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Mistakes I’ve Made in Business

I have built seven business’s to date, and the road has not always been smooth sailing. This month I want to share with you some of my biggest bloopers – none of which I regret, because it did lead to sharp learning curves and the business model that I am using today which appears to be working for me and my clients!

“Give to Get” Model

I spent the decade from 2012 to 2022 running a little gym called “IntoYou” on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. At it’s height, I employed 7 trainers, and the gym ran from 6am to 8pm with very few breaks during the day. In addition, we ran special programs on the weekend aimed towards getting people outside, moving, exploring, and experiencing different things.

Overwhelmingly, IntoYou was a positive experience for both the clients, the trainers, and myself, with one major error – the model was based on a philosophy that I believed in wholeheartedly: Give to Get.

The idea was I give everything I have – my time, my knowledge, my margins, my space and in return I develop a group of devoted trainers and clients who never leave. It kind-of worked, about half the trainers and clients became devotees, but the cost to me (both financial, emotional, and time) was too high.

Every time just one trainer left, I had to re-invest up to $10,000 of free personal development and continuing education for them. It also costed me several extra hours a week of time, plus the time and expense of finding a new trainer, and vetting them in the first place. They’d stay about a year and just as they were reaching the end of the education I could provide them, they’d pull up stumps and leave again, and I would have to start over with a new trainer (or two) whilst also covering the gaps in the timetable. In addition, there’s an extra trainer running around the Northern Beaches with my intellectual property in their heads, running very profitable businesses off it, with no credit or compensation coming my way – That’s not a good business model!

The give to get kind-of worked for the clients as well, and to this day there’s a cohort of people who still train together, travel together, and walk weekly because of what we did at IntoYou. I will go further into why “give to get” didn’t work as a business principle for clients in more detail in the coming weeks, but suffice to say that looking back, I feel like I sold myself short, and didn’t value my own expertise enough.

Being Ashamed of Making Money – Too Fine Margins.

I am not sure if “ashamed” is the right word here, but I don’t have another to describe how I felt about making money. It came from a place of too much empathy, which I think a lot of women can relate to; when I got to know my clients it was really hard to put my prices up, despite increased cost of living pressures.

At one point I was earning $6 per hour. I would put bundles together for things like run club, include 12-weeks of training, t-shirts, entry fees into the fun run, then run advertising on nothing, and ending the process out-of-pocket. On one of our overseas adventures, the Nepal earthquake occurred 10 days before we left for the trip, and two of the participants demanded their money back, despite knowing it was in Nepal. I had to withdraw about $10,000 from my own mortgage, with no guarantee that I would see the money again. That one worked out quite well because our guide in Nepal was scrupulously honest, and gave me my trip the following year for free, so I didn’t end up as far behind as I may have.

The point being that I did not value my time or services at what they were worth, and I over-valued my client’s time, resources, and money. What I should have done was value myself at a certain dollar amount, then gone and found clients who believed that value was worth it. It is by far the most common mistake I find in my business coaching clients as well – undercharging and over delivering feels almost like an apology for existing in business.

Time to stop!

Not Having a Cancellation Policy…

So big mistake when I started working for myself – I did not have a cancellation policy. As such, if someone cancelled last minute and I couldn’t fill that spot, I wouldn’t get paid.

Here’s the thing about working with people – their lives are more important to them than your life. I know that you feel empathy for your clients, I know you love them like family, but at the end of the day you are an employee, and if they can cancel with no consequence then their day-to-day will take precedence over you.

A cancellation policy is effectively a boundary by which you define what treatment of you and your time is reasonable, and it will be different for everyone. For me, it was 24hrs notice when I did one on one, because I usually could fill a spot within that time and I wasn’t left out of pocket. They would pay my whole fee if they gave me less notice, unless they rescheduled at the same time as cancelling.

For others these terms are too lenient, and you may prefer a 48hr policy, or no option to reschedule, that’s up to you – but if you’re to learn from my mistakes – have a policy!

Now I have been instructed to remind you all that I have a free membership in my Skool. So if you liked this and want more of it, head over here and join for free. You can also earn Continuing Personal Development points with AusActive and NZREPS on my VIP membership, which is 1 hour every month, and all past sessions FREE.

Selling “Packs” or Terms of Personal Training

Anita – Every 10 weeks I had to “resell” our training. Which meant that every 10 weeks, Anita would reassess whether or not she wanted to train. This went okay for about a year, every now and then she would “forget” to renew, and pay for her 10-pack a week or two late.

