business age

How your business history determines your business future.

In front of me sits a group of graduating PT's. Coming to the end of their program I am asked to deliver a business presentation on the opportunities in the health and fitness industry. As I prepare to deliver our 17 income stream model I look around the room of 80+ graduates knowing that only 4-6 of them will still be working in the industry in two years. As they are sold franchises, more technical workshops and other programs that will deplete their bank accounts and not deliver a single cent in return I feel the industry in a civil war. It seems so many think that a fitness certification is their ticket to developing a business. Why are they getting it so wrong? Who is selling them this information? And are the so called leaders considering the effects this is having on the person we are all trying to help....Mr and Mrs Sickest Generation Ever on average street.

Our industry can learn something that we know from our clients. Consider these case studies.


If we use this same analogy in business, especially to 95% of graduates to courses we start to understand part of the problem is around expectation and rather than training age it is 'business age'. Your business history has to determine your business future in an industry that is dominate by self employed business style models.

Is the lesson for graduating PT's a support program that helps to increase their business knowledge and people skills. In a technical dominated industry it seems we have enough options in this space but would the civil war cease if we could have better support programs. Could we then collectively work with Mr and Mrs Sickest Generation Ever and build a more positive, healthy, happier world by getting us right first!

However this problem is not only linked to graduates. Of the few who battle the health and fitness war are the veterans. The guys and gals out there, neck deep in their financial commitments and busy-ness, always doing what they have always done, yet expecting a different result! Choosing to invest their limited funds into the next big commercial event doing a range of different one hour workshops and choosing a wide variety of topics that very rarely return a cent into their business.
What's the point?
A majority of people enter this industry with a very low business age. They have never run a health and fitness business before, are generally sold a self employed style business and then expect to live in a world where if you are not turning over $100,000 as a minimum per annum you can probably expect to live with Mum and Dad for quite a few years. Even a $100,000 turnover allowing for the accounting allowance of 30% in wages equates to a $30,000 salary, is barely proving enough.

We need to increase the business age of the average graduate and industry in general if we are to stop the civil war we are currently experiencing. With a majority of models relying on business ownership it makes sense that this is where the focus needs to be.

I pick up my microphone, I look at the 80+ graduates, I wonder how do we get that retention number from 4-6 closer to 10. I start to change my delivery, understanding that this is the way of the future if we are really ethical about changing the outcome the next generation of graduates and clients.