Business coaching helps gym instructor build a
healthy business …

A true business is a commercial, profitable enterprise that works without you.
- Brad Sugars -

The Business
Name: Fitness Shortly (now Ignite Health Pty Ltd), New South Wales, Australia
Owner: Jamie Short
Business Sector: Health & Fitness

The Challenge
Being self-employed has a certain ring to it that many find appealing.

But running your own show is not a bed of roses. A self-employed person normally starts out with just one employee.
And that suits them fine. There is no one else to worry about, and none of those other people who make all the mistakes, it’s just a single person.

The self-employed person usually trusts no one other than themselves to get the job done. They’ll say things like: “I am my business.” Or, in their sales pitch: “You’ll be dealing directly with me and I’m the owner of the business.” Or, “If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” Or, “Everything is under my control so I know that it’s done right.”

Being self-employed is usually the first jump on the entrepreneurial ladder and for most, it’s the only jump.

In fact, most entrepreneurs never seem to get past this level of growth in their business.

The truth is, you really can’t call this scenario a business; you’ve really got to call it a JOB. And of course, you do know what J-O-B stands for, don’t you? Just Over Broke.

What’s more, this job is most probably one of the worst jobs in the world.

I think this quote puts it best, taken from one of my live seminars: “Most people thought they worked for an idiot BEFORE they started their own business.”

I really don’t think most people who start their own business know what they’re getting themselves into. In fact, most look at it as something glamorous, exciting, and with such a sense of newfound freedom that they’re fooled into believing wealth is just a few days, weeks or months away.

The self-employed person is trapped by the limited “doing” vision that is a part of being an employee. As an example, computer technicians who start their own businesses usually see themselves servicing people’s computers and would be extremely happy if they could get enough business to keep themselves, and only themselves, extremely busy.

This results in your business life feeling just like a see-saw. You’ll spend half your life chasing the work, or doing marketing, sales and administration.

Then you’ll have so much work to do you’ll have to flip over and start doing the work…

Doing the “work” is one side of the see-saw, while “sales and marketing” is the other.

Chase the work, do the work, chase the work, do the work, chase the work, do the work … and so on …

It’s this see-saw that stops a self-employed entrepreneur from ever really getting ahead. It’s also this see-saw that gets self-employed people to make one of two decisions: either give it up and go back and get a job, or take the plunge and jump in at the deep end of business and make the decision to grow their business by moving up the ladder.

This is what Jamie Short did.

This is what he has to say …

Jamie’s Story
I was pretty much a one-man band. I had one guy doing some personal training sessions for me, and that guy was me! I was the technician, manager, owner and entrepreneur all at the same time. The different hats that I was wearing could have filled an entire hat store.

So, what exactly do I do, you may ask? Well, if you ever get up really early, around 5 or 6am, you might see those crazy people running up and down the beach or in the park. Yes, that’s me, encouraging people to get into shape at weird and ungodly times of the day.

I spent the other half of my day running around Sydney training clients at their homes, their offices or at a couple of different gyms. I didn’t have many systems in place at all, and the reality was it was going to be a miracle if I could achieve my goal of owning my own gym in the next 12-months.