Fitness Business School – Build Your Ideal Business in the Next 12 Months

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about how to build the business you want in the next 12 months. 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 to the end of this episode because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

I can’t say this for sure about you, but I know that for me and for most of the people that I work with Having a deadline and having kind of a an end point to achieve things helps me focus.

It helps me gain clarity. It helps me really kind of lock in and know not only what I want to accomplish, but what’s realistic to accomplish. What it’s going to take to accomplish that in that kind of said timeframe. So I want to talk with you about a simple kind of framework you can use to have your best year ever to build the business that you want to really make leaps forward towards enjoying your ideal business over the next 12 months.

And it’s really kind of a step by step formula and. It’s something that I don’t think a lot of people probably employ because they get so caught up in the day to day of what they’re doing that they don’t really think strategically. So I’m going to walk through this. Step by step and hopefully it helps you kind of gain some clarity and shape the direction of where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.

So the first thing that, that I would tell you that for business owners in our industry, it is important is identifying where you want to go. And again, I would tell you be ambitious, but be realistic, identify. Specifics and don’t leave this vague. This isn’t kind of an abstract vision in the next 12 months.

How much revenue do you want to have? How much profit do you want to earn? How many clients do you want to have? How is your team different than it is today? What’s your schedule look like? How many vacations are you going to have? How much. Money will you have put away toward savings or retirement?

These are all things that you need to have specifics about, and they need to be targets that inspire you, but by the same token, they need to be targets that you can reach in the next 12 months. And an easy way to kind of define that is you have to be able to have a plan that. Can get you there. If you don’t have any idea how you’re going to get to that number, it’s probably not realistic enough just yet.

So that’s the first step. The second step is simply benchmarking where you are today for all the targets that you identified, you need to kind of create the gap, right? You need to gain real clarity on what the gap is from where you are today to where you want to go. So that. That tells us the road we’re going to have to travel to reach our goals, to build the business that we want to build.

So in each of those categories, go and define where you are at the moment, what your revenue was over the last 12 months, what your profit was, how many vacation days you took, how much money you put away, what your team looks like today in anything else that you’re going to use to, to be a piece of your roadmap.

And so that’s the. Really the first two steps, right? You’re going to need to identify where we want to go and where we start today. And it’s like that. Anytime you punch a destination into a map on your phone, or you’re trying to travel somewhere, you need a starting point and end point. So now we have it.

So once we have our destination, once we know where we’re trying to go and really the road we have to travel to get there, we need to identify our monthly marketing plan and our monthly marketing plan. Is really the first big piece in the how and the monthly marketing plan should encompass not only offers we’re going to make, but how we’re going to distribute those offers, how we’re going to market, outside the facility, how we’re going to market online, how we’re going to do things internally, referrals, reviews, reactivations, internal, Promotions for upgrades.

Are we going to run ads? Are we going to do things simply in an organic fashion? Are we doing strategic alliances with local businesses? So we want to map out a framework that we can follow the, that really encompasses all of those categories. And then month by month, we just kind of want to check the box and say, Okay.

What are we doing in each of these categories from email marketing to paid advertising? What are we doing in each category? And sometimes maybe you’re not doing anything, but we want to have a system that gives us a predictable number of new leads, a number of new clients, drives revenue into the business, brings people back in, creates reviews that are attractive to people who might want to do business with us.

So we need to craft a plan that’ll move us from where we are today to where we want to be 12 months from now. And so that monthly marketing plan is going to be the thing that It’s that kind of short term strategy that we’re going to employ that allows us to hit a lot of those targets that I alluded to and create the revenue that not only meets those financial goals, but obviously it also.

Affords us the things that, that can be a result of those by hiring other team members, taking vacations, and then putting money away for retirement. So the monthly marketing plan, that’s the next piece. The fourth step in this process is. We need to identify the things that we’re going to install or do the things that we’re going to improve.

And in our world, week by week is the way that this should look right. We do when the week, and I’ll talk about that more in a moment, but every week we should be looking at one thing that we’re going to install or improve. And that. Whether it’s a system or a tool from a script that we’re using to reach out to prospects or close clients to installing something like the other 165 or a new client onboarding system.

And if you have a monthly marketing plan that helps you achieve those revenue benchmarks and then Week by week, we’re either installing a new system or improving something that exists. We’re building our business both on the outside and the inside. And so we’re incrementally moving forward. None of this is just kind of putting everything off till month 12 and hoping we get there.

