From Passion to Profit: Heart Centered Strategies for FitPros

001 Mapping Out Your Fitness Business Journey: Without Burning Out

• Nichola Page • Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

Hello everyone I'm Nichola Page, and welcome to "From Passion to Profit." 

In this debut episode, we're diving into the exciting world of crafting a successful fitness business that aligns with your dreams.

We're exploring how to transform your passion into profit without burning out. As a fitness professional, your reasons for starting your business likely revolve around flexibility, freedom, and financial security.

Let's dig into these motivations and find your unique path.  Imagine your business as a road trip – you need a destination. Visualise where you want to be: financially secure, with the flexibility to enjoy life.  With this clarity, we can work backwards and map out your business journey.

Now, let's get practical. Define your financial goals and lifestyle vision. What does success look and feel like? Then, adapt your business model accordingly. Whether it's making some changes to what you offer, refining your marketing, improving sales conversions, boosting retention, building a team, or streamlining operations – the key is to tailor the strategies to your journey.

Remember, there's no universal formula. Your business is your canvas. I'll share insights, but the magic happens when you find what resonates.

Quick recap:

1. Reflect on your why – flexibility, freedom, financial security.

2. Visualise success and set financial and lifestyle goals.

3. Adapt your business model to fit your vision.

4. Embrace tailored strategies that align with your journey.

Thanks for joining "From Passion to Profit." In the next episode, I'll be delving into the fundamentals of creating your fitness business marketing.  Looking at how you get your marketing message to attract your ideal clients.  

Until next time, keep the passion alive and enjoy the journey! 

Don't forget to leave a review and share this podcast with fellow fitness colleagues and friends.

Resource Links:


As a fitness business owner, how do you turn your passion into profit? Particularly without burning out? What is it that you want from your business? Where are you at currently? And what actions do you need to take to get your business to where you want it to be?  

When I speak to fitness professionals for the first time and I ask them… what is it that got you into having your own business in the first place? Apart from the fact they're really passionate about what they do and absolutely love helping their clients achieve results, there are three main reasons why they decided to set up their own business.  

There's flexibility and freedom. The flexibility to be able to work the hours that they want to work.  The freedom to have a business that allows them to work around family or other commitments, or to have the lifestyle that they want.  

Then there's also the financial security. Flexibility, freedom and financial security are the three main reasons why somebody, particularly those that I work with, would set up their own health and fitness business.  

Maybe you've got the same three reasons, maybe it's more about the financial security for you. Or maybe it's more about the flexibility or a bit of all of it. But what are your reasons for having your own health and fitness business?  You will have some.  Maybe you are fully aware of what they are.  Or maybe you've just found yourself, you've stumbled onto this path, and you're not quite sure why you're here or what you're doing.  

Think about it for a minute… What are your main reasons for having your own health and fitness business?  Because the thing of it is, whether you are aware of why you want your business not or not, you have one, and therefore, you are responsible for making your own income. And you, as the owner of the business, are responsible for driving that business forward in whichever direction you want to take it.   

It’s a bit like if you were let's say… you were in Essex, you get in your car, and you want to go to Liverpool.  You get in your car to drive to Liverpool.  You might get so far, with reading a few signs and guessing which direction you need to go in. But if there was a specific destination in Liverpool that you needed to get to, and you didn't put that specific destination into the sat nav, you may or may not get there.  If you did get there, it's going to be out of guesswork and luck, more than anything else.  

Having your own business is kind of similar to that. Where do you want to be? What is it you want your business to give you as the owner? What is it you want it to look like? How will you know when you've got it to the point where you want it to be?  

What we want to do here is reverse engineer the business and work back from that. So it's really important, if you've never given this any thought, to seriously take some time out and sit down and think about - what do I want from my business?!   

Maybe you've got big aspirations.  Maybe you want a huge team.  Maybe you want multiple venues. Or maybe you want more of a lifestyle business that allows you to live your life the way you want to live it.  

It doesn't matter what the end goal is. But the key thing is, you need to identify where you're headed. From there, once you know where you want to get to, you can look at where you're at right now. We can then map out what that specific journey needs to look like to get you to where you want to be. 

So my question for you (well I've got a few questions for you in this session) is, first and foremost… what do you want out of your business? Is it that you want your business to give you more financial security? Is it the business needs to make more money?  Or is it that you want your business to give you more time back, more freedom, more flexibility? Maybe it's a bit of both? You can have all of it. Think about what that is for you? What does that actually look like? What does it feel like in the future? Once you know that, we can look at how you actually achieve that.  What steps do you need to take to get you from A, where you're at and B, where you want to be? 

So let's think for a moment, maybe you've identified what you want from your business is you want more financial security.  The business now needs to start making more money for you to be able to take more out of it, over and above all the costs and expenses. If you know that, if that's where you're headed, and you've got clarity on what that number is… (what is the amount of revenue or income that it needs to make every month consistently), you can then identify the actions you need to take to get you there. 

Maybe for you, you need to fill your classes.  Perhaps you've got classes running already, and they're half empty. If you were to fill those classes, with the additional revenue that you make, will that now give you what you want?  Is that now going to get you to that point B?  Or maybe it's your sessions, maybe you don't run classes, maybe you do small group sessions, or one to one sessions.  If you feel those sessions, or fill your diary with the number of client facing hours that you want… that additional revenue, once that comes in, is that what you need? Is that what you want out of your business, because if it is, then you are just following the track that makes that happen.  

