The Fitness Business School – 3 Keys to an Ideal Business

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk with you about three keys that are going to help you build a successful, scalable and lower stress business. So we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Let’s get to 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.

Hey, Pat, here, and I want to talk with you about creating assets for your business. Now I’m not talking about balance sheet type assets that your accountant would would discuss with you. I’m talking more about creating systems, processes, tools, things that are going to help you even when your not on the clock.

So really there are three different categories of assets that we’re going to need to work through. We need assets in the attract unit, basically where we’re connecting with new prospects, where we’re really getting their attention and initiating a relationship. We need assets in the convert unit, so we can turn those relationships with those new prospects, into actual ongoing coach client relationships. And then we need assets in the delivery unit so that we can deliver that dream come true result through an experience our clients enjoy. Now, fortunately, I kind of gravitated to this assets thing all the way back when I was a college baseball coach. So I’ve played to this for really, probably 25 years at this point. And, you know, back then it would have been creating a practice plan that I could leverage again, or creating a playbook so it’d be easier to onboard new players or even onboard new coaches because I didn’t really have much of a budget. So I had a lot of turnover with coaching staff.

And then, you know, I use this same approach when I launched my first training business. I mean, we had an operations manual from day one. We had hiring resources, we had sales scripts, we had up scripts, things that allowed us to really not have to start from scratch every time. And, you know, even when I got into to this scalable type of model where, you know, I launched a franchise way back in 2009, the first one, and then the second kind of sister organization that franchise in 2011, you know, we had franchise operations manuals, different done for you, templates and promotions. We had pretty much any tool that you could ask for. And these were all now I’m using plenty of assets today and I’ll get into that as we get into the three units.

But I wanted to help you understand that this is not some daunting thing. If I could do it back when I was 23 or 24 years old as a college baseball coach starting out, you can do it now in your business, especially with all the resources that we have available today, things that you can kind of borrow from other people and adapt to fit you, your business, your values, and your goals. So let’s break it down.

Let’s talk about the first unit. The attract unit is what I touched on a moment ago that that kind of place in the relationship where you’re getting your ideal prospects attention, your you’re making that first connection with them. Now in my business, the assets that I use for that are things like videos or long form posts that go on Facebook that we may use to make a connection and then lead magnets. Basically the books that I write at this point, I’ve authored or co-authored like 18 books with another one. I’m kind of on the way. You know, other sorts of lead magnets, we even used the online coaching certification as a tool like that for awhile. But basically it’s just resources that add value to that prospective client’s life and make a good first impression. And they give you the opportunity to follow up with them. Now, When you’re using assets in this way, and you’re making that first connection, let’s face it. Not all of those people are going to become clients. In fact, the majority of them won’t, but that’s okay. We’re putting good value out into the world. We’re, we’re making a good first impression. And hopefully it helps those business owners do things on their own or however they decide to pursue their journey. You know, it’s helpful. It’s a good first impression and it’s kind of paying it forward now in your business assets, in this category, it could be, you know, videos that you’re doing, that you can replicate over time, that you can recycle on different platforms. And what’s cool about those types of videos is you record at once, but you don’t have to be there at the same time, the same place as the person, watching it for them to receive benefit lead magnet, special reports, books, checklists, guides, things that you can give somebody that helped them move forward towards whatever their goals are or solve, whatever the problems they have are. So those types of assets are great in the attract unit.

The second unit that we need to focus on is that convert unit. And honestly, when it comes to assets, this is probably the one where there’s the biggest gap. We get leads. Maybe we’re running Facebook ads. Maybe we have a couple lead magnets. Are we, you know, we, we purchased some, are there parts of programs we’re in, but then once we have the attention of that prospect, what do we do with it, right? If they don’t buy instantly, do we have a mechanism in place? If we actually get to engage them in a two way dialogue, do we have a systematic approach that is scalable and gives us a high probability of success? Most business owners, don’t now in my business, this convert unit, we have a few different assets. In fact, this podcast is a great example of that. The podcast, I basically use this as a conversion tool. I sinned the podcast out and promote it to people that already know me already have a bit of a relationship with me. It’s not that first impression, but it’s kind of this ongoing way to add value to their life and hopefully move somebody listening or somebody watching closer to wanting to work together, to build their ideal business.