It’s a step by step process that allows us to see the compound benefit of all the work that we’re doing, all the things that. That, that we’re taking action on week by week or even day by day. And so we’ve got the roadmap, we’ve got the marketing plan, we’ve got the system installation improvement plan, and then finally we get to the how.

We’re gonna stay on track because this is a tough one. Something that, that frankly, not just. Business owners struggle with or fitness business owners struggle with, but this is something that just people in general struggle with. It’s so easy to get distracted. There’s so many things vying for our attention.

There’s so many shiny objects that seem like they may be the solution to something that we seek, but we need to follow the plan. Yeah, we can call an audible on the plan as we go, but we need to follow the plan. And make course corrections when needed, not just abandon it the minute something doesn’t go our way.

So the way that we do that is by using our six week cycles that you’ve probably heard me talk about in other podcasts or maybe in emails where we map out this cycle of what we’re going to accomplish over the next six weeks. So we can achieve the production goals that we have installed the processes that are important to us or improve those.

And build the projects. Well, we’ll finally kind of em, empowering or even adding people to the team. So we’ve got our six week cycle and then we break it down to our win the week. And I talked about that a little bit earlier, but when the week for us is just this way to kind of zoom out to what we want to accomplish over the week and make sure that we’re moving towards those goals, that we’re gaining ground.

On that roadmap that we developed in step one. And by having this win the week approach, we know that some weeks maybe we’ll gain more ground than others. I mean, if this were football, some weeks we’re going to gain two or three yards and other weeks we may gain 20 and that’s okay. But we’re in control.

We’re being intentional about how we’re spending our time. We have a plan we’re executing on the plan. Life happens. Our schedule is always kind of evolving and changing from week to week or month to month. And so, yeah, we need to be adaptable, but we need to do it. We’re still taking control of our time, our energy, our effort, and our resources so that we are moving towards where we want to be.

And then finally. Can I figure out where we get a help? Because business is too tough to go it alone. Is this something where you’re going to go read books? You’re going to get coaching. You’re going to have peers that you’re going to communicate with lean on. Provide accountability. We are much better as a team, right?

So, so keep that in mind. If you want to build the business that you’d love to own that ideal business over the next 12 months, you’re not going to do it by yourself. And obviously I’m saying this to somebody who’s listening or watching a podcast. So. You kind of already get this, you’re learning in other places, but you need to identify that stuff because they’re going to be questions that come up.

They’re going to be obstacles. The best laid plan is always going to be tested when put into action. The old Mike Tyson. Kind of everybody has a plan to get punched in the mouth thing is applicable in business and in life. So as you move forward, you want people to even bounce ideas off of, to vet things with, and make sure that you’re on the right track, or maybe come up with a plan B.

If one of the things in your marketing plan didn’t work as expected, or you had a hiccup with a team member. So that’s how you can build the business you want in just 12 months. 12 months is a long time if you’re making progress day after day. But I promise you it’s going to feel like a really short time if you don’t have a plan and you’re not executing on the plan, the time’s going to pass either way.

And you may look up and say, I’m exactly where I was a year ago, or maybe I’ve lost ground either. actually lost ground or lost ground to the competition that’s propelled themselves forward around me. So, if you want to be the one moving towards your goals, gaining ground towards where you want to be and building the business you want to own, use this roadmap and see the improvement come.

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

Before you go, I have a quick announcement:

One of of the things that we’ve been doing with our current clients is taking them through this Ideal Business diagnostic and really what it is, this checklist that allows you to pinpoint exactly what your business needs next so you can keep improving, keep growing, and build a business that you love to own, one that pays you well, one that allows you to have the impact you wanna have and one that allows you to have a lifestyle that you truly enjoy.

In this diagnostic, we walk through everything and we do an evaluation and can instantly pinpoint what you need to do next to build that business that you want. I’m going to extend this opportunity to get on with either me or my team and take you through this evaluation and fix your business’s most vital needs fast.

So if we take you through this, you’re gonna be able to make those vital changes that you need to finally have what I call your Ideal Business. If you’d be interested in going through this entirely free, risk-free diagnostic with us and learn what you already have in place, what you’re doing well and where are your greatest opportunities for rapid improvement are just shoot me an email with diagnostic in the subject line to [email protected].

Again, an email to [email protected] with diagnostic in the subject line will get
you scheduled and take you through this evaluation to help you build the business you want.