Attempting the Slowlane before Fastlane?

[glenn shelford]

Would you say this is a good way to get an experience at business?
(Warning: this post will be more of a mental fart, and as i'm feeling conflicted would like some opinions please)

I got let go from my job in the fitness industry at the end of March. This resulted in me setting up my own personal training business, which i have also started running as bootcamps.

The bootcamps have gone well, and in the last 2 months i have increased my bootcamps to 6 per week and am delivering around 10 hours per week personal training.

My business is going well, i charge £30 an hour for the personal training, and the bootcamps are generally earning around £40 per session also. Now my days are quite split up, and i'm struggling for things to do in the daytime.

For example, one week i may deliver 16 hours of work a week. The next may be 8 per week, this obviously affects my income massively, and i'm feeling optimistic as hell, yet sceptical at the same time!
Due i think to wanting to outsource some of the classes, and have me pay other trainers to deliver sessions under my company. I am finding myself increasingly broadening my horizons and finding new ways to build revenue, and also becoming more organised from this working for myself. Having to think about my own profit/ loss. how to advertise etc.

However, i cannot shake this feeling that i want to accomplish online business and make this my main source of income. I have been consuming various books and podcasts for almost 4 years on online business. But have yet to find my fastlane vehicle! I have tried a couple of times with ideas, and have a few now and this is by far not the most important or urgent problem i have seen on here. but i would like to get some other people's opinion to help me make an intelligent decision...

My thinking is this... Build this business up until i have sufficient income from it to get a good living? ( i have never earnt more than £1500 a month, but wont be able to earn much more than this just by working for myself)

Or to TRY and multi task between a business that im really enjoying doing but has a few snags, and a potential idea that hasnt hit me yet!

 

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[Gruby Phil]

IMHO you are not in a bad situation at all. 30-40 pounds per hour is pretty good money and should be enough for you to live.
Here is a problem though: from what I read in your post I got the feeling that you are waiting for some kind of magical online business idea to as you said 'hit you'. Your perception is wrong.
For example: you are in a fitness industry. This is HUUGE industry! Do you currently see any problems, needs in that field that you could find solution for? Maybe some equipment that would make practicing easier? Maybe supplements? E-commerce with healthy diet products? Of course this is all just from the top of my head and by no means I want to tell you that you should only seek in fitness industry.
The point is: don't wait for an idea to strike you. Be active: look for pain, problems, find a need and idea will present itself.

 

[RBefort]

Anything useful is a good way to start a business. You don't have to look for a 100m/yr idea (which I forget myself a lot of times). Get your feet wet, learn what works/what doesn't, and then scale or move onto another idea. You are right, however. You have control over yourself because it is your business, but it will be hard to scale without hiring more people (you can only serve so many people a day yourself, which limits your scalability). I would probably either figure out how you can get yourself away from being the center of the business, or just do for awhile and test different things that may be useful for another idea. Nothing wrong with that. Hell, maybe you just want to cover basic needs through this business, then spend your free time working on that idea. Nothing wrong with that. if you are going to go hardcore and try to scale this business, I wouldn't jump between ideas. That doesn't really make sense. But there are plenty of things you can do in fitness industry, as well as the above who mentioned finding pain points. Create you tube channel, post vids, blog, write articles, etc. Look at sixpack shortcuts. Guy is ridiculous!

 

[glenn shelford]

both replies contain excellent advice so thank you for those! you are completely right that fitness is a massive industry, and theres a lot of scaling that can be done with the right need. i feel like i can be doing more with my times is the main thing, and am not completely sure of best way to be using it. this will be just down to the lack of priorities, and my lack of knowing what will bring in the most revenue immediately!

as a question for the guys who work 12-16 hours per day... how do you do it? I dont mean staying focused that long, i mean with having stuff to do constantly for that amount of time, i'd like to be growing my business to that extent but cant seem to find things to do!

Thanks

 

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[yveskleinsky]

Seems to me you have discovered a need (people are willing to pay for it.) Now you just need to start working on your business instead of in your business. Write out some job descriptions for what you do and consider hiring others to do that so you can grow and work on others areas of your biz.