The Pros and Cons of an Online Business - Group Exercise

There are many of both and, as I’m sure you can imagine, anyone who has a degree of their business online has experienced them all. I started AMF.world from a place of passion - originally I couldn’t find a single website that had information for group exercise instructors about resistance training, Not properly. There was some wafty references to a few bicep curls but I knew from personal training, a lot of instructors were having to watch bodybuilding content in order to get proper cues and technique information, rather than the lackluster ‘tummies in, shoulders back’ jam that seemed to be all we were allowed to say in group ex. 

So that’s where it all began, and then we decided to add in more stuff - to cover everything that could be taught from the L2 ETM and help instructors use the full breadth of their qualifications rather than constantly paying for license fees. It was fun to create, I love making content and building websites, creating the spreadsheets etc… I just don’t really love the sales side lol. Luckily at first that wasn’t an issue. We had hundreds of instructors sign up within the first few months, assisted greatly I am sure by the fact we went into lockdown 3 months after launch. But that kind of growth just wasn’t sustainable and unfortunately the original website wasn’t particularly stable and I spent most of my money on the web designer trying to stop the whole thing from bugging out. 

Since then I’ve saved A LOT  doing the website myself. It was an agg to set up but it’s so much easier and so much cheaper… and I can update it whenever I want. If something goes wrong, I can fix it without asking if it’s OK to go inside my own back end (as it were). Plus it’s got an app which makes it easier for our Full Fitness Library members to access the content. 

Then there’s all the sales stuff - social media public posts, internal group posts, sales groups, emails out (have just started doing these again now ChatGPT has taken a lot of admin off my hands), events (I don’t really go these days, working on the weekend makes me sad), community building (always a bit harder online than in person) and the time investment… when it’s not actually my full time job, just a part of it. 

These days, I’ve got it down to almost a fine art. One full day and I can have produced and scheduled all the marketing content I need for a whole month that’s around 20 social media posts including reels and graphics, 35 groups posts, emails out. A lot of this is thanks to ChatGPT… I don’t let it write my captions because I think you can tell, but I do ask it to churn out a lot of ideas based on my content pillars and that really helps. 

The great thing about online businesses is that you can do it when you are poorly or injured, and to be honest, that’s kind of what this has turned into, my back up plan. I am very aware that I am lucky not to have been more significantly injured in this line of work and I’d like to know I've got options. Something that is already running and contributes something to my monthly income, but also something that I could dig deeper into and make it a full time hustle when the time is right. Having an online income stream doesn't have to mean you are making a full time switch… it just means it’s paying its way and at some point you might decide to put a bit more time into it.

I love the face to face side of this job, being side by side with my clients and feeling their energy but the big downside with lack of pay when I'm not there means that some of my online bits and bobs are really handy to keep some cash flow happening even when I'm not technically 'working'. 

If you want to find out more about this kind of stuff, come and join me for the EMD webinar on the 17th September… it’s gonna be fun!

Love Anna

xx