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Building a Six Figure Boot Camp Business That’s Easy & Fun To Run

Building a Six Figure Boot Camp Business
That’s Easy & Fun To Run

 

 

 

You can’t just start a boot camp any more and automatically have 20-30 new clients ready to start training with you.

 

Several years ago it was possible to open up a time slot or two in park or rec center, do a little bit of marketing to get the word out and have 20+ prospects waiting to sign up for $149-199/mo.

 

Trouble is a lot of people started catching on to this lucrative business model and over crowded the market and brought down the perception of boot camp because they didn’t deliver a great service (or results). 

 

They turned something great into a glorified group exercise class you find at most big box gyms. 

 

So, you started to see a shift into group personal training, large group personal training, etc.  The top trainers recognized that they needed to separate themselves from the competition so they started calling what they offered something different.
It worked for some and others didn’t have the success they hoped for.  Now you need to be able to run a great business if you want to stand out and have a business that’s easy and fun to run.

Boot camps are still a viable business model and they allow you to impact a lot of people while providing you with a great income. 

 

If you want to have a six or multiple six figure boot camp business you need to have a strategy for getting there that will outsmart the competition.  

Once you have the strategy in place you can deploy any number of tactics to help you make it easy to run and fun at the same time. 

 

So, what’s the strategy you need to follow if you want to build the elusive easy, fun six figure boot camp?

Start With The End In Mind

If you don’t know why you’re doing something, the purpose behind it, it’s nearly impossible to get there.  

 

Having a long term vision for your business helps you create a short term action plan that gives you purpose.  When you have purpose you’re more motivated to take action.

 

Start by describing what you want your business to look like 3 years from now.  Imagine writing an article about your business that’s going to be featured in your local paper or even something like Inc.

 

Tell the story of your business.  How many clients do you have?  How many team members?  Locations?  What are your values?  What impact do you have the community?   How are you innovating?

 

You don’t have to figure out how you’ll get there just yet.  But, you need a clear picture of what it looks like when you arrive.

 

Develop Your Marketing Strategy

If you’re going to grow your boot camp to six figures and beyond you’ll need a strategy to acquire new clients. 

 

Here’s where a lot of boot camp owners go wrong!  They deploy tactics with no consideration of an overall strategy.

 

Tactics are things like referrals, bring a friend days, FB marketing and joint ventures.  

They all work, but you need to know what you’re trying to accomplish and have a clear plan of attack before implementing these tactics. 

 

A good business owner will understand their strategy and be great at implementing the right tactical methods to get them to their goals.

 

To start with your strategy let’s look at what you need to define:

  1. Your Core Offer – what are you building your business around?
  2. Your Ideal Client – who are you building around?
  3. Your Local Market Positioning™ – why they should choose you?

 

Once you have this the next step is to figure out what you’re trying to accomplish with your marketing.  Defining the objectives of a marketing plan will help you create the right tactical plan to get the results you want.

Did you know that only about 3% of customers are ready to buy right now? 

That means that for every 100 people who see your ads, fliers, social media posts and hear about you from your clients only 3 are ready to buy from you today.

But, what if you could educate and persuade those others?

 

Here are some sample objectives you can accomplish:

  • Get people to trust you and your business
  • Build credibility within the community
  • Educate the market why they need to work with us
  • Refer new business
  • Gain respect
  • Overcome price objections
  • Gain influence
  • Build urgency

 

Once you’ve created at least 3-5 objectives for your marketing plan it’s time to develop it.
Most fit pros get a majority of their leads from word of mouth marketing or referrals. And while you need that in your arsenal of marketing tactics it’s way too passive to grow an easy to run and fun business. 

Because you’ll constantly be worried about getting referrals 🙂

 

If you choose to use an education based marketing approach you’ll be creating content that you can use to educate your target market that simultaneously sells your services.

 

Determine what the biggest pain points are for your target market (this is why you need an Ideal Client profile) and create articles, videos and workshops covering these topics.
For most boot camps the primary goal for your clients is weight loss.  Knowing that fact what are the biggest concerns for someone that’s trying to lose weight but hasn’t had success?

 

Here’s a few ideas for content:

  • How to eat if you want to lose 20lbs without following a strict diet
  • How to get results with 30 minute workouts
  • Eating Habits For a Lean Body

 

You know what your target market struggles with and you know the research for how to get the best results.

