Fitness Business School – Be A Winner

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here. And in this episode, I want to talk to you about the fact that there are winners and losers in every market and how you can come out on the winning side. 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.

You know, there’s a simple fact that I think we all need to understand when we’re starting a business or when we’re operating a business. And it’s that achieving what we want requires hard work, sacrifice, investment persistence. Now in my previous career, the first leg of my professional life, I was a college baseball coach and I won just to shake less than 70% of the games that I coached, which by, by college baseball standards that, you know, that that was really good, you know, a top kind of 5% winning percentage and business. I’m probably probably about the same, you know, two out of every three things that maybe I’ve done have gone. Okay. they they’ve gone well. There’s been some sort of measurable success. So I might call those winners, whether it be products launched or programs or businesses.

But what’s interesting about that is that means third of the things that I’ve done probably failed by whatever standards or expectations I had. They didn’t they, they, they didn’t reach the targets. I set, maybe they flop miserably. Maybe they became a drag on the things that were going well. But the thing about it that I, that I look back on that I’m still proud of. There is I got things done producing, right. And if you’re not producing, then you can’t come out on the winning side of the ledger here, right? I mean, there’s so many people that sit around and they’re in that aim, aim, aim, never fire mode. And it’s going to cripple business owners that do that. It’s going to hold people back from getting what they actually want. And you know, we have to accept that every losing opportunity gives us the opportunity to, to learn, to change and to improve. And, you know, losing is just part of it.

Nobody goes undefeated business. And that’s, that’s just something, one thing that we have to accept and the people who accept that as part of the journey, you’re going to move faster. They’re going to take the losses for what they are and they’re going to adapt quicker and they’re going to be more successful. But with that in mind, I wanted to share some traits of the people who usually come out on the winning side when it comes to business and the first is being driven, right? And that, you know, and some of these are all going to seem really, really simple, but sometimes we need to do a check in the mirror and saying, you know what? I may feel like I am this person, but do my behaviors and actions line up with the things that I say I am, or the things that I say I want to be. So being driven to succeed, right? They driven people know what they want. They develop goals, goals short, and long-term, they don’t let obstacles stop them. They, they may get slowed down, but they’re going to persist. They’re going to have faith. They’re going to take action. And they’re going to persevere. And they’re going to see these, these potholes along the way as part of the journey that they’re going to be proud of overcoming because they’re going to no, that they weed out the people who may may not be as committed. The second thing that we got to do is take personal responsibility.

We need to make sure that it’s on us, right? The harder we work, the smarter we work, we’re probably going to be more successful. And over time, hopefully we can make that trade for just working hard. Like we can work smart more and work with just volume less, but you know, taking responsibility for your own success, not letting others drag you down, not blaming your circumstances, not, not blaming the situation around us. I know that with my younger son, Alex, I talk a lot about never really being comfortable with somebody saying it’s not fun because I don’t know, fair, really exists. Right? I mean, circumstances are what they are, how you respond to them. That’s what you’re responsible for. And that’s, what’s going to decide how far are you you go?

The third thing is you’ve got to be eager to learn. You’ve got to be a lifelong learner. And you know, I’ve, I think I’ve, I’ve been fortunate in that regard. I’ve always been a reader. I’ve always been somebody that knew there was somebody else out there that was further along the path that I wanted to go, that I could learn from. And hopefully accelerate my progress and maybe avoid some of the pitfalls and mistakes that, that might’ve come without seeing the path they had taken. And you know, you, you have to understand that that is probably as big an investment as you can make. If you’re going to be a business owner is investing in you because it’s going to make every decision you make, every action you take along the way after that point better, you’re going to have a better strategy. You’re going to have more knowledge. You’re going to make better decisions. And that’s going to compound more than any other type of investment I’m aware of. And then, you know, you, again, this probably sounds cliche, but you need to have a positive mindset. That doesn’t mean you’re going to be the blind optimist, that doesn’t acknowledge challenges and doesn’t acknowledge things, not going well, but there has to be this belief that you can, and we’ll get this done and they’re going to be naysayers all around you, right? There are going to be people like we have to accept as business owners. We’re the oddballs, right? We’re the, the minority, most people work for other people.

And so if we want to be successful, we can’t let other people that don’t understand what we do or don’t believe in what we do drag us down. We have to. And then, you know, I’m, I’m a big believer in setting very clear goals and then setting up steps to accomplish these goals. We tend to set six week goals that kind of feed into our bigger annual goals and break things down into steps that we’re accomplishing each and every day. And the reason I believe this is so important is that if we’re trying to do something really meaningful, if we’re trying to build something great, it’s not going to happen by accident. We need to know where we’re trying to go. We need to have a path to get there. Now, does that mean we’re not going to have detours and we’re not going to have to course correct along the way or that that target isn’t going to evolve. The more we know the further along we are, all of it’s going to change, but by having this, it gives us focus to put our best effort forward with the information we have today. And then, you know, you’re going to have to be silent. [inaudible] I can’t tell you the number of business owners that I encounter, that they get so hung up on problems and they just want to complain. They just want to dwell on the problem, you know, I mean, learn from it, but move on. We’ve got to be the solution minded and even anticipate potential problems and start developing before those obstacles arrive, then you have to work hard and take action. I mean, I have been kind of banging the drum of building your ideal business for quite a while, but understand that you don’t get to just arrive at having your ideal business. It is built through hard work, through smart work, through persistence and consistency.

So if you’re not willing to pay the price to get there, then you probably should be okay, settling for something a little less grand than having your ideal business. And then, you know, finally I’d say, you’ve gotta be willing to get out of your comfort zone. You’ve gotta be willing to do things that may not be easy. Now, does that mean that everything should be a massive risk? No, I mean, I know I was a much bigger risk taker when I didn’t have kids. And when I was earlier on in my life, when I didn’t have nearly as much to lose or things, you know, not as many things I was I was responsible for. But you know, ultimately if we want something significantly better, we’re probably going to have to put ourselves in a situation that may be a little bit unfamiliar. It may be uncomfortable because it’s new to us. And new pretty much by definition is uncomfortable.

So all of this put together really, I think is the, the mentality that you need, the mindset you need to have the foundation that you build on to come out on top in what I believe is the most competitive fitness landscape we’ve ever seen. It’s, it’s a good thing because more people in the market means there are more people out there creating awareness, creating more potential clients for everybody. Now we need to do the things that it takes to make those clients choose us. Whether they choose us as their first option or my preference is they choose us as their last option. We want to be the one they stay with because we’re doing all this stuff, right. And we’re staying the course and having the mindset that it takes to come out on top.