Mind Your Own Business

Guest Post: Michael Libercci

Through some very real practical experience Michael Libercci shares his thoughts on paying attention to your business... record keeping is a vital component to any business.

Disconnection Between Planning and Doing

Planning is extremely important to the success of any business after all we have all heard the saying, “Fail to plan means planning to fail”

However, I have found a huge disconnect between planning and doing. Often time we can get so caught up in planning that we don’t DO!



There comes a point when we need to accept our plan as good enough and begin to focus on the DOING!

You must be willing to make the leap of faith if you will that will take you from the planning stage to the doing stage.

Here are a few quick things to remember:

 Planning is important because it provides direction
 Doing is equally as vital because it tests the plan and it is the component that will bring the desired results to your business.

The more you plan and the more you do you will find yourself on the short track

Following Up

The ability to follow up isn’t god given. It simply takes effort. Anyone can improve their follow up skills. Now I’m not one for the complicated. I have seen a dozen or so programs that all promise to help you improve ones follow up skills. However, for me it comes down to just a few quick things:

1. Any time I speak with someone, I want to create a reason to follow up. When I capture their contact info I make some brief notes as to what we talked about and what I want to follow up with.
2. During our conversation ask them when would be a good time to follow up and how would they like me to follow up (phone, email, text)
3. Follow up as scheduled.

Follow up comes down to doing what you said you were going to do.

CHAOS

Who has not had Chaos in their life? Heck often time my clients will describe chaos with a different term “Drama” either way it means disorder and confusion. In business, in your business there are no doubts that you have had chaos. Chaos serves a couple of purposes. It can serve as a destructive force that can destroy your business or it can serve as a catalyst for growth. Every business grows through a cycle of chaos. Think of it this way as you grew from an infant to a toddler, to an adolescent, to a teenager, to an adult your body went through several stages and at each stage there was chaos for example most men out grew their clothes before they could wear them out and they constantly had to be replaced or upgraded. The same will hold true for your business as your business grows you will out grow certain aspects of your business. Perhaps you have too many clients and in order to meet the demand you need to hire another personal trainer. The hiring of a new trainer can create chaos as you try to pass along clients who are emotionally attached to you and/or trying to train the new trainer on how to do business under your business.

This blog/video is far too short to go into detail on chaos, but the point I want you to understand here is that everyone business goes through chaos multiple times as it grows. Your business is no different. The difference comes down to this, do you have a support system in place to help you through the stages of chaos your business will go through?

Residual Income

Trainers if you want to have a successful business you need to come to the realization and the understanding that you business can not be dependent solely upon the monies you bring in.

If your business is solely based on the monies you directly bring in you are limited the growth of your business. After all there are only some many hours in a day, days in a week, weeks in a month, and months in a year. If you want to maximize your earning potential you have to create residual income. You have to have a way to generate income with out your direct involvement. Think about, Bill Gates can not personally create and sell every item his company produces. It’s impossible.

Here is a short list of residual income streams that you can take advantage of:

 Hiring or contracting personal trainers
 Product sales (equipment, supplements, etc)
 Program sales such as wellness programs
 On line training

EXECUTION

The word execution can conjure up a wide variety of thoughts. Today I leave you with two:

• If you can not create a plan to carry out your goals then you will have literally sent you business to the executioner.
• If you can create a plan to carry out your goals then you will have put your but business on the path to success.

I’m sure the vast majority of use would prefer to create a plan that allows us to meet our goals. So with that in mind let me speak to the masses.

If you are interest in gaining 100 new clients over the course of 1 year you would need to do the following:

• Speak with 1,000 prospective clients (this is based on the previous article “NUMBERS”) over the course of 12 months
• That’s 20 prospects per week (I gave you two weeks off for good behavior)
• That’s 4 prospects per day (for an a five day work week)

Do you think you could speak to 4 new prospects each day if you knew it was going to allow you to reach your goal?

Great here’s what you do:

• Take out a sheet of paper
• Create the following columns:
• Name
• Email
• Phone #
• Area of Interest
•  For each day of the week (Monday-Friday) write the numbers 1-4 on the left.

Set a goal right now to meet 4 new prospects everyday.

 I have one more thing to leave you with, did you know if you could grow your business by 10% each month over a 12 month time period you will more than doubled your current business. No joke! Do the math!

NUMBERS

Often times I get questions such as:

• How do I get clients?
• How do I get more people to attend my workshops?
• How do I get more people to attend my classes?

I know when trainers are asking this question they are asking because they have struggled and they are frustrated with their own results.

I know how they feel I have been there.



But the answer is simple “NUMBERS”. If you are looking to attract more clients, workshop and class attendees you need to get you message out in front of as many people as possible.

Yeah, so what kind of numbers are we talking about?

In my experience 10% of the people you reach out to will become a paying customer. So if for example you would like to have:

• 100 new clients then you need to contact 1,000 prospects
• 10 attendees in your workshop then you need to contact 100 prospects
• 25 people in your classes then you need to contact 250 prospects

Get the picture?

So, what you need to do now is set some goals.

• How many clients do you want?
• How many workshop attendees do you want?
• How many people do you want to attend your classes?

Once you set the goal then you can begin the “EXECUTION” process.

As a side note 10% is a reachable number and my experience is based on face to face interactions. With the onset of the social media boom your percentages will drop I would say 1-3% is an obtainable goal.