Fitness Business School – Building a Strong Foundation

Full Transcript

Hey, Pat Rigsby here and in today’s episode, I wanna talk with you about some core foundational components that many businesses are missing. 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.

Not long ago, I wrote an email talking about the journey of a business owner from Struggle to Success. And it really was kind of inspired by kind of a
business fable that I wrote a few years back called The Path. And you know, the thing that I’ve recognized over the years is a lot of people, even if they figure out how to get a business past the launch stage, and you know, they’re growing, they’re generating revenue, they’re still struggling in a lot of other
areas, right?

Maybe the profitability isn’t where they want it to be. Maybe they feel like their business owns them, their schedule is, is overwhelming. Their just some kind of foundational things that I think need to be in place that if you don’t have them sustained success is tough to achieve. And, you know, sure, some
people have built businesses that on the surface look kind of impressive, but it’s on this foundation of sand, if you will. And for me, there, there are a few things that just kinda stand out. And so I wanted to touch on them because I think there are three kind of core things that, that I see missing early on at, at a
really frequent level. And then beyond that, there are two others that I see that people kind of have some of, but are often incomplete. So the first three, the things that are often kind of the, you know, that, that Achilles heal in businesses as they grow.

The first is just not having a planning or productivity type of system, not having a you know, a way to take control of your time. So we, we teach planning on a weekly basis. We do six week cycles for business owners where you know, we, we help people map out what kind of progress they should make
on a, you know, a a six week window of time. We talk about annual planning with clients and help them map out an annual plan. We do a win the week thing. So basically it’s always trying to create a roadmap. So you have some clarity on where you’re trying to go. They, I think the planning side of stuff,
I’ve talked about it in a number of episodes before. It’s a hallmark, I think of successful people in general.

If you don’t take control of your time, you’re essentially giving other people permission to control your time, and you have to be reactive. So a lot of business owners, they don’t proactively plan. They kind of wing it. They, they do some stuff that may be on their schedule with other people, so they may have
appointments for training sessions or for consultations, but as far as getting their own goals achieved moving forward on their own projects, they haven’t scheduled time for that. And so, yeah, I mean, it may feel like, well, I have a plan. I know what I’m gonna do tomorrow because I’ve got this training
session I do at seven. I have this one I do at 10, I have one at at three and one at six. You know, but are you planning or are you creating a container of time to move forward on your goals?

The things that are gonna take you beyond where you are today? So that’s the first one. The second is, they don’t really have a financial system. They’re again, kind of reactive. They take the money that’s left over in the business account as a draw or, you know, they’re not doing tax planning,
they’re kind of reactive. We, we work with business owners and, and kind of take a I would say at least a modified approach to the profit first kind of financial system for small businesses. I don’t know that we really recommend it verbatim or word for word because there are other things that we do
based on the you know, the stage somebody’s in, in their business. As far as recommendations. I know we’ve leaned on our good friend Billy Hofacker a lot to help people early stage, kind of showing them how to get out of debt and take controller finances.

He talks with people about setting up a financial structure on ongoing. Doug Spurling and I talk about it in our boardroom group, but if you don’t have some sort of controller your finances, whether you’re using that kind of methodology or, or some other, you know, it, it feels like you never get ahead because
we are definitely cash flow businesses in general, not cash out businesses. Usually our business is more valuable to us as a vehicle to create revenue and income than it is as a saleable asset, as a, most people listening to this is a single site service business. Sure there are some people who get a windfall when
they exit, but on average that’s not the case. So I want to at least make sure that, you know, we’re setting those people up to succeed too, because you can build some, some real security and even some wealth with a cash flow business if you have strong financial systems in place.

So that’s number two. Number three is what I’ll just call personal optimization, right? And, and the reason I say that instead of just self-care is I think that, you know, obviously a lot of the people who are here listening to this we’re in the fitness field, so a lot of them, you know, they, they got into it because
they loved physical exercise, right? They loved working out. They’re physically active people, they probably, you know, a lot of people enjoy what would be deemed as healthier nutrition. So there’s that piece, right? That, that I think some of us do, do well with, or at least have plenty of
experience with. And, you know, and that’s good. But I, I think that there’s more to it, right? There’s you know, are we doing, you know, anything from a mindset perspective, are we doing anything to regulate our nervous system?

