Fitness Business School – Sustainably Successful 1 of 3

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna start a three part series about how I’ve built a sustainable, successful business that has lasted almost 20 years. So 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.

It’s kind of interesting to, to look around the fitness industry landscape and see how few people were involved and people that I connected with or, or knew about when I first got into the commercial side of the industry 20 years ago now I had had another decade of being involved in the university
landscape as a college baseball coach, college trade coach. But as far as, uh, the private sector out with gyms and training and that sort of stuff you
know, it, it’s been amazing to see how, how much turnover there’s been. And admittedly at the same time, it’s also an interesting point of reflection for me to think about. I was the youngest college head baseball coach in the country my first two years as a coach. And for years that that whole kind of journey, I was kind of the young kind of up and coming person trying to kind of make my way now and or then, and now I am generally kind of seen as, uh, the more
seasoned veteran. And the people that I spend time with usually, uh, have fewer years doing this than I do. And they look to me as maybe having a little bit of wisdom, hopefully accrued over time, or at least that’s kind of the, the part of the industry that I work with as a business coach.
And really, I was thinking about this, what has allowed me to stay excited about this stay relatively successful. I mean, I’ve had a lot of pretty, pretty successful
years in a row, at least by, by my standards and I guess by many, uh, many people’s standards. It’s, I mean, it’s gone pretty well both from a fulfillment standpoint and then certainly professionally I’ve been able to serve a good number of people and provide for my, my
family and enjoy I guess a relatively comfortable lifestyle. So how has that happened? I guess there are always things that I’m trying to distill down. I’m trying to find a simpler way to explain things, a simpler way to, to view things. And I think it comes down to three things,
coaching, consistency and adaptability. So in this episode, I wanna talk about the coaching side of it, and then in the next couple episodes I’ll
talk about the other two. So from a coaching standpoint that what really prompted me to think about this was I was coaching baseball the other day and, uh, had a, a coach mention to me that, you know, a, a coach for a different team mentioned that he had learned something from me about
navigating the coaching side of things. And frankly, I don’t have any recollection of purposefully teaching him something though we’ve had conversations about
coaching before, but he mentioned that to me then I had a parent come up to me and express some gratitude for their, their child’s experience. And then later that evening had a parent share a quote from their child where he said, I’m so thankful that pat’s my coach and he is believing in
me, and baseball’s finally fun again.

And, and I thought that’s really kind of the driver of the bus here for me. I’ve always thought of myself as a coach, not a marketer, not an author even I mean, when I think of entrepreneurship and business and that stuff, I usually think of these bigger corporate-ish businesses, and I think of myself as, as a coach. And it’s not that all those other things that those aren’t woven throughout what I do or they aren’t tremendously important or, or noble per
pursuits or professions. It’s just this is what I see myself as. I feel like I’m somebody who makes an effort on a daily basis to help people move closer to what they aspire to be. And in fact, it at various points in my professional life, it’s it’s been suggested, whether it be by mastermind
groups or by business partners or whatever else, that I kind of move away from some of the coaching stuff and move into just more of, uh, an executive type role or whatever. And I’m like I mean, that’s fine, but if it’s my business, I get to kind of make the rules and I get to do what I want, and I would be unfulfilled if I didn’t get to coach, whether it be coaching team members or coaching clients or coaching players. And I’ve kind of seen that throughout
the, the entire journey. It’s been baseball or business or whatever else, they’ve been a vehicle to help coach people. Ideally. That’s kind of been, I think, the hallmark of why, if I had to pick one thing, that’s probably why I’ve been able to stay around in this, this profession so long, is I’m genuinely excited about coaching people, and I get fulfillment out of coaching people on a daily basis. It’s not something I get burned out by. It’s not something that I lose enthusiasm for.

It’s not something that I get impatient with. Sure, there are instances where, you know, you don’t get through to somebody in the way that you’d want, but I see that almost like a puzzle to solve. I see it as a, as a challenge where I’ve got to find a better way. It’s, as a coach, I think
it’s our responsibility to make sure people are making progress, right? I don’t think it’s I think we all had a bad professor in school or something that we felt like, hey, they, they don’t really care if you succeed or fail. They see it as their responsibility to share what’s in the textbook and best of luck to you. Whereas I guess I always thought of it as it’s my responsibility to help somebody be better at the end of the time that we’re together in this class than we were when we started.
And so I think that that’s kind of been the, the first step that, and, and I think there’s a leading by example part. I think that people are smart, and I think that over time they see right through you if they and if you’re not who you say you are the ability to stick around for a long time is almost nonexistent. I think that sure, you can outmarket who you are, but I think that eventually people recognize that maybe the real version of you isn’t the same as the, uh,
social media version of you and you’re exposed. And that’s probably why there, there’s so much turnover. There are a lot of people who sell coaching, but never coach. And there are a lot of people who probably like the idea of coaching because they think, well, hey, I like being around fitness,
or in my case, previously being around originally being around baseball or so I like the general kind of landscape. I like that field. I think that I can achieve something professionally there, but then you get into the, the nuts and bolts of it and you realize that it’s hard. And anything dealing with humans is, uh,
bound to go off script at some point. And best our best laid plans do not, uh, materialize very often, but I think that’s the, the joy of it. I think that if you love coaching, it’s a lot easier to stay in this profession and have six some sustained success. If I look at the people that I, that I respect
and admire in our profession, they are almost always, not, not without exception, but almost always people who still get excited about coaching. Now, sure, maybe they used to coach clients all the time, like that was exclusively what they did, and now they’re coaching their staff, or
maybe they’re coaching other professionals or something like that.

But they’re excited about coaching. And so if I’m picking out the things that have allowed me to stay around this long and, and have some degree of success, coaching would be number one. Now I’m going to follow up in the next two episodes and talk about the other two things that I think have allowed me to do relatively well. And I think that as important as coaching is and how that’s certainly been at the core of all of this, without the other two, it
still wouldn’t work. So don’t think, well, hey, I’ve got the answer, so I’m just gonna skip over these other two things. Be sure to check out these next two episodes, and I, I think you’re gonna find a, a, a pretty simple but powerful formula for success.

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 owner they almost always ask me, “How can I get more leads or how can I get more leads and client?”

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