But maybe the most prominent one in my business has been this email newsletter that I’ve been sending out daily for about 15 years. And it’s the same thing I’m trying to make. Somebody’s day somebody’s business a little bit better each day. And frankly, you know, a couple of times a month, somebody will reply to an email and say, man, I’ve gotten more value from your free newsletter than I’ve gotten from programs that I’ve paid hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for, and that’s the idea, right? That’s the goal to be able to add value to their life and demonstrate that I can help. And then further along in that process, when somebody does engage and they are ready to explore the possibility of working together, you know, I’ve got scripts and processes to facilitate somebody getting on to a call to make sure that we’re doing what we need to do to get them there and set the stage for us to have the best possible live interaction. And then I have sales scripts or success sessions, scripts, where I’m making sure that we’re talking about what’s important to the prospect. I’m making sure that if it’s determined that we can be of help, we do a good job in conveying that. And then in presenting the programs to them in a way that’s clear and easy for them to move forward. If we both decide it’s the right fit And my business, And this isn’t very much different than your business, right? It’s a coaching business.

And so you probably would benefit from some of the same types of assets, something that kind of nurtures a relationship, something to make a replicable high performing process for the people who do raise their hand and say, you know, I’d like to know more. I’d like to talk with you and see if this is a fit and even sales scripts or conversion scripts. So not only are you putting your best foot forward every time, but also if you want to hand this off to somebody else, if you want to have other people in your team sale, you have the ability to, in fact, that was kind of one of the secrets to success in my first couple of offline training businesses you know, we had an entire team of people who could go out and do sales sessions or consultations. We had people who could go in and put our businesses best foot forward consistently without me having to be the person doing it. It allowed us to scale much more rapidly. It allowed a second location to be open two hours away and still succeed. And so you can do this same sort of thing as well in your conversion unit.

And then that third unit that we need assets in would be the deliver unit. Now I have no doubt. If you were paying attention to this podcast, you’re probably better than the average coach at delivering value to your clients, to, you know, delivering a high quality service that gives them the result they want through an experience they enjoy. That fortunately, that kind of seems to be the type of person I attract in that attract unit, but let’s face it. If you want to make this is successful and scalable as possible. You need to have assets here as well. I know for me, we’ve got processes for onboarding. We’ve got processes for accountability. We’ve got curriculum that we can use that is proven to be effective. We got tools and assets that people can take and kind of modify a little bit and deploy on behalf of their own business that are going to give them a high probability of success. And you need that same type of thing in your business. You need a program design system, you need a, an asset or a system or collection of assets may be for that other 165 hours where somebody isn’t in a supervised workout with you or your coaches, you need an accountability system, things that give your clients the best chance to succeed time and time again, it’s going to help your retention. It’s going to take a lot of the heat off you because you’re going to be able to empower other people to go out there and deliver on your business’s behalf.

And let’s face it. If you want to scale this to more coaches, if you want to scale this to more locations or maybe, you know, adding an offline component or an online component to your initial business, or if we’re thinking even bigger licensing or franchising, this is kind of the price of admission. You need to have these in place. If you don’t, it’s just going to cause you stress. And you’re kind of going to be built on a foundation of sand, but if you have them, man, the sky’s the limit. And if you’re interested in the online business, which, you know, I kind of just briefly touched on this. Stuff’s even more important because whether or not we realize it, there’s a little bit more inherent structure. If somebody is coming to you in a brick and mortar business, right? There’s a destination they need to arrive at. There’s an agreed to time. You’re going to meet, there’s already structure in the equipment, the programming, there, there’s some things that just are inherently part of an offline training business that we can’t take for granted in the online world. So we need to replace some of that structure with systems that can be translated online. So that’s it the three units that you need to have assets in attract, convert to deliver. If you have all three in place, you’re going to set yourself up to succeed as a business owner, more than almost anybody in this industry. And what’s great about this is when you bring on new team members, you’re setting them up to succeed. When you’re moving into new locations, you’re setting those locations up to succeed. And then maybe most importantly of all, you’re setting your clients up to succeed. And you’re doing this in a lower stress format. You’re doing it in a way that gives you a high probability of success across the board. So you’re going to make more money. You’re probably going to have better profit margins and ultimately you’re going to be a lot happier. So hopefully you enjoyed that kind of overview of assets. I know how much it’s helped my business and I’m sure it’ll help your business too.

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.