The Fitness Business School – A Primer on Branding

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here with another episode of the podcast. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about building your brand. So let’s dive right into it.

Welcome to the fitness business school with Pat Rigsby, the podcast for fitness entrepreneurs who want to make more income, have greater impact, and enjoy more freedom in their ideal business. If you’d like an accelerated route to these goals, email me at [email protected] and put BGA in the subject line and I’ll get you all the details about our business growth accelerator program.

All right, in this episode, I want to talk about your brand. Now, when I ask someone about their brand, honestly, they aren’t usually sure where to start. I get it, the word brand and branding, they get thrown around a lot. So let’s make it simple for the purposes of building your ideal business or what I call your ideal business. Your brand is really made up of just a couple of things, really.

Number one is who you want to work with. And then number two is what you want to be known for. If you’re clear on the answer to those two things, I mean, everything else really becomes much, much easier. Your marketing becomes easier, not only the message itself, but where you’re going to do your marketing. Really? Where are you going to focus your efforts? You don’t whether or not you’re going to go attend a certain health fair or try to form a strategic alliance with a particular business. You know, if they’re not somebody who really is focused on that ideal client of yours, your target market, then there’s really no use in spending your time there. So when we’re thinking about building a brand, we have to be able to answer those two questions and really to build a loyal following. You need to know who you want to do business with most fitness businesses, they target everyone.

So let’s, let’s think about this for a second. I mean, you don’t want to be all things to all people. You don’t want to target and market to everyone. That’s not how you’re going to build a great business with a powerful culture that that’s going to enjoy really strong retention. You’re not going to be able to generate a flood of referrals that way. I mean, frankly, you’re not going to have this stand alone one of a kind identity. If you just kind of say, Hey, I’m for everyone, I can help everyone, but you’d be amazed at how many conversations I have with business owners who, I mean, that’s what they tell me. Well, Hey, I can help anyone. Well, sure. You can probably help anyone, but people want to know that you’re the best option for them. Not just that you can help them because they’re just a human, right. So, you know, I think when we’re narrowing, we also have to think about, Hey, this is our career. This is our profession that we’re pouring so much of herself into. So who are we going to get the most fulfillment out of serving? So if you can get clear about who you want to work with and what you want to be known for, honestly, it’s going to transform your business. It’s going to transform your marketing. Everything’s going to be better. It’s going to ensure that the people that you attract are the people you want to do business with.

And as important as it is to know exactly who you want to attract. You also need to have a clear idea of who you don’t want, because, you know, if you get those people who are, you know, a bad fit, it can really undermine the culture. I mean, coming from a college baseball background, just a couple people that are part of a team that that really didn’t fit. I mean, you know, they can be cancers and they can undermine the culture of the whole program. Sometimes if you cut, cut loose, some of the people who are the wrong fit and they don’t necessarily have to be bad people, they’re just the wrong fit. You know, everything else levels up. So when we think about our branding game plan, it needs to start by defining exactly who your ideal target client is and conversely who they’re not. And then what, what are their traits? What are their wants, their needs, their issues, the pain points. They have their irrational fears, the aspirations that they have, their concerns, really anything that they’re thinking about that movie that’s playing in their head, because if you can speak to their desires, you know, too often, we spend so much time when it comes to marketing.

When it comes to branding, we think about somebody’s demographics, but really people buy based on their desire. So if we can think about that and speak to that and really address something that, that is really deep seated in somebody that they really want to escape from or arrive at, man, we’re going to have their attention. And then our approach should be creating a marketing message and a sales funnel. That’s client centric. That’s built around that.

And then, you know, the other component of building the brand is really identifying what you want your business to be known for. It’s, you know, for lack of a more eloquent way of putting it, it’s a statement of who you help and really what you helped them do. So think about it this way. If you were only going to get paid for the results that you provide to a specific person, and you know, you’re not getting paid by the hour, by the session, anything else you only are compensated. If you deliver results, what results would those be? And who would you deliver those results to? If we can get clear about that, man, we, you know, we’re really going to speak to a specific person in a powerful way. It’s going to make everything else so, so much better. Now, for me, it kind of looks like this. I help fitness business owners or health business owners build their ideal business. Now that’s different than saying, I’m just a business coach or I generate traffic or whatever else. And you know, my who is a very narrow audience, a very narrow target market, right? It’s not personal trainers. It’s not people who are just aspiring business owners is people who own a business, a fitness business owner, a health business owner, a sports performance business owner.

And, you know, that’s who I want to work with. And then, you know, it’s also talking about building their ideal business, which is a little bit different, right? I mean, it’s, it’s not just this same thing that you see with everybody flooding your inbox or your you know, your LinkedIn messages or your Facebook messages or whatever else saying, Hey, we’ll help you get a hundred clients in 60 days or something like that. No, it’s helping you build a business that is going to allow you to have the income that you want. Like you have the impact that you want. And then also allow you to have you know, a lifestyle that makes you happy. So that’s what I want to do. It’s not just a tactical thing. It’s not just, I run Facebook ads. It’s not that I just cut and pasted somebody else’s message like so many of the, the, you know, these new found gurus do, but it’s something very specific to me. It’s what I help people do. And frankly, if I were going to just get paid for the results, that would be what I would pick. So, you know, if, if you’re thinking about who you, who you serve and what you helped them do really go back to that same question that I just alluded to, right? That, that thing that you want to be known for, if you were only gonna be paid for result, who would you help and what result would you help them achieve? If you can answer that, man, you are really ahead of the game because you’re going to stand out.

So let’s get back to the core kind of message. You know, who do you want to help? What do you want to help them achieve and combine it in a way that is just, it makes everything simple, right? Like you know who you’re writing an ad for, you know, what’s important to them. So everything that you talk about, your followup, the emails, or podcasts or videos that you create, they’re talking about those pain points that person has, or solutions to problems that they have. So really when we think about the brand, it’s just allowing us to kind of put a box around the people that we want to reach. We’ll be able to connect with them in a far deeper entity, far more emotional level. And you know, it gives you a position in the market that you can own. See positioning is this perception that happens in the mind of your prospects, the story they’re telling themselves, it’s really allowing you to differentiate your business from all of the competitors. And if you do a good job with positioning, you’re essentially rendering the competition irrelevant. You’re talking just to the people you want to reach. And your message is so focused it becomes so powerful because everybody else kind of gets ignored. The people that aren’t, who they’re going to ignore you, but that’s okay. Right? Because you’re speaking to your right person in a way that nobody else does, you’re becoming a specialist for the right people in people almost always gravitate to specialists over generalists.

And frankly, if you’ve ever paid any attention to the medical world, they’ll pay more for a specialist to your brand’s going to give you a position that will really create this laser focus in on your ideal prospect. It’s going to filter out or qualify people. It’s going to differentiate you and really help you stand out in. What’s become very much a me too marketplace, and that’s how you’re gonna win. And that’s really how you’re going to separate yourself. So people choose you above everyone else. So just a few thoughts about branding today. Hopefully that gives you some things to chew on. So think about your who and what you’re going to help them accomplish. When you get clear about those things, when you get those things dialed in, you’re going to be so far ahead of the game. It’s going to give you such a competitive advantage in everything that you do.

Thanks for listening. I’m giving away a bundle of my bestselling books, the ideal business formula, the fitness entrepreneur handbook in the path. All you have to do is go to patrigsby.com/podgift to get it. Also, make sure to subscribe to The Fitness Business School with Pat Rigsby so you don’t miss an episode and you get yourself on the fast track to creating your ideal business.