Coaching growth-obsessed entrepreneurs is a wild ride. Everyone’s got the same good, bad and ugly stuff to deal with. Everyone has the same dreams and plans to GO BIG, and… the same issues that keep you from accelerating at the pace you’d like that can ... literally put you out of business. As we often say to some of our clients around here, “You’ve got to be careful to not go broke while you’re busy ‘getting rich’!”

If you’re a fast-growing entrepreneur, then you probably naturally gravitate towards the sales and marketing end. You love driving the front lines, bringing new people into your business, and pushing forward with no fear, straight through the line of fire. You’re a people person, and you genuinely look forward to helping other people improve their lives through becoming a client/customer of your business.

Entrepreneurs are pioneers, but these folks also have a natural tendency to leave the back door wide open. They’re usually horrible at follow-up and customer service, and generally piss-poor managers. If you want to really make it big, and have a real business (not just an endless churn of front-end sales and what we call “deal flow”) then you’ve got to take a step back and do some of real hard-work to clean up the mess you’re continuing to make!

Remember, this is the business where you’re weighing out your food, writing down what you eat in a food journal, and all the other tedious tasks that are neither exciting nor fun. Just about everyone hates doing this stuff, unless you’re some kind of freak, but getting these things done is a MUST if you’re serious about getting results and becoming the best you can be. Just like keeping a food journal keeps you on track with your weight, this will keep you on track with your business. Winners accept this and go do it. Losers whine, complain, and don’t move forward beyond the closed loop of getting business and losing business.

So, let’s talk about this in a little more detail. Right now, I’m going to give you six ways you can begin to tighten down the loose screws inside your business. I suggest you grab a pen and paper now, and make a hit list of action items that apply to you. Then immediately build them into your calendar and get them done. (99.9% of people don’t implement and finish this stuff, and that’s the main reason why they never move beyond the closed loop.) What you do or don’t do with your list right now will determine which category you fall into– successful or unsuccessful.

1. Map out a marketing plan and build the related activities into your calendar for the next 12 months. Commit to growing a list and working your list! Working your list can be as simple as sending an e-mail out once a week, with a story, testimonial, tip, and an offer for a consultation with you. But we recommend you take it to the next level by also mailing a physical print newsletter to that same list, every single month. Nobody else does it, and it’s an easy way to separate yourself from your competition. Incorporate an offer into everything that goes out the door.

2. Write out defined protocols and procedures for how all clients will be trained to ensure baseline standards, and therefore results, are being met across the board. This will keep you from having to re-invent the wheel with every new client that walks in the door, and give your trainers a roadmap to follow. (If you don’t have anyone working for you yet, stick with us and you soon will.) Having protocols and procedures assures that all components of success are consistently covered with every single client. You know how to train clients already, so just define those protocols a little better and write them out so they become duplicable for your staff. Make sure you cover all the components required for client success including nutrition, stretching, strength, cardio, etc.

3. Map out systems for how you find, hire, train, and mange staff. Then automate the front-end, lead generation portion of finding new prospective hires. You don’t ever want to be caught with your pants down in a situation where you can’t fire a loser, or can’t sell more prospects your services because you don’t have the capacity to fulfill labor. Everyone I know needs more training, more work in this area to continue growing. (For more help with this, refer to our Evolution Accelerator program, which you can read more about at www.NetProfitExplosion.com.)

4. Track and review weekly where you’re investing your time. This is much more important than where you are investing your money, because time, unlike money, is a non-renewable resource. As the saying goes, life and business is not a dress rehearsal. Evaluate how much time you’re investing working on the business, against how much time you’re spending working in the business. Then begin to work yourself out of more and more tasks on the inside. Go through your list of daily, weekly, monthly activities and ask yourself consistently, “What can be better systemized, automated, or delegated?”

5. Commit to hiring a $12-15/hr administrative assistant as soon as possible to delegate mailing assembly, client scheduling, and all the little things that don’t need to be done by you. Not getting someone to delegate these clerical activities to now is costing you money and peace of mind. You’ve got to continue freeing yourself up to do the high priority thinking and planning work required to grow your business. Only you can do that work, and you can’t do it if you’re screwing around stuffing envelopes.

6. Once you’ve got trainers working for you, and low-level admin work is delegated, begin training a back-up sales person to support you. This is absolutely one of the very last functions you’ll work yourself out of, but it is important that you have a back-up in place for those times when you’re sick, something happens and you can’t be in the office, or you’re out of town. The last thing you want to have happen is the business stops making sales and collecting revenue just because you’re not there 100% of the time. You can’t be, so don’t count on the impossible. Plan for the inevitable. It’s very important that you have a well-defined and repeatable sales process in place to ensure a consistent high close rate and ticket sale.
Once you get these keyholes plugged in your business (and only when you do get them plugged), you can begin looking at and focusing on additional growth opportunities. It’s very important that you don’t get distracted by the next shiny thing before you’ve got control over what you’ve got in your hands on and are already committed to right now.

We’ve seen failure to stay focused on key tasks and getting the holes plugged kill many a once-successful fitness professional. Don’t let that happen to you.

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve now created a hit list of activities you can work on to continue moving forward…so it’s time to get to work!