Fitness Business School – Adapting for Success

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in this episode. I wanna talk with you about adapting for success. Let’s get to it.

Welcome to the Fitness Business School podcast, the show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen till the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

One of the cool things that has been able to happen over the time that I have been in the fitness industry, which now is, you know, at this 20 year mark in the commercial side of the fitness industry. And you know, I mean, I got my first certification when I was 20, and so I am fast approaching 51 as we’re
recording this. So it’s been a long time, but I’ve been interested and loosely involved. And then, you know, still a pretty long time that I’ve been heavily involved and, you know, I’ve seen people’s kind of business life cycle.

I’ve seen people who were kind of, you know, the leaders in their respective market at one point, and then some of them just kept growing and kept thriving, and then others didn’t adapt. And I saw some people who just kinda were, um, you know, they, they were okay. They did, they did fair, but then before you know it, they adapted and they kind of cracked the code and they did, did great. I remember having my, my first kind of coaching community, the trainer’s inner circle, and then, um, acquired ownership to, to partner with Ryan Lee to launch the, you know, to launch personal training university or to take over personal trainer university. So those were really the first couple opportunities where I saw a broad spectrum of people, like hundreds of people at once. And I remember going to
early live events like the Ryan Lee bootcamps and some of those things.

And, you know, there were plenty of people back then, and even six, seven years ago that were just thriving, man. They were opening up multiple locations or they were doing 50, 75, even some, you know, a hundred grand a month. And then they didn’t adapt to the changing landscape. And yeah, some, some people had tougher circumstances during the pandemic than others, but, you know, that certainly doesn’t explain all of them. And then on the flip side, I saw
some people who just kind of plotted along for years and then kind of cracked the code and man, they’re thriving. And, you know, for me, watching the, the differences, seeing the patterns, seeing the trends, the obvious thing that has stood out is the people who adapted and evolved have been the
people who thrived, the people who did not, the people who kind of got married to what got them there.

They struggled because, let’s face it, the market keeps changing. Consumer preferences keep changing. It doesn’t mean that the consumer themselves changes a whole lot, though they do change a little. Um, there’s always gonna be this demand for us helping people pursue their goals and solve their
problems. There’s always gonna be that, but the way people believe is the best way to solve those problems and achieve their goals may, may evolve a little bit. The consumer’s knowledge and background and experience is different now than it would’ve been back then. There are a whole lot
more people that have been a member of some sort of coaching led business, um, or instructor led business than there were when I first started this. And so the what, you know, the way they’re gonna make their decisions, what they feel like is important, all those things have changed a little bit.

I kind of liken it to back when I was a college baseball coach, recruiting true freshman or, you know, incoming freshman versus recruiting transfers. The transfers had a much clearer landscape, um, in their background of what college baseball was like. Whereas the, um, the incoming freshmen, you know, they
kind of were hung up on shiny object stuff. And so it’s just different. And so if you’re not evolving, then you know, there’s not only gonna be some missed opportunity, but there’s probably gonna be some regression. I know for us, w we had a wonderful coaching program, um, that was kind of a, an
in between called, um, fitness Lead Academy, which we’ve recently evolved into. Something kind of merged into something completely different. But, you know, for a couple years it was the market leader in our industry for this, you know, done with you solution to online advertising.

You know, there were basically some low cost under a hundred dollars courses where you could learn to figure it out yourself, or there were agencies that at the time, in many cases were investment prohibitive to a lot of people. And so we came up with a solution where we had Scott Rawcliffe, who’s,
um, the guy that runs my ads. He’s great at the ad side of things. Well, we had him kind of pulling back the curtain on what he does. We shared plenty of templates and examples, and we coached people, guided people through running their own stuff, ads, lead magnets, um, funnels,
follow up campaigns, all that. We provided that, and that business really grew significantly. It did really, really well. But then over time, the market evolved. Um, the, the market became different. And heck, I can’t scroll through my newsfeed without seeing some agency willing to run ads for free as
their front end offer.

Now, admittedly, there’s nothing free about it, and that’s the offer, but, um, it, it’s a lot like the old lose 20 and six thing that, you know, Hey, it’s free, but it’s not free. Well, so, so that that offer and that gap that people perceived, uh, as a big need isn’t, um, what it once was. Now for us, we’ve decided that
there, there was a better opportunity to go out there and, and create a comprehensive system that was like an all-in-one marketing platform where there’s, uh, you know, a marketing software side of things to do the, you know, the, the landing pages, the funnels, the, the text campaigns, the review campaigns,
the, the email marketing, all of it which is not unique to us. There, there are a number of software solutions. But then the second piece was we’d provide all the, the posts, the emails, the copy, the funnels, the campaigns.

So really it, it’s, you know, a few clicks, maybe a little bit of customization, almost mad lib style where you just fill in the blanks and you’ve got your marketing engine built for a fraction of what it would cost to go to, um, a designer really for what it would cost to go to, uh, a really inexpensive option on Fiverr to
get one page done. You can get our entire marketing engine. And, and that was how we decided to evolve, because that’s where we felt like the market was still in need of a solution. You know, they, you know, they may have been able to figure out, Hey, I can run a lead ad or something. Um, or, you
know, there are these other solutions out there that promise something that even in some cases it may not be fully accurate, you know, this, Hey, we’ll run your ads for free thing.

But you know, there, there was still an opportunity. How can we simplify the marketing for people? How can we make it turnkey? How can we allow people to focus on the things that they enjoy doing? How can we, um, allow them to spend less time on tasks that may be outta their comfort zone? And how can
we save them money? So if you are not looking for opportunities to adapt and evolve, you’re gonna get stuck with an antiquated model, whether that’s a 2019 model, a 2017 model, a 2015 model, if you’re not changing the way that you’re solving problems, the way that you’re helping people achieve
goals, if you’re not sensitive to where the market is right now, you know, I mean, you’re gonna struggle. You’re gonna get left behind. And I feel like that’s probably been one of the things that has helped me stick around as long as I have.

I mean, I’ve always put, you know, the fitness business owner at the forefront of what I’ve done and tried to be sensitive to their needs, their wants, their goals, their problems. But how I’ve gone about addressing those, it’s always had coaching at the root. But, you know, there’ve been different formats.
There’ve been different ways to solve problems depending on where they were, because now, they’re definitely at a different place than when I originally started this stuff. And so, um, you know, I’ve evolved and adapted constantly. I, and we just actually are kind of wrapping up the next phase of
adaptation now in our coaching programs. And I couldn’t be more excited. And I think you’ll find that too. I think you’ll understand that if you adapt and you’re really passionate about helping the people that you serve, it is exciting for you because you feel like, Hey, I can do even better for these people that
I care about, these people that I want to help reach their goals.

And my business is gonna be healthier as a result of that. So if you’ve not been adapting, please do. And that doesn’t mean just, Hey, I went back to what I was doing before the pandemic. It means kind of trying to skate to where the puck is going, so to speak, be adaptable and watch your business grow.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School.

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