Understanding the Difference Between Activity and Achievement

If you’re like most trainers or coaches – between training clients and managing your business you are likely working 50, 60, or maybe even 70 hours a week or more.

The problem with most fitness professionals is not a lack of willingness to put in long hours and work hard.

It’s the way they are spending their time.

Most fitness pros are training clients for the bulk of their work day – which is totally fine. But they are also the bookkeeper, janitor (if they own a facility), marketer, and veritable jack-of-all-trades when it comes to running their business. So let’s put some math to the way most trainers spend their time.

If I ask most trainers or coaches what they earn per hour the typical answer is $50-75 per hour. Unfortunately, this is usually not the case.

Where as these trainers may charge $75 per hour for their training sessions, their work day looks more like this:

Training Sessions – 4 hours per day.

Busy work/“Putting out fires” – 3 hours per day.

Wasted time surfing the ‘net or doing other low return on investment activities – 2 hours per day.

Sales or marketing related activities, program design, or doing retention activities – 1 hour per day.

So this fitness pro is “on the job” for 10 hours per day and makes $300 for the day’s work.

Looks to me like that trainer makes $30 per hour – not $75.

Hey, $300 a day is nothing to sneeze at. Five days per week of that is $75,000 per year. That would put you in the top 15% of all earners in the U.S.

But two things come to mind when I see that fact:

1. Most trainers don’t make $75,000 per year. In fact the U.S. average is under $30,000.
2. If you truly can command $75 per hour or more for your time, why aren’t you replacing some of those low return activities with more $75 per hour activities?

So think about your goals.

What is the ratio of time that you spend moving closer to your goals vs. time you spend that doesn’t move you toward them or moves you away from them?

What are you doing to improve that ratio?

Personally, I am frustrated if I go a couple of hours without taking actions (even small ones) that move me closer to my goals, but I know dozens of people who go weeks – sometimes months – without taking even a step toward where they want to be.

Where do you fit into that continuum?

Your goal should be to gradually move toward spending more – and eventually most – of your time on your high return activities and delegating, streamlining, or simply eliminating your low return activities. Think about it… if you spend an hour mowing your lawn, which you could delegate to a neighborhood kid for $10 per hour, and replace that activity with a $75 per hour activity… that’s a net gain of $65 per week or $260 per month. You’ll soon discover that you can do that with a bunch of your activities.

Bookkeeping, website maintenance, cleaning, etc. You can find someone who doesn’t place the same dollar value on their time that you do and delegate that task to them, and then replace that activity with high return activities.

So I have an assignment for you:

Choose at least one item that you can either delegate, streamline, or eliminate from your weekly task list. Act on this item. In a week, choose one more item, and continue to do so week after week until you’ve significantly increased the value of your time.

By Pat Rigsby