Last summer I went on my annual trip to Slovenia to my good friend Marck Gorans gym in Maribor.
This time round I went with my friend Ian Fulton.
He is another coach and gym owner in the area and we share a similar outlook on training and the fitness industry.
We flew to Vienna, drove to Maribor and spent a few days with Marck before returning to Vienna to visit another gym.
We had a great experience at both gyms and we spent alot of time discussing various options and opportunities.
We both liked the idea of running our own fitness holiday, similar to the experience we had in Austria and Slovenia.
When we returned from the trip we exchanged a few messages and decided that we could put on something like this locally.The idea sounded brilliant.
We would get a group of guys down to Ayrshire. We would put them through training sessions, take them hill walking, put on educational workshops and many other things.
We booked the location and dates and everything was looking promising and we were both very excited about delivering something unique.
Despite our enthusiasm, the event didn’t happen. It was a failure. We couldn’t get anyone booked in for it.
Upon reflection, there were a few key reasons as to why this event turned out to be a failure.
We didn’t put a proper plan in place with set goals, deadlines and targets. We had everything in place but we didn’t set goals.
We just hoped that the spaces would fill up organically without putting a proper marketing plan in place.
When it came to marketing and advertising, we didn’t adapt to the different situation.
We used the same strategies that we have used for trying to attract new gym members and PT clients. Despite this being a totally different market.
We didn’t change our habits to allow us to succeed.We thought we knew how to make it work.
We are both fitness coaches, this doesn’t mean we know how to sell and market what was effectively a holiday for people.
We didn’t seek help or advice from someone more qualified and experienced in this area. We thought we could do it on our own without any assistance, which proved to be a big mistake.
We could have learned so much from someone who has done something similar. We could have learned from their mistakes and we missed a massive trick by not doing this.
When I think back on our failures in this specific event, I see many parallels with those who fail in their own personal fitness or fat loss goals.
Many people are enthusiastic about getting fitter and losing fat, but most people don’t put a specific plan in place, set goals, targets and deadlines. They attack the problem like we did the event – freestyling it and hoping that it would be a success.
They want to change but they don’t necessarily do anything to change. We didn’t change our marketing strategies despite wanting a different outcome.
Many people don’t achieve their fitness goals because they think they want to change but their actions suggest otherwise.We are gym owners and fitness coaches, we were trying to put on a weekend holiday.
We should have consulted with an expert in that area. Mechanics, joiners, teachers are not experts in fat loss or fitness training. Invest in a good coach that knows what they’re doing in that field. They will make sure you work towards your goals much more effectively and efficiently that trying to work it out on your own.
This event is still something we both want to put on and despite our failure the first time round, we know that we have learnt a massive amount from this failure that will benefit us for when we attempt it next time.
If you have failed with a fat loss goal before, have you learned from it? I see it all the time – people start a diet, they get some initial success but then they put on all the weight, plus some, but the next time the try and drop some weight they revisit the exact same strategy.
Failures are a part of progress, as long as you can learn from them.
Coach Milligan 