First off, reminder: this is one of your only chances of the year to join a crew of some of the fitness industry’s most successful gyms AND get personal coaching from Michael Keeler, Pete Dupuis, Ben “the Secret Weapon” Pickard, and yours truly.
To learn more about the Unicorn Society, go HERE.
Now, long time readers know your ol’ pal Mark loooves me some trackin’.
Admittedly, my personal approach is way too extreme and/or flat-out terrifying to many of you. Nonetheless, today I shall share what I’m currently tracking to be sure I’m on path for my goals.
Actual Thing: I’m always a bit embarrassed to share this stuff. Inevitably it leads to eyerolls. So let me reiterate this isn’t prescriptive.
But this strategy has brought me results I’m thrilled with AND joy in the process. So those of you wired with a similar affliction can steal large parts of my system.
And for those of you for whom this is hell on earth? You would benefit from implementing a more modest version.
Personal Self-Care Habits
First up, here’s a list of self-care habits I track on a daily basis, including my targets. I’ve been playing with this for about five years now. Although it’s always evolving, here’s what’s currently working for me as my minimum daily (and in a few cases, weekly) targets:
- Sleep – 7 hrs, 15 min (tracked on Oura ring)
- Meditate – 10 min
- Morning Read – 20 min
- Cardio – 2x per week
- Lifting – 3x per week
- Warm-Up – Done (on workout days)
- Greens Formula – Done
- Water – 80 oz
- Steps – 6000
- Fish Oil/Vitamin D – Done
- Coffee (ounces) – Under 24 oz
- Drinks – Under 3 servings
- Flossing – Done
- Nutrition – At least 2 (ranked from 0-3, highly subjective)
- Gratitude Journaling – Done
The above represent my daily minimums. But a recent uplevel this year is tracking some minimums for my 28-day rolling average (which happily, is easy to automatically tabulate in a spreadsheet).
I don’t do this for all the categories, but for some (sleep, alcohol, steps, etc.) I like to make sure that even with some daily fails here and there, I’m overall trending the right way.
Furthermore, I often have more ambitious targets for the averages than in a given day. For instance, if I enjoy a martini and an IPA on a Saturday night, I’m under my daily minimum. But if I enjoy this combo every night, I’d be averaging over 20 servings of alcohol per week. Which is NOT in line with my personal health goals haha.
The rolling 28-day average provides me with more context and another source of accountability.
NOTE: I also look at my business and personal bank accounts each day to get a feel for cashflow.
Weekly Business Behaviors and Results
Mark Fisher Fitness has been tracking weekly behaviors and results for around 6 years now. Weekly may be too frequent of a pulse depending on the current size of your business. But when feasible, weekly tracking gives a much more up-to-date sense of what’s happening.
After all, if you’re way under your target for leads in a given month, it’s too late to address if you don’t look till the month ends.
Below is our “top level” scorecard. These are the most important metrics that we review each week in our weekly leadership team meeting.
- Total Active Ninjas
- Total HomeBody Memberships
- Total In-Person Class Memberships
- Total Small Group Personal Training Memberships
- New Trial Opt-Ins
- HomeBody Intro Offers Claimed
- In-Person Trial Intro Offers Claimed
- Completed Strategy Sessions
- Strategy Session Conversion Percentage
- Total New Memberships Sold
- HomeBody Churn Percentage
- In-Person Class Churn Percentage
- Small Group Personal Training Churn Percentage
- FitGrid Trainer Feedback Average
Additionally, we track a bunch of other metrics in department scorecards: operations, fitness team, and sales and marketing. This lets me go digging for more data when any of these numbers are off.
Of particular note, the department level scorecards track behaviors (phone calls to lead, hours of continuing education, DM message conversations initiated), not just results. In most cases, these are broken down by individuals, so we have transparency and accountability for performance.
Monthly Business Finance
Each month I carefully review the Profit and Loss statement to see exactly what revenue came in from what offerings, as well as our expenses.
Additionally, I use this to create a high level monthly finance report to share with our leadership team based on the P&L. We have a few different revenue streams, so I split these out to give our team a sense of what’s generating how much income in a given month. But as you see, it’s pretty high level:
- In-Person Classes Revenue
- Small Group Personal Training Revenue
- HomeBody Revenue
- Unicorn Accountability Coaching Revenue
- Snatched in Six Weeks Revenue
- Miscellaneous Revenue
- Expenses
- Profit
- Profit Margin
NOTE: I’ve built custom P&L’s in Xero that do the math for me. This lets me review the P&L with a few different customized groupings or revenue and expenses without needing a calculator.
Monthly Personal Finance
And finally, I have another system for tracking my net income and savings rates.
As a business owner, I have some variance in what goes into my bank account from month-to-month based on distributions. And since my tax returns represent a tax treatment of income, profit, and expense, I find tracking my net income on a monthly basis is a better way of allowing me to see how I’m doing financially from month-to-month and year-to-year.
I break down my income by each of my core revenue streams so I can see what income is coming from what business and in what form (for instance, payroll vs distribution).
As part of this system, I also track my savings rate. I break my savings down into three main buckets of savings:
- Pre-Tax Retirement Investment Accounts
- Post-Tax Brokerage Investment Accounts
- Opportunity Savings Account – Earmarked for real estate, angel investments, market downturns, etc.
This lets me see at a glance what percentage of my total net income is being saved for the future and investing, as well as broken down by each of the three savings/investments categories.
NOTE: I use Personal Capital to review my total net worth. Market fluctuations create a fair amount of volatility from week to week. So I put most of my effort into what I CAN control, which is the percentage of my net income going towards long term investments.
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Let me say it one more time for the people in the back…
I’m not suggesting you track your life the way that I do!!
Having said that, outside of my admittedly extreme daily self-care habit-tracking, you will benefit from some version of weekly and monthly business and finance tracking.
And if you want some help getting this set up in your business?
Read below the signature about a great opportunity to get support from BFU!!
PS This is one of the ONLY times of year that you can enroll in the Unicorn Society.
In addition to our coaching for you (and your team) you get access to our library of on-demand courses, quarterly retreats, bi-weekly group coaching calls, free admittance to Business for Unicorns live courses, and more.
To lock in the best pricing, apply by November 6th.
NOTE: We sold out all spots last enrollment period. And we don’t have an unlimited number for this round as we want to ensure you have personal access to our coaches. So if this sounds like a fit, don’t wait.
Learn more HERE.
PSS Have you checked out my YouTube channel lately?
To see my latest video, click the thumbnail below.
