Fitness Business School – Are Things Changing?

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode I want to talk with you about whether things are changing or not. 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.

I’ll kick things off by saying I believe that things are constantly changing. Now, that may seem like the most general statement possible, but if it is general, and if it seems obvious, then why does so many businesses fail to evolve? Why does so many businesses continue to run the playbook they were
running in 2018 or 2019 if things are continuing to change? So when I got into the fitness industry, the commercial side of it, right?

I mean I got certified back in like 1992 and, you know, worked in a university setting for pretty much a decade after that. But then, moved into the commercial side of the fitness industry, soon after. And when I got into it, the fitness landscape was primarily big box health clubs that had one-on-one personal training, sold in packages, sold in by one on like one-off sessions, three packs, 12 packs, 48 packs, like whatever you wanna do. And it was all pre-pay. And, you know, the health club was judged on the number of amenities that they had. You know, did they have, you know, a locker room, did they have cardio equipment? And if so, how much and what type did they have a free weight area that would kind of, sequester people off, out of the way of the cardio?

So the, the people who wanted to lift weights could be over in one area, and the people who wanted to use machines could be in another. And did they have group exercise offerings? You know, did they have  the body pump type things, the, the cardio kickboxing spinning and, and all that different stuff? Did they have childcare? There were all these things that people were looking for. And, you know, the training side of stuff was largely one-on-one, and it was typically done in a retail setting, kind of expensive real estate, small footprint. and if you wanted to expand your business, typically that meant you hired more trainers to be able to offer more one-on-one stuff during peak hours. And that was the norm. And most people didn’t use a personal trainer. Most people had not
experienced working with a, a personal trainer.

Most people, if anything, had had a membership at a health club or a fitness center or something like that. But there wasn’t a whole lot of support. It was very much self-directed. And in part that’s why the selectized equipment was so popular cause it didn’t seem scary and you didn’t seem like you had to have a
whole lot of knowledge. You could just follow the instructions on the machine and you’d probably be in good shape. So, you know, that was where the landscape was at at that point in time. And, you know, then we started to get a little bit more, boutique-ish, right? There were a lot of, small kind of
spinoff clubs that either were women’s only, like curves and, you know, a number of other smaller brands that kind of followed the Curves blueprint, but put their own twist on it.

Then there was Anytime Fitness and Snap Fitness, and then a number of other small 24 hour brands that again, kind of just put their own twist on things. And then, you know, about that same time, a little bit after that came bootcamps and bootcamps essentially took a lot of what was happening in the Group X
room at a big box health club and took it outside and either said, okay, you can go do this in a public park. So the trainer didn’t really have to to pay rent or, you know, they’d sublease from a gymnastics facility or they might even, rent their own small space. And then, you know, about that
same time CrossFit started to emerge and the the light industrial, kind of training area became a little bit more popular. And, you know, and, and I know I’m giving this really poor history lesson right now, but, but since then, you know, things that have changed with, with great speed really.

If we think about, how slowly a lot of industries change, like right now, the fastest growing segment of the fitness industry would be group-based training. with all the franchises that are growing rapidly. We, we obviously saw a massive spike in the online training side of things during the pandemic, and that’s kind of tapered off, but I mean, it still is relevant. It’s just not growing with reckless abandon like it would’ve been a couple years back. you know, the, the comfort of people going and training in light industrial areas or people, you know, what people are willing to spend to go, join a group-based program. That’s all changed. The number of people that have been exposed to this sort of stuff, either due to the volume of the group-based training offerings and the fact that they are group-based. So the price points come down and things like Groupon and Living Social a while back, all made this so much more prominent.

And, you know, so the, the landscape has changed a lot just in the time that I’ve been in this industry. It has gone from very few people being able to really make a livelihood out of working in the fitness industry, owning a training based business, something like that. So that’s changed dramatically. When I first got into this people, you know, I mean there were products and courses and programs designed about around being a quote unquote six figure trainer. And six figures meant gross revenue, not, profit, not how much you’re taking home gross revenue. That was a big benchmark. Now that’s kind of what we would consider a very early stage business in most cases, if it’s gonna be truly a business and not just, you know, being a solopreneur. And so that’s changed a
bunch. The other thing that, that I’ve seen change is like the marketplace is so much more educated, and that’s the case with so many things, right?

