Daily Drive Sessions - #1 Technique To Increase Your Fitness Business Earnings Today

Chris Lynton from www.TribeFit.co - Daily Drive Sessions: Today Chris talks about one technique that you can implement today that will take less than 5 minutes and could add 10-30% more revenue to your fitness business straight away. More revenue and less admin workload means more time for leisure OR building your fitness business further.

Hi, it’s Chris here from TribeFit.co, and today, welcome to Chris’s Daily Drive Sessions.

Today I wanted to take you through one quick tip to increase your earnings in your fitness business.

It’s a really important tip, it’s quite a simple one that you can implement today. It’s one thing that will make sure that you’re earning more, and it’s a simple thing that a lot of people aren’t doing.

As you can probably see I’m in the car, I’ve got the snow jacket in the back there, I’ve just come back from the snow on the weekend. It was a fantastic weekend, and it’s a beautiful day in Sydney today.

But, onto what we’re talking about today. So, last week I had a meeting with one of the people we work with, a fantastic person, they’ve been in the industry for a very long time. An absolute authority in the professional space, and has trained everyone from everyday people all the way through to A-list celebrities.

And, we were talking, and I guess, it kind of hit me, as such a simple thing that they hadn’t implemented into their business. And they’ve been in their industry for 10, 12 years. And very successful in their space as well, but they were I guess wondering why their earnings weren’t up to the standard of what they thought the workload and the output they were putting into their business.

Anyways, we were looking at little things, and this was something that you don’t particularly bring up straight away because it should be a norm in most businesses. But it just became apparent that even for people that have been in the industry for so long, and were so successful in this space, that it’s these simple things that can be forgotten and not implemented in a business. As a result, financially they’re not as successful as possible, or as they should be.

And stress-wise, obviously that impacts your business, your life, you’re obviously trying to work more. Admin becomes more of a workload. Rather than being able to do the easy things easily, and automated, rather than having all the manual admin that comes along with a business that’s not set up correctly. Although you’ll work more from a manual workload perspective, you’ll actually earn just the same.

So, how can you get the same outcome, or better, and work less? That’s what today’s about.

So, onto what I was talking about: the simple thing. Most businesses that have a membership or a subscription-charging business model, such as personal training sessions, even if you’re a gym owner, that will be a pretty common one for you, but mainly for personal trainers who have one-on-one sessions or group sessions or whatever it might be.

A very, very simple thing, and I suggest you start implementing it into your business today: stop charging people manually, stop charging people just through PayPal or whatever it might be. Make sure you implement a direct debit or recurring billing system into your business.

It’s very, very easy, it’s very, very straightforward. I’m sure there’s probably 10-20% of people saying “I’ve already got that in my business”. But the vast majority of you are probably thinking, “why haven’t I got around to that?”. It’s such a simple thing.

When you do it the other way, you’re always chasing people for money. You’re calling them up, trying to get them to pay, chasing their last payment. They’re late, and as a result, it’s also very easy for people just to drop off. There’s not as much motivation for a client to stay on long-term, as they don’t feel like they have any real ties. It’s very easy to cut any links.

And as a result, some people will turn up sometimes, other times they’ll make up excuses. They might be sick. They don’t feel bad about not being there on time, or not turning up when they’re supposed to because they don’t feel like they’re going to be billed. They don’t feel like you have the capability to continue to charge them.

But if you set people up on a direct debit or a recurring, it’s one extra motivator A) for them to turn up, and they get better results. And obviously people who get better results, it will improve the relationship between the two of you, they will stay a client for longer. And then they’ll tell their friends, and then other people will hear about you through word of mouth, and your business will grow.

But B), you will not have to chase people for money as much. And there’ll be 10, 20, 30% of funds that you should be entitled to that you’re missing out on, because you’re having to chase people.

And then you feel bad chasing them, and then you let things slip or slide, just because you’re being a nice person. Because it’s not a great conversation to have, it’s not a fun conversation to have. When you’re training someone, you almost become, a bit of a friendship-relationship that you build there. And then asking for money or a transaction, it’s not a fun conversation.

So, set people up on direct debit or recurring billing.

How to do that? It’s very, very easy. It’s not costly at all. I recommend, there’s generally two platforms that you can do it on.

There’s one called eWAY. And if you just Google eWAY it’s very, very easy to get set up and structure.

Another is called “Stripe.” I personally prefer Stripe. Stripe is easy to set up. There’re not as many loopholes and admin to try and jump through to get approved for an account. And once you have your Stripe account set up, you can set that up through, you know, you can give people a link, and they can make payment. And then you can set it up on recurring.

Generally, what I like to do, which makes it even more simple, depending on what you’re selling, there’s a system called SendOwl. Or there are a thousand other ones like that. And what that allows you to do, is to link up Stripe to it. You then can go in and set up what the rate should be, how often or how frequent they should be billed, whether it’s weekly, fortnightly monthly, quarterly, whatever it might be. And then it just goes automatically.

You can have a URL or a link, and what you can do is you can take a person’s credit card details, and you can punch it in yourself. Or, alternatively, very easily, you can get a URL link. You can email it to them, you can text it to them, and they can just press on that button and enter their own details.

So, stop taking payments manually. Make sure you automate that part of your business, otherwise, you’re never going to grow and reach the full potential you should.

And not only that, you’ll never earn what you actually should be earning right now. You’re doing the workload, you’re doing all the admin, you’re chasing people up for funds. There’s always going to be 10, 20, 30% of funds that you’re missing out on, l that you’ve worked hard for, and it should be yours.

So, avoid the conversations, the tough conversations asking for money. Avoid having to chase people, avoid all of that admin. And rather than having to get money off a person every single week or every single fortnight, you just have one conversation when you start. Put everyone on that, and then no more admin from then on.

If you’ve got clients you’ve been working with for a long time, just let them know. Let them know there’s a hard cut-off date that you’re moving everything to this, and make sure you just push them into that format.

It’s going to make your life a lot easier, you’re going to earn more, and you’re going to have a lot more freedom in your time. Because all of that admin, all of that stress, all of those awkward conversations will be gone.

So that’s it from me today. Just a short one today, and hopefully you take that into your business.

Make sure you throw those things into Google, look them up. They’re very, very easy, very straightforward, very cost-effective.

They only take a small percentage of any transaction, extremely small. So the savings that you’ll get from putting people on a direct debit order or recurring, far outweigh what you will be charged. You know, the one percent’s, the two percent’s of every transaction is absolutely nothing compared to what you’ll get back, I promise.

So make sure you put that into your business today. Like I said, Google those things, apply for them, go for whichever one you prefer. Make sure you put them into your business today, and you’ll have a much easier, more fun, lifestyle-based business. What you’re earning is what you should, and also you’ll have more freedom and time for more clients, so you can grow your business further.

So that’s it from me today, hope to be speaking to you real soon, bye for now.