 

Creating education based marketing on these topics covering their biggest challenges will not only attract the other 97% (remember only 3% are ready to buy now) but it will also position you as the expert.

Once you’ve completed your education based marketing you can offer a solution for the biggest problem that your audience is facing.  This is where you make your offer to some type of intro offer to start your boot camp.

 

Taking an education based marketing approach allows you to accomplish your primary marketing objectives. 

If you’re stuck on tactical methods to get this strategy out to your audience here’s a quick list:

  • Free e-books
  • Workshops
  • Seminars
  • Lunch and Learns
  • Videos
  • Blog Posts
  • Email Marketing
  • Public Speaking
  • Joint Ventures
  • FB Marketing (ads to your videos/workshops/etc)
  • Networking

 

Plus, when you educate your clients in your marketing they are more likely to refer their friends.  And because you’ve educated them they know exactly what to say.

Create Simple Systems

An easy and fun business doesn’t require you to do every single task.  That actually sounds like a hard, lame business to run.

 

If you’re just starting out there’s going to be a short period where you’ll have to do it all.  As long as the goal is to get non-revenue producing tasks off your plate as quickly as you can afford to that’s okay.

 

You need to create systems for the following:

  • Lead Generation (marketing) Systems
  • Conversion (sales) Systems
  • Training Systems
  • Customer Service Systems
  • Billing Systems
  • Accounting Systems
  • Human Resources Systems
  • Facility Management Systems

 

When creating your systems make sure you keep the 80/20 rule in mind.  Knowing that 20% of your activities will produce 80% of your results will keep you focused on documenting the most important activities in your systems.
The rest can be up to the person completing the system.  If you get all your systems to 80% and you hire the right people they can take it the rest of the way.

 

Hire the right people

Now that you’ve got your systems in place it’s time to look at hiring or outsourcing some of your tasks.

The first hires in your business should be a great accountant, a solid bookkeeper and a superstar admin. 

Unless you love staying up to date with tax code and spending countless hours getting your P&L ready a great accountant will save you tons of time and lots of money.

 

You want your accountant to do more than end of year tax prep.  You want them doing your monthly P&L, cash flow statements and balance sheets.  It’s also critical as your grow to have them help with tax planning so you don’t get behind or surprised with a huge amount to pay at the end of the year that you didn’t expect.
A bookkeeper will help you manage your expenses and work with your accountant to make sure everything is tracked correctly.  My bookkeeper provided me with an accounts receivable and accounts payable report each week and I’d tell them what to pay and what to hold off on for our bills based on due dates and the cash we had available.
Hiring a bookkeeper saved me 2 hours a week doing stuff I hated!

 

Next you can look at hiring an admin to take on some of the work you’re doing that’s not revenue producing.  Training, marketing and sales can stay on your plate for now but everything else if fair game to delegate to an admin.

 

Hiring trainers is a great idea once you have these other areas covered.  That’s a tougher position to fill and requires more training on your part, which is why you do it after the other three.
Having an accountant, bookkeeper and admin frees up your time to train your trainer on your systems.

 

Know your numbers

Successful businesses don’t guess.  They use data and information to make educated decisions. 
That’s why you need to know your numbers.  Tracking and reviewing a few numbers in your business will help you identify issues before they become a problem and help you make key decisions.

 

You need to be tracking the following weekly:

  • Leads
  • New Front End Offer Clients (people on your low barrier to entry offer)
  • New Core Offer Clients (those signed up for your membership)
  • Retention Rate

 

The following need to be tracked monthly:

  • Operating Margin
  • Autopay to Expense Ratio
  • Closing Rate
  • Growth Rate

If you can get this info you’ll be able to manage the health of your business and make better decisions on a weekly basis. 

 

It’s not always fun setting things up so that you can get these numbers but it’s well worth it once you have it. 

Wrap Up

You’ll be able to create a six figure strategy for your boot camp by getting this in place.  Don’t worry if you don’t have it all right now, or even if you don’t have any of it. 

Start by making one of these a priority to get in place this month and then add a new one each month until they are all in place.

 

Not only will you be able to grow your boot camp to six or multiple six figures quickly, but your business will be more fun and a lot easier to run.

 

If you want an indepth FREE training on building a six figure fitness business make sure you register for our Six Figure Business Blueprint.

 

FREE Video And PDF==> Get Your Six Figure Business Blueprint Here

 

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