Fitness Business School – Ideal Business Rules – Ep 2 – Having a Systematic Approach

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here and in this episode, I want to follow up and talk with you about what I’d consider the second rule of building your ideal business. Let’s get to it.

Welcome to the fitness business school podcast. The show for fitness business owners who want to grow their income, increase their impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen till the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

So in the last episode, I talked with you about serving your ideal client. Well, the, the second rule, at least in my mind in building your ideal business is you must have a systematic approach to connecting with and converting, right? You have to have a systematic approach to marketing and selling to your ideal client. So in our industry, most business owners didn’t get started with this, you know, real deep background in marketing and selling and even business, right? I certainly didn’t. I was a college baseball coach, a strength coach. I was passionate about those things. And, and I think a lot of the people that I’ve had the honor of working with were kind of the same, right? Their background was in fitness or health or maybe sport performance. And they, they, they felt compelled to turn that into a career. And so because of that, most of us were not incredibly strong in things like generating leads or closing sales in the early stages of our time as a business owner. In fact, most of the time when, when we open most fitness businesses, don’t even have a real predictable way to generate new clients. They may try to pull some people with them from previous stops along the way.

They may just try to go and, and make some social media posts and, and just try to create some initial awareness. But over time, you know, those businesses kind of typically established a few simple and maybe maybe predictable ways to generate new business, like asking for referrals or running a challenge and running a few ads to that. But they, they still, they don’t have what I would ever call a system. They, they have a few kind of periodic tactics that they put into action and you know, and, and they wonder why they can’t really get over the hump and get to this point where, you know, money’s not a stress anymore. And where client flow is something that that’s more stable and they’re not stressed out and anxious. Anytime somebody needs to pause, or somebody says, Hey, they’re gonna cancel for a little while or something like that. Whereas the best businesses, you know, what, we’re what we are kind of queing the ideal businesses. They have a system in place where they can consistently generate interested prospects and over time and convert them into clients. How can that work for you? Well, the first thing that we have to do is understand that there’s this kind of journey, this prospect journey that that goes on with most successful marketing systems, the best marketing really kind of begins by identifying the people who are interested in getting them to raise their hand right there. There’s a, a level of awareness that that has to happen.

These people have to know you exist. These people who are prospective clients, not necessarily ready to walk in, hand you a credit card and start today. But at least the people in this general pool of prospective clients that might be shopping around, they’re starting to have an interest in solving the problems or achieving the goals that you are uniquely qualified to help them do. Well. The best marketing systems begin by identifying and connecting with those people. Then there’s this follow up that happens right? Where a relationship is built, motivating the, that prospect, educating them, inspiring them and compelling them until they’re ready to become a client, but that’s not what most businesses do, right. It’s just what the best businesses do. So think of yourself as a consumer, because I want to kind of take a little bit of time to convince you as to how this works.

Because when, when we are building a great business, a lot of this is about putting ourselves in the shoes of the person we wanna serve, because we’ve gotta build something that’s attractive to that person and will fit into their life and, and really kind of dovetail in with the way that that person actually operates. So let’s look at things as a consumer, from a, you know, for just a moment, most of the time, you know, your initial indication of interest in a product or a service doesn’t happen the exact same moment that you’re ready to buy, right? Like most of the time, if you are in the market to buy a new house or buy a new car, or maybe even buy a new dishwasher or something like that, right. You know, most of the time, it’s not like, Hey, the, the light bulb pops up over your head and you’re like, oh, you know, it’d be nice to have a new house. Let’s see if I can go pay cash for this right now. No, sure. If I, if you need a plumber because your baseman’s flooded or whatever else sure. You may make that decision really rapidly. But most of the time when we are thinking about making a meaningful purchase and, and I think our services, my business coaching services, your fitness sport, perform health, coaching, sports, performance, health, coaching services. They are significant investments of money and time. Most, most of the time we start to do some research. We begin by being interested. Then we start to think about various options that we have available to us, the prices, the value, the schedule, the way it’s gonna fit into our life, how it’s gonna fit into our budget. We investigate, we ask around, we do a little bit of online discovery. We look at reviews and then once we’re educated and we’re comfortable, we make a buying decision.

Now, as business owners, our job is to get those people who are potentially our ideal clients to raise their hand and indicate an interest. Then we’re gonna follow up with them over time and we’re gonna help them get to know us. We’re going to help them like us and trust us. And hopefully they’re going to be interested in what we have to offer and through doing all that, that education, that motivation, we’re gonna convince them over time that when they’re ready, we are the best option for them. Now to make this a consistent marketing and selling machine, we need to not only have a way to get people, to raise their hand initially, but we have to have follow up in place. Now, obviously with me, most of the people that come into my world probably, you know, download a free copy of one of my books. They start to get my emails. Maybe they listen to the podcast and that’s kind of my process, my journey for prospective clients. And hopefully some of them raise their hand and say, Hey, I’m, I’m really ready. This is a good fit for me. So we have to be able to make those offers to those people. Once they are in that, in our kind of ecosystem in our world, in our pipeline.

And we have to kind of alternate, right? We have to have some offers where they can join anytime, where it’s kind of this we’re open every day mentality. And then we can also have this kind of incentivized deadline driven offer where maybe we’re running a short term program and enrollment closes, or we give somebody a gift or a bonus whenever they decide they, they want to, you know, when they’re on the fence, we can kind of nudge them and get them to take action. But we have to have this system to consistently do this in place, if we’re gonna be successful. And if you don’t have that, if you don’t have a continual way of filling this pipeline and moving that relationship along with people who are in that pipeline, then you’re always gonna be in this position of desperation. You’re always gonna be in this position where you feel like you’re kind of behind the eight ball.

And in fact, if you look at a lot of the Facebook ads that are out there for marketing either, you know, coaches or agencies, they like they prey on that desperation. They prey on this person, who’s working from a deficit, they’ve got attrition, they can’t pay their bills. So there’s this promise of this flood of 50 or a hundred people in almost no time. When the reality is, if you have a system in place, you never need that. You never need that flood because you’ve got this consistent flow of the right people coming into your business. Not, not being forced to just desperately pursue anybody and everybody in hopes of just being able to pay the bills. So that’s rule number two, you have to have a systematic approach to marketing and selling.

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Fitness Business School. Before you go, I have a quick announcement. When I first connect with a fitness business owners, they almost always asked me, how can I get more clients or make more money? Well, I have an exclusive offer for you, and it’s gonna help you do just that. As a listener of this show, you can test drive our business growth accelerator coaching program for FREE.

BGA is a one of a kind program where you get done-for-you marketing tools and a level of coaching that is unmatched in our industry to help you attract more qualified prospects and convert them into paying clients, ultimately making you more revenue and personal income.

Imagine having every tool template ads, script you need all proven to convert in, ready to use. Plus you have access to over 10 weekly live video coaching sessions to help you with everything from dialing in your ads, to mastering your mindset. You get all of this and more when you joined BGA and to help you succeed, I’m going to do something I’ve never done before. I’m going to let you test drive BGA at zero cost.

If it delivers for you in the way that I expect – it more than it pays for itself, and you’ll probably want to stay. If not, you’re out nothing and have a library of proven tools and resources to keep.

To take advantage of this special offer. Just email me [email protected] and put test drive in the subject line, and I’ll get you all the details.