Fitness Business School – The #1 Trait for Business Success

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in today’s episode, I want to talk with you about what I believe is the number one trait for business success. Now there are any number of traits that go into being successful as a business owner. But if I had to choose one, the one we’re going to talk about in today’s episode is the one that I would pick. So let’s go 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.

So the other day I was in a conversation with a couple of business owners. I shared what I consider to be the number one key or the number one trait for entrepreneurial success. In fact, I’d venture to say that it may be the number one key to success and about anything. Now it’s not being really skillful at your, at your craft. It’s not having more intelligent or some sort of innate talent. Sure, you know, I mean, if you want to play major league baseball or play in the NBA or be a world-class musician, then, you know, innate talents probably going to be a prerequisite. But the reality is I still think this trait kind of takes precedence over everything else.

And it’s not experience, it’s not even the ability to connect or communicate or be great at public speaking or be some skillful writer. No, I mean, it’s something that’s completely different. And what I consider the biggest difference between the successful and the unsuccessful, it is the willingness to take personal responsibility. And that may seem like common sense for, for you. It may seem like common sense for about anybody. But as a business owner is what we have to accept. And you know, as much as it does seem like common sense, it’s not common practice.

Everything leads back to us. If we aren’t getting enough new leads, it’s our responsibility. It’s our responsibility to go market. It’s our responsibility to generate those leads. It’s our responsibility to make our message more clear. It’s our responsibility to connect with more people who we could potentially do business with. If our staff, if our team isn’t doing great work, we hired him. We’re the ones who were responsible for developing them. It’s not a kind of a, Hey, there are no good employees out there. You can’t find good people. No. I mean, ultimately it’s our job to pick the right people and it’s our job to make sure that they can fulfill their role in a way that moves our business. If client retention is bad, I mean, we figured out who we wanted two and how we wanted to serve them and how we were going to price things and what we were doing to retain. I mean, now let’s face it, it’s not naive to think that a hundred percent of what happens is completely within our control. I mean, it’s not, we’ve all seen the circumstances we dealt with. I mean, we’ve seen people over the last year be faced with various iterations of lockdowns and consumer uncertainty and any number of other things. But, you know, I mean, we’ve also seen some people have of all things have their best year ever in 2020, we’ve seen people navigate the, the, the choppy waters really well. And we’ve seen others just get swallowed up by it because we’re the first domino, right?

Like we’re the people who decide whether we’re going to be proactive or reactive. We’re the people who decide whether they going to play offense or D defense. And in fact, the people who I know who’ve been the most successful in about anything are the ones who take more responsibility there. They’re willing to probably take more responsibility for things that are outside of their control rather than pass the buck on much of anything, because there is this sense of control. There is this sense of comfort in believing that you have some control over your own destiny. And yeah, you know, I mean, I’m not talking about this from a faith perspective or whatever else. What I’m saying is when you, we wake up each day, we can choose how we invest our time. Are we proactively moving towards our goals or are we just waiting to see what happens, waiting to hope that the phone’s going to ring people are going to pop in, that people are going to pop into our inbox and show an interest. And what we do that clients are just all going to magically stay.

Let’s face it. If we want to succeed as a business owner, we have to accept that we’re taking on more responsibility than the average person, the average person, isn’t a business owner, right? And they’re in some ways saying, look, I want to hand the responsibility of keeping this operation of float to people up the management chain, right? And we say, no, we want to be business owners because we want more responsibility in exchange for the potential to cheap, greater things, to have more impact to earn more money, to have more control over what we do, how we do, who we do it with, you know, my first leg of my professional life, I was working at a state university, which is, is kind of the epitome of bureaucracy, right? Not only is it a, you know, a decent size organization, but it’s all also state funded. So lots of layers of bureaucracy, the budget is handed down from the state, regardless of, or funding is handed down from the state, regardless of how well the school may or may not have done based on variables beyond their control. And then you’ve got all sorts of boards, the committees, making decisions on things that are going to have a profound effect on you. And you know, for me, that wasn’t very appealing, right? I know that the, the year my college baseball program finished fifth at the world series, it was the best finish ever for a program in our conference, the best finish ever for a program that played at our level in our state. My budget actually didn’t go up at all the following year. It went down and the, the soccer program at the time hadn’t won a conference game in, in years. And they had, I had the exact same budget. We had, we had a much bigger roster than they had. We had much more success than they had. So bigger roster, meaning more kids are coming to the school and paying tuition. Right.

And, and when I looked at that, I thought, you know, I mean, I can’t change this. I can’t control the way the university operates, but I want to be in a situation or environment where I do have more control. And that’s what really helped inspire me to, to move on and, and start my own business and step out and do things on my own because, you know, ultimately I wanted the greater upside. I wanted more control, but we have to accept that wanting those things, doesn’t magically grant us those things. We have to earn them and deserve them by taking responsibility by saying, Hey, if it’s to be it’s up to me, right? Like if we want to have more clients, then we’re the ones who are going to have to go out there and generate more clients, regardless of the budget we have or whether or not our Facebook account got shut down or whether or not the market is as robust as it might’ve been a year or two ago. I mean, if we want the outcome, then we have to generate it. We have to go find people who are willing to buy. We have to sell them what they’re willing to buy. We have to be willing to maybe make for a lack of financial resources, with more hustle and more effort and more desire. So when you take the reins as a business owner, when you decide, Hey, this is what I want to do professionally, understand that. I mean, there’s plenty of upside there’s there.

There’s plenty of potential benefit, plenty of potential gain. But with that comes a price tag and that price tag above all else is being willing to take personal responsibility for every outcome that you’re going to achieve. If you embrace that, if you really wrap your arms around that and say, okay, this is what I’m going to be about. And I’m excited about it each and every day, because I have more control over my professional destiny than the average person does. And you wake up with a smile because of that, then you’re on the right path. But if that’s something that you are constantly looking to avoid, if you were looking to blame circumstances, if you’re looking to blame somebody else, my suggestion for you is to go get a job, go work for somebody else and let them take the responsibility. But don’t be mad when that person who’s leading that business is making many multiples of what you’re making and making decisions that you don’t love. So, you know, just to kind of tie it all back together, if you want something you’re probably fully capable of achieving it, but you’re going to have to take personal responsibility from closing that gap from where you are, to where that place is.

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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