Stuck? This Shift Changes Everything

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Once you've been in the Fitness Industry a while, established a client base, and found some sense of security - you might find yourself asking…

"What's next?"

The default answer is: "Go online"

It feels like getting to where you are now required you to follow a well-travelled path with a fairly simple set of principles.

But it feels like that path has come to a dead-end.

You start undulate between being fully booked with clients and then losing a few because you've taken your eye of the ball a little or have become burnt out.

Heck, you might have even got a little bored!

When you boil it down, you feel stuck.

Stuck in a cycle with no sense of how to break it or where to go next.

You need answers.

But there's no single 'right' answer.

So, what you need instead is a reframing of how you think about this problem, so that you can create multiple, and more suitable, solutions.

The One-To-One Mindset Mistake

Most people feel stuck because they only have one frame through which they view the delivery of their service.

For 99% of Coaches, this is 1-1 service delivery.

This makes sense as it is the well-travelled path with a simple set of goals…

• Attract clients

• Deliver great results

• Get fully booked (and stay there!)

This is your foundation.

Your bread and butter.

But what got you here won't get you to where you want to go next…even if you're not sure where you want to go next.

If you continue to see your options only through the frame of 1-1 delivery, you will inherently be limited in the opportunities available.

And even if one of these 1-1 opportunities feel appealing to you, (typically, this is 1-1 Online Coaching) you still end up travelling the same path you've already been on and get stuck.

You rinse and repeat the same cycle you were trying to break out of.

Your progress requires a different approach.

The One-To-Many Approach

Regardless of WHAT you choose to do, you may need to address HOW you do it.

For most, the simplest solution here is to go from one-to-one to one-to-many.

You take your years of knowledge and experience, and share that with a wider audience by building different vehicles for delivering your service.

For a 1-1 PT on a gym floor, this could take several forms…

• Semi-private training

• Group training (larger numbers)

• Workshops - Corporate Wellness & Consultancy

• New Facility - build an environment for one-to-many services

This is a short list for demonstration purposes only - there are many options, especially when we extend them into the online world.

The goal here is simple…

How do I build services that allow me to work in a one-to-many format?

It doesn't mean that ALL your services have to go this way.

Maybe it's just a select few.

But to truly get to the bottom of why Coaches end up feeling stuck, we have to address the underlying issue.

In my opinion, that issue is to do with the mindset they have about HOW they can deliver their service.

Full Disclosure - I still offer 1-1 services. I do 1-1 Business Coaching.

I do this knowing full well that it is limited in its scalability and that is one reason I cap the number of clients I work with for this service.

However, I am also offering Fitness OS as an option for people and this my attempt at taking a 1-1 service and delivering it through a one-to-many vehicle.

I am creating my own path for overcoming the 'scalability' issue I face.

I didn't want to go down the route of doing group coaching for this service.

I felt I wanted to build something different and I was only able to discover a different approach by doing what I'm suggesting you do - alter the way you think about your service delivery.

How To Transition From One-to-One to One-to-Many

Let's get practical and outline some steps for you to consider.

You don't have to make this transition in one big leap.

You also don't have to transition everything.

Here's how I think about the steps involved in making this transition…

1. Apply Constraints

Even if your fully booked with your 1-1 services, my guess is that you haven't yet fully optimised your diary and time, so that your service is delivered across as few hours as possible.

Let's take a quick example to demonstrate the point…

A Personal Trainer might deliver 100 sessions per month and view that as being 'full' - I'm cool with that.

Because they are full, they're busy.

They still do several 10-12 hour days in the week and sometime a little session delivery on the weekend too.

This is a prime example of an unoptimised diary, in my view.

Here's why…

The PT essentially has 25hrs of delivery to do each week.

Accounting for admin time, you could round this up to 30hrs.

Technically, you could do 3 × 10hr days per week and be done.

…But most coaches are still doing 5-6 days per week and long hours.

They need to impose some constraints on their time and their diary.

Sure, they might be available anytime to train people.

But that works against them if they aren't careful.

Instead, a coach at this stage should impose some strict boundaries around their time and when they are available for service delivery.

This will, without doubt, unlock huge pockets of time they currently lose.

With this additional time available, you can think about the next step…

2. Build A New Path

If you don't commit to step one above, this step becomes almost impossible to execute.

You are highly unlikely to successfully build a new arm to your business unless you are committed to setting aside the time required to build it.

