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Outsourcing

As a modern personal trainer there is much more to running your business than just delivering personal training sessions.  A modern fitness professional needs to have a wide range of skills and wear many hats.  These include finances, marketing, web development, SEO, social media and much more.  One of the many lessons I have learnt is you can not do it all and on many occasions there are professionals out there who may be able to do a certain job better than you can!

There are a number of websites that can help you get all those jobs done, but a great deal of personal trainers can be put off by spending a small amount of money on something they may be able to have a go at themselves.  One of the key things to consider is that money spent wisely to off load some of those tasks can help to free you up to focus on driving your business and the tasks that only you can do.

Fiverr (https://uk.fiverr.com/) is a site that has gathered some momentum over the last few years.  This site allows you to post minor jobs to be bid on by people who are willing to carry out the job for a payment of around five pounds.  With such a small average payment, the service received on these sites tends to be lower but it tends to be a good starting point for your first try with the outsourcing of tasks.

The giants of the outsourcing websites are Elance (https://www.elance.com/) and upWork (https://www.upwork.com/), these two sites handle a wide range of possible jobs from having a basic logo designed for a few pounds up to full on website development.  These sites work in a very similar way to Fiverr in that you post a job and then you will get quotes from various providers, but tend to offer a higher quality service at a higher price.

If you require staff then Virtual Staff Finder (http://www.virtualstafffinder.com/) is a great place to look, rather than seeking assistance on a job by job basis you are looking for an assistant who will give you a set number of hours of time as required.  This is a really underestimated way to superdrive your business, allowing you to outsource all those mundane tasks that could be done by a virtual assistant.

If your planning to use any of the above services I would ensure you consider the following:-

  • Be precise about what you want when posting a job, the more information you give, the better the project will turn out and the more accurate the quote will be.
  • Make sure you check out the bidders, profiles contain ratings and normally testimonials for others that have used them. By ensuring you only use rated and proven bidders you will minimise the risk.
  • Do not always go for the cheapest, remember the old saying ‘buy cheap, buy twice’, this can often be case with these kind of services where the less money you pay the lower the quality of the product.
  • Make sure you use an escrow service to keep your funds safe and ensure they are only released once your satisfied with the service you have received.
  • If your happy with a bidder this might be a useful contact you use for on going work, but also help others out in finding them by posts a review and/or rating them.

If your looking to take your business to the next level and are not currently outsourcing all those tasks that do no require you to be effectively done, you really are missing a trick.  This could free up hours in your week and that time could be focused on what you do best in terms of generating income and working on your business.

Tom has been involved in the fitness industry for nearly 20 years. He is a specialist in rehabilitation, exercise referral and helping other fitness professionals to improve their business. He is also involved with course development, teaching, assessing and IQA of a range of training courses. He is always willing to meet other professionals so please do contact him via social media with any questions or just to say hello.

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