Are we doing anything? You know, I mean I will be the first to tell you that plenty of our most successful business owners see therapists. I’ve used neurofeedback with a lot of regularity over the past few years. You know, so I think there’s kind of that self optimization that we need to do. And that’s not
even talking about, you know, personal development. I think that we probably as businesses, like our businesses are not going to go further than we go. We ultimately are gonna be the limiting factor. If we are not improving ourselves, then we’re gonna put a pretty low ceiling on how the business grows. And
a lot of people, they get stuck in this cycle where it’s like, man, the business is swallowing me up. And so they’re, you know, their self-care really gets diminished in it almost exclusively.

If this happens at all. The only thing they do is the stuff that they do inside the gym, right? They’ll jump in a couple workouts, they’ll do some stuff in between sessions, but they’re not doing anything else to, to take care of themselves. And, you know, other things about that, you know, just fostering
healthy relationships, all that. So those are the core three that I think a lot of people drop the ball on. The other couple that I think have some chinks in the armor, I think that business systems would be one, like operating systems and you know, the operating systems, they, they’re more of a problem. The
more somebody scales, right? Like if you’re just a solopreneur and you’re you know, and you’re not having to navigate a, a team or a high volume of client, you can probably get by with incomplete or in inferior operating systems.

But the more people you have, the more system structure you need, the more coaching on systems that you need to have. And that’s the other piece of this, like when I’m thinking about systems, it’s not just having them, it is facilitating the successful execution of them. And that, and that’s a big one too, right?
You’d be amazed at how many people we talk to that they don’t ever have team meetings. And I liken this to like an NFL team saying, Hey, here’s the playbook, but we’re not gonna practice and expecting to go out and perform really, really well on Sunday. So systems from an operational standpoint are another
one that I see serving as a bottleneck for scalability. And then the last one would be actually having strong connecting convert systems like the marketing side of things. And I’m lumping marketing and selling in together, but a predictable way to consistently generate leads and convert people into clients.

So having that pipeline in place, because a lot of people, they’re just kind of fly by the seat of their pants erratic, and Hey, I’m all for you. Layering on things that are seasonal or things that may bring bring some extra business in that you, you learn from this podcast, from our Facebook group, from other people
that you listen to from coaching programs. I’m, you know, grab things and, and execute, implement, find out what works. But you know, your business can’t be built on, oh, I heard this good idea on a podcast, so I’m just gonna try it, it today. It has, there has to be some sort of predictable way to bring in at least
the necessary business you need to stay where you’re at and hopefully grow a little bit. And for me, it’s pretty simple. Like the, the most predictable foundational, ongoing marketing system is, you know, we, we run ads to books that, that I’ve written that move people into a pipeline of daily emails
that have a mix of various offers that hopefully get them introduced to the things that we do and how we can help.

So you gotta have something that is stable and steady, and then you can bolt on other things, you can wrap other ideas around it, you can try other things, but that’s it. Those are the five things that if you said, okay, well what, you know, what’s that foundational stuff that people kind of miss out on that that
undermines them, even if they’re working hard, even if they’re on the surface, it looks like they’re doing okay because they’re doing 20, 25 grand a month in revenue and they’re, they look kind of busy, but their business is, it’s almost like just held together with duct tape. So planning financial systems,
personal optimization are the, the real core three. And then depending on the business and the size or scope of the business, operating systems and marketing systems, those would be the next two. If you feel like you’re stuck, if you feel like this, you know, this is you that I’ve just described
put these under the microscope.

And if you need help with any of those you know, I’d love to help. This is probably some of the most fulfilling work I do, is taking people that, you know, have some, some positive things working for them and just, you know, they’ve got some, some blind spots or some things they haven’t been able to fix that
can serve as a, a springboard to really help them build the business they want. Shoot me an email at [email protected] and we’ll connect and jump on a call and just talk through and maybe identify what you need to work on. You know, I’d love to talk to you about it, no strings attached. Just, you
know, identify those things and obviously, you know, if it makes sense to continue to work together after that, we can see how that might work out. But, you know, just as a thanks for listening to this episode of the podcast, if I can help with any of those, just shoot me an email and we’ll connect.
Talk to you soon.

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