If that doesn't give you what you want, if it's falling short, in some way, maybe you need to look at doing a price increase. Or maybe you need to change your current model: The way in which you're delivering your service may need to change in some way shape or form so that you can bring more money in. But until you do this piece of work, you don't know for sure. 

If you're following what somebody else is doing, okay, on the outside, they may look like they've got everything now. But your goal is your goal. What you want from your business is what you want, not what they want. So this is about mapping out your personal journey to get you from where you are to where you want to be.  

But what if your business is now more about giving you more freedom and flexibility, getting some of your time back? Maybe the actions that you need to take are now to reduce the number of classes or sessions? And if you did that, would that give you your time back and the flexibility? If it did, maybe it's affected the income too much, though, so it's not a possibility?  

What if you could reduce the length of time of your classes or your sessions? If you looked at the amount of time you’re client facing right now, could you reduce the class or session times down?  So you're still working the same number of hours, but you're actually able to get more classes and sessions in during that same timeframe?  Therefore, help and work with more people and bring in some more money? Would, that give you what you want? So you've not actually taken any of your time away, but you've leveraged the time that you've got to be able to help more people? Is that what you need to do with your business? 

Maybe you actually need to increase the capacity of the classes or sessions that you're doing. And by that I mean, getting more people in? Maybe at the moment, you're hiring a venue where it's very small.  Could you find a bigger venue so you could have more people in it?  

If it's your own premises, or hiring a different venue is not possible, could you change the way you're doing things… so you could get more people into a class or a session?  Maybe you've got an online business, in which case, the capacity is pretty much endless, depending on the software you're using of course.   

Maybe right now, the only way you can identify to get your time back is to really scale your business and have others working for you.  

Again, the key thing about doing this piece of work is to identify what different scenarios there are.  The different types of actions you could take, that are going to give you what you want.  To be able to turn your passion into profit without burning out.  Without working even longer hour and juggling even more balls. 

You have to start with the end in mind.  You have to reverse engineer your goals. So you look at where you want to be and you work back from that. Then you'll be able to identify the steps that you need to take to get you there. 

Let me just summarise the actions that you could take off the back of this episode. I really strongly advise you to do so.  Take a bit of time out.  Go and sit in the park or go into a café.  Somewhere different to where you would normally work and just sit and think about this.  

Where do you want to be? What do you want out of your business financially, time, freedom, flexibility? What does that look like?  Get really specific on what that is. In terms of the finances? What's that number? What's the revenue you need to be bringing in every month, every year? 

What does success for you look like? How's that going to feel when you get there? What will your day look like? What will your week look like? What kind of things will you be doing?  Get excited and connected to the reason why you're in business in the first place.  You're in it, so you might as well be creative with it and come up with a plan that excites you and motivates you.  Particularly one where… when the stuff hits the fan, when we have to work really hard, when things don't quite go to plan… being able to reconnect to why we are doing this in the first place, is hugely important.  

So once you know what you want out of your business, what that's going to look like and feel like, then you can get clear on what your model needs to be to get you there. By model, I mean what service you are providing.  Do you need to change your format in some way to get you to where you want to be?  

Once you've got the right model down on paper, that fits with your vision that fits with the lifestyle that you want to live, it's then just about taking the right action and the consistent action to get you there. 

Now that could be for you to improve your marketing.  Let's say the model that you've got right now can work on paper, but the challenge you face is - you don't have enough people, enough clients in your business. Then it's all about the marketing.  We just need to get people in.   

Maybe you are getting people in, but you're not getting them over the line.  They're coming in, they're having a great initial experience with you. Then they're walking out the doors never to be seen again.  Maybe what you need to focus on is your sales process and get better at selling.  

Maybe you need to improve your client retention.  You get people coming in, but then you get too many people dropping out at the bottom.  How can you get people to stay longer with you?  

Or perhaps what you really need to do is build a team and create better systems in your business that allow it to grow and not be so reliant on you and your time? 

Your journey at the end of the day is going to be your journey. But you do need to put a destination into the sat nav, if you're going to get anywhere near or even achieve what you want to achieve. 

If you don't have the clarity on where you want to get to, and by the way on this one - if in six months that changes, that's okay too. You don't have to come up with where you want to be right now and have this set in stone forever.  It’s your business and if in six months or a year down the line, it’s actually not what you want anymore, change it.  It’s your business.  You can do what you want with it. But, we've got to put something into the sat nav now.  So that we can start taking the right direction, the best direction to get you there.  

There will be things that I'm going to recommend that have worked well for my clients that will work really well for you. So if you're tuning into future episodes, I'm going to be making some recommendations and strategies and tactics. We're going to have guest speakers coming in to give you some tips. Some of those have worked really well for my clients.  I only talk about things that I know have worked either for myself or for people that I've worked with.  Some of those will work really well for you. There will also be some that won't.  See the thing of it is, this is about you, your business and what you want out of your business. And that's all unique.  

Sure there are going to be some similarities to other businesses. But there is no magic cookie-cutter process for you to follow. No matter what anybody else says, there isn't this one-size-fits-all process. There are principles that will guide you. There are strategies and there are tactics that you can try out, all of which have worked for some people, but some of them may not for you. It's about being clear on where you're going. Then trying things out and picking the strategies and tactics that are more aligned with the direction that you're going in.  

It all starts with you being clear about what you want out of your business.  What your model, the way in which you deliver the service, is.  What it needs to be to get you there. If you get clear on that, then you're halfway there. 

You have the passion for helping others for making an impact on their lives.  But now it's time to make sure your business works for you, just as much as it does for your clients. 
I'm Nichola Page and you've been listening to From Passion to Profit enjoy the journey and I'll see you on the next session