• The Business of Fitness Podcast

  • Written by: Dan Williams
  • Podcast

The Business of Fitness Podcast

Written by: Dan Williams
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  • Summary

  • Actionable ideas to build your fitness business. Presented by Fitness Business Mentor, Dan Williams.
    2023
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Economics Hygiene & Healthy Living
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Episodes
  • 63: 10 ways to ensure your side hustle idea will make $50k.

    63: 10 ways to ensure your side hustle idea will make $50k.
    Feb 5 2025
    Summary: This episode uncovers the ten key questions every fitness business professional should ask to evaluate their side-hustle ideas, boosting the chances of success while minimising risk. 5 things you’ll learn in this episode: How urgency can determine the immediate success of your fitness side hustle.Why narrowing down your market size can help you attract paying clients faster.How pricing potential and client acquisition costs affect long-term profitability.The importance of creating a unique offer and protecting it from being easily copied.How to test and rank multiple ideas before committing time and resources. You’ve probably got a great idea for a ‘fitness side hustle’. It’s part of your pursuit of multiple income streams as a fitness professional. And I’m all for it. I think it’s a great idea in the health and fitness industry, where the badge of ‘fitnesspreneur’ is displayed proudly. And I know you’ve got no shortage of ideas. I know, because I’m the same. I call them ‘projects’ – side quests from your primary income stream. But all these ideas leads to one big problem… which one to choose? The biggest mistake I see people making when launching a new project is that they simply launch the first half decent idea they think of and try to turn it into a business. But honestly, what are the chances it will work? Out of the thousands and thousands of ideas you’ll have in the next few years, what are the chances that the very first idea will be the one that gives you that financial freedom you’ve always dreamed of? Tiny. The chances are tiny. Just like the chances of throwing a dart at a dartboard and hitting the bullseye on your very first attempt. The best way to hit the bullseye is to throw more darts. Throw 100 darts, and you’ll probably hit the centre with one of them. But what if we could increase the size of the bullseye? What if you could test your business idea before launching it (before even building it) to grow the bullseye and increase the chance of success. What if you could rank the potential of your ideas so you know which ones are most likely to succeed? Well you can, and you can do it by asking ten simple questions before you spend any time or money on turning that idea into a business. In his book, The Personal MBA, Josh Kaufman gives us ten ways to evaluate a market. I’ve adapted these into ten questions a fitness business owner can ask to tip the odds of success in their favour. I’ve spoken about this book before, in an episode of The Business of Fitness Podcast called ‘The only 5 reasons your fitness business is failing‘ (you can also read the article here). Let’s look at these ten questions, and give a few examples from the fitness industry to help to understand how we can apply them. Question 1: Urgency. How urgent is the need for the service you’re providing? If the level of urgency is high, your business will experience success sooner. And for something that’s starting as a side-hustle, immediate success is really important because it gives you the feedback you need to turn this idea into something bigger. A treatment program for diabetes or osteoporosis has a high level of urgency. So does a body transformation program for brides-to-be, or a pre-season sports program. A gym membership catering to general population isn’t as urgent. Question 2: Market size. How big is your potential market? This is an interesting one, because generally speaking, the bigger the market, the more people who will pay you money. But if you make the common mistake of trying to create a service for everyone, you’ll find it’s too general and not actually specific enough to solve a narrow problem and attract paying clients. But you do need to make sure your market is big enough to sustain your idea. Short, high intensity small group exercise classes run at lunch time in the CBD have a large potential market. Those same classes in a small country town don’t. Question 3: Pricing potential. How much are people prepared to pay for your service? So many of the business owners I mentor come to me with business ideas, but they collapse when you actually run the numbers. Many ideas just aren’t financially viable. If people aren’t prepared to pay enough money, the return on effort will be so low that you’re better off trying a different idea. An intensive and all-inclusive exercise, heath and nutrition coaching program in high earning suburbs will attract a high price point. But people will pay a lot loss for an access-based gym membership. Question 4: Cost of client acquisition. What does it cost to acquire new clients? This is a big one. Generally, if your business attracts more customers, it will be successful. But attracting customers will cost you time, money and effort. After school exercise classes on the school’s oval for secondary school students will have a low acquisition cost. On the other hand, trying to ...
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    16 mins
  • 62: How to create a strategic plan for 2025

    62: How to create a strategic plan for 2025
    Jan 25 2025

    Download the 2025 Fitness Business Strategic Plan here.

    In this episode, Dan explores how to review your fitness business for 2024 and strategically plan for a stronger and more successful 2025 using a step-by-step framework and workbook.

