what they could achieve.
They made a bold, courageous decision. They would sell their gyms and build something very different (and better!).) than their previous business.
They decided to create a new company, Lockeroom Gym. It would focus on serving business executives in inner Sydney. This would be a premium brand. It would have a high-end, country club vibe. Joining would require a premium investment.
They invested a whole year imagining the brand. Dreaming and planning about what they wanted to create. Getting very clear on knowing their perfect client inside and out. They designed an amazing space. They build relationships with the best equipment suppliers. And raised some capital to fund the project with adequate resources from the start.
Then came the time to open the new facility… but the pandemic hit. Construction got pushed back. Loans became due. And everything became very, very hard. But these guys fought through the challenges. They finally opened their new facility and sold it out!
Then they imagined their second location (down the road from the first gym) and did it again!
As I write this, they’ve posted a record month of $535,000 (across 2 locations). They have a great team of managers who lead day-to-day operations. They are now the most exclusive and expensive gym in the whole country of Australia. And they will continue to grow to 3-5 locations in the next few years ahead.
How did these entrepreneurs turn an unprofitable CrossFit gym into a sold-out brand? And increase monthly revenue from $30,000 to over $535,000 in five years?
Because they had a roadmap to do it—and to do it right.
In this chapter, I will show you the roadmap I shared with Raph and Lach. It’s helped over 53,000 fitness entrepreneurs in 96 countries grow 6-, 7-, and 8-figure businesses. And I’m going to show you how you can use it to create your own business transformation. So let’s dive into walking through the…
7-Figure Fitness Entrepreneur Roadmap™
Since 2006, we’ve collected data from the thousands of fitness businesses we work with around the world. What we’ve learned is that fitness businesses go through predictable stages of growth. As such, they face very predictable problems at each stage of the journey.
The good news is when you know the problems you’ll face at each stage, you can then reverse engineer the step-by-step solutions required to succeed and breakthrough. All of this work over many years has allowed us to create the 7-Figure Fitness Entrepreneur Roadmap™.
What we’ve learned is there are four main stages of growing a fitness business from start up to seven-figures. Let’s review each stage…
Stage 1: Solopreneur
Description: Fit pros and low-revenue studios/gyms that want to earn a full-time professional income.
Revenue: <15k/month
Challenges: No clear business model. No sales or marketing systems. Client success systems are still being established.
Goals: Grow to 15k+/month and have the mindset, tools, and skills to sustain it.
Success Factor: Client Success
At each stage of the journey, you must solve many problems. It’s important to focus on the most critical one. It’s key to growing to the next level.
In this stage, your number one key to success is learning how to get your clients’ results.
When you can do that and document your client wins, you have a valuable service to offer to the market. Which means there will then be more people looking to hire you than you have the capacity to serve by yourself. Allow me to explain…
Everyone wants to earn more money. And in startup mode, they think that learning sales and marketing systems is the key to growth. But it’s hard to do sales and marketing without the skills to serve clients. And you don’t have any proof that you can actually deliver value and results!
So where should you start? You start by building a ‘proof of concept’. Which means you find five clients you can work with over three months and document their journey. Learn and practice your craft: assessment, program design, and coaching. Document your clients’ progress. Interview them about their experience, lessons learned, and results. Then package it all up into at least three good case studies. When you do this, you’ll then have proof you can actually deliver on the promises you make to the market. This positions you ahead of 80% of other service providers who sell their time. A lot of people sell time. Very few sell results.
Some will say, “But I don’t want to spend three months grinding to train clients and practice my craft. I want to grow my business now!” Again, if you have no proof of results, you must start here. It’s vital for a sustainable business. If you’ve worked in the industry for a while but have no case studies of client success, fix this first!
But what about sales and marketing? How do you get clients… if you don’t know where or how to find and sign them up? As a solopreneur, you only need to learn the basics. You need to find and sign up a dozen or so awesome clients. You can learn this in a short time with a Proof of Concept campaign. I’ll explain more on this in the chapters ahead.
