Fitness Business School – Predictions for 2021 Part 2 of 2

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here and I’ve got the second episode of my 2021 predictions. We covered a number of those predictions in the first episode. So if you haven’t checked it out, go back and review that.

(https://patrigsby.com/fitness-business-school-predictions-for-2021-part-1-of-2/) But in this episode, I’ve got five more predictions for you to kind of explore and see what might fit in your business. So let’s get to it.

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All right, we’ve got five more predictions today. We’ve covered a handful of predictions. We’ve kind of talked about some of the things that are maybe not going to thrive in 2021. We’ve talked about the, the upside that potentially comes along with small group training, semi-private training and one-on-one whether it’s in facility or in home.

So what else as has real upside going into 2021? Well, the first thing that I would tell you is the hybrid business model. Being able to serve people in a mix of offline and online, I think is really the way that facility based training businesses should go, or really any business that kind of has a foundation of offline training. Even if you were an in home business. I think hybrid is only going to grow and only going to be more successful. Because I think that that’s the way that most people’s life functions, right? Most people are kind of tethered to, to their technology in some way or another. And so being able to deliver some of their program to them and make them feel more connected, 168 hours a week, instead of just three hours a week will create better relationships for you. It will make people less dependent on the in person experience. Should we run into a situation where maybe they can’t come in and experience things in facility quite as often? So the hybrid business model, I think is the way forward. If you’re going to make offline a significant piece of what you do now, I’ve talked about hybrid at length.

So I’m not going to go into it in great detail now, but a great hybrid experience does have something live. It has something that’s on demand. It has an accountability component, a community component in a personal attention and connection component. If you’ve got all five of those boxes checked, you’re going to be in good shape. And you know, it doesn’t, you know, I, it doesn’t have just kind of this one way of looking at it could be primarily one-on-one offline. It could be small group offline. There, there are a number of ways to approach this, but understanding that your client is under your care, whether they’re in your facility or in a live training session or not, you’re still responsible for impacting their results. You’re still responsible for being their coach and serving them and helping them reach their goals. So the hybrid model is going to continue to grow. I think that 2021 is kind of just the kicking off point of people being able to proactively develop the optimal hybrid hybrid model for their business. I think a lot of people kind of had to back into it and be reactive in 2020 just to stay afloat. But now we get to kind of shape and craft the business that we want. And if I were, you I’d consider the hybrid model in, you know, in that kind of building or remodeling phase.

The second thing that I’d, I’d tell you that it’s not going to come as a surprise to you is that online training is only going to continue to grow. I mean, we see people throwing literally hundreds of millions of dollars at it when it comes to Peloton when it comes to Mirror. And so many of the other kind of bigger competitors online is only going to continue to grow. I think this idea that people are becoming more and more comfortable training at home, they’re more and more comfortable having their coach come to them through a screen rather than being face to face. That’s not going to regress. It’s not going to revert back to, to this thing where people don’t want to train online. You know, the, the second mean of the market that’s comfortable training online is only going to continue to expand. I mean, I don’t know if you remember back to the point where a lot of people were really uncomfortable shopping online at one point, right? They weren’t comfortable putting their credit card into a site on the internet and, you know, trusting that things were going to come to them or shopping for clothes because they couldn’t try them on. People got past that. And now online businesses you know, I mean, it’s kind of the way to go if you’re going to be in retail, but the same thing’s happening with fitness. And it doesn’t mean, I mean, the, the offline’s going to die off. It means that if you’re not accepting of the fact that the market is definitely starting to shift to more comfort with online coaching and online training, you’re going to miss out, you’re going to be left behind.

Now, there are a few different ways that you can do this. And I’m going to talk about the, the client centric part of this later with another of my prediction. So I’m not going to dive into it now, but if you’re one of those folks who said, okay, you know what, I’m able to go back in my gym. I’m good. And you’ve shut down all your online offerings. I would tell you to, to rethink that strategy, I would tell you to figure out something that you can continue to build online, whether you want to see that as your virtual second location, or just a profit center within your business, or just kind of that hybrid model where you’re at least having other mechanisms to care for your current clients. But I don’t think that I would go completely back to analog if I were you.

