Black Friday Mistakes

The Thanksgiving holiday season is here so the thing that I wanted to go over today was just priorities Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and sales for weeks. When you're looking for a business owner, I really want you to start to consider where you're putting your time, effort, and your money. More often than not I see so many gym owners waiting for Black Friday so that they can buy the newest best bar, rack, or any type of real piece of equipment that they feel like they need now.

I want you to think back and look at everything. I want you to evaluate where you're spending your money. The thing you need to start to consider is, how much money are you going to make off of that piece of equipment. Is that bar actually going to bring any new clients? Is that bar going to bring in the next team that needs to be in there? Don't get me wrong, I can understand if you're just starting off or you're in a place where these types of pieces. Maybe they are necessary for a special population you work with. Those things make sense and I completely get that. I'd never fault anybody for that. Who I'm looking at is people that are either on their way or even established, where are you putting your money? Should you get that new bar if you have a banged-up backside of your business? Do you have your sales process dialed in? Do you have new leads flowing in? Is your forecasting done for the next six months as to what your business is actually expecting? I'm going to say this if you don't have a stable backside of your business a new piece of equipment isn't going to sell anything. You're going to be in the same place, fighting for clients, and guessing why revenues not coming in. But hey, you'll have a nice shiny bar sitting there on the floor with nobody to use it.

Let’s think about where we can actually spend time, money, and Investments. Let’s evaluate where you need to be to make sure your business is running. Let's think about the actual aspects of the business structures. Do you have a solid foundation of being able to know your business by the numbers in an effective efficient way? If you can establish where your business is now, where it's going in the next 30 days and where is projected out for the next six months then you are in a great place. We should probably start there because at that point. If you don’t you are just guessing. You're guessing at where you are at and how much money you need. We all know in the fitness industry and sports performance industry there are peaks and valleys. We know that you're going to have great months when kids are off school ready to train for the fall season. You know that in fitness it's going to be a big-time for New Year's resolutions.

If you didn't look to see where you're at and what money you're going to need to come in. For instance, do you know you're losing six clients coming up when they go back to school? If not, then you're just fighting from behind and you're playing a guessing game with your money. I'm going to tell you that you probably should have begun marketing 90 days ago at a minimum. You should have planned for this downturn and made adjustments. Either a new sale, find a new revenue stream or a new product to set yourself to crush your busy months but to make it through these slow months too.

I see so many business owners go through and just fight every month guessing what they want to do for their business. There's no plan in place, there's no thought put into it, and everything is just completely reactionary. Let’s set the stage for taking control of your business. Let’s establish what specials you are running for the next six months, know where you're going to lose your revenue in the next 3 months, how many active clients you have, and how many active clients do you need.

So, let's do this, let's take a look at your business structures make sure you have an outline. What are your marketing strategies, your social media calendar, and what type of information you're putting out? What are you using to track everything that's going on?

Take a look at your business maybe it's not time to invest in a new piece of equipment, maybe it's time to invest in your business. You've dumped $50 to $200,000 in equipment so far. How much money have you actually invested in structuring your business and making sure that it's working the way that it's supposed to?

I hope everybody had a great holiday and I hope it all continues for you but keep getting after it