Elon Musk and Steve Jobs both had the same 24 hours that you do. How did they do so much? Today we're going to talk about the concept of leverage.
I often hear gym owners say "My time is my greatest asset". No. It's not, and it's time you stopped thinking that way.
Time is not your asset. You don't own it.
Time is your most precious resource. It's something you spend, whether you want to or not, and once spent it can never be recouped.
I like to think of my time spent in terms of leverage. As a small gym owner, you should too.
Leverage your Time
As a small gym owner, you need to think about ways to leverage your time, so you can spend it in the most meaningful way.
You are the one with the vision in your gym. You are the one with the dream.
You need to find ways to focus your energy where its best spent: delivering your vision to your community.
Every hour you spend collecting membership dues, you're not spending working on bigger picture things.
Every hour you spend coaching a class, cleaning a bathroom, or even doing personal training, you are not spending building your vision.
Old School Leverage for Gym Owners
Historically in the business world, there's been two main drivers of leverage:
- Money - Use capital to help grow your business. Pay for ads, buy businesses, etc.
- People - Hire people who can specialize in roles to grow your business.
Both of these forms of leverage are no longer efficient.
Businesses that rely on using money or people as forms of leverage will die off over time.
We also know, from running gyms, that money is not readily available (especially other people's money) and there's not much ability to hire people to scale up operations to really allow yourself to grow.
So how do you maximally leverage time as a gym owner?
New School Leverage for Gym Owners
If we can't create great amounts of leverage with money or people in our gym, what can we do?
Here are the three concepts that have risen up during the last 10 years that level the playing field for small businesses like yours.
- Robots / Code / Automations
- Media
- Community
Robots
Robots is a gentle term for anything that can automate a process with precision and at almost no cost, once built.
While we'll immediately think of Wall-E when we think of a robot - it's important to realize that a robot can actually be code that's written to automate process as well.
However, your time likely isn't best spent coding your own robots or software systems. Even if you are a computer programmer - the time spent to build a system from scratch doesn't' make sense.
You are in luck, because today you can basically rent any software system you want for a monthly fee that gives you all that leverage for almost no cost.
Your Gym Management System as Leverage
Often business owners don't think of software as a form of leverage, but it actually is the largest leverage they have today, by far.
Can you imagine the day when you had to hire a person to sit at a desk, and manually check to see if a member was up to date when they checked into the gym?
Think about how much of a pain it was before to try to collect an overdue payment from a member in person.
Gym management software will simplify many of the aspects of running a small gym which buys you back countless hours.
More importantly, once setup, you know your gym is running correctly without flaw.
Code doesn't talk back. Code doesn't take breaks. Code doesn't' have family emergencies, career ambitions, or desire a vacation.
Media
There was once a time that in order to announce an idea to the world, you had to get permission from a television or radio network.
With the internet, we've democratized the spread of ideas. Now anyone has the ability to broadcast an idea to the world, and be seen by thousands of people.
Further, in the true lens of leverage, you can post something to the Internet today and reap the benefits from that post forever.
Take this blog post for example. This idea of leverage is now in the Internet and you found it. I didn't ask anyone permission to post it - and you are able to read this at any time after its' been posted.
Social Media as Leverage
Social Media has become an integral part of the way we live our lives.
It's not just a time-waster anymore - it's something that can help you grow your business and connect with people who have similar goals as yours.
If used correctly, social media is one of the best forms of leverage available to a small gym.
One thing to realize about social media: It's blast radius is huge but it's shelf life is short.
For this reason you need to be vigilant with social media and post high value content all the time.
Post daily. Spread ideas and concepts, not just mindless photos of your members working out.
Give value in your posts. Share workouts to do from home, recipes people can try out, or highlight members to spread the strength of your community.
Your Blog as Leverage
The blog is another great form of leverage that you can use.
Opposite to Social Media, blog posts have a much smaller potential immediate audience, but the audience is much more engaged with your gym. Blogging also has a very long shelf life, and Google will index your blogs for SEO and other benefits.
Ideally a blog post will be posted weekly and posts should always have useful content in them. This doesn't mean they need to be long form articles - short chunks are just as effective if used correctly.
Blogging also helps you build audience, brand authority, and position yourself as a subject matter expert in fitness. All important things when trying to connect with your community!
Community As Leverage
This is a newer concept in the business world - but has long been known in the small gym space.
Community is more than just having a good workout space and equipment.
It's about creating an environment that fosters connection, growth, trust, motivation and other important aspects of life.
To do this effectively you need to create community events - but also find ways to build connections with people outside your gym in person or online on social media.
Creating a safe, welcome environment that has trust amongst members, coaches, and owners is critical in leveraging your community to grow your business.
Also, building process to allow your coaches to as for feedback, asking your members for reviews or referrals, and get members to attend and invite people to community events is critical.
Without these processes, you might be wasting one of your best leverage points!
Gym Management Software - Your Cheapest Leverage
On average, PushPress clients save over 40 hours a month, via our built in processes and automations.
If you value your time at $100 per hour, that's about $4,000 in value.
Processes like our Check-In system will end up saving you or your staff over 10 hours a week - and it's never going to be wrong.
If you feel like your Gym Management Software is working against you - not for you, give it another look.
Perhaps you've not aligned your business with the way the software works (or perhaps you need to consider finding a software that better aligns with your business)