Because people can Google, they can YouTube, they can search whatever they want, and they have more awareness, they have more options available. They can go read just hundreds and hundreds of reviews in most any market on Google about the various things available to them. They can watch
YouTube videos and understand some of the nuances of what, what good training might look like. There’s so many things that I think can change, very quickly in our industry, right? And the consumers having more people have experience. It’s, when I first started my initial training business, about 5% of the people that became clients had ever worked with a trainer before 5%. But now it is such that I have clients very regularly saying that two thirds of the people that they
have walked through the door have belonged somewhere else in the past, have at least done a trial somewhere else.

So the, the market has evolved that way, right? Like people are maybe experienced with training and exercise and they’re looking for a better fit for them. And then I, I know from my perspective, just getting people to market it all, when I, you know, started business coaching back in like 2006 and 2007,
getting people to market at all was the heavy lifting, right? Like getting people to actually do anything when it comes to, to business in that regard that was the hard part. Now, most of the people that I encounter, they’ve marketed in the past, they’ve been inconsistent with it sounds kind of like the
clients that, that you may see, right? They’ve been inconsistent, erratic, maybe they’ve not gotten the results they wanted, maybe they got bored doing what they’re doing and wanted a change. In many cases, a lot of those people have already even worked for the business coach.

So the market changes, the market evolves. And the, the reason I want to tell you this is if you are not changing and evolving, eventually you get left behind, right? Eventually you become a dinosaur, you become antiquated in your approach. I know for us, we’re doing a, a remodel of my coaching business
and it’s, it’s not that, you know, the overarching goal and philosophy changes dramatically. It’s just, okay, what do people need now? Where’s the gap? What do they feel like is holding them back? And so we’re doing a lot more week to week making it simple, execution. It’s not just knowledge stuff,
right? It’s not just giving them this aha moment where we teach them how to design an offer or how to run a sales consultation or how to set up an ad. It’s okay, how do I fit this into my week?

So very much the same thing that coaches do for clients. They give them a training plan to follow and provide some accountability and troubleshooting or course correction along the way to help them lock things in. So, that’s the real crux of what I want to talk about in this episode. If you are not changing, if you are not evolving, if you are not moving forward, you know you’re gonna be left behind if you are not continually upgrading. That’s one of the things that I really love about the people that I’ve admired in this industry from the training side for so long. You know, guys like Bill Hartman and Mike Boyle and Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson have, you know, I’ve known them for really as long as I’ve been in this industry for the most part. And, you know, the things that they were
doing 15 years ago probably seemed kind of cutting edge at the time, and they’ve graduated from the things that they felt like there was a better path forward with, right?

So, if you’re not evolving, if you’re not changing, I would encourage you to look in the mirror and say, okay, can I expect the results that I want with, you know, if
I’m running a play like a playbook that is five years old. And if you know, I mean, if you’re self-aware and if you’re honest, the odds are no, I can’t. So what am I gonna do about it? Whether that means, you know, lean on a coach like me to help you or go on your own kind of, uh, educational journey and figure
some things out. But the bottom line is if you are not changing, if you’re not evolving, you know, the market is evolving around you. The clientele is evolving around you, and eventually it’s not that hey, you, you’re stagnant. It’s that you get left behind because everybody else passes you by.

And eventually your business kind of dies that death by a thousand cuts and you know, there’s a little bit of attrition and you’re not replacing clients the way that you used to or your staff members leave and you haven’t figured out how to replace them because you still think that hiring and
leadership looks like it looked a decade ago or something like that. And, and hopefully that’s not the case with you and hopefully this is just a refresher or a reminder, but I promise you it’s the case with the market as a whole. There’s no question about it. Really, the only question is this, are you going to evolve
and adapt with the market? And if so, how are you gonna do it so that you’re skating to where the puck is going.

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

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