Hey, Jeff Sherman here with Fitness Marketer. Today I am going to tell you about how business is a game, and getting rich is a team sport.

Business is a game — no numbers equals no business. So if you are not keeping score it is highly unlikely that you will find a way to win or succeed. Did you know that 50% of small businesses fail the first year and 95% fail within the first five years? The numbers are actually worse than that for small businesses that start up with just the owner and no employees.

Most people start their business without a plan. They just have an idea, run with it and hope something good happens. They have the “build it and they will come” mentality.

That’s exactly what I did a little over 15 years ago. I struggled and worked ten times harder then I needed to just to break even. It wasn’t until I started keeping score that my business actually started making money.

When I say you need to keep score, what I am talking about is all the numbers in your business. You need to know every penny that is coming in and every penny that is going out.

How much money you are spending on each marketing campaign and how much each one is actually making you. Like Joe Polish said “All Marketing Should Be Free, if not, Then Your Marketing Sucks!” What he means by that is if you don’t track where all of your leads are coming from, how do you know if you are wasting your money or not?

You need to know how many new leads are coming in, how many 1 week trials you are getting, how many people you are converting to new members and how many old members are canceling their memberships.

You would be surprised how many trainers and boot camp owners don’t even know how many new members they got this month and how many old members canceled.

Without knowing theses numbers it is impossible to know where the weaknesses in your business are and what systems you need to put in place to fix them.

For example, if you are getting a lot of cancelations then you know you need to work on your retention systems. If you are not getting very many new leads or one week trials then you know you need to work on your marketing and lead generation systems.

I created a simple flow chart that you can download for free (no opt in required) that will show you exactly where the weakness in your business is so you know what you need to do to fix it.

Have you heard the quote “whatever can be measured can be improved?” It’s like telling your clients to fill out a food journal. Without knowing exactly what they are eating it is almost impossible to help them come up with a plan to get them the results they want.

So the bottom line is “Business is a game. No numbers, No Business!”

That one simple lesson took me about 5 years to learn really well and after that my business started to really take off.  If you only learn this one little thing, it will jump start your business by at least 5 years.

The other lesson I want to share with you is how getting rich is a team sport. You see, I used to be the kind of person that likes to figure everything out on their own. I never asked for helped and I never trusted anyone to do it for me.

And I can tell you from experience, that is not a good thing. It cost me a lot of time and my business could be much further along if I would have learned this lesson a long time ago.

Now, the more I surround myself with positive and successful people, hire the right staff to get things done and outsource all the things I suck at, the more money my business makes.

A good quote that I truly believe is that, “Your success will be in direct proportion to, the thoughts that occupy your mind and the people you surround yourself with.” I believe that the people you surround yourself with will control a lot of those thoughts that occupy your mind and that will help determine the amount of success you achieve.

At this point there should be three things as a business owner you should be focusing on. The first is generating new leads, second is making sales, and third is educating yourself on how to generate more leads and make more sales.

I have finally learned that the more I can replace myself, so I can work on the high profit generating things in my business, the more money I make.

The more you can automate and systemize your business, the easier it will be to keep replacing yourself while continuing to grow your business. And that is how getting rich is a team sport.

Leave me a comment below letting me know what you think or if you have any questions, I am more than happy to answer them. Just leave them below so everyone else can learn from them too. Be sure to check out our Fitness Business Automation Workshop, where I’ll personally walk you through every step you need to automate your business from the ground up.

Thanks and talk to you soon,

Jeff Sherman