Fitness Business School – The Constants

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here and in this episode, I want to talk with you about some things that you can count on when you’re building your 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 end impact and improve their lifestyle. Be sure to listen to the end of this episode, because we have a brand new special offer exclusive for listeners. So stay tuned.

Invariably people will ask about what they should be focused on in building their business, what things are gonna be happening, what things are gonna be changing. And I think over the last 15 plus years, there are so many of the things in my business that I’ve been able to build around that I, I think would apply almost just apples for apples, with almost all of the, the clients that I work with, that they could just translate into their business. And it, it it’s stuff that seems very simple,but you know, you, you may be throwing a quote, you know, fresh coat of pain on it periodically, but I mean, these are all things that have held for me for 15 plus years in some way, shape or form. And I’m pretty sure that if you’re focused on building your business around these things, they’re gonna work for you too.

So I just wanted to kind of go down a list of things that aren’t going to change that, you know, I’ve talked about these general concepts before things that aren’t gonna change, but these are a little bit more
tactical. These are things that you can be doing in your business, not necessarily with the, the consumer
ones that won’t change. So the first is being very coaching centric. I think that people have gotten really
focused on programs or sometimes if they’re in the online world courses and they’ve kind of danced
around the coaching thing, but coaching has been prominent the entire time I’ve been in this industry.
It’s gonna be prominent as long as I’m in this industry because people want personalized support. They,
they would rather you fit to them than them adapt to something else when given the choice. So being
very coaching centric, and that’s not the same thing as just being an instructor, teaching somebody, your
system, but actually, you know, serving is, you know, the instructor, but the mentor, the motivator, the,
the support system, and then kind of along those same lines, the, the source of accountability in many
cases, because accountability’s not going away.

People when they’re changing, changing behaviors, when they’re adopting new habits, when they’re
kind of installing new processes or ways of operating, they need accountability because it’s new,
they’re kind of rewiring how they do things. So they’re gonna need somebody to help course correct
along the way, whenever they get off the track. For me, paid traffic has been one of those things that
just isn’t gonna change. You know, I spent the first couple years of my business life looking for every way to generate leads, to generate prospects without spending money because I didn’t have money and, and that was fine, but ultimately you’re either gonna be trading time or money for whatever outcome that you want. And, and we buy those, those prospects in some ways, shape or form, right? With the amount of time that we’re spending or the amount of money that we’re investing.
So if you have the, the option to pay for traffic, whether you are the person running ads or you’re paying somebody else to, to run ads, it’s more predictable. It is. I, I just think of me hiring either Facebook or an advertising agency or whatever else to generate leads. It it’s like, you know, I’m hiring an employee that is just spitting out the outcome that I want. And usually it’s gonna be way less expensive than hiring other employees. So paid traffic is a big one follow up, has been huge for me. In fact, if I think of the, the way that I’ve approached follow up that may be one of the bigger differentiators in my professional life.

And, and it’s, it’s really just started in this mentality of saying, how do I make the most of the leads that I get because leads were very expensive from a, a time standpoint early on.
So how do I make the most of every person I come in contact with? I think a lot of people are pretty
frivolous with their follow up and they aren’t nearly as purposeful. They, they don’t commit to doing a
great job with it. And so they end out having to generate far more leads and invest a lot more money or
time to get the same result because they do less with follow up. So coaching accountability, paid traffic
follow up simplifying solutions. And I will tell you the way that I think of simpler solutions is probably
different than the way a lot of people do.

Now. I will say that for me, just the way that my mind works.
I’m kind of always looking for a simpler way to, to view something, right? Like I, I don’t do well with like textbook type stuff. I try to translate that into like layman’s type language or something.
Well, for clients, whether it’s a B2C or a B2B client, I’ve always thought of simplicity being valuable
because I’m asking somebody to do something new. I’m asking somebody to bolt something onto an
already full plate, right. They already have a busy life of me. I’m working with business owners. You
know, they already have clients, they already have obligations. They already have personal
responsibilities as well. So if I’m going to say, Hey, I need you to do this new thing. A, it has to be simple.

So it doesn’t take up 20 hours a week for them to figure it out. And B it has to work so simpler solutions are paramount next up planning. I’ve been an avid planner for gosh, at this point 28 years, I guess now. And it is in my mind, like other than being kind of intentional about relationships, I would say that planning is the biggest success hack.

