The Business of Fitness Podcast
63: 10 ways to ensure your side hustle idea will make $50k.
Published: 5 February 2025 at 01:59 Europe/London
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Episode notes
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 build relationships with health professionals to refer to your business will drain a lot of your resources.
Question 5: Cost of value delivery. How much does it cost to deliver the service you’re providing?
It doesn’t matter how much people are prepared to pay, if it costs you a lot of money, time or effort to provide a service, your profits will be low.
The overheads of a modern, fully equipped gym with multiple staff are high. Online coaching and programming with well built systems has a very low cost of delivery.
Question 6: Uniqueness of offer. How unique is your idea, and how easy is it to copy your idea?
This is one of the very first things I work on with fitness business owners I mentor. To be successful in business, you either have to be ten times better than your competitors, or you have to be different. And it’s easier to be different than it is to be ten times better. This is called a ‘blue ocean’ strategy. And it’s not enough to be unique, you also need a ‘moat’ around your unique idea to stop other people copying it. I spoke about this ‘blue ocean strategy’ in episode 55 of The Business of Fitness Podcast: ‘The 19 ways to get more gym clients‘ (read the article instead).
A personal trainer who also has a psychology degree and an interest in paediatrics is a unique combination which is hard to replicate. Functional training classes are common, and easy to copy.
Question 7: Speed to market. How long will it take you to build a business that can start earning?
When you’re testing the viability of a side-hustle, time is your biggest enemy. If it takes 12 months for your business to start earning, and it doesn’t work like you hoped, you could have tested a lot of other ideas in that same time.
If you’re already working as a PT, it’s very quick and easy to test partner assisted stretching sessions with your current clientele. But opening a recovery centre is a much bigger time sink.
Question 8: Upfront investment. How much will it cost you to build a business that can start earning?
Most of the business I see that fail financially are due to a big upfront investment before the idea has been properly tested. And that’s really hard to recover from.
Offering online programming for family and friends using a Google spreadsheet has start-up costs of close to $0. Building a custom and state-of-the-art programming app could end up costing tens of thousands.
Question 9: Upsell potential. What is the upsell potential of the idea?
A good way to earn more money from an existing customer base is to identify what related products or services they are already spending their money on – then offering them in-house.
Sports-specific strength and conditioning offers opportunities to sell supplements, equipment and sports psychology services. Exercise classes for over 60s in the local community hall don’t have an many upsell options.
Question 10: Continuing effort. How much ongoing work will this idea require to continue generating income?
We have finite time. Everything we do has an opportunity cost – if we say ‘yes’ to one idea, we’re saying ‘no’ to everything else. So if you enjoy the process of building and testing new ideas, be wary of building a business with a high opportunity cost that chains you down.
Building a system that allows you to make individualised nutritional recommendations take a lot of work up-front, but very little to continue. On the other hand, a full roster of PT clients where you earn a set amount of money per hour requires you to trade your money for time. The only way you can earn is by giving away your time.
So those are the ten questions.
- Urgency: How urgent is the need for the service you’re providing?
- Market Size: How big is your potential market?
- Pricing Potential: How much are people prepared to pay for your service?
- Cost of Client Acquisition: What does it cost to acquire new clients?
- Cost of Value Delivery: How much does it cost to deliver the service you’re providing?
- Uniqueness of Offer: How unique is your idea, and how easy is it to copy your idea?
- Speed to Market: How long will it take you to build a business that can start earning?
- Upfront Investment: How much will it cost you to build a business that can start earning?
- Upsell Potential: What is the upsell potential of the idea?
- Continuing Effort: How much ongoing work will this idea require to continue generating income?
Josh Kaufman, the author of The Personal MBA suggests scoring each question on a scale of 1-10. He says that if the score is 50 or below, move on to a new idea. If the score is between 50 and 75, the idea has potential, but will take a lot of hard work, time, and money. Maybe move on to something a little easier (there are easier ideas out there, find a business you can roll down hill instead of one you have to push uphill). If you score over 75, you might just be on to something. Invest the time into building a minimal viable product to test the idea with a real market.
Being an entrepreneur is so exciting. The ability to be in control of our future and be genuinely in love with the process of creating, testing and building is such a privileged position to be in. Generating ideas will never be your problem. The problem is in deciding which of these ideas to pour our valuable time into.
By spending half an hour asking yourself the questions we’ve explored today, you’re setting yourself up to make sure your next idea is your best idea.
Your action steps:
- Ask yourself the ten questions for your top three current side-hustle ideas.
- Use a scoring system (1-10 for each factor) to test multiple business ideas and focus on the most promising one.
- Build a minimal viable product for the highest scoring idea so you can test it in the real world.
- The four Es. A framework to build fitness businesses. Read the article | Listen to the podcast
- A strategy guide to generating multiple income streams for Fitness Professionals. Read the article
- 8 crazy fitness business models to boost your profits. Read the article | Listen to the podcast
- Ranking the most profitable fitness business models. Read the article | Listen to the podcast
- The True Cost of Running a Fitness Business: Your REAL Hourly Rate. Read the article | Listen to the podcast
Read more of my top articles on innovation.
