Your Business Is As Predictable As An Arcade Game

One of the biggest myths often pushed by fitness business mentors is this idea that you will have a completely predictable business

Particularly when you start out.

Business just doesn’t work that way.

There are going to be times when unpredictable things happen because a key part of coaching (at least in theory, although not always the case in the fitness industry) is coaching.

You are dealing with people.

People are unpredictable.

They have unpredictable things that happen to them.

They respond unpredictably.

And therefore, to say that the whole structure of income in your business can be predictable when all of the moving parts are unpredictable?

Is a lie.

However, you can stack things in your favour.

So the way I see it is, your business is like a 2p machine at an arcade.

If you put 2p in, you are not guaranteed to get a certain amount out.

There is a good chance that you will repeatedly put 2p in and get absolutely nothing back.

However, the more times you put 2p in, the bigger the chance that you are going to have an unexpected (unpredictable) huge influx of work.

As Rory Sutherland often quotes from Nassim Taleb: you want to increase your surface area to positive upside optionality.

More simply, put yourself in more situations where good things can happen to you without increasing the chance that bad things happen to you.

In business, that just means doing more inputs, particularly when you’re starting out.

And so the goal is not to make the output predictable or the outcome, but to make your inputs very predictable.