So you’ve made the decision to venture into an exciting career as a health, wellness or fitness professional. You’ve completed your qualifications or left your 9-to-5 job to venture into business for the first time and are eager to hit the ground running.

Let’s assume, since you’re reading this, you’re thinking of starting your own business (who wants to work for someone else anyway?). No matter what your career path of choice is – massage therapist, personal trainer, chiropractor, physiotherapist, or osteopath – you all have one thing in common. You need the right tools to get your business started. You then need those tools to help you grow and manage your business and time effectively.

Wearing multiple hats as a business owner

When you start a business, you have to wear every hat imaginable. I’ve been a designer, a marketer, a blogger, a receptionist, a salesperson, a bookkeeper, and my own personal assistant.

You’re probably thinking that sounds daunting, overwhelming, and exhausting all-in-one. You’re not alone. It would be for anyone, especially if you’ve never done this before or have left the comforts of your old job and are venturing into business for the first time.

It actually turns out that starting your business by doing every job yourself is pretty darn important. It’s the only way to truly learn what a job requires, what you need to know, and who will be the best person to take over that job for you when the time comes.

"Starting your business by doing every job yourself is pretty darn important. It’s the only way to truly learn what a job requires, what you need to know, and who will be the best person to take over that job for you when the time comes"

The reality is that the majority of you will start out as a sole trader. You won’t have an endless supply of cash to hire staff straight off the bat. Some of you may not be the slightest bit interested in growing your business beyond just you, and that’s okay. For others, you’ll have to slowly grow your business to the point where you can afford to hire staff to take over those roles that you no longer want or have time to do. Until then, you’ll simply have to juggle multiple roles and figure out how you do that alongside building your customer base, working and making money – the reason you gained qualifications in your field and started your business in the first place! 

It’s because of this that you need to leverage tools in your business that will make juggling multiple roles easier and far more enjoyable.

Achieving a healthy work-life balance

It doesn’t have to be hard straight from the word go. I really mean that. Yeah, you have to work super hard to get your business off the ground so it has some chance of success, but just because you’re a startup doesn’t mean you can’t have a healthy work-life balance. At least if you want to stay sane anyway! Starting a business shouldn’t mean going grey before your time.

"Starting a business shouldn’t mean going grey before your time"

When it comes down to it, we all choose to venture down the path of self-employment to have:

  1. More freedom to live life;
  2. More money;
  3. More time to spend with family and friends;
  4. Less stress; and
  5. More control over your future.

It’s ironic really, because more often than not, the result is quite the opposite for most health, wellness and fitness professionals. For those unlucky ones, self-employment results in less freedom, less time, less money and more stress. I guarantee you, those people aren’t managing their time effectively to allow for maximum productivity throughout the day, they aren’t using software to automate daily tedious tasks and manage their bookings, and they aren’t juggling their roles to the best of their abilities. 

When it comes to balancing work and life, be sure to build downtime into your busy schedule to make time for family and friends. Having something to look forward to each week gives you that extra incentive to manage your time well so you don’t have to cancel. It’s also good to reward yourself for all the hard work you’ve put in that week.

Try waking up a few hours earlier before you start work. It’s easy to get up, get stuck straight into your business and work 10-15 hours a day. Waking up a few hours earlier will result in a more productive and peaceful workday. You’ll be more energised and you’ll notice the difference.

When it comes to your business, that’s where you need the right tools to help grow and manage your business so it skyrockets to success.

What if I told you that we could make your life a little easier by giving you the tools to manage your business more efficiently? That we could automate some of those repetitive tasks and save you hours in your day, giving you more time to live life – even as a startup? And what if I told you that you could waste less time chasing up customers, phone tagging and booking appointments by replacing that with software that acts as your virtual receptionist? That’s where Mystro can help.

Use Mystro to fuel your startup business engine

One of the things I love about Mystro is how perfect it is for startup businesses in particular. Like fuel is needed to start an engine, using a tool like Mystro in your business could mean the difference between getting your business engine started and making it from A to B (success) as opposed to not having enough fuel to start your engine and never actually making it to point B (failure).

As well as providing those fresh to the industry or small business world with the right tools, Mystro does an awesome job at helping you look professional without all the added expense.

