5 reasons your fitness business needs goals

We are now over half way through 2020 and over the weekend I forced myself to sit down and take a look at the goals that I had set 6 months ago. Certain world events (I’m looking at you Corona) had meant the path I was now travelling on it not the same as it was last year and I needed to readjust my thinking and strategy. Setting goals is one of the most important things you can do to help you thrive, both in business and personally. Without goals you can end up sleep walking through each day and before you know it, 5 years have passed and you haven’t achieved what you wanted to. If you know what you want your life, business or relationships to look like then setting goals is a great way of getting there. Fitness professionals are exceptionally bad at setting business goals. We are great at setting goals for our clients to help them achieve their desired training outcome, but when it comes to our finances and businesses we are awful. So why does you fitness business need goals? Here are my 5 top reasons:

1. You know what you are working towards

Creating goals for your fitness business will give you a really clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you are going to get there. Your fitness business is a vehicle to help you achieve the life you want and just simply writing that dream down on paper can be really powerful. I first did this about 18 months ago for my personal life and businesses. I created a big 5/10 year goal for each and then broke the big goal down into smaller targets. This helped me create some sort of road map of the actions I needed to take to get there. Suddenly the big, scary goal seemed a lot more achievable.

2. You get really clear on your message Setting goals and mapping out how to achieve them will help crystallise the reasons you are doing what you are doing. During the process of setting goals you will be forced to think about why you want to reach a certain income level or number of clients. What difference will it make to you and your wider community if you hit this goal? Why do you want to do this? What is your bigger mission? If you know your mission and your goals you will be able to reach out to and help the right kind of people for the right reasons.

3. You have something measurable to assess your progress against They say that what is measured gets managed. How will you know if you are moving towards your dreams if you have no goal to measure it against? Putting a time frame and a numerical value on things gives you a way of measuring your success. You can see whether you are on track and, with regular reviews, pivot your strategy if you are currently behind where you want to be.

4. Having goals helps with motivation Motivation comes in waves for all of us. It is impossible to be motivated and raring to go all the time but having a goal to work towards will keep you going when motivation is lacking. There will be days where you don’t want to get out of bed, where you are feeling tired and burnt out, but it will be the reminder of your goals that will get you moving again. I’ve experienced this principle the most strongly when trying to save for a house. Every time I was feeling lethargic or down and would want to buy a Costa or takeaway to perk me up, I would ask myself if I wanted the house more than the food. The answer was obvious and it pushed me through that slump.

5. Allows you to celebrate your successes Life can be pretty disappointing sometimes and we all tend to judge our success against arbitrary numbers and our peers. You might see every other Facebook post is an old school friend who has got engaged, had a baby, achieved their PhD or had a promotion and you’re sitting there feeling less successful because of it. Hitting a goal, however small it may be, is a reason to celebrate yourself and your success. You are on your own path and will achieve things in your own timescale. Focusing on what you want to achieve and what is important to you can help drown out some of that noise and pressure that society has put on us and feel validated in your decisions.

What are some of your goals for the rest of the year? How do you plan on achieving them? Drop me a DM or email on chloe@gftcourses.com. I’d love to chat with other motivated fitness pros.

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