One day, she was late paying the invoice, we kept training as per usual because she’d always gotten around to it before. She continued training without paying the invoice and eventually after a full 10 weeks, I put my foot down. She left.

At the time I was charging $45 for 30min sessions, I had lost $450 by trainer her for free in the past 10 weeks, as well as the $450 I expected for the next 10. It was a blow, and I never booked a session until the invoice was paid again.

However, this didn’t overcome the fact that a client may wait a week or two before paying their invoice, then they’re out of routine, and it’s easier to ghost you than it is to renew. It’s also a lot of admin following up on these clients that we don’t get paid for.

So I no longer do packs, unless it’s for the NDIS, who’s systems don’t allow for a recurring payment in advance. For everyone else, we do direct debit, they’re deducted on the day of their session or the day or week beforehand, neither the client nor I have to remember to write or pay an invoice, and when they go away or wish to cancel it’s an easy one-step process.

This is another boundary in business. You may be a fairly relaxed invoice payer, or your training business is a hobby and you aren’t doing it for money. In this case it may not be a mistake – just because it was a problem for me, doesn’t mean its a problem for everyone!

Mistakes I’ve Made in Business – Doing the work before getting paid… then not getting paid…

I used to work at a gym where the contract stipulated that every new client got a 4-session “introduction” and we could invoice $125 for that 4-session introduction once they had attended all sessions.

The catch being, all sessions. As we all know, when people are busy, they will often attend one or two sessions, then skip out on the rest, especially when they’re free. These clients cost time to follow up and chase up, they cost the time when they ghost you, and the gym had found a legitimate way to charge a joining fee and NOT pay their trainers – have their cake and eat it.

This same gym had a system with their group fitness instructors, which I think is common in big gyms, where the instructor would take the class, then invoice for it, then get paid the following week. In our contracts, we had to give 2 weeks notice before leaving the gym, and this gym had a practise of not paying invoices of group fitness instructors that were leaving in that two week period.

Now it may be that the gym was unscrupulous. I ran a search on it and it’s no longer a chain, if it does exist then it’s just one gym in Woolongong, but the branding is different so I am not sure if it’s the same owners. What I learned was you never do the work before you get paid, unless you’re prepared not to get paid.

An example of this is more recent, where I did a few promo posts for the gym I work out of on the understanding that I would get a commission on anyone who joined in the period I was posting for. There was a risk, that I understood, that no one would join. There was also a risk that people would join, and I wouldn’t know about it, because the transparency is non existent – I have no access to the gym’s operating platform or app. If the owner decides to be unscrupulous, I probably won’t know, but it was something I went into with eyes wide open, prepared to be burned.

When you’re a sole trader, you are vulnerable to big business, and a lot of us are working out of big-chain gyms. Read your contracts carefully, and negotiate payment in advance wherever possible. As an example, in my first story I would have negotiated payment for the 4-session introduction as soon as the new client was booked in with me, since they’d already paid their joining fee at that stage. At least then I would be paid for the no-show and the follow up!

To finish up this month’s topic – Mistakes I’ve Made in Business, I thought I would touch on what I have done well, how I have managed over 25 years in an industry where trainers last an average of 5 years.

  1. When conflicts emerge, I’ve always looked for the win win win – for the client, for the trainer, and for the employer/business. Rather than saying “no”, I have always paused and come back with a “no, but” and then presented an alternative. For example, “no, there’s no leeway with our 24hr cancellation policy, but if you book now you can make it up”.
  2. Focusing on life improvement rather than a look – recently, in a paper that looked at women who stayed exercising over a long period of time, it showed that when women trained for reasons other than an aesthetic, they were more likely to stick it over the years. Examples include, time to themselves, training for their old lady bodies, mental health reasons, etc. I have always petitioned training to be about how we live, not about how we look, and this meant, for the most part, people stayed.
  3. Asking “would you like to train with me”? So many trainers don’t ask for the sale! This simple question will double your conversions, especially if you’re still doing complimentary sessions. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.
  4. Understanding my clients, current, ex, future, and potential really, really, really well. I’ve done my research, and to this day I am ALWAYS engaged in personal development. I can speak really accurately to the problems women face exercising, and provide sensible solutions to them. Nothing beats a solid business plan with good evidence justifying your decisions.

If you liked this, you might like to join our Bite Sized Business Coaching series here. Each module is just one, simple, actionable, and effective change that you can make in your business to stop wasting time, enhance your earnings, and hit your goals as soon as possible!

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