But your main focus at this stage should be to master your craft and build those case studies. Along the way, you’ll be learning how to be a great coach. Guiding clients to great results will teach you more than any book or exam. It will also position you as more valuable to the market. Because great clients want to hire and work with great coaches!
Success at the end of this stage of growth should look like this:
You have established a clear business model, packaging, and pricing for your services.
You’ve learned basic sales and marketing skills to find and sign up 3 to 5 new clients each month.
You’ve mapped your client journey. You’ve documented simple operating procedures for working with clients and delivering your services.
You’ve documented 5-10+ case studies of clients with amazing outcomes. Start with the 3 from your Proof of Concept campaign, then keep going.
You are training clients for 25 or more hours a week.
You’re earning a professional six-figure personal income.
When you’ve hit these milestones, congratulations! You’ve built a successful career as a 6-figure solopreneur. Some people hang out here for years, and they’re happy doing so. But others want more. They want to build a business that provides more income and time freedom. They want to help more people and make a bigger impact in the world. And they want to build a business asset they can sell one day.
Let’s unpack what that means. The next stage isn’t for everyone. It requires a big commitment to succeed.
Stage 2: Desert
Description: Owner/Operators who want to grow revenue while building a team.
Revenue: 15-40k/month
Challenges: Flatlined growth, working too many hours (no operational team), low profit.
Goals: Grow to a predictable, profitable $40k/month. Build a team to support operations.
Success Factors: Sales and Marketing
At this point, you are at a professional crossroads and have some big decisions to make.
You can stay where you are. You earn a good income, with little responsibility and commitment. But you’re stuck trading your time for money. When you stop working, you stop getting paid. Or you can go ‘all in’ to invest in growing a business and a team that gives you both money and time freedom.
If you choose the latter, you’ll need to make big sacrifices. There’s a lot of growth required to build a business that gives you both money and freedom. There will be a high risk of failure and no guarantees you will succeed. The worst-case scenario? You’ll waste money and time (months or years). It might take you a long time to recover. If you commit to the journey and persevere, you will achieve victory in the end.
I tell fitness entrepreneurs: “This is the hardest stage of growing a fitness business.” Why? Big dreams and goals are great. But if you go for them, your business (and life) will get harder before it gets easier. The next stage of your business journey will test your commitment—many times over!
Here’s why this is so dang hard: in the solopreneur stage, you don’t have a lot of overhead or investments. You’ll often be renting space in someone else’s facility. Or, you’ll be training clients from your garage or traveling to their homes or offices. This is unless you’re working with clients online. But to continue growing… you’ll need to invest in getting a physical space of your own, buy equipment, and more. The space you invest in must allow for growth. You’ll need to invest a lot of capital upfront, usually six figures or more. This is before your revenue is high enough to profit and get a return on your investment.
Also, you need to hire others to work with you. You won’t have enough time and energy to serve all the clients and do everything yourself. But you won’t have enough revenue to hire and build out a full team yet. You’ll need to stretch yourself. You’ll work IN the business (serving clients) and ON the business (recruiting and leading a team). Also, you won’t have all the skills needed. So, you’ll make mistakes. You’ll work hard; it may take a while to see results at this stage. You will likely start by hiring part-time coaches and contractors. These will be people who have not yet made a full commitment to your business. You may find that you cannot fully rely on them at this stage, so you must develop and manage them with caution.
Have I scared you away yet? I want you to know this is a difficult mountain to climb in this stage of growth. You will be stretching your time, energy, and resources on all fronts. Staying in this stage too long can cause fatigue and burnout. It may even lead to closing your business. There will be days (and sometimes weeks and months) when you’ll question if this is the right decision. Guess what? Everyone who has grown through this stage has faced the same tests and has come out the other side. You’re not alone!
My best advice is this: When you want to build a business that grows beyond you, get the right support. It will help you solve these problems in a short amount of time. Then put your head down and get to work so you can get to the next stage pronto.
It may take you 6, 12, or 18 months to come out the other side. Don’t stay here too long. Something will have to give in the end—your business, your health, or your relationships. Hopefully, not all three at the same time! The bottom line is that the sooner you can run the gauntlet, the better.
