Fitness Business School – Build a Better Business Model

Full Transcript

Hey Pat Rigsby here. And in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about building a better business
model. Let’s get started.

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.

Not too long ago, I sent out, uh, kind of an informal survey asking what people felt like they
needed the most help with. And I guess almost surprisingly, one of the top answers was that people felt
like they needed a better business model. They needed, um, you know, something that, that helped
them operate more successfully, which, you know, I, I guess in hindsight, it, it’s not that surprising. It’s
just, uh, you know, it, it’s a really good way to look at things because I think a lot of times people’s
answer is usually tactical.
They usually say, oh, I need more leads. Or, um, you know, I need to know how to run a Facebook ad or
something like that. And thinking of it through the lens of, no, I need to upgrade my business model to
have the business that I want to have. I is definitely, uh, an evolved way of thinking and likely will lead to
a better result. So I wanted to take, um, just a little bit of time in today’s episode and talk about what,
um, what I consider the ideal business model framework. And what’s great about it is it leaves the
business owner, plenty of latitude to, to kind of color in the boxes as they wish. But you know, it is
something that if you go through the process of really thinking through this framework and optimizing it
to fit you, your business, your goals, your strengths, then ultimately what’s gonna happen is you’re going
to land on a, a really strong business that allows you to have the impact, the income and the
independence that you’re looking for.
So let me kind of talk through this and, um, you know, help you understand how this works,
right? So basically our, our core business model is three units. We have the connect unit, the convert
unit and the coach unit. And then once we’ve established that, then we start to talk about scaling. But
until we’ve established this really solid foundation, then scaling shouldn’t be a priority optimization
should be a priority and then scale what works. But the connect unit’s really simple, right? The connect
unit’s this concept of connecting with the right people. So really connect, we’ve got to fill in three kind of
boxes within this framework. The first is identifying who our ideal prospect is, right? We need that
perfect prospect that we know that we can deliver a great result for that perfect prospect that we know
that we can also reach with some degree of consistency.
So, you know, sometimes people kind of miss the mark on this because they either pursue everybody.
So they don’t narrow it down. They don’t have a perfect prospect. They just take every prospect or
maybe they narrow it too far. And there just isn’t enough volume for them to serve within the market.
They’re trying to reach sure. If you’re online, maybe you can reach a much broader, um, cross section of,
of the marketplace. But if we’re talking about local, are there enough people that you can actually
compel to do business with you that fit that profile? Um, or, you know, maybe we’ve not identified that
perfect prospect that we’re gonna be great at serving and people make mistakes on this for all sorts of
reasons. I won’t delve into with any depth here, but, you know, chasing what they see other people
doing, being afraid, uh, of narrowing, um, you know, not, not necessarily focusing on the result they
want to deliver there.
They’re all, all sorts of reasons. But if you take the time to lock into who your perfect prospect is, then
everything else becomes easier. So the second component of connect like this connect unit is
developing your magnetic message. So your magnetic marketing platform, basically, because the
message is what we’re going to do to compel those perfect prospects, to raise their hand. They’re going
to, you know, essentially go from being invisible to you because there are probably plenty of people
within 1, 2, 3 miles of your facility. That would be wonderful prospects for you, but you don’t know their
address. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know anything, um, specific individually about them.
You just know that, Hey, there there’s a high probability. These people exist. So we need to craft a
magnetic message that compels those people to, to become visible to you, whether it is, you know, the,
the stuff you’re putting out on social media, you’re ongoing kind of messaging, whether it’s, um, the, the
stuff you put on your website, whether it is a lead magnet, you create, you know, anything that you’re
putting out there has to be attractive to that person.
So they kind of raise their hand and become known to you. And then the third leg of this connect unit.
So basically that third box we have to, to fill in is how we’re going to fill our pipeline, because ultimately
we need to have a steady flow of those perfect prospects coming into our world, coming into our
ecosystem. So we’ve gotta have a, a systematic way to get that message in front of those people and
compel them to give us their, their contact information, to give us the ability to follow up with them and
at least start a conversation and introduce them to what we do. So there are a multitude of different
ways that we can fill in these respective boxes, a as I’ve mentioned, but if you’re trying to build your
ideal business model, that’s, that’s the key is you have to strategically fill in these boxes and not just kind
of cobble together tactics and not just chase shiny objects and hope that it all somehow fits together
synergistically.
So if that’s the connect unit, the second unit is the convert unit. And we, we start off the convert unit
with that first box winning follow up. So if we connect with somebody, we have to demonstrate to them
that we’re the right fit. That we’re somebody who can help them solve their problems and reach their
goals. We have to help them recognize the, that we are going to be the best solution for them. Now, this
is a combination of things from, um, you know, compelling content to social proof, to, um, you know,
just kind of coaching people in some ways, until they pay you to coach them. It, it it’s demonstration of
something that, that allows this person to believe you are. In fact, exactly what they’re looking for now
follow up is critical. And it’s a missing link for so many businesses in our industry, because we want
people to decide on our terms and our timeline.
We want people to sign up when it’s convenient for us, not when it makes sense for them. We want
