How to Enjoy the Full Benefits of Failing in Your Personal Training Business

Failing is a Good Thing - Get Into It

Dear fellow failure

That’s how the truth should read.  Because we all fail, everyday, in so many ways.

Yesterday I failed to be a great father by getting to my daughters school athletics. I failed to complete 10 minutes on a treadmill. I failed to tell my wife I love her.  Generally my day sounds like a total abomination.

That said I did succeed at some things.  Reading the above though – maybe not the most important things! So, why do we fail to do the most important things – is it fate, god, ‘them’, or the most general of all descriptions – life.

It's what we do with failure that matters

I know why I fail. I wonder if you know why you fail?  I wonder whether you even identify that you fail anymore or just feel the weight of ‘not winning’ on you most of the day.  Maybe that’s where blame serves a purpose.  After all, if we didn’t push back and unload ourselves by blaming everything else I’m sure we’d all be crushed before we were adults.

I know what I do with failure.  I wonder if you have an approach that works for you? I wonder if you understand what failure really is and what jewels lie within it.  I’m interested to think of you failing and wriggling under the weight of the dirtiness of it all, not knowing where to go, just feeling the pressure on your skin rather than embracing the closeness failure offers us.

Failure is that lucky experience of being smack up against our current limitations where the possibilities become endless with just a little wriggle of our mind.  Yes, a little wriggle of our mind.

Ever wonder how much it takes to be a millionaire? Ever wonder how much it takes to help hundreds or even thousands of people improve their lives?  Ever wonder how much it takes to be a better father, to attend the athletics, to build to 10 minutes on the treadmill?  To say ‘I love you’ more often?  It’s a wriggle of the mind.

Failing in a nutshell

The same process is at play when we all fail.  Here’s the places it happens;

1. Didn’t decide to do it (or decided not to do it)
2. Didn’t commit to it (or reversed our decision without telling anyone and lied to ourselves)
3. Didn’t work out how to do it (yip, just didn’t learn enough / practise enough before launching into it)
4. Didn’t have the resourcefulness to do it (at the time, didn’t have the time, money, energy)

Ahhh, no you say.  I fail for completely different reasons.  It’s because I don’t … um … what … you don’t know why you fail most often?  I do.

Failed to go to the athletics – decided not to

Failed to complete 10 minutes on the treadmill – didn’t have the resourcefulness

Failed to tell my wife I loved her – didn’t decide to do it

At various times in my life I failed consistently at different stages of this process.  Now I fail mainly because I don’t decide or didn’t work out how.  When I was younger it was that I failed to commit or failed to be resourceful enough.

You can fail and benefit

Regardless of how I fail now I can always work out why and I can always use that to progress – I’m comfortable as all hell with the closeness of failing and what it tells me about me and my situation.  Some time ago I decided because of the jewels in failure that I would make the most progress with an “accelerated mistake making plan”.  That’s right, take lots of action, fail a lot and quickly, set myself up to work out what was going on, then go again.  The only failure I didn’t want is one that I wasn’t ready to learn from or one that would break or limit my resourcefulness entirely (for example bankruptcy).

So why do I want to fail knowingly?  What is it that I cherish about failure?

Failure to me is (three reasons failure is so powerful);

Painful – it gets my attention

Enlightening – it shows me what I need to develop

Stimulating – once I fail at something I have more energy to get it right next time

But, and it’s a big but, failure must be broken down to it’s origin to be useful.  This is the single biggest mistake I see made over and over.  Why?  Because to do this you have to reflect on the failure, feel the pressure and weight of it on your skin, and think through this discomfort.

Most of us simply learn to avoid this positioning.  We would rather shed our skin or push off with blame than embrace the dirt and let it choke deep into our throats as we chew on our poor results.  That’s human, protective, insulated, safe, stagnant, still, festering and lifeless.

Yes, the dark side of failure is denial and blame.  The light side is growth but it takes the taste of fertiliser to get it.  If you are aware of your failings and you feel stuck then get uncomfortable with yourself by writing down all the things you are failing at and how (use points 1-4).

How to extract the maximum benefit from failing at anything

Taste the chicken shit my friends.  Then repeat these three words ‘I am responsible’.

Never make anyone else responsible for a failure you are feeling – it’s so disempowering you might as well give up your opposable thumbs.  If a failure is important enough to get your attention then say ‘I am responsible’ – swallow the muck – then get in to making progress.  Never hand over the keys to your life by blaming others – as soon as you do – you’re literally down the toilet.  Things I’ve been responsible for;

• Hiring a staff member who I paid six figures and stole from me
• Accumulating 130k of unsecured debt and nearly going bankrupt
• Marrying a woman out of comfort (not my current wife you idiots – I love her to pieces)
• Not making 100k in four days because of my greed (contradictory but true)
• Allowing people to waste my time
• Allowing myself to gain 40kg whilst using various excuses

Here’s the blamers list of the same thing

• This guy is so dishonest – how could he steal from me – he should be locked up
• The bank should never have leant me that money
• She lost her spark and we grew apart from me
• No one told me how hard it would be to make that place work
• I have to help these people and meet with them, they won’t do it without me
• Everyone is taking my time for themselves so I suffer – look at my weight

Analysing your failures 101

Getting to the bottom of failure, once you decide (step 1) and commit (step 2) – is just a matter of learning how (step 3) and dedicating some of your time and energy (step 4) to it.  It’s so friggin simple and powerful that it truly is a ‘wriggle of the mind’ to change the results.  So, here’s the how.