So what’s the number one key to breaking through? Fitness businesses get stuck here when they can’t build a big enough revenue engine. You must install systems that generate new clients and recurring revenue. They must do this every week, like clockwork. We’ll cover how to do this in part 2 of this book.
You’ll also need to start hiring some coaches to help with training clients. You need a good team, but you can’t put all your time into building the team you will want long-term yet. Keep your focus on generating consistent and predictable leads, sales, and recurring revenue.
Success at the end of this stage of growth should look like this:
- You’ve got a clear 1-, 3-, 10-year vision for your business.
- You’ve refined your business model, packaging, and pricing to produce strong gross profit (we’ll cover this in Chapter 4).
- You’ve established strong sales and marketing systems. They predictably generate high-quality leads and new clients every week.
- You’ve refined your client journey. You’ve also made an operations manual to train coaches to lead clients to success.
- You’ve hired coaches, likely part-time, and a head coach, full-time. They share your values and support training clients.
- You’ve begun to reduce your hours training clients. This will free up time to focus on leading and growing the business.
- You’ve grown revenue to over $40,000 per month with solid profit margins
At the end of this stage, things start to get a little easier. You’ve got predictable revenue (and profit!) and you can now take a breath.
It’s time to focus on building a team and streamlining operations. This will give you more time back and reduce your daily firefighting. Let’s continue…
Stage 3: Stable
Description: Owner/Operators who want to make more while working less.
Revenue: 40-100k/month
Challenges: Flatlined growth, long hours (no management team), and no financial plan or systems to maximize returns.
Goals: Grow to 100k+/month with a strong manager and team in place that executes the business plan.
Success Factors: Team & Operations
A fair bit of warning. Operators are often exhausted from the previous growth stage. This leads them to mistakenly hire and promote team members too quickly. They do minimal training, then step away from their business abruptly.
This is with good reason – when you’ve pushed it very hard (maybe too hard!) for a long time, and you need a break. But if you move too fast, all the progress you’ve fought hard for can fall apart.
Moving too fast to step out of operations runs the risk of making (or promoting) bad hires, putting a weak team on the field in your business, and ultimately churning out clients (not to mention damaging your reputation and brand along the way!).
This means a loss of revenue. It also means firing and rehiring for key positions. That can take 6-12 months, just to get back to baseline where you started. Even with your best efforts, unforeseen setbacks can occur. Hurricanes, earthquakes, and the pandemic are a few examples. Regardless, your goal in this stage is to minimize risk. You’ll do this by designing a solid team and installing the right operational systems. And being patient with recruiting, hiring, and developing leaders in your business. We’ll cover all this in Part 4.
Good teams take years to build. Good managers can take 6 to 12 months to find, hire, and settle into the seat. Some wisdom to share: Successful entrepreneurs generally aren’t patient. We like to go fast! But take your time to build a strong foundation with your team and operational systems. Doing so will minimize the impact of lost revenue and time from having to go backward when things go wrong.
Success at the end of this stage of growth should look like this:
- You’ve got a clear 1, 3, 10 year vision for your business in place.
- You have a core team in your business. It includes coaches, a head coach, and a membership consultant (or marketing coordinator). They are hitting all performance targets.
- You’ve got a solid General Manager who runs day-to-day operations. They execute the business plan and solve issues with the team on the field as required.
- You have great weekly and monthly reports. They focus your team on the key factors for success.
- You’ve grown revenue to 100k+/month with solid profit margins.
- You can step away from your business for weeks. It will run fine without you.
Now you’ve got money and time freedom. Amazing. You’ve achieved a level of success that very few business owners ever do.
Is this the end of the journey? No. Things get even more exciting from here. Onward!
Stage 4: Lifestyle
Description: Founders who want to grow asset value (2-5 locations).
Revenue: 100-400k/month+
Challenges: Inconsistent growth across locations, a weak talent pipeline, and gaps in processes. The leadership team lacks experience.