    5 Things You’ll Learn in This Episode:
    • How to assess the impact your business has on your life and make adjustments for improvement.
    • A method to align your time usage with your top business priorities and avoid pseudo-productivity.
    • The importance of SWOT analysis and how it identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in your business.
    • How to design a perfect week that balances business success with personal fulfilment.
    • Strategies for pre-empting business challenges through a pre-mortem and using the 4 E’s framework to prioritise ideas.

    Download the 2025 Fitness Business Strategic Plan here.
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    18 mins
  • 61: I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here’s what I learned.

    61: I tracked every minute of work time for a year. Here’s what I learned.
    Jan 13 2025
    Five things you'll learn in this episode: How tracking every minute of work can transform your time management and life quality.The importance of balancing billable and non-billable hours for business and personal success.How to optimise your work schedule for deep, meaningful productivity.Strategies to increase your hourly rate while reducing overall working hours.Why time is your most valuable resource and how to prioritise it effectively. Episode transcript: In 2024 I worked for 1,433 hours and 25 minutes, averaging 27.5 hours a week over six different task types. This is my review of that year of work, and the lessons we can all take from it. But before we talk time, let’s talk about money. Tracking your finances is a non-negotiable for building a financially successful business. You should at least be tracking revenue, expenditure and profit from your business, and business health metrics like number of enquiries, number of new clients, client departures, and overall growth rate. But you know that. And money isn’t the only asset you’re trading in. You’re also trading in time. When your business is young, you’re time rich but money poor – you use your time to earn money. When your business is more mature, you’re money rich but time poor – you should use your money to buy back your time. The management consultant, Peter Drucker, told us, ‘What gets measured, gets managed’, and I wanted to better manage my time – knowing that how I spend my time is a direct influence on the quality of my life. So for every day of 2024, I tracked every minute of work I did. The results were pretty revealing, so I’d like to dig into the numbers. But first, some background info to give you a bit of context to better understand the numbers. First and foremost, I’m a Dad and a Husband. I’ve got two little girls, who in 2024 were four and two. Our four year old was in Kindy three days a week, our two year old is with us full time – with some really valuable support from the grandparents. We’ve never used daycare. My wife is a Director in a very successful Employee Relations and HR Consultancy. I work two full days a week, and two half days. That leaves me with three full days and two half days per week with my kids. Hopefully this bias of my time towards my family will tell you what my values are and where my priorities lie. This arrangement didn’t happen by accident. This is my 19th year as a business owner, and it hasn’t always been so ‘balanced’. In the early years I was working seven days a week. The hard work through my 20s and early 30s is what earned me the freedom I now have. Three years before we were planning to have kids, I intentionally re-engineered my business to ensure I could be the best Dad I could be. I’m now benefitting from that planning. We have a two week holiday every Christmas, and do four two night mini-holidays a year. I also take three ‘deload weeks’ per year, where I don’t do any client facing work, but focus on business development, writing, and any other little ‘non business side projects’ I’ve been thinking about (like writing a series of children’s books to help instil the values we believe are most important in our kids). I do my absolute best to make my time with the girls as intentional as possible. They do organised gymnastics classes, swimming lessons, rock climbing and dance, plus all the other stuff little girls do. I’m proud to be heavily involved in all this. At risk of gender stereotyping, half the week, I’m a ‘stay-at-home-mum’. And I love it. Two of my highlights of 2024 were teaching our four year old to ride a bike, and being in the water for swimming lessons with our two year old. My wife works three days a week, but also works a lot in the evenings. She’s the heart of our family, and is completely and utterly extraordinary as a mum, wife and business person. I currently run three main businesses, with a few side projects here and there. Check out episode 53 of The Business of Fitness Podcast ‘The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses’ to learn about how I manage my businesses and projects. The first business is Range of Motion, a vehicle for my face to face Exercise Physiology and Coaching work. We have a 300sqm facility in Osborne Park, Perth. I work one-on-one with NDIS participants who rebate the cost of their consults through the NDIS. My rate for these is $167 an hour, and I do about five hours of this a week. My Personal Coaching sees me working primarily two or three on one with clients, where I earn $240 an hour for five hours a week. We also had long-term subleases set up with around 15 businesses and sole traders in 2024. The second business is my main source of income, Dan Williams Business Consulting, where I mentor business owners. I cap this service at 30 businesses at a time, and usually have a waiting list. My hourly income here is $280 an hour, though I do spend a lot of time ...
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    28 mins

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