Fitness Business School – 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Business

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to share five simple ways to improve your business. It’s a lot of ground to cover in a short period of time. So let’s get started.

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.

One of my favorites things to do as a business coach is finding simple solutions that will really help you, the small business owner, enjoy more success. Now I can’t always pinpoint the best and simplest opportunity for each and every business, because obviously this is going out to a pretty broad spectrum of people, but I wanted to give you a few ideas, cause I know at least one of these is something that you can put into play right now and start to see some immediate benefit.

So the first simple way that you could improve your business is to improve your follow-up. See, it’s not uncommon for someone that I work with to become a client of mine after reading my daily email for four years, even, but most small businesses stop following up in about a week with the prospects that they, that they first encounter. And we have to understand that most people who show some interest in what we have to offer, they’re eventually going to invest in a solution to, to solve that sort of problem. That’s why they showed an interest in the first place, but they just may not be doing it on our timeline. It may not be within the first week. It may not be within the first month. So you need to keep following up adding value to their lives, showing them that you can solve the problems that they have and building a connection with them. That positions you as a trusted authority. Then when they’re ready, you’re going to be the obvious choice. It’s why we really hand deliver done for you follow up three weekly emails to, to the clients of our coaching programs. We give that to them each and every month, three mails each week. So they don’t have any problem following up and they can stay in front of the prospects who are potentially interested in what they have to offer.

So that’s number one, number two, raise your rates. Now I understand the hesitancy with this one, especially right now when we may be kind of throttled in what we can do in our business, but I think it’s key that we charge what we’re worth and then deliver more than is expected, right? So you may not need to raise your rates for current clients in the moment, but there’s no reason that you can’t raise your rates for new prospects coming in because they don’t have this established baseline of what they should expect to pay for your services. And let’s face it raising your rates by just a few dollars, you know, five or $10 a month multiplied over, you know, dozens of people or even hundreds of people month after month, it’s going to add up and it’s pure profit. So if you haven’t raised your rates in a while, or if you’ve based your pricing model, just on what competitors are doing and what you see is an easy entry point into the market. Now’s the time to put your rates under the microscope.

So that’s number two, number three, start building your email list. More aggressively focus on growing it each and every day, 365 days a year, then connect with those subscribers regularly. Like I just talked to you about and follow up earlier, but you know, I mean, I don’t care if you do a quick Facebook or Instagram live, and then you send your email list to it and say, Hey, go watch this. You don’t have to write a print, new newsletter like I do, or a text newsletter. You can send people to a podcast which may be the way that you arrived at this podcast that you’re listening to right now. Let’s face it. You need to connect with people, connect with more people, build your own little community and then build connections within that community because let’s face it. People don’t need more information. They don’t have enough time for the information they’re already bombarded with as it is, but there’s plenty of time for meaningful connections. People want to feel like they have people in their life that are bringing value to them. They want to surround themselves with things that they feel are valuable and that speak to them. So create your own media, build your own email newsletter list, get people on it that are excited about what you’re sharing. And then that can become your true marketing hub. And you won’t be dependent on, you know, some of these other channels that is we’ve seen as of late, you know, I mean, people can throttle your access to pretty quickly. So that’s three improve your follow-up raise your rates, the dream mail list.

Fourth one run more front end offers, run more short term programs. I mean, obviously we’ve seen transformation challenges explode over the last few years. And you know, I think sometimes the purpose of those challenges it’s kind of been lost. It’s been kind of lost in the mix. Originally a challenge was a vehicle to let someone experience your service in a low-risk way that really allowed them to receive a real benefit in just a few weeks and move towards their goals or solve their problems. And the focus of these checks was this wonderful first impression that would allow you to transition people into being an ongoing client. Now, plenty of people, you know, they, they started running challenges where, you know, the challenge itself was the destination. They may get a bunch of people in a challenge, but they don’t really have a process to keep them on. And so that’s almost like the tail wagging the dog, your front end offer is the, the, the end point your business instead of the starting point. So my suggestion is run. These short-term programs, whether they’re their challenges or you know, whatever name you choose to call them and build in this choreographed conversion process to move people into your long-term programs, combining, you know, education and results so that they feel the benefits in the short term, but they better understand why they need to be with you in the long-term. And then if you have this kind of conversion process that also integrate some sort of success session, whether it’s in-person or over zoom or whatever else, where you get to spend one-on-one time with someone you’re going to see more and more of these short-term pro program people become long-term clients. So that’s the fourth simple way to make your business better.

And then the fifth is just to focus on becoming better at selling. See, it seems like so many fitness business owners will do about anything to, you know, to avoid having a one-on-one success session with with a prospect to sell them into a program. They’ll discount things. They’ll, they’ll just assume people stay. They’ll try to close people through email. And honestly, it’s a mistake that costs them at least five, if not six figures a year in a lot of cases. So invest the time upfront and get good at selling. And so you can reap the reward for the long-term. There aren’t many more valuable things you can do in business than spending time with individuals converting these prospects into clients. So if you haven’t really honed your sales process, or if you haven’t worked on trying to create more success sessions with prospects or built a process that might start with a front end offer, but integrates a success session into it, you need to, because it’s one of the most powerful and impactful things that you can do.

So there are five different ways that you can improve your business. They’re all pretty simple. And maybe they’re not too big a shift from what you’re already doing. And that’s the idea. See small hinges swing big doors, and any of these, it might not require much change on your part, but you could easily add 10,000 to maybe even a hundred thousand dollars in annual revenue. If you had the right kind of synergistic effect. I mean, think about it. If you raise your rates by $10 a month per client for 125 clients, whether they’re the 125 new that you add over the course of the year, maybe, you know, and that’s just, you know, 10 a month, that’s a $15,000 a year, additional profit, not just gross revenue bump, but additional profit, right? Convert five more of your friend and offer people four times a year into $150 a month program. And you’ve added $36,000 annually sell one more person a week through a success session into that $150 a month program. That’s $93,000, small changes, big benefits. So pick one or two of these simple things, you can plug into your business and put it into action. And then do me a favor. Let me know how it goes, because I’m sure it’s going to go well.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School. And before you go, I have a quick announcement. When I first connect with a fitness business owner, they almost always ask me, “How can I get more leads or how can I get more clients?” Well, I have an exclusive offer for you and it’s going to help you do just that. As a listener of this show, you can test drive Fitness Lead Academy for six full weeks for just a dollar. Fitness Lead Academy is a one of a kind program where you get done-for-you marketing tools and coaching to attract more qualified prospects and convert them into paying clients. Imagine having three marketing emails written for you each and every week for easy-to-deploy promotions provided to you that are proven to convert and they’re ready to use and proven ads and social media posts given to you each and every month as well. Plus you have access to three weekly live video coaching sessions to help you with everything from dialing in your brand to navigating things like building funnels and getting ads approved. You get all of this and more when you join Fitness Lead Academy. And to prove that FLA can serve you as your virtual marketing department and not only save you plenty of time, but also consistently bring you more leads and clients, you can get access to the entire coaching program for six full weeks. Again, for just $1. If it delivers for you in the way that I expect it will, you can continue on for just $199 a month. So basically, just one additional client each month and you’re ROI positive. And I’m sure that if you apply what we give you, you’re going to get more than just one additional client each month. And you’re going to likely save at least 10 hours a month to take advantage of this special offer. Just go to TestDriveFLA.com to try it out for six full weeks. If it’s not what you’re looking for, you can cancel it any time.

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