Goals: Grow to 400k+/month and build a world-class leadership team that builds the company with you.
Success Factors: Strategy & Leadership
At this stage, you’ve come a long way. You’ve reached a peak few entrepreneurs ever attain in this industry. Congratulations. But a warning: smart, successful people make dumb, painful mistakes here.
Here are a few I’ve seen:
- You think you’ve mastered small business. So, you decide to open new businesses in different industries and models.
- Believing you’ve mastered one location, so you should jump to having 3 or 4. But you lack the team, operations, and capital to do it right.
- Believing you’ve mastered one revenue stream. So, you should launch 3 or 4 new ones within your current operations. This can create an incredible amount of chaos.
The keys to success at this stage are getting very clear on your long-term vision and strategy. It takes discipline to say “no” to the endless opportunities that will come your way. They may seem like great ideas at the time! You must ask yourself, “will this support my 10-year vision?” If the answer is yes, then it’s worth exploring. If not, say no.
With your big goals, be patient in building your team for success. In business, you can accelerate things like raising capital and generating leads. But building and developing strong leaders takes time and patience. Let the strength of your team and leaders dictate your timeline. Wanting to do something doesn’t mean you should. It also doesn’t mean you have the right team to do it.
Success at the end of this stage of growth should look like this:
- You have grown revenue to $400k+/month.
- You have a core team of general managers. They execute the business plan and solve problems without you.
- Your managers have built an awesome team within their locations. Ninety percent of your staff members hit their targets and fit your culture.
- You can still take weeks off from your business. It will run fine without you.
- You invest your time in strategy and vision. You explore new opportunities for growth while developing your leadership team.
- You’ve built a saleable business that is worth 7+ figures on exit (if you choose to sell one day).
This is often where many entrepreneurs celebrate and enjoy the journey.
Some go on to build enterprise companies that grow to 30, 100, or even thousands of units. Company-owned stores are one model. Franchising is another model.
Or you can enjoy an incredible lifestyle business that you’ve created. The choice is yours.
Where do you want to go?
If you’ve struggled to grow your fitness business, you might doubt your ability to succeed. But, after working with over 53,000 fitness businesses in 96 countries, I’ve learned one thing: It’s simple (not easy) to grow your fitness empire with the right plan.
Like Raph and Lach, you might be struggling to keep your business afloat right now. You might be feeling tired, confused, and worn out. You might be questioning whether this business is the right path. Should you consider closing your doors?
Doubt, fear, and uncertainty are par for the course. This is normal. It’s where most of the amazing fitness business success stories I’ve supported for 18 years began. Heck, even when you solve some big challenges, you’ll face new ones when you move on to the next stage of the journey! The game never ends until you exit the business. Each stage of growth requires you to learn and grow. You must transform into a stronger entrepreneur and leader.
As you own a business for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, or more, your life is going to evolve. Your priorities are going to ebb and flow with children, family, and more. The market and industry will shift because business is a dynamic sport.
But as long as you commit to growing and developing your skills, network, and team – the future is yours for the taking. I want to invite you to take a step back from doing the work and think deeply about your vision. Where are you now? Where do you want to go? Why are your goals important to you? When your vision and motivation are clear… then you’re ready to chart a course into the future. Let’s begin!
Exercise:
Where are you now?
What stage of growth is your business in right now?
What is your current income?
How many hours per week are you working both on and in the business?
What is your current hourly wage? (Income/hours = hourly wage)
Where do you want to go?
What does success look like for your business over the next 1, 3, 10 years?
What type of income do you want to have?
What type of lifestyle do you want to have?
What type of impact do you want to make in your community?
What’s your why?
Why is building a successful business so important to you?
How does building a successful business support your personal vision and life goals?
Action Item:
Write down your goal for the next 12 months and why it matters to you. Stick it on your bathroom mirror or in a place where you’ll see it everyday. Read it outloud. There will be many times you feel like this journey is too hard, you’re failing, and you want to give up and quit. Don’t. Look at your goals and vision. Remember why they matter. And reach out for help on the journey when you need it. You’re not alone.
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