Would You Spend 8 Hours Trying To Get A Free Breakfast?

By Chris Fernandez   |  Comments 2

Read Time: (5 Minutes)

As a personal trainer, we can sure do some strange things sometimes.

It’s natural.

In fact it’s human nature really.

The tendency to want to “win”, come out on top or “hunt/scavenge” is built right into our DNA.

To prove that point, I was watching the Super Bowl, America’s premier sporting event, and saw an ad from Denny’s — sadly this ad must have been really successful because they also ran it last year — where the company gives away a free Grand Slam breakfast between the hours of 6 AM and 2 PM on a certain day.

For those of you that might not know, Denny’s is a…ahem…lower end sit down restaurant chain here in the US that is open 24 hours a day and serves minimalist fare of pretty much anything you want with generous portions of unhealthy fat and cholesterol…oh, and the prices are really reasonable — go figure…

Anyway, I was thinking to myself how absolutely ridiculous this idea was (great for marketing of course!) in terms of time management and resources for anyone that would actually waste their time trying to capitalize on this offer.

Think about it for a second.

Are you telling me that most people out there can’t afford the $5 to just go in anytime and buy your own Grand Slam breakfast whenever you want?

That fact that this promotion is so popular that it made it’s way back for another year says a lot about our society and could say even more about YOU if you were even thinking of getting your “free” breakfast!

In fact, if you are even considering taking Denny’s up on this offer, we’ve got some serious work to do!

To eat or not to eat…

Put simply, there’s a whole bigger issue going on here other than the fact that you can pig out on some gross and fatty food that isn’t going to get you any leaner.

Hey, don’t get me wrong, when it’s 2 AM and nothing else is open, Denny’s is a great place to grab an Egg Beater omelet with some dry toast or fruit to satisfy a light night hunger craving without breaking your meal plan, but as a general rule, you want to stay as far away from the grub they offer as humanly possible….No offense of course….

But let’s take it deeper than that.

Some simple math

If you are even thinking about eating this meal, waiting in line for this meal, or feel that a free offer of a five dollar breakfast is worth even one second of your time, your mindset is in the wrong place!

Hey you knew I would take this and turn it into a fitness marketing/mindset lesson somehow right?

Don’t worry though, because it’s OK if at first you thought it would be a great idea and even thought about standing in line for awhile to see if you could be one of the few to get a free breakfast…it’s a natural human instinct to want to “scavenge”, “hunt/gather” and “win”…

Those are basic human instincts and manifest themselves as an underlying need for change and variety in our lives…thus the reason people love gambling, taking risks and doing stupid things at one time or another or “winning” at something, whether it be a card game against a friend, making a shrewd business deal, or closing a personal training client for a higher rate package that leaves you smiling ear to ear.

Sometimes you just wanna come out on top.

I understand that, and it’s OK.

But what isn’t OK is taking this to an extreme and detrimental level.

Here’s what I mean:

Let’s say you  decided to take our good friend Denny’s up on their fantastic offer for a free Grand Slam breakfast from the hours of 6 AM to 2 PM.

Then let’s assume that you managed to find one of the few Denny’s locations (good luck by the way…) where you only had to wait 1 hour for your meal.

So here’s the way this breaks down:

• 1 hour of your time = $60 – $200+ in personal training income

• 1 hour of your time wasted waiting in line at Denny’s for a “free” $5 meal: = (- 55) – (-$195+)

In other words, by doing this seemingly trivial thing and wasting valuable time out of your day for what appears to be a free meal, you are actually LOSING huge amounts of money, not to mention the time lost not growing your fitness business!

It’s time to change your mindset

You know where this is going already I’m sure.

But just in case…

If your mindset as a personal trainer, boot camp instructor or fitness entrepreneur is not yet over this belief that your time just isn’t that precious or valuable, then you need to take a step back, think for a second and realize that time is actually your MOST precious asset.

Once today is gone, it’s gone forever…think about that for a second…

When the sun sets, there is nothing you can do to change what happened, only look towards tomorrow.

That’s a good and bad thing…but especially bad if you waited in line for 2 hours for some stale eggs and bacon.

The moral of the story?

You need to understand the value of time, and how your time really is money.

You need to realize that any time you spend not growing — or at the very least — working in your business is time wasted that you’ll never get back.

Sure, it initially sounds exciting when you think about the prospect of a free breakfast at the expense of a large corporation, but when you step back and think about it, the last laugh is actually on YOU for not realizing that you’ll be losing much more than you’ll be gaining from this endeavor.

Apply that same knowledge and understanding to EVERY single aspect of your fitness business, marketing and mindset and understand that one of the first things you’ll need to do in order to start turning around your business and making more money as a personal trainer, is to simply value your time for the exhaustible resource that it is.

Time = Money…but it also = Your life…

Once it’s gone, you don’t get it back.

Use it wisely.

February 9, 2010