Now, the next prediction that I have coming is I think there’s going to be a continued growth of nutrition, coaching, and wellness coaching online, and people seeking that out. I mean, it’s no secret that diet books are one of the biggest sellers on Amazon diet books are always a big seller, but I think that now no different than, you know, people saying, okay, I’m going to hire a coach to, to help me get fit. Instead of being self-directed with their exercise program. I think all those people who are interested in diet books and recipe books and everything else online, many of them are going to be looking for nutrition coaching. They’re going to be looking for wellness, coaching health coaching to, to facilitate their execution, to hold them accountable, to help them persevere through the challenges and changes that they’re incurring. And so if you’re not integrating that into what you do, and if you are exercise or workout only, you’re probably missing out on an opportunity to not just better serve the clients you have, but to also attract the clients that you want to serve. So if you’re not diving into that, now it’d be the time to explore it. You know, I know in my previous offline businesses, nutrition coaching was a big driver for the success and what we did, and not only was it a huge profit center, but it also were, you know it also represented the clients who got the best results with us because it facilitated such a big piece of body composition change, just having direct coaching, having accountability, getting people to stay on track.

And then, yeah, the next thing that I’d tell you may come as a little bit of a surprise, but I fully expect that challenges are going to make something to come. I think that, yeah, we had kind of had our fill of them is an industry. And there was such a saturation point because there were so many people doing these free, but not free lose 20 pounds of six week challenges. And so it kind of hit a diminishing return point, right. But now I think that people are looking for, you know, some accountability, but they don’t necessarily want to commit. They don’t want to commit to some program in place pituitary. They want to kind of, again, the risk or the exposure of commitment. Yeah. Because things change so quickly today, but they still want results. So I fully expect challenges to make a comeback in 2021. And I think the people running challenges the first part of the year, we’re going to see, you know, see a real positive uptake and those people doing it and kind of hybrid fashion where there’s a lot of support online or going to see even more success. So challenges, I think pose a really significant of an opportunity.

And then the last prediction that I have it is something, the thing that I probably am carrying forward from things that I’ve talked about all year this year is the fact that client centric businesses are going to be the ones to thrive because the businesses that are so, so dependent on their, their workout process or their training tool, we saw that, that that was kind of, I have a bad recipe this year because things would change and maybe people couldn’t follow that workout process exactly as planned or people couldn’t come. I mean, and use those training tools in person. And so those, those businesses didn’t really have the ability to pivot and still be high value to them. People that they serve. However, client centric, businesses, businesses that’s in, you know, their, their, their core focus was on the client. The client’s success solving their problems, helping them go from where they were to, where they wanted to be. Those businesses, they adapted better than anybody. They said, okay, look, maybe I can’t solve their problems or help them achieve their goals in this way. But here are all these other ways, ways that I can do it. And they, and so many businesses found other ways that insight cases worked even better than what they were doing previously. So the businesses that are truly client centric, the businesses that are going to be sensitive to how clients feel about safety, how clients feel about, about, you know, their comfort in the environment that they’re in the, the client’s desire to, to, to maybe mix some in-person some online and really just be focused on what the client wants, what the client needs and how the client feels. Those businesses are going to really have a leg up on everybody else in the industry in 2021.

So two episodes, a number of predictions. Hopefully you can use some of those and kind of blend them into what you’re doing. I’m not telling you, you need to remodel your entire business and completely change it. But there are probably some things, things that you can update, some things that you can change, and maybe, maybe some things where you can really get excited about the new opportunities that hit a head. So if I’m you, I’m not getting, getting in this kind of negative mindset and saying, man, 2020 was a challenge 2020. You know, it didn’t go the way I wanted. I would look at this as an opportunity to really ascend because I mean, let’s face it, a lot of businesses on our industry, aren’t going to adapt. They’re not going to make it. They didn’t do a good job. And so the people they served are going to be looking for other solutions and then some of those businesses, they may survive, but they may be doing things in a way that isn’t attractive to the people that used to come in and work out at those clubs or be part of those large group training programs. So they will be looking for a different solution. So there’s going to be plenty of opportunity that is going to be market share up for grabs. These predictions. These ideas will help you get your share and be successful in the next year and beyond.

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.