THE VALUE IN SPINNING PLATES

newsletter Dec 07, 2023

The Value in Spinning Plates

Once you’re a mile deep, branch out a little.

By Eric Bugera

Depth before breadth in the fitness industry – master one thing before chasing many things.

Once you have established yourself, diversification breeds sustainability.
Multiple well-oiled product and service offerings helps you weather times of feast and famine.

Longevity Breeds Opportunity

The first several years can be very challenging as a new trainer. In this age of online and in-person hybrid offerings, there’s a strong allure to turn over every rock possible. In order to get established (and in some cases, feed yourself), it can be hard to stay committed to just a single product or service. However, until you have mastery over the skills, administration, and business practices to keep you afloat – it’s highly recommended that you do. Once you’ve “gone a mile deep” and refined your craft to the point of sustainability, you can then expand your model and draw greater revenue from multiple sources. These opportunities arise from longevity. Proof of concept that you offer quality services and are reliable enough to warrant commitment.

Breadth Comes Next

Hybridized models in the fitness industry means taking advantage of every access point to a potential client. This can be in-person one-on-on, small group training, classes, educational content, or any other format you can conceive. Going a mile deep doesn’t necessarily mean committing to strictly one-on-one per se, but it does mean committing to a more narrow selection of offers that won’t cannibalize your focus on success on any individual venture. Spreading yourself too thin and diluting your effort is career suicide.

On the contrary, when the time comes to add breadth to your selection of services, you’ll create resilience within your business model. Spending a significant amount of time within the fitness space should establish trends in your mind. Certain times of year there is feast, others, famine. Your ability to market and attract new leads determines your time allocation per service. How long or difficult it is to find one online client versus in person, the amount you charge per unit time, and many other factors come into play when determining where most of your effort should lay. However, a disparity in income per client serviced across different offerings is actually offset by the ease with which they are retained. Client retention is everything, and a diverse array of offerings provides the business cushion to survive times of feast and famine alike.

Losing a single in-person client can hurt, but not as much when it’s buffered by an online roster. A slow month of online training happens. Trends come and go and sometimes you’re not thriving in the online algorithm as much as you’d like. In-person credibility and referrals easily offsets that lost potential revenue. Expanding further (over the years) into education, paid content production, or any other prong of the industry that you can conceptualize is at your fingertips – but only once you’ve created a sustainable primary source of income.

First Things First

Diversification of your product offerings is dependent upon your ability to actually provide a service worth paying for. Select the main source of revenue at the outset of your business and go all in. Get exceptionally good at delivering that one thing and you’ll find overlapping skill sets that help launch future offerings in time. Being a trainer is the centrepiece of the entire discussion, and widespread focus across a massive amount of potential services (while also establishing a business and all of the responsibilities therein) limits your ability to simply gain experience. Once you’ve conquered the first leg of your career, then it becomes appropriate (if not necessary) to diversify. Maintain some order of operations to your career and you’ll outlast the swarms of flavor of the month trainers. It’s difficult to become established without spinning too many plates – but one day, spinning plates becomes one of your biggest assets for career sustainability.

Choose one product or offering to develop mastery around.
Establish all of the necessary business support pillars around that offering.
Use the initial offering as a template for how to then diversify your business.