One hour here and one hour there won't cut it. You need larger blocks of time where you can dedicate your focus to your 'new' thing.

If you treat it like a side-hustle, that's all it will ever be.

(FYI - that's how most people approach Online Coaching)

Your secret weapon…

The advantage you have here is that you are building something on top of a solid foundation.

You already have a successful service that's generating good revenue each month and providing you the security you need.

This security allows you to take a few extra risks that other can't afford to take.

It also affords you the opportunity to not take shortcuts.

Across 3-4 days per week, your sole focus is on fulfilling that service and maintaining it (for now), giving you the chance to put your focus elsewhere on the other days.

With this foundation in place, you can afford to go all-in on building out your next venture or using the time to try things out and discover what you might want to do next.

I have spoken about the various ways I went about trying out one-to-many business opportunities on a recent Fitness Insights Podcast episode.

I used the time outside of my 1-1 service delivery to try out, and build upon, these ideas.

• Group Training - the time was used for promoting seminars to sell people into the group program and do all the relevant preparation for the service.

• Corporate Wellness - the time was used for networking was businesses, delivering talks to staff, and selling workshop packages to business owners.

• Online Coaching - my time was spent honing my online coaching skills before developing products I could sell, rather than only offering 1-1 coaching.

• Fitness OS - now I use my time away from service delivery to build out the systems that allow Fitness OS to grow into a one-to-many business coaching software/service.

…I've done this numerous times, across numerous service offerings, and each time I've approached in pretty much the same way. It works.

3. Grow & Stop

With your foundation taken care of and the time available to focus on your new venture properly, you are in a position to dedicate 3-6 months of going all-in on that project and seeing what happens.

You might find it's a non-starter.

You might realise it's not the right opportunity for you.

You might find out that it's perfect.

…who knows!?

But by having 10-15hrs per week dedicated to this project, consistently, you will make huge progress on learning whether or not you are heading in the right direction.

If you want to be an Online Coach - this might mean you dedicate 10-15hrs per week for producing the highest quality of content you possibly can and sharing it at a level of consistency you have never managed before.

If you want to do workshops/talks - this might mean you test out 5 different talks to different groups of people and see which ones work best and give the besty opportunity to build into a business.

If you want to completely change lanes - this means you have the time to acquire new skills, develop them, shadow others, and test the waters for whatever your new thing might be.

…and all of this can be done without any immediate return.

You can play the long game and do it properly.

Think about it…

The Online Coach that posts this each week: "I have space for 5 busy men…"

…Is probably rushing it and desperate to just get clients through the door.

Their haste will probably slow them down in the long term.

Whereas, the Coach dedicated to producing high-quality content that changes the way way people feel and improves their lives, they get to focus on creating content and let people come to them.

All of what I have described above is the 'Grow' aspect of this third step.

Here's what I mean by the 'Stop' element of this stage…

With your foundation ticking over nicely and your new project gaining momentum, there will come a time where you have to make a decision to STOP offering the service that had previously been your main offering.

That doesn't mean you sack all your clients and ride off into the sunset.

What it means is that you stop offering it to any new people and, hypothetically speaking, take it 'off the menu'.

For example, I signed up my final 1-1 PT client 5 years ago.

1-1 PT is no longer something I offer.

I still do a small amount but I no longer offer it.

The same will happen with my 1-1 Business Coaching.

The time will come where I no longer offer this option.

I'll keep working with current clients (until they leave) but won't offer it to others.

You transition away from one service being your predominant offering, to something else taking that place, gradually over time.

Sure, you can do it in one hit if you want to.

My experience is that people prefer the steadier route.

(Unless they HAVE to make a quick switch for personal reasons)

Summary…

• Switching from one-to-one to one-to-many (regardless of the service) is the only true way to scale over time.

• Building a new one-to-many offering takes time and that time is created by fully optimising, and applying constraints, to your current service offering.

• You transition away from your old service to your new one by no longer taking on new clients into your old service and using the new offer as your core service offering.

You might not know WHAT your one-to-many service will look like yet - there might be a period of trial-and-error in order for that discovery to reveal itself.

Despite this, one-to-many offerings answer the question of 'HOW' you get past being stuck and unable to scale.

You have the HOW, now your job is to discover the WHAT.

If you want my help in unpicking this topic further and seeing what the next phase of your business may look like, this use THIS FORM to reach out for some help.