1. Take any failure you wish (preferably something fresh and a little bit painful).  Define it as clearly as you can by writing it down – what exactly didn’t you achieve?
2. Think back to when your gut was telling you things weren’t on track. When was that?
3. What didn’t you do at that moment in time – what didn’t you ask, say, insist on, require. This was the point you began to fail.
4. Why didn’t you do that?  Did you decide not to because you were … scared? Did you decide to do it but then it got … hard?  Did it get hard because you didn’t know how or because you didn’t have the energy or time when it was required? This was how you failed.

An example (steps are numbered 1-4 as above);

1. I failed to fire a staff member when I suspected (knew without tangible evidence) they were doing a very poor job and were actively under-mining my business.
2. My gut was telling me things weren’t on track six months earlier.
3. I denied my gut and didn’t investigate by contacting customers, talking to staff around them and requiring them to explain various situations.
4. I didn’t do that because it was awkward to do, things were going well enough anyway and I didn’t have the energy to uncover a bigger mess than I expected.

So, if I were to say ‘I am responsible for paying someone thousands of dollars and accepting them not doing what I paid them to do, and allowing them to influence other staff in a negative way, and allowing them to deflect any poor performance with fiction of various types’.  Wow, what a schmuck I am!

Alright, so now that I have worked out what and why I didn’t do something and now that I’ve taken responsibility (this is the ultimate painful bit giving you energy for next time), I can plan to do better next time.

Claiming the jewels of failure

Primarily within this example I actually failed to decide to do anything.  I realise I needed resources, commitment etc but I really failed to decide that ‘it’s not ok’.  Lesson for me is as follows;

• When I think it’s not okay – it’s not okay.  At that point I should decide to take action.
• Committing to resolving any staff issue quickly and effectively is showing leadership.
• Resolving issues such as this requires discussion of the facts in a face to face setting followed by an email and a plan for the near future including monitoring – that is, the ‘how’ is not actually that hard.
• I have unlimited resources in my business to deal with staff performance as when I don’t it costs the business (and me) more resources than I could ever have spent if I had committed to fixing the issue when I first felt it in my gut.

Uh oh, Personal Trainers fail too!

So, let’s take failure to a more common ground.  Let’s take a failure to approach members in a club and offer them help and support - despite needing to build your Personal Training business.  I’m going to use this example assuming that the Personal Ttrainer has realised that all marketing leads to personal contact anyway and that the ability to approach members in a club will give them a rapid lead generating option and will allow them to fill particular time slots in their diary.

Define the failure – step 1:

This week I have failed to approach 10 members (my goal) and only approached (half-heartedly) one member.

Think back to when it started – step 2:

Even though I nodded and said I’d approach 10 members to my business coach I already knew I was going to do just 1 and see how easy it was.  I had committed to trying but not to succeeding (they are different).

What didn’t you do at that moment – step 3:

I didn’t say I was going to try one and then if it wasn’t easy stop.

Why didn’t you do it – step 4:

I wanted my coach to support and like me, I didn’t want to disappoint them so I said what was expected.  I also didn’t think approaching members on the floor was for me – but I didn’t say that either.  I didn’t think it was for me, therefore I didn’t commit to it, I didn’t really focus on learning the ‘how’ and I definitely wasn’t as resourceful and resilient as I needed to be.

Lessons:

I should be straight up with my business coach because I have wasted my time and theirs with this week of fiction.

I should decide how to generate leads in a way I can decide to do, commit to, learn how  to do, and be resilient enough to carry through.  This will mean my business will always have some leads because I'm actually succeeding at doing a lead generating activity rather than failing at it.

Failure is the fertiliser businesses use to grow

Notice the lessons above are mainly around choosing the right path for the Personal Trainer and likely involve the Personal Trainer adhering to values they already have (like being honest with themselves and others).  It’s not a ‘I need to motivate myself and just do it’ thing.  Very rarely is there only one way to achieve something.

Instead, it’s about making sure you are aware of what you are (or you’re not) deciding to do, what you’ll commit to, what you’ll happily get good at and what you will follow through on given your resourcefulness at any given time.

This is the ‘little wriggle of the mind’.  It’s little because you are moving closer to your own way – you’re getting in tune with you and your setting.  You are failing and taking responsibility – which then gifts you the jewels of learning you need to progress.

What now?

I have given you the ‘how’ to learn from failure.  Will you fail to use this piece of information to your benefit?  Have you decided not to already?  Do you lack the will (resourcefulness)?  Are you happy to fail some more before you learn how to fail effectively?

Dear fellow failure – don’t ever worry – failure is a tide that comes and goes on the ebb and flow of our efforts to learn and succeed.  It’s never too late to pick up from where you last failed.  A rut, after all, is just one wriggle away from progress.

Write down what you are failing to do that's holding your Personal Training Business back. Take responsibility.  Analyse your failures and enjoy prosperity sooner rather than later.  You are the only person who can allow or prevent your own success.  You are in control of what you choose to do or choose not to do.  That is the gift you and I have both been given.