There is it, you know, something that you can spend five minutes on in an evening that essentially lets
you hit the ground running for the next day is I mean it’s a time saver. It’s a productivity supercharge. If
you are not planning your days. In my opinion, you’re basically saying I’m going to settle for 50%
performance. Other things that, that don’t change or, you know, have, have held kind of held on the
entire time. I’ve done this, focusing on what clients want, the problems they need to solve. I think that,
you know, when we design offers for clients or to attract clients, focusing on what they actually want,
what problems they wanna solve, what their objections are, is way better than saying, Hey, this is what I wanna sell. But most people do the latter and there’s definitely a lot more opportunity in the former
serving people with what they actually want is like the surest way to become recession resistant, to
become you know, somebody that people are unwilling to give up in times of distress.
So, so really focus on the client themselves, not necessarily just what you wanna sell, what your process is interactive selling. I think a lot of people try to be lazy and figure out like how they can avoid talking to other people. It it’s always interesting to me when somebody says, Hey, I want to do a sales page. I want to do a video sales letter, but they don’t get a lot of traffic. You know, they don’t get a lot of leads. And, you know, if you get a, the opportunity to sit down with somebody in a consultative selling environment, worst case scenario, you’re gonna sell 25, 30% of those people. If you have like the world’s greatest sales letter, maybe you convert like three or 4% of those people. And if you were selling it to cold traffic, you wouldn’t get anywhere near those numbers.

But, you know, so if you wanna make the most, it’s a lot like follow up. If you wanna make the most of
the leads that you’re getting interactive selling is a game changer. You know, I, I talk a lot about
relationships, so I won’t spend too much time on that here. But, you know, building relationships with
people where, you know, it’s more than transactional is not only just a, a great way to create
opportunity, but it’s a retention booster. It’s a referral generator. It is an opportunity to find
opportunities. I mean, if you spend your time being interested rather than interesting, and, and you
learn about your prospects, if you learn about your clients, they’re going to tell you what else they need.
So they’re gonna tell you opportunities to make your program better, to add on ancillary offering. So
relationships, it’s not just a marketing thing, it’s a business growth or business improvement tool as well.

And then recurring revenue I’ve had about 50 recurring revenue programs and most every program that
I consider launching, I, I look at ways that I can build a recurring component into it because for me, the
recurring revenue allows me to focus on serving the client less than, about chasing new business. Now
that doesn’t mean you don’t have to go get new leads. You don’t have to go get new sales, but my goal
is to help people find solutions that are a little more budget friendly. And so the recurring model, rather
the, than the prepaid model makes a lot of sense because it works with people’s cash flow better. And
then once somebody’s on board, my job is just to win their business. So every month it becomes a good
decision to stay and I don’t have to, you know, talk them into res resigning.

I don’t have to chase new people constantly because people are, you know, you know, they’re, they’ve
paid their fee and they’re done so recurring. Revenue’s huge. And then this is gonna sound like common
sense, but treating others well, treating others fairly trying to see things from people’s perspective. I, I
think a lot of times as a business owner, we want to build around the E everything that we want. So
when it comes to like a lead, our follow up, we expect the buyer’s journey to be what we want it to be,
rather than just being you know, really aware of what people actually go through in that buying process.

Same thing with clients you know, like an example would be treating others well or fairly, and seeing
things from their perspective, if somebody doesn’t, you know, doesn’t want to train as frequently during
the summer, just because that’s what we want.
Doesn’t mean that’s the best thing for them. They it’s their life. They get to live it the way they want. So
we need to find a way to, to, to adapt to that, to connect with that, and still be somebody they want to
be a part of their life or a business that they want to be a part of their life. So that’s kind of where like
what, I mean, an example of that. So, you know, I, I know I touched on a bunch of things during this
episode, but you know, those are the things that I’ve built my businesses around. And frankly, if you
were to dissect my current business, if you were to look at anything that, that I’ve done over the past
six, seven years it it’s been built around the, the things that I just listed. And frankly, those are like the
guardrails that I have. If I’m coming up with something new tomorrow, it’s going to be built around
those same things. So some things that have helped me and I think they’ll help you as well.

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