Why a business coach won’t work

Who uses a business coach?

If you’re struggling to get your business booming, you might be considering getting some outside help from a fitness business coach.

Being a small business owner can be tough, especially in the fitness industry. Not necessarily because you’re not a great Personal Trainer – more likely because you’re not a great marketer, graphic designer, website developer, human resources manager, lawyer, business consultant and all of the other hats you need to wear to be “great” in all aspects of your business. Most of us who become a Personal Trainer to help people hate the thought of most of these jobs. Even if you can do some of them to a “great” level, you simply won’t be able to do all of them all the time.

What is a fitness business coach?

A fitness business coach will work with Personal Trainer businesses to try and increase their client base and retention rates. Their coaching skills may have been learned in a classroom or simply from several years of doing it themselves. They charge money to give advice on what the Trainer should do to improve their business. Generally there is no accountability if the advice is followed and no benefit to themselves if the business is successful.

Survivor biased success stories

Have you seen these types of headlines before?

“How Jimmy PT Made $10K With One Phone Call”

“Double Your Income With This One Simple Tip”.

You probably think, “If it worked for them, it must work for me too.” but this is not always the case – because a lot of the success stories are based on survivor bias. What is survivor bias? The logical error of concentrating on the people or things that WERE successful and overlooking those that were NOT, typically because of their lack of visibility. If a business coach has had a 25% success rate, it’s only the successful 25% that are happy to share their success stories and make the coach look great. The 75% that failed certainly don’t want to shout about their failure, because they’re embarrassed and feel bad about their results. This is what some coaches and mentors rely on to fund their businesses.

If you’re so successful, where’s your business?

The biggest questions to ask when it comes to business coaching are:

Q – “If you are so good at knowing how to run a successful fitness business, where is your successful fitness business?”

Q – “Why aren’t you going the route of the most successful big fitness businesses and going into franchising? If you are so confident that your clients would be successful, why not collect a percentage of all their future profits?”

Now we preface this statement by saying that we know and respect many fabulous teachers, however the old adage “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach” – rings true in this scenario. There is a general view that a teacher can get hung-up on the principles of an industry but not actually “do” the very thing they’re teaching. If someone is so successful in the fitness business world, they would have a successful fitness business bringing in their profits, rather than teaching OTHERS how to have a successful business. A business coach generally has no accountability and no benefit to themselves if that business becomes successful, giving them no incentive to ensure success.

Fitness Franchise – a secure investment

With a Franchise, the Franchisor benefits from the franchisees success both directly and indirectly. Firstly the Franchisor collects a percentage of franchisee profits, so the more successful a franchise, the more a franchisor benefits. Secondly, having successful franchisees makes a successful team and builds a strong brand. The Franchisor does want to have unsuccessful franchisees bringing down the team. A franchisor must feel very confident in their ability to help franchisees become successful in order to put their own business on the line and branch into franchising. There is a large amount of accountability, both legally and financially. It’s a much more secure option to invest your money in. Buying a Fitness Franchise means you are buying your own Personal Training small business, but under the umbrella of a big business. As a Fitness Enhancement franchisee it’s still your own business, we’re just building it and your profile as a team under the Fitness Enhancement brand.