Here’s a few ways Mystro can help your startup business:

  • Store your customers as you grow your customer base - As you grow your customer base, it’s important you have the right tools to keep track of and manage your customer database. As a health, wellness or fitness professional, you’ll know how important it is to keep certain information about your customers like their personal and contact details, notes, medical history, health history forms, and their progress. Having an easy-to-use CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that can collect and store all of this information for you is key.
  • Super simple scheduling - For your business to succeed your schedule must be filled with bookings. Mystro’s scheduling calendar makes it super simple to create, edit and cancel bookings. You can also create repeats and reschedule bookings with ease.
  • Automated Invoicing - Let’s face it, invoicing is a pain. Time spent creating and sending invoices is better spent focussing on your customers. Many health, wellness and fitness business owners still create their invoices manually in Excel or Word. The last thing you’ll want to do at the end of a long day is create and send invoices for every appointment you did that day. It’s a tedious, time consuming task that, quite frankly, you don’t need to give yourself the hassle of doing. Instead, have peace of mind knowing you can automatically generate invoices directly from the booking in Mystro, ready for you to email to your customers. Now that’s time saving at its best!
  • Automated SMS and email booking notifications - It’s important you get the most out of every booking and booking notifications will help you do just that. Sure, you can spend a few hours at the end of every day sending out notifications and reminders for tomorrow’s bookings, but why would you when can use software that does it for you? Mystro automatically handles the sending of booking notifications so you don’t have to, freeing up more time in your day so you waste no time phone tagging and chasing up customers. You can choose the types of notifications that are sent from booking confirmations, changes, reminders, and cancellations. Mystro can also automatically remind your customers of upcoming bookings. Not only will you reduce the risk of no-shows, your business will thrive because of it.
  • Get a daily agenda of bookings straight to your inbox - Send a daily agenda to get an overview of your upcoming bookings without even needing to look at your schedule. You’ll know where you need to be, at what time, the service you’ll be conducting, and who for.
  • Accept credit card payments online - As a startup business, the easier it is for customers to pay you, the quicker you’ll get paid. You can connect a payment gateway to process credit card payments online directly in Mystro. This means you don’t have to go out and commit to a payment facility and the dreaded monthly costs that come with it! If you accept offline forms of payment like cash, you can record those payments on invoices, too.
  • Use Mystro free for up to 10 customers We understand that you’ll want to keep your costs and overheads as low as possible when starting a business. That’s why we let you use Mystro free for up to 10 customers while you’re working on building your customer base. Once you reach this limit, you won’t have to pay an arm and a leg to keep using Mystro as we’ve made it super affordable. Just check out our pricing to find out for yourself!
  • Help & Support If starting a business isn’t daunting enough, learning how to use new software can be just as daunting. Mystro Help & Support includes step-by-step guides and how-to articles, forum discussions, support ticketing and live chat where our team are on hand to answer any questions you have along the way. Introducing software into your business shouldn’t make things more confusing for you, so we’ve tried to simplify the process as best we can.

Advice from one business owner to another

Don’t let your fears get in the way of starting a business. Everyone’s business has the potential to be successful, as long as you have the determination and persistence to get there. Don’t forget, patience is a key element of success. While there will be times you may find it tough, it’s a fun ride, so let yourself enjoy it!

"Patience is a key element of success."

Another bit of advice is to never stop learning. It should be your aim to soak up every bit of information you can get your hands on. Learn from industry influencers, learn from others that have built a similar business, and learn from anyone else that once walked in your shoes and is now successful. This will allow you to grow as a business owner and be more confident. Learning from the experiences and mistakes of others will be valuable to you and your business.

"Learning from the experiences and mistakes of others will be valuable to you and your business."

Final note

I hope this article has provided some insight for new and upcoming business owners in the health, wellness and fitness industries who are thinking about starting or recently started a new business.

I also hope it’s enlightened anyone who perhaps didn’t plan on going into business. Whether that’s because you don’t see yourself as the business type, or maybe you’d prefer to gain a little experience working for someone else first before venturing out on your own. Business isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but with the help of Mystro and the information we’ll be giving you, this will certainly help you on your journey to success if you decide to venture down this path.

Have Your Say

Have you made the decision to start your own business? Has this article inspired you to get on the startup bandwagon instead of working for someone else? If you’re already running a business, what advice can you provide to others that are just starting out? Leave your comments below.

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