them to, um, see our ad or hear about us the first time and immediately rush through the door with a
credit card in hand, ready to fully commit. But that’s just not the way that humans operate. So we have
to have this winning follow up in place. So we have to craft what our version of winning follow up looks
like for our ideal business. Then we need to create what I call conversion events. Now a conversion
event could be a success session. It could be a consultation, it could be an assessment. It could be a free
trial. It could be a transformation challenge. It could be a 28 day experience in your facility, but really it’s
an opportunity for you to further that demonstration. It’s a way for you to get somebody to move from
interested to ready and, you know, actually experience things in an interactive way.
Now, like I said, it, it could be just a simple consultation. It could be a paid assessment or some sort of diagnostic evaluation, or it could be a, a multi-day or even multi-week experience with you. But
again, depending on your ideal business model, you need to select the right one or two options for you.
And the reason I say one or two is sometimes we want to have a couple different tools in the toolbox in
this respective category, because you know, it can become stale and we can, you know, we, we can do
some different things to create urgency and leverage to better enhance our conversion opportunities.
And then once we’ve established the conversion events that we are gonna use in our business model,
the third kind of box we need to fill in, in this convert unit is our approach to what we call simple sales
sales should be the beginning of a partnership.
It should not be this antagonistic tug of war where you win and the prospect loses, or if they don’t join,
they win and you lose or something like that. The way that so many sales people present this is if they
conquered the person walking through the door, instead of actually partnering with that person, to help
them achieve their goals and creating a meaningful value exchange between the two parties that works
going forward. So again, we want to build a simple sales system that works for you and your ideal
business. So we’ve got connect, we’ve got convert. The third piece of this model that we need to
optimize for you and your respective business is the coaching unit. The coaching unit is, um, you know,
very much, like I said, I work with coaching businesses. I work with fitness, sports, performance, and
health coaching businesses. And you know, it, coaching is different.
There are a lot of people that talk about, Hey, I create courses or I have a membership or something like
that. Coaching is different. Coaching is us taking a greater, deeper role in helping somebody go from
where they are to where they aspire to be. It’s not just the dissemination of information. It’s not just
instruction. It is actually taking some responsibility for, for this journey that the person that we’re
serving is going on. So the first box we have to figure out here is the optimized service model. Now this
is kind of a subset of your larger model because your service model is how you’re gonna deliver what
you are doing, right? Like, so are we going to do one on one? Are we gonna do semi-private? Are we
going to, um, you, are we going to do in-home training? Are we gonna do virtual training?
Are we going to have a facility and lock into small group training? Are we gonna have a multifaceted
approach where we can have a couple service offerings where maybe we have small group and one on
one or large group and semi-private, or are we going to integrate nutrition coaching to make this a more
holistic business model? So we need to check those boxes. And then once we’ve done that, we can
figure out what, what this looks like for us. Then we go into what we call leverage service. How do we
find the leverage point? We, we look at pricing to maximize our hourly revenue. We look at, you know,
the way that we can create one to several or even one to many opportunities or build assets that do
work for us, ongoing leverage doesn’t have to necessarily mean you are doing only large group, or you
are only handing off things to other people.
Leverage means that we’re getting more mileage out of the work that we’re doing by profit. Um, you
know, by charging more by building things and automating them by finding those kind of spots within
your model, that allow you to detach yourself from doing one thing for one person at a time. And then
the third box that we have to fill in to optimize this coaching unit is playing our best role. Because even if
you don’t really wanna have a bunch of employees, you can always find ways to use technology or
contractors to offload some of your responsibilities. You can delegate and then elevate into the role that
you should be playing. You know, not only do I have people who are on my all the time team, but then
I’ve got other people who play certain roles for me, whether it be, um, you know, an accountant who
does some of my tax planning and taxes, and some of the, you know, some of the other things that he
may handle, or I’ve got my dear friend Paul over here managing the podcast.
So these are things that, that you need to identify, and yes, it may be evolving into your best role as,
Hey, I’m gonna manage the business. I’m gonna coach the coaches and I’m going to handle marketing
and selling, or maybe you love coaching, and you want to make coaching an integral part of what you
do, but you want to change the schedule as to which you are actually doing it. So that’s our core
business model. Now, once we’ve established this, we can start to look at scaling. We can start to do
some other things that allow us to evolve this into whatever we aspire to, to make it. Maybe it’s multiple
locations. Maybe it is adding in other components to what we’re doing and taking more of a leadership
role instead of a technician role, maybe it’s licensing or franchising, or integrating a virtual second
location and having an online component.
There’s so many things that we can do to scale, but we want to scale a proven successful business
model. So if you’ve been unsure of your model being the right thing, I would encourage you to go
through this framework process, go through this kind of, of fill in the blanks with what’s appropriate for
your business kind of approach, or even reach out to me. Just shoot me a message [email protected]

I do this in one on one and small group settings, both virtual and in person to help people design
and start building their ideal business model. So there’s the blueprint for building your model, the
framework for success. Now it’s up to you to put it into action.

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